How to turn your expertise into a paid speaking revenue stream

* Transcript created by AI – may contain errors or omissions from original podcast audio

I get paid thousands of dollars to speak about what I know, and in today’s episode, I wanna talk about how I do that. But more importantly, how you could potentially build speaking into a revenue stream in your business as well, no matter what it is that you do, and even if the thought of public speaking absolutely terrifies you, ’cause trust me, it used to terrify me.

Because did you know that you can actually get paid really good money for speaking about your area of expertise? Whether you’re a finance expert like me, a HR leader, a marketing strategist, an AI expert, whatever it is that you do, you’ve got knowledge, experience, stories, and a point of view that people out there want to hear about and potentially pay you good money to share.

Welcome to the Intentional Money Show, where we talk business growth, profitability, mindset, and building a wildly successful creative or digital business without sacrificing your life in the process. I’m Clare Wood, business profit coach, speaker, author, and unapologetic believer that you can build wealth and freedom doing work you genuinely love.

Each week on the podcast, we dive into the strategies and honest conversations that will help you scale sustainably, increase your profit, and build a business that actually feels good to run. Let’s grow your profit.

So to start out the episode, I wanna talk about the elephant in the room because when you think about being a speaker, you might instantly picture that you need to be standing on a giant stage in front of 1,000 people with bright lights in your face and everyone staring at you. And yes, speaking can absolutely look like that, but it doesn’t have to.

In fact, most of my paid speaking gigs are actually via Zoom. I’m presenting to masterminds or leadership teams or companies remotely just on video. Yes, sometimes I’m running a workshop or speaking on a stage, but a lot of time I’m just recording educational content that a company or a business owner might need.

So first of all, I just wanna crush that idea if you instantly think speaking on a stage is not for me. There are lots of different ways that you can get paid to speak, so please don’t immediately think speaking isn’t for me. And while we’re talking about the money side, you might already be thinking, “Well, what’s the point in speaking?

Is there actually any decent money in it?” And yes, absolutely there can be. Like, when you think about it, there are people that get paid, you know, a million dollars. There’s actually a, a famous example. Someone once paid US $1.5 million for a one-hour speaking appearance. Now, I’m not suggesting that you go and, you know, charge a million dollars for your first speaking gig, but I did just wanna demonstrate how valuable the speaking industry can be at that very top end.

So if, you know, talking about what this could look like, for the, the average person, there’s still really good money in it. So here in Australia, professional keynote speakers get, anywhere from 5,000 up to 15,000 up to $30,000 for professional speaking keynotes, and celebrities and premium speakers can get even more than that.

So yeah, there is really good money in speaking. But I don’t want you to, you know, hear that and think, “Well, I’m not a professional keynote speaker so that’s not relevant to me,” because there’s lots of different formats.

Personally, I’ve been paid anything from hundreds of dollars through to thousands of dollars to present remotely on Zoom. And I’ve been paid even more for speaking on stage, especially where travel and additional preparation or time is involved.

So don’t underestimate that people will pay you for your knowledge and your energy and your ability to communicate your knowledge to an audience.

The question I most often get asked when clients of mine or, you know, biz friends are wanting to move into this space is they’re like, “How much do you actually charge?” The annoying answer is it depends. It depends on your experience. It depends on who you’re presenting to. It depends on how much preparation and customization is involved.

I personally charge more for in person than I do for online, ’cause, you know, you’ve gotta get all dressed up, and you’ve gotta travel there, and all of that stuff. Um, you can also charge more if they are recording and reusing the content. And, you know, there’s a lot of factors that come into it. So if you’re getting started, you don’t need to have it all perfectly worked out.

You can start small. You can test different price points. And the more that you do it, you can put your prices up as your reputation and your body of work grows. The important thing is that at some point you actually need to start getting paid because I think that this is where a lot of experts do get stuck.

Before we get into that, though, I wanna talk to you if you’re sitting there thinking, “I’m not good enough to be a speaker.” Because if you’ve listened to this podcast for a while, you will know that I personally had a crippling phobia of public speaking. In fact, I had a panic attack the first podcast I went on and had to stop recording it, and now I don’t even get the slightest bit of nerves when I’m recording a podcast

I still get nervous when I speak on stage, though. Look, someone asked me the other day, “How do you get better at public speaking?” Because I know that it is one of the biggest phobias out there. And I can’t speak for everyone, but I had tried a lot of things and spent thousands of dollars on Toastmasters and hypnosis.

The only thing that really worked for me was doing it again and again and again and again and again. So the more that you practice, the better you’ll get, and I can honestly say that I now love speaking. It’s something I really enjoy doing. And the other tip that I do have for you, y- invest in help along the way.

Over the years I’ve invested money in my own speaking journey. I paid the fabulous Annalise McCarthy, I’m gonna link to her in the show notes for this episode. Uh, I was doing a, a tour of Australia and we spoke about my voice and how to protect it when I was doing this big speaking tour, and also how to make the presentations more enjoyable and engaging.

And I’ve also worked with Jamie Abbott and she helped me a lot in the space around how to actually up-level how much you’re getting paid for speaking. It’s what she’s kind of known for. So I’ll link to both of those in the show notes if this is something that you are keen to learn a bit more about.

So if you are wondering, where do I get started on my speaking journey? The first thing is that you need to let people know that you are a speaker. Now, I know this sounds really simple, but the first thing you could do, go onto LinkedIn and just add speaker into your bio on LinkedIn. Add it on your social media platforms.

Let people know, yeah, I’m open to being a speaker. I also think it’s really helpful to have a dedicated speaking page on your website where you actually, have some pictures of you, you have, if you’ve got any, some testimonials. I’ll link to my speakers page in the show notes for this episode so you can go and check out what that looks like.

So you have to tell people, and especially when you’re first getting started, I know you might have a bit of imposter syndrome around it all, but that’s honestly what I did before I’d done any speaking, was just let people know, “Hey, I’m now open to being a speaker.” It felt really weird at the time but now I really own it So the next thing in terms of elevating getting paid is that you need to practice your craft.

You really need to be doing lots of this because that’s how you figure out what works and what doesn’t work. It helps you getting comfortable being in front of an audience, and the more that you do this, the better you’ll get. So go, like, volunteer. Like, in- initially I really recommend that you do some free speaking.

Speak at some local networking events. Offer to do a free session in someone’s mastermind, or speak on their podcast, or volunteer to present to an organization. And while you do it, make sure that you film it and take some photos. Grab some little snippets. This is another tip. Make sure that you grab snippets of you actually presenting because that’s something that people wanna see if they’re gonna be paying you.

What’s their energy like? Is this someone who I wanna put in front of my audience? So the more that you can be sharing this sort of stuff on your social media and your website, that’s when people start thinking of you as a professional speaker. And the next thing that I do wanna talk about is also authority and becoming known as a subject matter expert because it’s a lot easier for someone to think of you if they really understand what your thing is.

I like to think I’m known as the person who makes business finance fun. I’m known as the accountant who’s not boring. She’s a bit more fun and can explain things in a really clear, easy-to-understand way so that business owners and business leaders actually understand their numbers and make smarter commercial decisions.

And I think I’ve done a pretty good job at positioning myself that way. So if someone’s putting together a leadership conference and they think, “Who’s the person for, financial or commercial literacy?” They might think of me. So you need to think about what your area or areas of expertise are, and it doesn’t just have to be one type thing.

You know, I’ve spoken about profitability, about cash flow, about balance sheets, but I’ve also spoken about pricing and money mindset. And you might have an umbrella thing that you’re really well known for, but there might be a couple of different, categories, subcategories that sit under it that become your thing that you’re known of as well.

And when you are, are wanting to get into speaking you really need to be owning that expertise and owning that authority. So put it on your social media. Share your opinions. A podcast is a fantastic way that people can check it out, see what your energy’s like, and see, “Is this someone who I actually wanna put in front of my team or my company?”

So the next thing that I would say is that when you first get started in getting paid, it’s gonna feel a little bit awkward. I know that when I first got started, I was doing a lot of free speaking, and then the first time I felt really uncomfortable actually saying, “Um, do you have a budget for that?”

Look, the thing that really changed this for me was realising that people aren’t paying you for an hour of your time. Because when I looked at what I was charging, it seemed– you know, I thought, “I’m earning more than a, a doctor here. This feels really uncomfortable.” But there’s a story about an expert who came in to fix a piece of machinery, and they did one tiny tweak and sent through a huge bill.

And when the client said, “How could you charge that much? You were only here for two minutes. All you did was turn one screw.” And they said, “You’re not paying me for turning the screw, you’re paying me for knowing which screw to turn.” And that’s what expertise is. Someone’s not just paying for me to talk about profit for 60 minutes, they’re paying for my 20 years of commercial and financial experience.

They’re paying for my preparation for the event. They’re paying for my qualifications. They’re paying for all of the experience I have over the years in helping businesses to make more money, like the frameworks I’ve developed, my stories, and my ability to explain things in a way that people actually enjoy.

So when you kind of reframe it, it will help you to start to realise you’re not just selling your time, you’re actually selling a transformation. So if someone does approach you to speak, don’t say, “Oh, no, no, it’s fine. It’s free.” You may as well ask the question, “What budget have you allocated for the speaking,” or, “What budget have you got?”

And if you are starting out, you can start small. I’m pretty sure I got paid, like, maybe $100 for my first speaking gig. You know, but it’s a start, and then over time you can grow your confidence and put your prices up. And I’m not saying that you have to do that. If you feel confident to charge more straight away, great, go for it.

Look, there’s a lot of different things that you can do. Like I said, you can run workshops. You can speak on stages. You can simply be presenting remotely on Zoom. But the big thing is be the subject matter. Be known for the thing, and that is what people will value The next thing that I wanted to highlight is that the more that you do this, the easier it will get.

You will build a body of work, and then you’re able to kind of tailor bits and pieces. I know for me, you know, I’ve got 10, 11, coming up to 11 years of content that I’ve created, so I can pull bits and pieces from certain presentations and create an even more potent and customized presentation for my audience.

Now, one thing that I want to say if you are getting started. Please do not get started by going into ChatGPT, write me a presentation, and then get up on stage and read it out. Someone told me that they went to a conference recently, and they felt like they were listening to speaker after speaker spitting out regurgitated AI crap in AI presentations.

There was no thought leadership, no actual market intelligence, stories or perspective, something that made you feel like it could only have come from this person. Because if you want information, you can just bloody go on AI yourself. And this is actually gonna become more important, not less important.

Because as AI gets better, people are paying for you, your stories, your experiences, your actual expertise, your sense of humor. They don’t want something that’s come out of a machine, and really, that’s coming from a big body. When you think about how large language models work, that’s coming from everyone else’s knowledge and experience.

Really start from who you are, your thought leadership, and then, yes, you can, you know, tweak it or refine it using your AI tool. Because if you’re just regurgitating crap, people will not wanna pay you thousands of dollars for that. People are paying you because you’re an expert. As I said at the start, the best tip that I have for you is just to get started.

The more that you do it, the better that you will get.

So to wrap up today, if you’re listening to this and thinking, “This actually sounds really cool. I’m keen to get started on my speaking journey, but I’m so scared,” I just wanna let you know I was terrified of public speaking. It was my biggest fear. I didn’t just become confident overnight. The more I practiced, the more confident I got. And that is how I am now a paid speaker.

And one last thing to close out the episode. If you have an event coming up, whether it’s a retreat, a big event, or an intimate small event, or you know someone who does, or you know of a team that needs help with their financial literacy, make sure you think of me. Pass on my details because as I mentioned earlier, I love speaking and I love helping people to become masters of their money.

If you enjoyed this episode and you think you know someone who really should be getting out there and speaking on stage, make sure you share it with them. And I’d love to hear. Send me a message on Instagram or LinkedIn. Let me know what you thought about today’s episode. I’d love to hear if you had any aha moments, and I’d love to hear if this inspires you to get out there, land a speaking gig.

Please make sure you share and let me know. All right. Thanks for tuning in, and I’ll chat to you again very soon.

Thank you so much for tuning in to today’s episode of the Intentional Money Show. If you’re ready for more profit, come find me on Instagram at clare_wood_coach. Thanks so much for tuning into the podcast, and I’ll chat to you again next week

* Transcript created by AI – may contain errors or omissions from original podcast audio