“Never Speak for Free” Is Keeping You Off Stages

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So in 2019, I spoke at a conference for free. There was no fee. There was no travel paid. I’m pretty sure I paid. It was in hotel. I think I paid for my hotel room. I wasn’t the keynote. It was a breakout session in one of those rooms with you know the accordion wall. Maybe there was like 40 women in it. That one free session got me four paid speaking gigs, and yesterday, yesterday, somebody that was sitting in the audience at one of those four gigs sent me a message on LinkedIn. Seven years later, she’d seen one of my live streams. She told me she still uses the techniques that I taught her, and she asked if I was going to be presenting anything for her organization later this year or next year. So I said, “Well, nothing’s on the books, you know. But I’d love an introduction to whoever’s kind of running things now, and she made that introduction the same day. So the point here is that that free session from 2019 is still producing, still producing. And here’s why I’m telling you this: somebody told you never to speak for free. Know your worth. Don’t work for exposure. Exposure doesn’t pay the mortgage, and that sounds like respect. And all of that is true to some degree. There needs there needs to be a profit plan, right? With each thing, it’s not like you’re speaking for free and walking away because it sounds like they’re kind of looking out for you, right? So so they get that. I know, like my family said, “Oh, did you get paid for that? How much did you get paid for that? Like they don’t really understand. A lot of people can’t understand that there’s value in not necessarily getting paid by the event, as long as you can create a a profit plan from the event. And when you when you listen to those people that say, “Don’t speak for free, right? It costs you the exact stage that would have paid you four times over, right? Free isn’t the problem. Free with no plan is the problem. And today I’m going to tell you about what the plan is. Okay, so let’s talk about the advice that we get from well-meaning but not well-informed people. You know, it’s people like I said to you. My family sometimes says to me, you know, like because a lot of times if I’m if I’m speaking like somewhere else in the world or in the country, and if I have family or friends there, I’ll be like, I’ll stay with them or visit them or whatever. And you know, I don’t know. I don’t ask people how much they get paid, but somehow the and did you get paid for this? It always comes up, right? And I don’t know why people feel the need that that feel like that’s okay to ask that, but I just think they understand what I do. So I kind of get the curiosity from it, and it comes from generosity. They are genuinely interested in what I do, and honestly, the advice exists in the industry because people have been used. So it’s not, it’s not incorrect advice. It’s incomplete advice. Okay. So the problem, never speak for free. It’s a rule that’s written for people who already have a fee. Okay. If nobody’s ever paid you to speak, then the rule doesn’t protect you; it just keeps you off stages, right? And I want you on the stages. I want you on stages. I want you borrowing other people’s audiences. I want you to have a plan to monetize every audience that you get to have in front of, and you know you can’t negotiate a rate for something that no one’s ever seen you do, right? So there’s always going to be that first time you get paid for a stage, and I can tell you, I’m going to do this off the top of my head. You you know because I I didn’t do this research before this, and I should have now that it popped into my head. I am pretty sure that I’m going to go with the number 75, but it could be as close to 90. Of the paid stages I’ve been on have come from a free stage. Somebody saw me speaking at a stage for free, and said, “I’ve got this event. Would you do it? So that’s how you start to get paid for this stuff, and that’s like the good girl tax we talk about here on this show, right? Like you were taught to be gracious, you were taught to be like tough and resilient, and like now you’re you’re standing there with two sets of instructions and no no gigs on your calendar, right? So I’m not here to call you out on this, right? I’m here for you on this, and I’m going to blame the advice for this, not you, because you’re trying to figure out all the things, right? You’re trying to figure out all the things. So I’m not going to tell you to speak for free forever, although you might, right? There’s always there’s still things that I will do, and we have a whole section in our programs that talk about how you can how to monetize these free events, right? But I’m going to tell you what has to be true about the free one, so that is the last real free one, okay? And that and and that’s we’re going to get into now. So let’s get into the meat of this. Let’s get into the meat of this. Let’s talk a little bit about that 2019 breakout room that I was in. It was a small room. I said yes when I wasn’t quite sure what the money was in it, right? And I walked away with four paid gigs that. I remember one of them was for a conference for librarians. And listen, you need to get paid. I need to get paid for a conference for librarians because librarians aren’t. There’s no. It’s not a room of students for me. Like no one’s going to buy my stuff. That’s a library in a school. It’s just not who my programs are made for. Right now, if she’s leaving the library and going out on her own, maybe. But I wasn’t expecting that out of the room. It was basically me to come in and talk about how librarians, how libraries can help their their patrons use LinkedIn. So it was a stage I definitely needed to get paid for. But I remember it was in Atlantic City, New Jersey, and I live right not that far from there. But they put me up in a hotel room. They paid me and put me up in a hotel room. And I remember when I checked into the hotel room. If I can, if I’m in a hotel room by myself, I like to kind of treat myself. I always ask, like, what kind of upgrades do you have? So when I get there to check in, I said to the woman at the register, you know, tell me about this room. Do I do I need an upgrade? And she’s like, Oh no, no, no, you don’t need an upgrade. I get into this room, and it was it was like a three or four room suite. There was, I think, there was three bathrooms in this room, overlooking like New Jersey, not just Atlantic City. Like it was so beautiful. It was so beautiful, and again, it came from being paid, right? It came from being paid. So there’s there’s another. There was another one that I got from this that was it was interesting because it was out on Long Island, and I met a friend of mine who is kind of a competitor, and she lives right out there. And it was a real estate organization, and she’s like, “How did you get this gig out here? I’m like, and she had just done a gig in my neck of the woods, right? So we’re like, “We should have traded, right? But and that was another paid one that got out there, and I leveraged that probably into five more. Like I’m telling you, each one becomes leverage for the next one and the next one and the next one, so so this is how this works, okay? And some of those paid gigs were not. I wasn’t. I’m trying to think. I don’t remember what I was paid. That wasn’ keynote speaker $20,000 paid, but it was a couple $1,000. You know, it was a few $1,000, and again, paid for my hotel rooms as well, so you know that’s really sweet when you walk in and your rooms already paid for. And I also remember, God, things that pop into your head, right? I also remember being at the the real estate one, and being in the hotel room, which was also sweet, by the way, which was also sweet, by the way, because I’m now picturing it. And I remember being in the one room of the suite and getting this big giant client, like just because there’s just energy. Energy begets energy, right? This this attraction energy begets energy. So it was just it’s just win win win all around. And the reality here is is that the I always always want you to talk to the conference organizers when you’re speaking and see if you can get a reference to some other conference that maybe they maybe they can introduce you to somebody else up here that runs conferences, or maybe they can write you a LinkedIn recommendation or anything you know. We want to make sure that we’re fully we’re we’re putting a you know a full wrap around opportunities with that. But these opportunities all came from attendees, all came from attendees, not the organizer, not the person who invited me. Women sitting in the room, and every one of them had enough authority somewhere else to recommend me and to have it stick. And I didn’t know that, right? Like I didn’t know that. I want to assume that because I assume that many of us have more authority than we were out there talking about. I didn’t get rebooked necessarily by the person who booked me in this case, I got booked four times by people sitting in that room, and then again another one, and another one, and another one. Now that was 2019, so you know what happened after that, right? 2020 conferences like screeching halt, so I had to rebuild that momentum again. But there is momentum that happens when you start speaking, even if you’re starting with the with the free speaking gig, okay. So notice that I want to say I want to say this. What we’re talking about here has nothing to do with the specific conference, and everything to do with this. Okay, I’m going to tell you a personal a personal statistic of mine, I guess. In when I look at the statistics for my podcast, which is one of my stages, and when I invite guests, they get to borrow my stage. The top, the downloads, the most downloads come from the United States. Right? Makes sense. I live in the United States. This, the country with the second most downloads of my entire podcast is Japan by double the next country. I don’t speak Japanese. I don’t know a single follower that I have that’s Japanese. I have no idea why Japan is the second most downloaded country of my podcast by double the next one. I’ve never spoken in Japan. I couldn’t tell you the name of a single listener. Okay, so we don’t know who’s in the room when we’re speaking. We don’t know who’s in the room when we’re speaking, and I want you to understand this. There’s a whole room that you can’t see that you don’t know, and it may be. Not the room you would have guessed, right? So stop, like performing for the people that you could name and just show up and do an amazing job, okay? Because the same thing happened in that breakout room, right? 40 women and I got four doors that opened up. I didn’t know who those four women were. Look, I didn’t know there was. I didn’t know who was going to be in the room? And I didn’t know that they had these opportunities, right? The organizers already chose me, right? The decision was made. It was made before I got in the car to go there. The woman who hadn’t chose me yet was like sitting in row six, right? She wasn’t on the program. Nobody introduced her to me. You may never even know her name that day, right? The person who books you from a speaking engagement is almost never the person who booked you, because you know what? I called that library conference back the next year because I’m like, I liked it. Let’s do that again. They’re like, Yeah, we we had that theme last year. We have a different theme this year. Thank you, we loved you, but it’s not a fit. Didn’t mean they didn’t like me. They loved me, right? But it wasn’t a fit. So, so the person who booked you is not necessarily the person who’s going to book you the next time, right? It’s the person who books you next is almost never the person who booked you. So, think about who you’re actually speaking to, right? Row six, row six is who you’re actually speaking to, so let’s talk about like what the topics are. Because here’s the other thing: when you show up as a good speaker, and I really, by the way, if you have an event for me, please call me. I’d love to speak at your event. I love being on stage. I do. I love having a microphone, and I’m good at it. I know it’s one of the things that I’m really, really good at, and of course I have specific topics that I generally like to speak about, and I have specific audiences that I like to be in front of. But within that, there is wiggle room. You don’t have to get booked. I didn’t get booked for the same topic I taught at the women’s conference. Right when I was speaking in 2019, I was talking about the power of relationships and LinkedIn strategy for women. Then I got booked at a librarian conference and a real estate conference, right? So, so nobody in row six texted her boss on or turned around and said to her boss on Monday, “You need to book the woman who spoke about the power of relationships and LinkedIn strategy for women, because it sounds like every other breakout. You, you. What she said was, I heard the speaker Karen Yankovich. She talks about LinkedIn. I was thinking when she was talking. There’s a couple things she said that I think would be really good for our event. Okay, your session title for what they’re watching you for is for that specific program, for that specific conference. It’s not what’s going to get you booked for the next one, okay? What she probably said was something with like more of a verb, and it’s something close to she’s a LinkedIn person who tells you to stop posting and start start talking to people, right? She probably said something like that, right? So the woman, the woman that messaged me the other day, didn’t remember the title of my talk. She remembered me. She remembered my energy. She remembered that she aligned with my messaging. She’s still following me. She’s still listening to this show. Thank you for listening. And she says she still uses my techniques. Seven years later, right? What lasted? What I was what I told her to go do, right? And what lasted was the the overall experience, not the specific title. So you don’t get recommended for your specific topic. You get recommended from something that they can repeat, from something that they remember from what you talked about. So could a woman who was not in that room describe what you teach in one sentence to someone with a budget, and would that person want to book you off that sentence alone, right? That’s like the test here. Okay, so sometimes we use these words that are too big. We talk about I talk about leadership. I talk about mindset. I talk about visibility, right? Nothing to repeat. Let me just tell you something. I fight with Claude and ChatGPT and all the eighth things all the time because they always want me to say things like leadership and mindset and visibility, and I’m like LinkedIn and strategy and make more money. Like I want to be more specific, right? I want people to to understand exactly what to do with it. I want to be a category of one, right? There’s too many people talking about leadership and mindset and visibility, right? So you, if it’s and if it’s too specifically you, right? Like you only I only talk about my specific framework or I only talk about my specific acronym. She’s not going to remember that, right? She might, but it makes her sound like she’s selling something, right? And I don’t want that for you. I want it to be really easy for you to be recommended for that next gig, right? And if there’s nothing to the if there’s nothing that the audience will do different on Monday. There’s nothing to describe, right? So, so think about that from the perspective of how you are giving your presentations. Make sure that you are sharing your energy and the overall strategy and. That you’re giving some them some things to take with them, but it’s not so specific that you were teaching a math problem. It felt like right, or so generic that it was like leadership. Everybody needs to be a better leader, right? Be specific, but not too specific. Does that make sense? And remember that you’re speaking to row six here. You’re speaking to row six here, so I don’t want you to stop performing for the organizer. Your work for the organizer stops the minute you step on that stage. Listen, I got lots of strategies to be of real value to the organizers, so you can get lots more gigs out of that opportunity. But when you have that mic in your hand and you’re standing in, or I’m interviewing you on my podcast, or you’re standing on a stage, you have to start speaking to the woman who in row six, the woman who runs something, the woman who isn’t whose name isn’t on the program. Okay, so so think about something that they can do before they leave, even right? Not something that they’ll like agree with. Like yeah, you know, yeah, it’s nice when you’re sitting up there and everyone’s like, “Yes, yes, yes, I love that. Yes, I love that. I’m not a motivational speaker. I mean, I think people. I think I motivate people, but I don’t bill myself as a motivational speaker. I bill myself as a you know as a LinkedIn strategist. So I want that to be what I am known for. I want people. I want to give people some kind of strategy that they leave with, so that they can. They have something that they can do with this. Okay. So back to yesterday, the conversation I had yesterday, seven years later, right? Saw me on a live stream, sent me a DM. How did a woman from 29 from a 2019 room reach me in 2026? Okay, I don’t know if she’s on my email list. I actually didn’t even look. The conference is long over. The organizers have. There’s all new people. She could find me because I was still there, right? That’s the whole reason. Okay, so that’s why when I talk, like I talked about a couple episodes ago in episode 388, that being findable is not vanity. Findable is how a room from seven years ago sends me clients now, right? So of course I, in fact, I saw it come through, and I, I, my instinct is to immediately reply and say, “Oh my gosh, I’m so excited! Thank you! But I didn’t. I didn’t immediately respond. I I said I waited because I wanted to stop and think about the move, right? And the move was, wow! I wonder if it’s time to redo that. Like, and then I did, of course. I said, “Thank you so much. I’m so happy that you’re still doing this. I love that conference. I remember that conference. I remember this. Blah blah blah blah blah blah. I wonder if it’s time to for a revamp. I wonder if it’s time for another another LinkedIn. I don’t remember how I said it. And she went, “Yeah, these people run it now. I go. I would love. Could you make? Would you be? And she gave me their names, and I went back to her and said, “Could you make me an introduction? Right. So to me, that’s that’s the move. That’s the move. I didn’t just say thank you and stop. I said I would love an. Who’s running it now? And can I get an introduction from you? Right. So a compliment opened the door for that. I didn’t just say thank you and close the door, right? I built. I stayed in the conversation. I engaged in the conversation, and that’s how those gigs came in. Those four gigs. You have to have these conversations, and you have to stay engaged in these conversations, right? I didn’t just say thank you to the person booking the library conference when she booked me. I said, you know, like when she when she said that, she was like, you know, I’ve got this conference. What do you think? And I’m like, yeah. And then I stayed engaged. I looked for her on LinkedIn. I wrote, you know, I wrote her name down and I followed up. Right. These are the conversations. This is why the word conversation is the most profitable word you could embody on in the strategies that we’re talking about here, so let me just talk. For I want to, I want to, I want to just kind of take the elephant out of the room here, because what’s going to happen in this conversation is somebody’s going to say, “What’s your fee? and you’re going to freeze, or you’re going to say, “Oh, I’m happy to do it for free, which is the same as freezing. Okay, so my question always is, well, you know, I have the answer to me. Well, first of all, there’s there’s a couple different ways you can do this, and and this is not a training on pricing. Okay, this is just how to get out of that question. All right, I always answer that question with more questions. How many people are going to be there? Who’s going to be there? How much of my time do you want? Okay. and then say a number and stop talking. $5,000 and stop talking. $10,000 and stop talking. Sometimes you can say, “Well, I my day fee is $10,000. My talk fee is $5,000. And I’m just throwing numbers out there because I want you to develop your own numbers here, which is not a pricing training. And what the difference here is, if you want me to come in and talk and leave, it’s this much money. You want me to spend the day? If you want me to join the conference for a couple days, then I’m, you know, or I’ll do three talks in that one day if you want. Right? Put me on three different talks. I’ll come up with three different topics. So my day fee and my talk fee, and say the number, and then shut your mouth. Okay. I’m not putting that figure in your mouth, right? You’ve got to figure that out, but then shut your mouth. And when there’s genuinely no budget, and sometimes there isn’t, okay, there’s opportunities here. Well, let me ask you something: Is there going to be a recording? Can I get a professional recording of this? Can I get the attendee list intro? Would I be able to get an attendee list with permission to market to them? Can I get a named sponsor slot? Is there can I make an offer from the stage, which is not something I always want to do, but you know it’s an opportunity. Like you’re trying to think right now, how do I want? I want to. If it’s an audience that you really want to be in front of, work with them to try to find a way to get there, and say only what you’d actually negotiate for. Right. One of the things that I do sometimes is say, you know, listen, I’m hoping that you’re going to love this talk, and because we’ve already experienced, you’ve already experienced the talk from me. I’m, you know, I think we have a, I think you know that I over, I try to over deliver. When the talk’s over, would you be open to sending me three warm introductions to colleagues that also run events that might be interested in a speaker? That might be a way to get in front of an audience, and that’s how you kind of leverage. I didn’t get. I don’t have a budget, right? Sometimes you can just get enough budget money out of them to to cover your travel costs, right? Because for me, at the very least, I can’t take money out of my pocket to do this. You don’t really know, no matter what they say. You don’t really know if there’s people in the room, you can convert until you get there, right? So, at the very least, my travel costs have to be home. I’ve covered in my in my world, okay. And you know, the other thing you can also say is, you know, here’s the thing: when somebody says we don’t have a budget, that’s the start of a negotiation, not the end of negotiation. They asked you to speak. We don’t have a budget. All right. So what do we do? How do we make this? You know, like how do we make this win-win? And that’s what you’re looking for there. That’s what you’re looking for there. So I want you to think. I want you to kind of go back and listen to this, or go back and and think about what we talked about, what I talked about here, and think about your sentence-the one a stranger could repeat to someone with a budget, with a verb in it, right under 15 words, and then come back and like message me on LinkedIn or come into LinkedIn and tag, put it on LinkedIn and tag me with it. And in fact, I love that idea. Let’s do that. Go on LinkedIn and make a LinkedIn post of it and say, Hey, I’m looking for speaking engagements. Here’s what I do. Here’s what I got. Let me, you know, under 15 words, who’s ready to do this? And then feel free to tag me in or DM me the link so I can jump into the conversation. Because I, it’s hard to hear. And if you need help, you know, come into our Facebook group, LinkedInForWomenCommunity.com. We can help you create it there. It’s hard to hear your own sentence, right? That’s the whole problem here. That’s the whole problem here. So here’s what I want you to take out of this: that free session in 2019 that I did wasn’t charity, and it wasn’t me being underpaid. It was me standing in a room with 40 women in it, four of whom could open a door that I couldn’t open myself, that I didn’t even know the door existed, and I didn’t know which four of those people, which four of those women it was-that’s the point. You never know which four they’re going to be. The person is booked who books you from an event is almost never the person who booked you for the event. So stop speaking to the front of the room. Speak to row six. Okay, that’s being seen. Getting the in the room is being seen. Being repeatable is how you get known. Okay, and getting booked, getting paid, getting introduced, getting the message out seven years later. That’s being chosen. So if you want the whole system for how that works, how to find stages, how to get on them, how to turn that room into the next four, that’s what I teach in my free masterclass. Borrow the stage. It’s completely free. It’s about an hour. You can grab it at she’slinkedup.com/masterclass. That she’slinked up.com/masterclass. Our next week’s show, we’re going to talk about the person who accepted your connection request and didn’t say anything else, and you’ve been staring at it for four days, and you really want a conversation with them, and you don’t know what to actually say. That’s the warm open. We’re going to talk about the warm open next week on Good Girls Get Rich, I will see you there.