Mind Readings: Events That Don't Pay Speakers

In today’s episode, I’m going on a rant about events that don’t pay their speakers. You’ll discover the hidden costs of not compensating speakers and how it ultimately impacts the quality of the event for attendees and sponsors alike. I’ll also share my perspective on the value that paid speakers bring to an event, and why it’s a worthwhile investment. If you’re an event organizer, or thinking about speaking at events, this episode is a must-watch.

Mind Readings: Events That Don't Pay Speakers

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Christopher Penn: In today’s episode, a bit of a rant. I was talking with an event recently that was interested in having me speak, which I appreciate. By the way, if you would like me to speak at your events, let me know.

After a bit of back and forth, the event came back and said, “Well, we really don’t pay speakers. But the exposure is great.” The snarky response that I did not say out loud was, “Well, people die of exposure.”

Then I went to check the event’s registration page. The early bird ticket was $4,000 a person. The sponsorships for the little ten-by-ten booth on the expo floor,$ 25,000 to start. I’m pretty sure this event — which, they said 5,000 people attend — I’m pretty sure at a $4,000 ticket, you can pay speakers. You choose not to.

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, 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’re more entertaining, they’re better communicators, the quality of their presentations is better. And if you choose not to make that investment in your event, again, that’s your choice. But 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 going to do that?

Most commonly, they’re going to give you a hard sales pitch from the stage. They’re going to say, “Hey, I’m Christopher Penn from Trust Insights, and today, I’m going to 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 speaker’s 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 will speak just for the experience, just for the practice. 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 if people come to the event with the expectation that they’re getting gems, and they end up with a pile of rocks, they’ll be less happy with it.

Speakers also provide audience, they help put butts in seats. There’s three sources of revenues, 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 that is 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, between the speakers, the attendees, and the sponsors. If you don’t pay the speakers, they — 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 has been, that’s the way the events business has been forever.

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, some things happened with travel budgets and professional development budgets to the point where some prospective attendees from the companies they’re at, they say, “I can go to one event this year, which one am I going to go to?” Are they going to go — they’re going to go to the event where they think they’re going to 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, to have someone like Barack Obama on stage, because it’s the — the name is going to 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 because they can afford it, who make it easy for attendees and stakeholders to say, “I want to go to that event, because I see Katie Robbert speaking at that event. I need to go see what she has to say about change management because we are screwed in our current change management process.”

That is our must-attend event, we have to go see her. And for an event to nab her, they’ve got to — they’ve got to 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 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 benefit, but there’s a rationale behind it that’s more than just, “Hey, pay me for showing up.”

That’s good for today’s episode. Thanks for tuning in, I’ll talk to you soon. If you enjoyed this video, please hit the like button. Subscribe to my channel if you haven’t already, and if you want to know when new videos are available, hit the bell button to be notified as soon as new content is live.

Mind Readings: Events That Don’t Pay Speakers

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