So You Want to Do This for a Living?

So you want to make a living of speaking - want to buy me lunch and pick my brain? I don't have time!! So save your money I have given you some good free advice. If you like it, I have tapes, I give seminars, and I offer a free newsletter to speakers called SpeakerFrippNews - yours for the asking - just send a message to Subscribe@Fripp.com

Making a Job of It
Most of you will be honing your speaking skills as a tool for advancing your intended career. You may discover you're so good at getting your message across to groups that you're considering doing it full time. If so, here's some Fripp Advice. Even if you'd never consider professional speaking, many of these tips apply to starting any new business.

You bring the same qualities to speaking that you have used in your other business affairs. If you have never been even remotely successful before, you aren't going to be now. My overnight success took nineteen years of gradual, constant growth. I worked all the time to get ready for the opportunities that came. You don't get the opportunities first and then do the work.

You can't make it as a speaker on your looks or the power of your personality, not even on your speaking skills. Audiences expect you to have original material or, at the very least, an original slant on your material. Can anyone else say it? Does anyone else say it? If so, don't say it.

As you develop, new material will too. Start with one good speech that people really want to hear rather than sixteen indifferent speeches. Once you have this speech, work on adapting and expanding it, ultimately turning it into a seminar. Then go for speech #2.

Here are five good business habits that will help you as a professional speaker.

Socialize: Go early, go to the cocktail party or reception, walk around and look at the exhibits at a conference, talk to and learn about your audience. You have to be social. You have to be nice. I'm clear with myself and the organizers that I will go to a social event the night before, such as a dinner with the board of directors and their spouses. However, I draw the line at parties at an off-site location ten miles away with country-western dancing where my presence won't make any difference.

Diversify: Never have all your eggs in one basket. A friend of mine gave a presentation about how he had lost ninety-six speaking engagements in two days. He had three clients that each booked more than thirty dates. Then all three had business reversals. I once met someone who was thrilled that 70 percent of his business came from IBM. Guess what happened when IBM eliminated all outside contractors.

Exercise free speech: There is no such thing as a free speech. There are just speeches that you don't get paid for directly. My early clients didn't realize that my "free speeches" cost me about $130 each for preparation, travel, and lost time at my salon. To get customers for my hairstyling salon, I spoke for civic and community organizations. I told them stories about customer service and funny things that had happened in my salon. At the end of my presentation, I'd put their business cards in a hat and pull out one for a free hairstyling. These cards quickly built my mailing list.

Negotiate: If there's an organization you really want to speak for, but they can't pay, remember these magic words: "What else can you give me?" A chain of sandwich shops wanted to book me but were trying to cut $500 from my fee. I said, "What else can you give me that's worth $500? I don't need 250 sandwiches." They agreed to write a letter saying that I walked on water and send it to a hundred influential program chairs of my choice. First I faxed or wrote the contacts asking if they'd like to hire me. Then a few days later each received the rave letter.

The first year I was a full-time speaker, my calendar wasn't as full as it is now. A woman had heard me speak at the National Association of Catering Executives. "I know you're worth it because I've seen you," she said, "but we can't afford your fee."

"Let's not give up so easily," I said. In the end, my brother and I spent five days at a lovely hotel in Berkeley, with a suite each, breakfast, lunch, and dinner, including one with friends - all for one free speech to 150 meeting planners on a day I wasn't booked. If we'd actually paid for these perks, the cost would have exceeded my fee. This was one of the best vacations my brother and I ever had together.

Another time a woman called me and said, "I hear you're the best speaker in the world." "You heard right," I said. She was program chair for Women in Travel and wanted me to speak at their installation of officers. The date was open on my calendar, but they couldn't afford me. "Well, I don't need the practice," I told her, "and I'm not doing it for nothing, but I will take a trade. Why don't you call me back tomorrow with your best offer"

The next day, she called back. "Would you take a free, round-trip, first- class airline ticket to England?" "You negotiator, you!" I said.

Count on payback time: I can't tell you how many people call to hire me, saying they first saw me years ago. My brother told me, "Looking back at my career, sometimes I've performed in these horrible places. One day in 1981, we played an especially miserable dump for an audience that didn't appreciate us. But that day, a young man was in the audience named Steve Ball. Ten years later, he had become a world-famous designer of logos for music groups, creating many album logos including the one for "Discipline.".

How to Gather Material
Material is everywhere. First, do what a good speaker friend of mine did when he decided to go professional. Danny Cox went to the beach with a pad and pencil to review his life for experiences and situations that could serve as good or bad examples. He wrote down the high and low points, successes and failures.

Include the sudden and stunning bits of insight that come to you as you're showering or speeding down the highway. Maybe a friend said something that was especially funny or memorable. Write it all down. Record your life as you live it. Every day, write down something that could be in a speech. For every intriguing, funny, or surprising thing that happens to you, think, "how could I use this in a speech?" Eventually, some of these experiences will become the original stories you use to illustrate a key point in your speech. Nothing bores an audience faster than old stories. Keep it fresh.

Start clipping and collecting. Rather than relying on a brilliant flash of creativity, you can "harvest" stories and quotes. Whenever something you see on television or read about provokes a new insight, cut it out or jot it down. Anything that makes you laugh or cry should be added to your file folder.

Office Mechanics

Think big, but start small. At the beginning, don't be concerned with anything except setting things up right. Don't spend a penny you don't have to.
If you have a spare bedroom, don't go out and buy office furniture.
Don't spend money on razzle-dazzle brochures before you know what your topic will be. These days it's better to have a one-page black-and-white fact sheet you can fax or mail. When you can afford it and have a number of such sheets and publicity pieces to offer, invest in a fancy press packet cover. This gives you the flexibility of constantly changing and updating the contents. Keep your fee sheet separate and date it so that someone running across it a few years from now will realize your prices may have changed.
You cannot say you are in business until you have a dedicated fax line.
If you're serious about your business, you can't function without someone in your office to respond immediately to requests, route important messages, and handle crises. Anytime a potential client fails to connect with you satisfactorily, you've lost them.
Whenever you or your assistant goes to lunch, leave a new message on the answering machine: date, time, when you'll return their call. If someone is calling down a list of potential speakers and isn't sure you'll call right back, they'll call the next name.
Take the cost of postage seriously. Once I used a heart-shaped paper clip to hold several pages together in a mailing of 1000-until I discovered that fraction of an ounce pushed the cost of each piece up to the next postage level, a total of $200!
When you travel, park at approximately the same place at your local airport every time. It will save you time and bother when you stagger home jet-lagged at odd hours.

Make it tremendously easy to do business with you. Customers want convenience, speed, and choice. "You can e-mail me, fax me, call me." I built my entire business on my father's philosophy: "Don't concentrate on making a lot of money. Concentrate on being the kind of person people want to do business with. Then you'll make a lot of money."

Speaking Agents
"Where can I find an agent?" people ask. The fact is that agents don't want to know you until you really don't need them. At the beginning and intermediate stages of your career, you create the bread-and-butter jobs that the agents will come and top with jam.

Good agents are bombarded with prospective clients. Don't contact an agent until you can present them with agent-friendly material:
your publicity packet without your name and address on it so they can fill in their own.
a fine demo video they can sell you with.
a halfway decent fee so they can make some money.
a reputation.

I've spoken at meetings with a number of other speakers who were booked through various bureaus. When this happens, I send copies of the program to the other bureaus, saying, "Hey, I was on with your speaker. Would you like to know about me?"

Frankly, every agent who had booked me is someone I first met at a National Speakers Association event. These people are a lot more open to your call if they sat next to you at a luncheon.

If I think a speaker is superb, I recommend her or him to my agents, who know I'm not going to waste their time. My agents know that when I recommend someone, he or she is qualified.

A couple of my speaking friends are handled exclusively by speakers' bureaus. Wouldn't it be wonderful to be guaranteed a hundred speeches a year? But in actuality, when you get to the "A league," you may find yourself in great demand as the flavor of the month. You must understand that this too shall pass. Popularity is a pendulum. A speakers' bureau may think you're wonderful and send you out, but the next month someone else has become their star. Never relax your own promotion, marketing, and networking, counting on a bureau to do it all for you. Promote yourself, even with the speaking bureaus that already hire you!

If you decide to take some time off, arrange to keep your self-promotion active while you're not working. A very successful speaker I know took a year off, and when she came back, it was like starting over. Her clients had moved or found someone else, or their meeting planning was now "outsourced." I'm not saying you shouldn't take time off, but if you do, keep the energy going.

Some people, as they achieve more success, think, "I'll just get a good salesperson, and then I don't have to sell anymore." But it just doesn't work that way. No one can sell you the way you can. I'd rather talk to a client myself. Then I can say, "Tell me what I should know about your meeting," and I can clarify their responses. Or they may be calling to say, "We only can afford half your fee, so can you recommend someone else?" Then I ask about their event, what else it includes. I point out that my full-day fee would also cover a second speech or a seminar, and often this opens up new possibilities.

Selling Related Products
As speakers develop their careers, many begin marketing products related to their subject matter. However, don't invest in products if you don't know how to market them or don't have a marketing mechanism in place. The simplest way to start is to tape-record a keynote speech. Then you have a demo audio to send to prospective clients as well as a product to sell. When you have a one- hour taped speech, you could also be interviewed by someone on the subject and then you have two cassettes. But don't try to start with a six-cassette tape pack if you have only two tapes.

Make every product do double or triple duty. Each can be something to sell, a gift for meeting planners, and a promotional piece all in one. Make your presentation cases as versatile as possible. I use a six-cassette notebook-style box with a handsome four-color generic cover. I can customize the contents and add a sticker to the outside to identify them. Thus I can have very impressive packaging even for tape programs that may be tailored for a small, specific audience.

Marketing your own audio and video tapes, books, and brochures requires a certain amount of resilience. Resign yourself to the fact that every demo you create will be obsolete the moment it is done, that anything you send out will have a typo, and that when your book is finally in print, you will think of the most brilliant thought you've ever had.

When to Say "No!"
People ask me, "Do you ever bomb?" Yes, but even the worst experience, with a little time, can become funny, and I always learn something. Once I spoke for a group of men who worked in a gravel quarry. I said no, I didn't think it was my kind of audience, but the organizers kept insisting. Finally I gave in and said yes. (I admit to this defect in my character: when people beg me to take their money and I refuse but they keep offering even more money, I sometimes end up accepting.) How bad could it be? I rationalized. I went early, set up the environment, changed the lighting, schmoozed with everyone. I'm not saying they weren't nice, hard working Americans, but it looked as if their friends had given them subscriptions to Tattoo of the Month Club. Fortunately there were a few wives. One woman, very thin, sat up front. "Ah, she must have heard of me," I thought. So I asked her if she liked speakers.

"Oh, no, my husband is a bit deaf so we have to sit up front." I schmoozed, especially with their shop steward and a man they called "The Preacher." who was there. When I met their president, I asked him why I was being paid so much money for just a fifteen-minute speech. He replied honestly that he didn't think I could keep their attention for more than fifteen minutes. "Boy," I thought, "this man hasn't seen me Fripnotize a crowd!" Then I started speaking. It was horrible! No one in the room stopped chatting with their neighbors. I learned that any time you have an hour-long open bar for a blue-collar audience before a speech, your chances of success plummet. They would have done better to have a stripper.

After my speech, awards were given out. I couldn't slip away because my handbag was up front. The first recipient was the hard-of-hearing man,who said, "Talking to the owner of the company, I haven't always agreed with you guys, but when you take someone's paycheck, you don't _____ on them." The second award winner was the shop steward, who said, "I don't know why you bring in these motivational speakers. We're all motivated enough to turn up at work every day." Finally came the preacher. He said, "Most of you weren't listenin' to Patricia. You should have done because she was very good. Now, I have 12 points to make..." His speech was longer than mine.

When I got home, I called my friend Susan RoAne. "It was awful!" I moaned. "Should I send their money back?" Susan's reply changed my attitude for life: "You were fine. They failed. You suffered. Keep the money."

I also learned the importance of your position on the schedule. On one occasion, I sent the advance money back because I learned that I was scheduled to speak on the last night of a conference, following a dinner dance. That's just not the right situation for any speaker. At that point in a conference, everyone has been working hard for several days and wants to party, not listen to a speech. I suggested they hire a male comedian instead.

It's also insulting to be scheduled after a dinner with an audience that has consumed lots of alcohol when your message requires focus and concentration. Unless the corporate culture is "no alcohol," I don't take such engagements. Breakfast meetings or morning time slots work best for me. So, learn not to take all the money offered. Say no based on your past experienceÛand mine.

"Shut Up!"
At every service club, there are invariably two retired gentlemen seated at a table by the door, counting the money. One day while I was speaking, two gentleman were sitting in the back of the room talking. Not whispering, but really talking. I began to get indignant. Here I was, giving them a free speech, and not only weren't they listening, but they were preventing everyone else from hearing and concentrating, too. "They don't realize that I'm an important person," I thought. They kept talking. Finally I stopped in mid- sentence, something I never do.

"Gentlemen," I said, "You may not realize it, but I'm usually paid very well to speak. I also have a business in San Francisco waiting for my time. When people pay you to speak, they treat you very well. You've taught me that when you speak for nothing, you have to put up with people talking through your presentation. I'll be happy to leave right now and go take care of my business. I'll also be happy to stay and finish my speech, but if I do, you will have to shut up and listen!"

The Mayor, the Fire Chief, and the Police Chief leaned forward in their chairs. This was leadership (or foolhardiness) in action. The two men stopped talking. Afterwards, everyone was very appreciative, but I admit that I wondered if I hadn't been just a bit too pushy.

Six months later, I got a call from the President of a Rotary Club wanting to book me the following year. Assuming it was another freebie, I suggested he call a few weeks before his date to see if I had a vacancy. He said, "You don't understand. We want the best speaker, and we're willing to pay for it. Don't you remember us? We're the Rotarians you told to be quiet. We loved it."

Inside secrets on the speaking industry and tips for success as a professional speaker from a pro...
by Patricia Fripp, CSP, CPAE