One of the easiest ways to become a professional public speaker is to speak to groups in your current industry. In this article, we will show you several ways to get paid as a professional speaker without having to change careers. This article is a continuation of our previous article, How to Start a Public Speaking Career. Although this is just one of the three routes we will cover in detail, it is one of the most common (and perhaps the most lucrative as well). So, we’ll spend a little more time on this one and get you closer to being a professional public speaker.
One of the most important steps in beginning is just that, to start. Otherwise, there’s no change. Just starting out gives you practice and room to improve. Improvement might be necessary because, while you might have a friendly face, your body language could portray something else. While speaking, you may not connect with your audience enough and need to practice making more eye contact. Start by speaking at low-stress meetings or at community centers. Don’t start your career by jumping into corporate events- they’re likely to have a large crowd. The best thing to do is to start where you’re comfortable. The good news is that it’s easy to “rent” by presenting at home or work. Once you feel comfortable enough, seek out new, larger venues.
Become a Professional Public Speaker by Sharing the Knowledge that You have Acquired within Your Current Industry
Become a Trainer within Your Current Organization
One of the most common public speaking careers (and one that most people don’t realize is a role as a professional public speaker) is being a trainer. Maybe because we don’t think about training someone as a speaking gig, we view it more as helping someone or creating improvement and efficiency.
When I was in high school, I worked at a fast-food restaurant. A few months after I was hired, a new guy started.
My boss asked me to show the new guy how to fix the sandwiches. I didn’t realize it at the time, but my role had shifted in those few minutes from worker bee to professional public speaker. It was just for a moment, but for that short period of time, the new guy saw me as the expert at that particular job. I had the information that he needed, and my personal experiences gave him the success he needed.
Incidentally, a short time later, I was promoted to supervisor. There was a small raise, and I began training more of the new employees. So, in essence, I was a professional trainer for the first time in my short career. It was a great way to use my life experience and knowledge to help the company and better my speaking habits.
Becoming a Professional Public Speaker Doesn’t Happen Overnight
Almost a decade later, when I became a sales manager, I was being paid to train the company’s sales team. The more that the team sold, the bigger the bonus that I received each quarter. During the sales meetings, I had to be a teacher, a coach, and a motivator. (It is very similar to what I do now as a professional speaker.)
Every industry on the face of the Earth has to have a way to train new workers as they join the organization. In some cases, the jobs pay very little, but in other cases, they pay a lot.
For instance, my brother-in-law was a firefighter who got a second job working for a company that sold software to medical organizations. Since he was a paramedic, he had a background in medical semantics, so the company hired him to train their customers to use the software.
Because the training is so specialized, he is paid a generous fee every time he visits a customer site.
Here is one more example. One of my instructors, John, started his career working at an eyeglass retail store years ago. The store was a franchise, and the owner wasn’t making a great living. One day, the owner told the staff he was selling the franchise, and John, even though he was only making a meager hourly wage, expressed interest.
The owner, having no other offers, self-financed the store for him. Over the next decade, though, under John’s leadership, the store flourished. In fact, he eventually was able to buy two additional stores.
Eventually, he sold all the stores at a huge profit and took some time off.
Of course, he got restless. He was also driving his poor wife up the wall, hanging around the house all day. So, for the first time in twenty years, he went looking for a job.
He ended up running the eyeglass store in front of his local Walmart. Because he had so much experience running a store like this, he increased the revenue in his store by over 300% in his first year.
The regional manager noticed and hired John to travel to every single Walmart in the country to train their managers and staff to do what he had done in his own store.
The point is that well-executed training is a fantastic investment for any company. If you become a great trainer, you can make a fantastic living doing it.
Become a Trainer within Your Current Industry
Last week, I mentioned that one of my first instructors was a CPA who made extra income teaching for the CPA’s association. I also mentioned that, because these organizations require continuing education, they are much easier to teach within. But what if you are in an industry that doesn’t require continuing education?
The truth is that it doesn’t matter a whole lot. It just takes a little more research.
Just about every industry has a group or association that represents it. US News published an article called “10 Strange Lobbying Groups That We Swear Are Real,” which is pretty funny. Among the groups listed are the US Association of Reptile Keepers, the American Dehydrated Onion and Garlic Association, and the Balloon Council. According to the article, the last one had a pretty busy year because there was a shortage of helium. An industry event, such as a convention or conference, is a great opportunity to get in front of a target audience and share a particular subject matter in which you have expertise.
Each of these associations has meetings, and every meeting requires speakers to present. For instance, in October, San Antonio will be holding the Lonestar Reptile Expo as a supporter of the United States Association of Reptile Keepers. This is a convention for reptile keepers and enthusiasts. Vendors include people with a particular area of expertise. They have experience with geckos and gophers and provide ideas for reptile habitats and snacks.
But What About The Moo-lah?
One question that you might have about these types of speeches is, “Do you actually get paid to do these types of presentations?” Well, in some cases, yes. Conventions hire me all the time to do breakout sessions and keynote speeches. Event organizers will look for and hire speakers, and potentially pay them. In most cases, though, not really. You might get a small honorarium or a free trade show booth.
In my own experience, many of these types of speeches are done on a volunteer basis. However, if you are trying to start a speaking career, these are great places to get on stage, get a video of you professionally speaking, and also get your first raving fans. The video you make in front of a live audience can be a great way to gain social media exposure. This is an important step to get in front of an audience and gain experience.
In addition, even if you don’t get a fee for speaking, you can still make money by…
Become a Consultant. Sell Your Expertise to Others Who Want to Do What You Do.
Here’s one of the things that professional public speakers know that others don’t. What is commonplace for you is uncommon to others. The information you have about your industry can be very helpful to people whether they’re new to the industry or… for want of a better phrase, less successful than you. The great news for you is that, with the technology that is available today, you can sell this knowledge without incurring any expense on your part.
College professors often use their own books as course texts and require students to purchase those textbooks. I had one graduate assistant, though, who taught a lab class for us, and this guy didn’t have a book yet. However, he started the class by saying, “If you plan on attending every single one of these classes, taking notes, and studying, you will make an A. If you feel like you may miss a class somewhere along the way, you can go to the bookstore and purchase my notes.” Every person in the class headed for the campus bookstore and purchased photocopies of his handwritten notes. (And I’m pretty sure that we all made A’s.) He wasn’t a professional public speaker, but he was an expert in his field and that made his notes sell.
Speaking From Experience as a Professional Public Speaker
When I started the Fearless Presentations ® class, I didn’t have a big business with a lot of operating capital. In fact, I wasn’t able to create the Home Study Course version of the program for six years. At the time, I had to rent a recording studio, record audio for the class, and edit the audio. After that I still had to send the files out to a company that created thousands of CD sets of the class. It cost me a fortune. (By the way, I still have hundreds of these CD sets left if you have some way to play them, lol.)
However, I was able to capitalize on new technology created by Amazon in 2002. I was able to self-publish my book by just uploading a PDF version of the book to their website. Within a couple of weeks, I had a self-published, printed book. (I also had the PDF version published as a Kindle book, by the way.)
I made money from the book in several ways. First, since it was listed on Amazon, I got a few purchases through their organic search results. I also bought Google pay-per-click ads that sent people to the Amazon page for the book. This was a great place to sell the book, but the bigger fees were collected from speaking events. In some cases, I would speak for a small honorarium. I’d set up a table at the back of the room where audience members could buy my book and audio recordings.
However, in some cases, at the end of the conversation with the meeting planner who was hiring me to speak, I’d ask if she wanted me to bring one of my books for every audience member. For these meetings, if there were 100 audience members, I might only receive $500 for speaking. However, 100 books at $10 each would add an extra $1000 to my fee. This was a good idea, and I’d typically stay at the back of the room signing autographs for an hour or more after my speech. During this time, I always got dozens of people asking me to speak for their groups as well.
Today, though, you have many more opportunities than I did when I started. You can use a simple webcam recording and a free video editing program like CapCut. Using that you can create much more professional recordings than I was able to do in a studio years ago. If you don’t like writing but are a good speaker, record yourself giving a presentation. Then send the recording to a transcriber on Guru.com, eLance, Fiverr, or some other contractor website. That transcript can be a handout, mini-book, or, if you put a few together, a full-length book.
Click here to learn how to create the perfect seminar handout for your next presentation.
If you really want to get paid speaking gigs, you need written material you have created. Also, collecting videos of you speaking to groups. The ideas in this post are good ways to get started. But that’s the thing, even industry leaders and professional public speakers had to start somewhere. Just getting started is the best way to get your career in professional speaking off the ground. You’ll build up your communication skills by speaking in front of others. In no time, you’ll become a better public speaker and secure more speaking opportunities.
In the next post, we’ll show you how to become a professional public speaker by using your presentations to market yourself!</span>