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In the speaking industry, anything can happen at the last minute. It’s rare for a professional speaker to simply not show up. That tends to happen more when the speaker isn’t getting paid. But even a paid professional may find themselves in a position where flight delays, extreme illness, or family emergencies occur. I had to deliver a keynote the day my mom died. It was incredibly difficult, but the show must go on. It was also to a group of hospice workers so they more than understood. I was able to keep it together without crying until the end.

I’ve gotten a couple of jobs at the last minute because of my location and topic. How do you prepare and set yourself up for those opportunities to step in as a last minute speaker? Here are some speakers who have done it:

Last minute speaker

I’ve been a last minute speaker several times. I start by finding out everything I can about the organization with my standard questionnaire. I try to find several people I can interview about them beyond that. Then I plug the information into my presentation on the subject I’m speaking on, tailoring the presentation for what I’ve found.

We actively promoted me as a last minute speaker for a while, then decided that those gigs were so infrequent, it wasn’t worth the effort. But we did spread the word around and satisfied customers led to other clients.

Speaker and author, Barry Maher has appeared on the Today Show, NBC Nightly News, CBS, CNBC, and he’s frequently featured in publications like the New York Times, the Wall Street Journal, the London Times, Business Week and USA Today.

His books include Filling the Glass, which has been cited as “[One of] The Seven Essential Popular Business Books,” by Today’s Librarian along with books like The Seven Habits of Highly Effective People and The One Minute Manager.

www.motivationalpresenter.com

Tik Tok follower

This has happened to me and I was actually a last-minute speaker this past Wednesday!

I was contacted at 3:15 on Tuesday to talk on zoom about the Spendthrift Trust to a real estate investment group.

I teach 1099 Income Earners and Investors how to save Federal Taxes with a Spendthrift Trust.

The zoom happened 1 pm EST and I told them on Tuesday I had a hard stop at 2 pm.

From that meeting I have had 4 appointments and sold a Trust today!

The investor has a wholesale deal closing May 31, 2023, and with the Trust they will save $15,470 in Capital Gains.

My advice to any speaker is know your talk inside out so you can step in very easily and answer questions on the fly.

I was asked to speak because one of the organizers follows me on TikTok and knew the investors needed to hear my information.

Sally Gimon

623 693 1382

www.TheTrustIsYou..com

Last minute tech speaker

One morning, I was enjoying my usual routine of coffee and news when my phone rang. It was an old friend, now a high-profile event organizer, and she sounded pretty flustered. The keynote speaker for a major tech conference she was organizing had suddenly fallen ill. She was in quite a predicament with the event just a day away.Despite the unexpectedness and my initial hesitation, I agreed to step in. Over the next 24 hours, I immersed myself in preparation. Having spoken on various tech-related subjects before, I was familiar with the terrain, but the short notice was a challenge. I focused on three key things: understanding the audience, reviewing the topic, and structuring my speech to be informative yet engaging.The day of the event arrived. As I stood on the stage, facing hundreds of expectant faces, I felt nervous but took a deep breath and began. Drawing on my experience and passion for the subject, I delivered a well-received talk. The initial nerves soon gave way to confidence and satisfaction, and I remember feeling immense accomplishment when I finished.

Some quick tips

As for advice to those finding themselves in a similar situation, I’d say preparation is crucial. Try to understand the audience’s needs and expectations. Prepare an outline, even if it’s rough, and structure your speech so that it has a logical flow. Remember to stay flexible as well, as you may need to adapt your speech on the spot based on audience reactions. Most importantly, bring your authenticity to the table. People connect with real stories and genuine emotions.Networking is essential to let people know you’re available for such opportunities. Engage with event organizers, join relevant professional groups, and participate in industry forums and conferences. Regularly update your professional profiles on platforms like LinkedIn and let your connections know you are open to speaking engagements.Remember, being a last-minute speaker can be nerve-wracking but also an opportunity to showcase your expertise and adaptability. Embrace the challenge, prepare well, and deliver your speech with confidence and authenticity.

Garrett Yamasaki, founder of WeLoveDoodles and a tech entrepreneur with many years of experience working for Google, Texas Instruments, and BroadcomThe Accidental Speaker

I’ve had the misfortune of being in a situation where I was asked to step in as a guest speaker at the last minute. Here is how I handled the situation:

I had to step in as a last-minute speaker during an event about utilizing online job marketplaces to earn money online. It was organized by a forum that was interested in helping students find the right direction when it comes to earning money online. Back then, earning money from the comfort of your home was a new concept. People were making money by creating CDs, books and other resources on this topic but very few of them were actually helpful. This eagerness of trying to earn money online led to a lot of people falling for scams. It also didn’t help that people were clueless about where to begin. The event was designed to educate these interested people.Although I was there as a friend of one of the organizers, I also had some decent experience as a freelance writer. My friend was aware of my activities and wanted me to meet the speaker. As the guest speaker didn’t show up, he requested me to take the stage.

Amateur speaker

Everyone was quite aware of the fact that the actual guest speaker didn’t show up. They didn’t mind seeing an amateur speaker taking the stage. Even though I am more comfortable writing stuff than speaking publicly, it was my knowledge of the topic that gave me confidence. The familiarity with the topic helped me stay calm and assemble my thoughts quickly around the key points. I wove a narrative that included both personal experiences and practical advice. My journey as a freelancer became a backdrop to the insights I was sharing which gave my speech credibility and relatability.It was the response from the audience that gave me the strength to deliver a meaningful and impactful talk. Their nods of understanding and thoughtful questions that followed my statements served as a confirmation that my message was resonating with them. This interaction didn’t just help me navigate this unexpected public speaking venture but also turned the session into a dynamic dialogue. Although it could have turned into a disaster, it was that event that sparked my newfound passion for public speaking. I loved the satisfaction of not only sharing my knowledge but also potentially making a meaningful difference in someone’s life.Every moment of that day remains etched in my memory, each second a vivid testament to a transformative experience.

Tim LeeFounder of Tims CoffeeWebsite: timscoffee.com

Being a last minute speaker can be a great opportunity to help a meeting planner save the day. But being prepared and well-versed in your topic is important to make sure you make the most of that opportunity. Or as one meeting planner told me, “If a speaker doesn’t show up, there’s always Bingo”. Don’t lose out to Bingo!

AAE Speakers Bureau recently took a 2023 survey of around 500 meeting planners and professional speakers and found that almost a quarter of the planners have more money to spend on keynote speakers. That leaves 75% who don’t. And 53.1% of the speakers have said they have had to raise their speaking fee. The report said that the average fee for a keynote is $15,551. And the average total budget for speakers is $26,583.

Meeting planners expect added value from speakers these days, such as a meet and greet with attendees, social media promotion, a book signing, and a meet and greet with executives. This should all factor into what you charge as your speaking fee. But how do you know when you should raise your speaker fee?

When should you raise your speaker fee?

So many factors go into a speaker fee. And the truth is that there are really no rules about what yours should be. But there are some guidelines.

New speakers

If you’re just starting out as a speaker you can’t expect to get paid very much, if at all. Most speakers start out speaking for free. The only reason I never spoke for free was that I had my own sponsors. I taught other speakers how to make a living as a speaker from sponsorships. It cuts out all competition. Especially if you’re a new speaker. You can’t compete against seasoned professionals for regular speaking jobs, but with sponsorship, you have no competition. You get your own sponsors and create your own paid speaking jobs.

A good rule of thumb is that new beginning speakers can expect to charge between $500 and $2500 per speech. Again, if you have sponsors like I did when I first started out, you can charge as much as you think you can get. My very first speaking job was $2500 because I had several local sponsors and I put on my own event. If you can’t get someone to hire you as a speaker you can always become your own boss and hire yourself to speak. When the speaking industry is down this is a great option to still be able to make a living as a speaker. I used this method all through Covid to create my own virtual content for the sponsors I have in my portfolio.

Established speakers

Ok, so now you’ve been speaking for a while and you’ve been charging anywhere from $500 to $2500 and you’re pretty booked at that rate. By now you should also have at least one book on the market in your chosen topic in which you are an expert. If you’re marketing yourself you probably also have a decent following and are becoming well known in the industry. There’s no timeline about when that would happen. I’ve known very established speakers who spoke for free and low fee for a decade before they raised their rates. But it usually doesn’t take that long to get to that point. Go at your own pace. When you get to the established speaker level you will know it.

Established speakers should start to raise their speaker fee when they are too busy at the lower level fee to keep up with it. There are only so many days in the year and speaking every day of the year is not practical and will wear you out quickly. Speaking takes a lot out of you. Travel takes a lot out of you. And there is a sacrifice to be made in your personal life when you’re on the road so many days out of the year. You need the rest in between and you also need to have time to write more books and customize speeches for higher-paying clients.

Established speakers are able to charge between $2500 and $10,000 per speech. You’ve earned the right to boost your fee. Like every level, you don’t want to jump up in fees too quickly or you may find yourself struggling for work.

Influencer speakers

Once you’ve written multiple books and have tens of thousands to hundreds of thousands of followers you move up to the influencer level of speakers. You probably also have a strong media presence. These speakers typically are able to charge around $10,000 – $20,000 per speech. Much more is expected of you as you move up to this level. My first big speech in this range was for 1,000 attendees for an engineering summit for Procter and Gamble. I was asked to take a lengthy internal research survey and find solutions for the issues they needed to find answers for. This was my first look at the difference between an established speaker and an influencer. You have to be prepared to up your game a lot at this point if you want to play in the influencer sandbox.

An influencer speaker is a known expert in their field. They don’t usually have an all you can eat buffet menu of speeches on 20 different topics. When a meeting planner thinks of your topic your name should be at the top of their list. This is also when you should start to differentiate yourself from other experts in your field. What’s in your background of experience that makes you different from all of your competitors? Hone in with laser focus on what makes you special, unique and different. What is your niche within your industry?

Celebrity speakers

Celebrity speakers are usually in the $20,000 range and over. If you are a celebrity in another field, such as a famous athlete or actor, you can skip the other steps. You are mostly being hired for your name draw. That doesn’t mean you haven’t paid your dues. Just the opposite. You’ve paid your dues in another industry and have earned the right to stand on a stage for big bucks.

A celebrity speaker is also a speaker who has been around for many years and paid their dues on the stage as a speaker. By this point you probably have multiple books and at least tens of thousands of followers. You are at least well-known in the speaking industry and probably by the general public as well.

Seth Dechtman of The Keynote Curators has a good guideline for working with celebrity speakers.

No rules

Again, there are no hard and fast rules for when you should raise your speaker fee. Being a professional speaker is a full-time job and there’s no contest for your own personal timeline.

As we’ve come out of the post-pandemic meeting industry it’s nice to be out and speaking in person for the past year. But what does the 2023 meeting industry forecast hold as we go forward?

Meeting industry forecast 2023

According to the 12th annual Global Meetings & Events Forecast, meeting professionals expect there to be more in person meetings. They also expect budgets to increase. But that also means they plan to do more with less, thanks to high inflation.

Planners dealing with rising costs and tight budgets are becoming more creative when it comes to finding budget-friendly options. According to Conventions South “this includes hosting fewer meetings, shortening meeting times, using less expensive venues and food options, choosing destinations close to their members, and negotiating everything.”

The cost of hotels and food is impacting the bottom line for meeting planners and they are finding ways to work around that.

Optimistic about the meeting industry

77% of respondents feel that the meeting industry will be strong in 2023. 67% think the number of in-person meetings and events will return to pre-pandemic levels in a year or two. I’m surprised that number is so low actually. From what I’ve seen most people are anxious to get out and network again. Airports have always been crowded lately as I’ve started traveling again for speaking work and for pleasure.

Face to face meetings

The good news is that most meeting and event planners expect 87% of meetings to have an in-person element. And virtual fatigue is a real thing. I, for one, am glad to hear that virtual is fading out. Part of the reason I like being a speaker is for the face to face, one on one with the audience. You can never get that same feeling from a virtual event no matter how well you do it. You can’t break bread over a virtual event or get instant feedback from an audience. Apparently, I’m not the only one that feels that way.

Meeting size

Covid is no longer a concern for most people. So meeting size is continuing to increase. Over 70% of events last year had attendance at or above 80% of 2019 levels. Two thirds of meeting professionals don’t expect the number of meetings to decrease.

Using industry speakers

One thing I’ve been seeing more of is that meeting planners are using more industry related speakers instead of general outside ones. I’ve asked if that is because of budget or if that’s what the attendees want and most of the time I hear that it’s what attendees want. There’s not much we can do as speakers to change that. Hopefully it’s a trend and will change, as things tend to do in this industry.

Overall the news is good. At least it’s way better than the past few years and there’s light at the end of the tunnel.

I’ve been working as a speaker for the past 15 years and have encountered a lot of different situations. But there is always a first time for everything. I’m posting this as a precautionary tale in case it ever happens to you in your speaker contract issues.

A few weeks ago I left for a very much needed 2 week vacation to Ireland. There must be some kind of law that says that you will book work as soon as you go out of town and stop looking for it. This has happened to me many times.

So, I’m in NY and miss my connection because of a 3 hour delay in L.A. and get stuck there for the day. That’s when I got a call about a speaking job. I’m not the most tech savvy person on an iPhone, but was able to get the meeting planner the info she asked for in a PDF version. Then I got a call from her right before getting on a plane to Ireland. I got the job!

Speaker contract issues

So, I relaxed and settled in for my 2 week vacation thinking all was good. Then she asked me to send her my contract, which I did asap. And by the end of the week I had signed the contract and thought I would be doing the job. She was supposed to send me the contract back with a signature and told me to go ahead and book my travel and hotel.

I got back and spent hours rebooking another speaking job to be able to make this one, and booking the flight and hotel like she asked me to do. I sent her an email to tell her that my flight and hotel was booked. That’s when she sent me an email to tell me that they had decided to go in a different direction for the event. This is after I rearranged another job and paid for a non-refundable hotel and another plane ticket.

I sent an email and called to find out what the problem was, but didn’t hear back from her. After leaving a voicemail she finally sent me a short message that they had never signed a contract. Basically I relied on her good word and the fact that she asked me in an email to book the travel and she asked me to send her a contract. I found out that she had done the same thing to other speakers and speaker bureaus.

My word of caution is to never, ever book anything until you have a signed contract AND a deposit. Even with a signed contract you still might have to fight it, but if you get a deposit at least you won’t be out the money.

Has this ever happened to you? How did you resolve it?

A Speaker Sponsor member recently asked why we send out opportunities for free speaking jobs. There are several reasons for that:

Should you speak for free?

You’re a beginner

When you’re just starting out as a speaker you may want to speak for free to get the practice. That doesn’t mean you shouldn’t give it the same amount of time and professionalism you would give a paid job. But if you’re brand new you simply won’t have the same polish that speakers have who have been doing it for years have. Like a comedian who has to work out the bugs in a routine. It takes time to figure out what gets a laugh and what makes the audience cringe. Sometimes you stumble on something that gets a laugh that you didn’t expect. Each time you get in front of a new audience you learn something that you can add to your speech.

Speaking isn’t something you can learn by reading a book. You have to learn through experience. Students pay huge tuition fees to go to college. Think of this as your college education. Speak anywhere and everywhere you can. Try new things. Experiment. Be bold. When you’re speaking for free you can do more of that. Get in front of as many people as possible and as many different audiences as possible. Get feedback and keep improving.

A free speaking job can turn into a paid speaking job

Recently I’ve booked 2 paid speaking jobs because I filled out the online forms for free speaking jobs. Speaker Sponsor sends out free speaking leads, along with paid ones. It may seem like a waste of time when you want to get paid. But you never know when someone will be looking for speakers for a different conference. Or they secretly have the budget for speaker topics they really, really need. This is how I ended up with 2 paid speaking jobs.

Also, meeting planners will keep things on file for years. And when they need your topic they will search through them. I’ve booked jobs for things I filled out as long as 8 years ago. It was a free speaking job that I didn’t get at the time. I ended up getting my full speaking fee. So, I would say that it was definitely worth my time to fill out the free form.

If you have a book or other things to sell, speaking for free can often be a good deal. If you do speak for free ask for as many things in return as possible. Opportunity to sell books, etc. A free booth at their trade show. A list of attendees. All expenses paid. Mentions in their newsletter and social media. Opportunity to sell your coaching and consultant services. Your own sponsor, who they will help you promote.

You have your own sponsors

I’ve taken several free jobs as a speaker, especially in the beginning. But I have never, ever spoken for free. I’ve always had a sponsor who paid me to get them in front of their target audience. I learned about sponsorship completely by accident. I was living in NYC and working on a TV pilot. It was a variety show with writers from Saturday Night Live, Broadway dancers, and celebrity guest stars. In addition to raising half of the money for the show, I was also one of the reporters. Behind the scenes my boss asked me one day to go out and get sponsors. I had no idea how to do it, but I put together a proposal and went door to door looking for sponsors for the show. This was my trial by fire into the world of sponsorship.

Once I learned out to do it I started using sponsorship to produce plays. When I became a speaker I realized about half of all speaking jobs are free ones. So I saw a huge opportunity to fill those free jobs with sponsorship to get paid. I practice what I preach and am constantly finding new ways to supplement speaking with sponsorship. Having a portfolio of sponsors helped me earn a living as a speaker during the shutdowns of Covid when events were being cancelled. Sponsorship means never having to hold your hand out for a paid speaking job. You have a much better chance of getting a free speaking job and getting paid for it.

Many Speaker Sponsor members have their own sponsors and welcome the chance to find any speaking opportunities. Paid or free speaking. They know they can monetize them and get paid for the free speaking jobs.

You need to be seen

The very best way to get booked as a paid speaker is for someone to see you speak live. I have a saying. “If you want to be in the right place at the right time you have to be everywhere all the time”. That means you have to speak every single chance you get. If you only wait for paid speaking jobs you miss out on opportunities to get in front of people who can hire you. Have a portfolio of sponsors and things to sell and you have a guarantee of being paid.

I can’t tell you how many times I’ve gotten full fee speaking jobs because someone saw me speak live at an event. And I’ve also lost jobs because I was in the running with someone who was seen live by a decision maker. Speakers who are constantly working will get more work. And be seen by more people who can hire them. If you’re booked solid all year long with paid speaking work, this probably doesn’t apply to you. But if you’re new or not solidly booked, think about all the ways you can get in front of more decision makers. Even if you speak for free.

If you want more speaking jobs you need to do everything you can. This includes adding free speaking to your strategy. But always make sure you monetize everything to get the most out of those opportunities.

There’s no doubt the meetings industry has been hammered for the past two years. But it is slowly showing signs of life. It’s not as easy as just saying that everything will go virtual forever. Nothing beats face to face meetings! But regardless of whether the meeting is face to face or virtual or a hybrid, the speaking industry has changed.

Meetings industry forecast for 2022

Here are some expectations from Northstar Meetings Group and AmEx Global on the meetings industry forecast for 2022:

When will face to face meetings return to pre-pandemic levels?

Some meeting professionals think we will get back to that level in a year or two and some think it will take until 2025. One thing is for sure, it will still be rocky and uneven. I’ve personally spoken at several in person events in the past year, but have had twice as many cancelled or postponed. The AmEx Global survey anticipates that 81% of all meetings in 2022 will have an in person component to them. 42% in person, 39% hybrid, and 19% virtual only.

Meetings industry forecast for 2022 – costs

Let’s face it, the cost of everything is going up! Meeting planners in North America are expecting at least an 11% increase next year. Unfortunately this doesn’t necessarily mean that speakers are going to be paid more. Budgets are still tight, though most are increasing. Having your own sponsors will help put you in a better position to get paid more. Make that a part of your negotiations.

Meetings industry forecast for 2022 – space

If you’ve been out speaking you have noticed that meeting room space is bigger to accommodate more social distancing. Attendee size is smaller, but the room space is bigger. That is a determining factor in where a meeting will be booked. Also, whether or not they are able to host a hybrid event.

The AmEx Global forecast states:

“The number of attendees at in-person events is expected to increase for every meeting type, by 3.5% to 4.3%. The number of attendees at virtual and hybrid events is also expected to increase across the board, although by a smaller percentage – by 2.8% to 3.4%.”

What do you predict for the meetings industry in 2022?

I haven’t posted a whole lot lately. Because frankly, the speaking industry in 2020 sucked! Sure, there are speakers who are still working, and even some who are making decent money right now. There were people who made a fortune during the Great Depression. But most people were just barely scraping by. Most of the best speakers I know are not working. Obviously, Covid has put a huge damper on the live event industry in general and speakers are having a hard time right now.

Speakers are having a hard time right now

Many people will tell you that everything is simply going virtual for now and in the future. But this is a simple explanation that I’ve found is not true. Many people will tell you that the speaking industry is booming and the best it’s ever been. Also, not true. After interviewing hundreds of planners and others involved in the speaking industry, I’ve discovered that there is no one reason why speakers are having a hard time right now. It’s a deeper issue. Here are some of the things they’ve told me:

Live events up in the air

With Covid still hanging over us and variants popping up, meeting planners are hesitant to book a live event. Where they used to plan 6 months to a year in advance, now committee meetings are being put on hold. That’s just to discuss the dates and locations. Attendees are hesitant to make reservations, and the meeting planners need to have a certain number of attendees just to put on the event. Some are ready to travel and go to a live event and some aren’t.

Can’t you just go virtual?

So, if everything is so tentative, why not just go virtual? Zoom fatigue is real! Maybe in the beginning it was a necessary novelty, but not everyone wants to pay good money to watch speakers on a Zoom call. It doesn’t matter how interesting they are. Sure, conferences can charge less because it’s online, but then they also want to pay speakers less also. And, because watching speakers online is tiring, they tend to spread the conferences out for several days or even longer. I just attended a conference myself that went on every day for 2 weeks. The information was incredible. The speakers were interesting. I still couldn’t handle it for more than 15 minutes at a time. I can’t tell you the number of classes and webinars I have sitting in the que that I haven’t gotten to yet. Many people are simply Zoomed out.

So, the idea that we are only going to be speaking virtually from now on is not true. What could be true is that conferences will have other options besides just live events. They’ve been doing a combination of live and streaming for a while now. I remember several years ago speaking to a group of scientists in New York, but they wanted to have their employees in Denmark see it. So it was also live-streamed to them.

But make no doubt about it, there is a lot of pent-up demand for travel. Speakers and others who work in the live event industry do it for a reason. They are social people who like to travel and meet new people. Otherwise they would have a desk job. The speaking industry is not going to remain virtual forever.

Discontinued conference

A number of conferences are folding completely. Not all of this is due to Covid. Some have mentioned that their attendance was dwindling even before. Since this is a sponsorship site, I’ll mention that sponsorship is dependent on ears and eyeballs in the audience. The fewer people you have in the audience, the less you will be able to attract a sponsor. Or the less that sponsor will be willing to pay. At some point conferences have just decided to cancel for now. That means no jobs for speakers.

Mergers

Some conferences have decided, even before Covid, that they need to partner with their competition in order to have enough attendees to make it worthwhile. I spoke at one of those a few years ago. Several competitors just got together and had one big conference. They split the expenses and marketing. With 3 of them it was a pretty decent crowd. But, this also means they need fewer speakers. One more reason speakers are having a hard time right now.

Using industry speakers only

Part of this has to do with budget cuts, but this trend has been going on for a while now. Some conferences simply don’t hire outside speakers. And even ones that have in the past are turning to industry speakers this time around. I’ve even heard from sponsors that they want their own people to speak. Nothing you can do about that. But that doesn’t mean they are good speakers. It means they are footing the bill. And money talks. That’s why you need to find sponsors who are not looking to speak and would love to sponsor you to do that for them.

Carried over speakers from 2020

Since so many conferences were cancelled in 2020, most who had hired speakers simply rolled them over to 2021. Now if they don’t have the conference in 2021, that rolls them over to 2022. This means that fewer speakers have opportunities right now. That’s not going to last forever, and things will go back to some normalcy fairly soon.

Budget cuts

It sucks that we were finally at a point where meeting planner budgets were increasing. But, that has taken a nosedive. If you’ve been a speaker for any length of time you know that economies wax and wane all the time. I’m being told that even the budgets for big sponsors has gone down. But I’ve always made sure to line up more than one sponsor anyway. About half of all speaking jobs out there, even before Covid, are free ones. If you are able to come in with a sponsor for a free job you have a much, much better chance of getting that job and getting paid. Meeting planners need good speakers. But if they can’t pay for them, the next best thing is getting a free speaker with their own sponsor. This is how I’ve managed to make money for years as a speaker, even when the economy was bad. There are always ways to work around the free speaking thing by using sponsorship and multiple streams of speaker income. When times are tough you can prosper when everyone else is running around clucking like a chicken. This is how clever entrepreneurs became successful during the Depression. I hate to use the hack terminology of pivot, but that’s what you have to do.

Speaking industry goes in cycles

But it’s not all bad news. Everything in the speaking industry goes in cycles. Yes, speakers are having a hard time right now. But that will change.

This is a time for you to step back and figure out where you fit in in the speaking industry. Figure out other ways to make a living at it. Figure out if you are still really committed to it. And if you are, commit to learning, growing, and being the best speaker you can be. So that when things turn around (and they will), you will be ready.

Aristotle once said “Man is, by nature, a social animal”. Humans are most comfortable when we’re connected and sharing our emotions. When we’re face to face we’re able to match each others emotions instantly, without even realizing we’re doing it. That is something you can’t completely get on a Zoom call.

Digital Meetings

In a survey from the Professional Convention Management Association, 62% of meeting planners said they did not feel that digital meetings would cannibalize live meetings and events, but would exist with them side by side.

I was just reading over a post I published in January regarding the insight of live meetings and events in 2020. It said that 70% of meeting planners had a very positive feeling about the state of meetings in 2020. What a difference 3 months makes!

That goes to show that you simply can’t predict the future based on statistics and surveys. Because the future will always change, and life is very unpredictable.

Meeting planner lead times

I was wondering if this recent crisis has changed lead times at all. Here are answers from a couple of meeting and event planners:

“This is an unprecedented time in the meetings and events industry. While past crises like 9/11 and the 2008 recession have affected a similar pivot to virtual events, each pivot was an aberration. In this case, however, we’re seeing a real paradigm shift.

The digital platforms and integrations we’re leveraging to get us through this crisis are here to stay. Events will be increasingly integrated across channels, and everyone from business leaders and event marketers to speakers and sponsors will need to adjust for that. While that’s no small challenge, of course, we expect it to lead to improved audience engagement over time.

This crisis has driven an increasing number of clients to adopt a campaign-oriented planning cycle, rather than a one-off event cycle. That’s a very good thing. In practice, this involves assessing all the content that clients intended to deliver at their live programs and transforming it into a more pulsed series of communications across many platforms. The result is that, in collaboration with our clients, we’re developing more robust communications plans that engage their employees, customers, and partners — not just for a couple days but in a way that is sustained over time.”

Jill Tanner, SVP, Creative Design and Marketing at InVision Communications

www.iv.com

Flexibility for meeting planners

“I am the CEO and co-founder of Spacebase, the leading online B2B platform
for unique meeting rooms and event locations, and I think the main change
to planning corporate events will be flexibility. Currently, the crisis is
constantly changing and updating, so event planning must accommodate and
reflect this. We are working with space providers to enable longer
cancellation periods or to postpone events.

Whenever the end point is, there is sure to be an immediate significant
influx in last minute event bookings, for businesses to regroup. At the
moment, we are encouraging our bookers to rent rooms and plan for this
further in advance, with a flexible event date. Looking forward, I think
this flexibility will stay. Whether the lead times are longer or shorter,
they will have more room for change and adaptations.”

CEO and Co-Founder Julian Jost
Spacebase
www.spacebase.com

Have you seen any changes in meeting planner lead times?

The speaking industry is in a bit of upheaval right now. Conferences are being canceled and there is so much uncertainty about the future. As a speaker you should always have backup plans. Most people just think in one direction. But there is a lot of money to be made as a speaker who has an expertise that executives and others need. I mean, you are an expert in your topic, right? If not, you need to take this time to start honing in on what you have that is of value to your audience.

Speaker Consultant

I’ve been hearing about speakers doing their speeches through online videos, which is great. But a faster and easier way to make money right now is with consulting. Companies may be hunkered down with their employees working from home, but they still need outside help, maybe even more right now.

I remember my mother worked as a consultant for a tech company when I was a kid. She would find a quiet spot in the house with a “Do Not Disturb” sign on the door and schedule a couple of consulting calls. Since she was also a writer, sometimes she would even write booklets for them on her topic, which she sold in volume.

Speaker consultant contracts

One advantage of being a consultant over being a live speaker is that you usually get more work out of it. With a live event, you do a speech and then it’s over. Consulting contracts are usually longer and more intensive. Once things settle down and events are booming again, you will have a great add-on service to complement your speech. You’ll get paid extra and you will be ready and primed to do it. Just like speaking, consulting takes some practice to do it well.

Here are some ways to get started as a consultant and speaker:

Hone in on your niche

Now is the time to really start thinking about your expertise and become even more knowledgable and up to date with your info. Study the trades in your specific topic. What knowledge do you have that companies need?

Who needs your expertise?

Don’t randomly throw everything against the wall to see what sticks. Spend some time thinking about who needs your knowledge the most.

Research your audience

Before you think of contacting anyone, find out what they are looking for and what they need that you could supply.

Get certified

If you need certification to add credibility as a consultant, do that first. Find out what licenses and certification would be valuable to your target audience. Having these credentials should also help you as a speaker.

Add hard skills to your resume

A backup plan should include some hard skills along with soft skills. What hard skills can you add to your resume?

Everything goes in cycles, but right now consulting is a good skill to have on your resume regardless of which direction the speaking industry is going in. The speaking industry is in a constant sea of change, so be prepared to cover all angles.