Mind Readings: Events That Don’t Pay Speakers

In today's episode, a bit of a rant. I was talking with an event recently. He was interested in having me speak at them, which I appreciate, by the way. If you would like me to speak at your events, let me know. And after a bit of back and forth, the event came back and said, Well, you know, we really don't pay speakers.

Uh, but uh, you know, the exposure's great. The snarky response that I did not say out loud was, well, people die of exposure. Um, then I went to check the event's registration page. The early bird ticket was $4,000 a person. The sponsorships for the little 10 by 10 booth on the Expo floor, $25,000 to start.

I'm pretty sure at this event, which you know, they said, you know, 5,000 people attend this event. I'm pretty sure at $4,000 ticket, you can pay speakers. You choose not to. And you know what? That's your right.

That's your right as an event coordinator, event professional. If you as a company that owns an event, you don't want to pay speakers, you can do that. You can run an event and not pay speakers. Plenty of places do. But as with all things in life, you get what you pay for.

Better speakers cost money for a reason. They have more knowledge, they have they're more entertaining, they're better communicators, the the quality of their presentation is better. And if you choose not to make that investment in your event, again, that's your choice. But there are consequences. There are consequences to that choice.

If you don't pay speakers, assuming it's not like a community event of some kind, then those speakers have to get value for their time and effort somewhere else, somehow else. How are they gonna do that? Most commonly, they're gonna give you a hard sales pitch from the stage. They're gonna say, Hey, I'm Christopher Penn from Trust Insights, and today I'm gonna sell you my AI for marketers course. So let's talk in the next 45 minutes about why you should buy my course.

And everyone in the audience is like, oh, I hate these talks. No one likes being sold from the stage. But if you don't pay compensation and money, the speakers got to get money somewhere else to make it worth their time. Or you're going to get people who are speakers who are not as experienced as speakers and don't command fees. That's not necessarily a bad thing.

There are plenty of people who are just getting started out in their speaking career, and we will speak just for the experience, just for the practice. Uh, and your event becomes the practice event for them to eventually ladder up. That may be okay because everyone's got to start somewhere, and you may find some hidden gems. But the challenge with hidden gems is there's an awful lot of rocks that are not gems. And uh if people come to the event with the expectation that they're getting gems and they end up with pile of rocks, they'll be less happy with it.

Speakers also provide audience, they help put butts in seats, right? There's there's three sources of revenues. Uh there's three there's three pillars of an event there's speaker sponsors, attendees. So attendees pay 40 to 60% of the bill, usually for an event. Sponsors pay the rest.

And then the speakers are the ones that attract attendees because people want to hear that person speak. And in return, the attendees attract the sponsors because the sponsors are like, wow, you've got 500, 700, 5,000, 10,000 people who have the demographics and the firmographics of the kind of audience we want to advertise to the kind of audience we want to be in front of. And so there's this sort of virtuous circle, if you will, of between the speakers, the attendees, and the sponsors. If you don't pay the speakers, they and and you don't get the brand name speakers, you don't draw as many attendees. And that then means you can't command as much money from sponsors.

That's the events business. That's the way the events business has been forever. Um, here's the challenge about that. There's so many events people can go to. So many, and more and more all the time.

If the big names are not at your event, people will go to the events where they are if they want to see that person. Prior to the pandemic, that was fine. Like, okay, well, everyone has their own audience. After the pandemic, something's happened with travel budgets and professional development budgets to the point where some prospective attendees from the companies they're they're at. They you know, they say, I can go to one event this year.

Which one am I gonna go to? Are they gonna go? They're gonna go to the event where they think they're gonna learn something. And their heuristic, their proxy for that is who's got the biggest names. That's one of the reasons why events pay, you know, to have uh someone like Barack Obama on stage, because it's the it the name is gonna put butts in seats, and that will then help you sell more sponsorships.

The best events invest in the audience by proxy, invest in the best speakers they can afford, who make it easy for attendees and stakeholders to say, I want to go to that event because I see that Katie Robert is speaking at that event, and I need to go see what she has to say about change management, because we are screwed in our current change management process, right? So that is our must-attend event. We have to go see her. And for an event to nab her, they gotta bear. They gotta pay her.

So, no surprise, you get what you pay for. And if you want to attract more and better audiences, pay for better speakers. That's what it boils down to. I also fully acknowledge that this piece is very self-interested because obviously I get paid to speak at places and things. So but I do want to remind folks there is a logic to it.

It's not just because speakers want to get paid. I mean, of course they want to get paid for their own for our own uh benefit, but there's a rationale behind it that's uh more than just hey, pay me for showing up. That's gonna do it for today's episode. Thanks for tuning in. We'll talk to you soon.

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