Speaker 1: Get ready for your daily dose or marketing strategies and tactics from entrepreneurs with the guile and experience to help you find success in any marketing capacity. You're listening to Marketing School with your instructors, Neil Patel and Eric Siu.

Eric Siu: Welcome to another episode of Marketing School. I'm Eric Siu.

Neil Patel: And I'm Neil Patel.

Eric Siu: And today, we are going to talk about how you can make at least 10,000 bucks for an hour speech.

Neil Patel: Yeah. So if you guys haven't done public speaking before, you guys should check it out because it's the quickest and easiest way to make money. Both Eric and I have been paid for public speaking.

Eric Siu: Yeah. And even if you don't get paid, it's worth it.

Neil Patel: That's right. And in general, what are your thoughts, Eric, on paid speaking versus non-paid speaking? Because you actually just mentioned if you don't get paid, it's still worth it.

Eric Siu: Yeah. So I think ... Here's how you can look at it. If you don't get paid, you got to think about how you can get compensated for your time in the first place. So it could be if they're like, "Oh. We can't afford it but we'll cover your expenses." Da, da, da. Well, can they get you first-class accommodations? Can they get you a nice flight, nice hotels? Also, can you get the leads from the people that are attending the conference? If they're not going to pay you, it's like, "Hey, look. I'm giving you my time. I'm going to be with you for three, four days. Can I at least get the lead list?" That's at least worth some money. You got to figure out what your ... It's like any negotiation. What your main points are. If you're looking to generate leads or whatever, if you want to get to a special dinner, you want special access to people. Just think about what your terms are and then you can back that out into how much that's actually worth to you and if you should do it or not.

Neil Patel: Your first speech ever that you gave, was it paid?

Eric Siu: Nope.

Neil Patel: Mine wasn't either. How long did it take you to get your first paid speaking gig?

Eric Siu: Two years?

Neil Patel: That's pretty quick. It took me ... My guess is four or five years at least.

Eric Siu: But you started a very long time ago.

Neil Patel: Yeah, that's true. But in general, the point I'm trying to make is with paid speaking, the first lesson we have for you guys is don't expect to get paid from day one. You need to speak. You need to build your history. People need to know that you're a good public speaker, you're a good talker. You're just not going to make money from day one, so expect to put in at least a year of applying and pitching to get these speaking spots and, of course, you're going to have to pay for your own airfare, your hotels. The conferences, of course, will give you a free ticket, but you have to start out there. You're just not going to go from nothing to getting paid 10 grand.

Eric Siu: Yeah, and I recommend ... I think if you have ... I'm assuming most of you out there that are listening probably have your own website. Make a speaking page at least in the very beginning and then track how many ... Show how many speeches you've done in the past, where you've done them. And when you go speak for free, a lot of times, there's a video team that's recording. Get that footage, get images of you to build up that credibility. And Neil, both you and I on LinkedIn, we both have ... You have "speaker" in your title?

Neil Patel: Yeah, so I have "speaker" in my title on LinkedIn. Eric brings up a good tip right there. I generate probably 20% to 30% of my speaking leads from LinkedIn.

Eric Siu: Yeah, that's a good point. And same thing for me too. It's interesting because people will see me speak at a conference and even before I go on, they'll reach out and say, "Hey, look. We're looking to speak. We have X budget." And actually that's a really important point. So if people are asking you to speak in the first place, it's kind of uncomfortable to talk about money but just to get yourself used to it in the beginning, even if you're okay speaking for free, just get used to asking this question. I like to ask, "Well, can you tell me what your budget looks like? Can you also tell me what kind of people are going to be in the audience?" Because then if it's a really ... Let's say it's a group of venture capitalists for example, you know the audience has money and you know they can probably pay more too and you should know how you should tailor your speech.

Neil Patel: Yeah. And what I found is if you haven't done any public speaking yet and people are even wondering, "Hey. How well are you going to speak?" When you're just applying, whether it's for free or paid. What you can do is you can go and create YouTube videos of you just being in front of the camera. I have this on my channel. You can find me on YouTube. You can also find Eric on YouTube. He does similar things. And what we found is when I give speeches or let's say tidbits or advice and I'm speaking to the audience on Facebook, it helps me generate speaking leads as well. Not a ton but I would say anywhere from 5 to 10% of my speaking leads come from Facebook. I mean not Facebook, YouTube. The reason is being they've seen me speak. Even though there's not an audience, they're like, "Oh, wow. This guy's not that bad on camera, so he's probably not going to do that bad or poorly in front of a live audience."

Eric Siu: Right. And if you want to get started too, there's a guy named Bryan Harris. It's B-R-Y-A-N, Bryan Harris. He released something about almost a year ago. It's called Agent. So just google, "Agent", A-G-E-N-T, Bryan Harris, and you should be able to find the tool. It's a free tool that will show you all the speaking gigs around, let's say, entrepreneurship, marketing. Even there's female-focused conferences too. There's a bunch of different niches in there and he's constantly updating it. That's a good place to start. And I think for you to get going with speaking too, you have to be proactive. You can't expect people to come to you, inbound all the time because ... Look. Neil's been doing it for a while. Look. I've been doing it for a while too. And I think it's maybe lazy to just try to do it all inbound. Now I see a lot more people like ... One guy I used to work for, his name is Ryan Carson. He's doing a lot more speaking this year, speaks at a couple of prestigious conferences but it's only because he started to ramp up his outreach and that's why he's speaking at these conferences.

Neil Patel: Yes. Speaker bureaus are a great way. I get a lot of inquiries from speaker bureaus. Don't apply one and have exclusivity. I tried that. It sucks. I went a whole year and they didn't give me anything and they were even screening my inbound leads. But if you just apply to all the speaker bureaus, they take a fee but it opens up the possibilities. Another tactic that you could use and my buddy does is he writes a book, you can self-publish the book, and then he sends it to a lot of corporations. And when he sends it to corporations, he says, "Hey. Let me know if you're interested in having me train your marketing team or your sales team or your development team." And that's how he generates most of his paid speaking gigs. The beautiful part about that is it's not conferences, he's speaking directly to employees at a corporation. He goes in there, speaks. They usually also sign him on for a consulting agreement right after as well and it's a win-win situation. He's not a New York Time's bestselling author or anything like that, just did it purely through self-publishing.

Eric Siu: Yeah. So there you go. Look. You can make 10,000 plus an hour after ... Yeah, 10,000 plus an hour. Also at the same time, if you're starting out, look, you can get clients as well, you can get ... And some speaking gigs, I remember I spoke once for free in Brazil. I flew ... How many hours does it take to get to São Paulo?

Neil Patel: Direct flight here, I think it's 12 or ... 12 hours?

Eric Siu: 14 hours I think.

Neil Patel: 14?

Eric Siu: Yeah, 14 hours. I did this for free. 14 hours there, stayed there but I met a bunch of other great people and it led to other speaking gigs. So, look. I was only there for less than 24 hours, flew back 14 hours, I ate the cost but hey, it worked out.

Neil Patel: Did you pay for the flight as well?

Eric Siu: Yes.

Neil Patel: Now, that sucks.

Eric Siu: It sucks.

Neil Patel: It's a long flight.

Eric Siu: It's a really long flight but I got the ... Oh, here's a hack for you. So I got the economy tickets and because not many people, at least from LAX, fly to São Paulo, I upgraded last minute to first class for additional 600 bucks. And if you amortize the 600 bucks across 14 hours, it's not bad.

Neil Patel: Yeah. And then the last hack I have for you guys is if you're trying to get any paid speaking gigs, you have to be patient and scrappy at the same time. Here's what I mean by that. You're not going to get people hitting you up and paying you right away. And even if they do, it takes a while. Someone will hit you up for a paid speaking gig, it may take you a month or two, or they may even say, "Hey. We're talking to other people. We'll get back to you." But you need to be scrappy and here's what I mean by that.
So you'll get some inbound or you may even do some outbound to get the request and then what you want to do is upsell yourself. You can be like, "Hey. By the way, I can do a workshop for free." Or, "Hey. If you want me to do a dinner with your VIP attendees, I can also do that for free and show up." So by offering all these other little bonus things, they're going to be like, "Oh, wow. This speaker is giving me more than most." Because most paid speakers get paid and then they bounce. Seriously, right? They come and then they bounce. And by offering those extra little things, I kid you not, you're more likely to get picked than the other people, they're more willing to pay for your speaker's fee and on top of that, you're more likely to generate business from those speaking spots.

Eric Siu: Yeah, that's a really good point. When you're just starting out, do a little more than the other people and you'll stand out. But anyway, that's it for today. Hope you enjoyed it. Go check out our marketing tools to help you grow your business. We got some free offers for you. Just go to singlegrain.com/giveaway, and we'll see you tomorrow.

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