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Have you ever dreamed of speaking around the world? You visit different cultures and get paid to do it? James is Taylor will give you the low down on getting started or jumping to the next level.
Also in regards to going global, you may be concerned about what’s happening with the Coronavirus in terms of the meetings industry. In the show notes you’ll also see a link to a live webinar James is hosting on that very topic.
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Topics Covered:
1:12 – How James transitioned from managing rock stars to being a pro speaker
5:45 – What made a biggest difference for James to go global
18:30 – How James found his first pro speaking gig
20:30 – Success tips for talking to groups that don’t speak English
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LINKS
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The Impact and Implications of the Coronavirus on the Speaking Industry
https://p3music.ontraport.net/c/s/vQZ/6PvLe/s/sGG/RrO/6iYzCO/zMdxSqlNYv/P/P/qG
International Speakers Summit
https://internationalspeakerssummit.com/
James Taylor speaking page
SpeakersU.com
Speaker’s Life Podcast
https://speakersu.com/podcast/
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Connect with Carla Rieger:
Facebook - https://www.facebook.com/carlarieger
Twitter – https://twitter.com/carlarieger
LinkedIn - https://www.linkedin.com/in/carlarieger/
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Speaker 1:
This is episode 43 going global as a speaker with James Taylor, you’re listening to the mind story speaker podcast for influencers in business. Head over to mind, a story academy.com for free resources or to get on our list to hear about upcoming events. Now, of course, the big thing on everyone’s mind about going global these days is the Corona virus. So if you look in the show notes, you’ll see a special live webinar that James Taylor is hosting to talk about how to protect your business and your livelihood during the global Corona virus outbreak. Hey everyone, it’s Carla and I’m so thrilled to have James Taylor here today with us who runs speaker you and is an award winning speaker himself, an internationally recognized leader in creativity and innovation. And for over 20 years he’s been teaching entrepreneurs, educators, corporate leaders, writers and rock stars, how to build innovative organizations and design the creative life they desire. So welcome James.
Speaker 2:
Well, thank you Colin. Nice to be with you today.
Speaker 1:
Yeah. So give us a little bit of background about how you got into speaking and, and a bit also about why you started speaker. You
Speaker 2:
sure. So the, the, uh, I guess I’ve always been on stages. My, my father was a musician, my grandfather was a musician, my wife is a musician. So th the big kind of being on stage, it was always kind of pretty natural. Um, and then initially when I first left school and college, I was actually a professional musician. I’m a professional drummer, I’m a jazz drama. I kind of, I loved playing and all of that, that feeling you get with an audience, especially doing jazz because you also, you’re having a conversation with the audience, but you’re also having a conversation with other people on stage as well. And uh, but then, you know, during the day you can have hanging around what am I going to do? So, uh, I decided to stop managing artists and then I’ve managed one. Then another one asked me to manage them.
Speaker 2:
And then very soon I ended up going a stable of artists and a management company. And some of them did very well. We had, you know, platinum selling artists and I got to work with lots of other fantastic ASOS to Grammy award winning music artists. Um, and that was all growing great. And we started record labels and publishing, but I could see that the, there was the, the music industry was about to go through some real shocks. Um, and so around in a two thousands, I decided that I wanted to kind of change things a little bit and I really got interested much more in technology, um, and online business. And that resulted in me getting asked to go and move to California to go and work with a gentleman who was setting up one of the first, uh, can large scale subscription-based online academies.
Speaker 2:
And together with our team there we launched about 30 online academies, online schools, mostly in music and some other topics, subjects as well. And that kind of really allowed me to do something I was passionate about, which is run education and learning, but also that she can strong marketing online marketing background. And then I was really just getting asked to go and speak a lot of conferences, uh, about different topics, mostly around marketing, but sometimes they were anything in creativity. And, uh, and really at one point I decided to kind of exit the business and my wife and I moved up to Vancouver and I was in a situation I couldn’t really compete with that business for a year. So we basically had a year where we just got to hang out. So we spent time in Vancouver, um, we spent time in Thailand, Italy. Just kind of reflecting and thinking about what was the next stage going to be.
Speaker 2:
I remember very, when I was kind of quite young enough, 14, 15, seeing a couple of professional speakers at that point that that really blew me away. One was Tony Robbins. Um, uh, but then I also could see that as much as I love that show and being able to entertainment style, I also knew that, that that was not particularly for me. It’s a bigger kind of Boulder kind of style. Um, but then I saw another gentleman called Edward de bono who spoke about creativity and he was completely different. He was more like a university professor, uh, in his style. But there was something I loved about these ideas. And so like when a lot of people, when we can think about doing something, when we’re 14, 15, we ended up not doing anything about it until we had a big birthday, a birthday with a zero on the end.
Speaker 2:
And that point I said, okay, if I’m going to do this speaking thing, now is the time to do it. I’ve got this opportunity to do this. And so at that point I really started building, I’m running a speaking business and learning, not really knowing anything about speaking business. I knew about stages and events and I had a lot of experience there. But the speaking business is such a different beast. So I had to kind of really learn and get focused on that. And really what I do with the unknown. Like last year I spoke in 25 countries, uh, 50 keynotes. Um, and really with speakers. You what I do is when I came into speaking, I just felt that wasn’t the kind of training that I wanted in order to how to build an international speaking business. It was also a really good training on how to craft a speech, um, and things like that, presentation skills.
Speaker 2:
But it wasn’t really anything about the business side so much. So I decided to kind of create a program called speak as you where I essentially just share the things I’m learning about how to build a global speaking business. So it comes in the sales and the marketing and how to add more revenue streams, evergreen revenue streams as well as all the craft. So that’s kind of how we kind of got to here. So I have this really fun job of being booked to go and speak on stages all around the world as well as then getting to share that and hopefully help other speakers to start their journey and build their speaking businesses.
Speaker 1:
Yeah, you’re a very innovative marketer and I had a lot of speakers could take a page out of your book. So give us, what are some of the top things that you discovered made the biggest difference for you going global as a speaker?
Speaker 2:
Well, one of the first things, um, I, so I decided kind of early on I thought I want to learn from the best speakers. And so I decided to interview a hundred of the world’s best speakers and I ended up putting the out, there’s a thing called international speakers summit when people go and they can get, and it’s free and they can sign up and kind of actually can just listen to all the interviews I did as part of that. But what was really fascinating for me is I interviewed a hundred speakers and they all had a hundred different business models. So, wow, this is like, you can kind of basically shape this, which is fun. You can shape as business any way you want it. Um, really, and so that thing can, it goes back to what your values are, what you, you will give you joy, we’ll give you happiness.
Speaker 2:
Um, and so I noticed that there was, uh, some speakers who were not just, um, making a phenomenal living. I mean, it was one speaker the other day who speaks in the same topic as me, did 183 keynotes last year. His average fee is $35,000 very well and in the business. But then I was also looking at some other speakers who had that level of financial success, but they had a level of joy and happiness as well. And I think really what they got right was they figured out the figured out how to create this kind of optimal balance and I’d be very efficient with their time and how they, the market and sold themselves. Um, and they, they really decided, you know, what they wanted their lifestyle to be as a speaker. And so for me, I love traveling. I love seeing different parts of the world.
Speaker 2:
So for me, I purposely limit the number of speeches I give to 50 a year because I want to go and see different places. And I couldn’t go and speak in Dubai one day in Istanbul and another day in Chicago and you know, a few days later, you know, if you’re doing 180 gigs a year, uh, I can only really work if I do about 50 at the most. So that was the first thing, like understanding there’s loads of business models out there. What do you want from the speaking business? What does, what does it have to deliver for you and your family and your partner? So that was, that was number one. And then the second big thing I realized was that the business as it been up until that point was very sales orientated. Um, so it was really about know, getting on the phone, doing calls, pitching and things like that.
Speaker 2:
And I’m terrible at sales. I’m the worst salesperson in the world. So I thought, that’s not my strength. I can’t do that. Um, but I do love creating content and putting and doing marketing and learning and interviewing people. So I just found how can I use my skill set and what gives me pleasure to be able to do that? Because the idea of sitting down and spending an entire day on the phone doing sales calls fills me with dread. And I don’t want want to do that. So I, I basically had to figure out the lazy version of how to build a speaking business, um, without having to do the sales stuff. And I kind have figured out different ways of doing us some of the stuff I should share it speak as you, which is really about automation and, and leverage. Um, and then there was that.
Speaker 2:
And then, then even as I started getting further, I realized that talking to a number of speakers, uh, um, who the speaking bit, the bit where you’re on stage is actually the, the tip of the spear is the small, it’s almost like the, when you that famous picture of the, uh, the, um, and in the Arctic when you had the iceberg, you know, the bit that people see and then they, they don’t see underneath the water. And the speaking bit is a bit, but people see the books and the speaking is a bit, they don’t see the, the, the seep underneath it. There’s all this other stuff going on there. And example for that. There was a speaker I was talking to the other day last year, I think he did one point $3 million in revenues on a speaking business, but you get six point $2 million in sales through his membership programs and his other things, you know, and he speaks to a corporate audience.
Speaker 2:
So this isn’t to consumers, just general corporate thinks he sales that you would never see, uh, you just didn’t even know that happening. So that was very interesting. And it meant that you could think about how to create a business model and revenue streams, which even if you don’t necessarily want to be on the road all the time, that you can still be earning as well. Um, and so that, that was a, that was a little bit of a light bulb moment for me. Yeah. So I know you teach a lot of these things in speaker you, but what’s one of the ways that you avoided spending all day on the phone? Um, okay. So you know, this kind of appeared obvious to me, but a lot people when they think about sales, marketing, sales or speaking, they, they think of this funnel. So the top of the funnel as you get awareness, a used to be a new terms, Aida awareness, interest, desire and then execute or something else after that.
Speaker 2:
Um, so everyone thinks about awareness. How can I get more people being aware of me? But I actually wanted, I thought, well that’s fine, but what if I flip that round the other way? And what about by, I just went, what is the absolute, simplest, most direct route to what I want to try and get, which is a booking. And I basically just can reverse engineer that thing. Well, the best way probably to do it is to try and find other speakers that speak on topics like me and to speak for the same fee as me. And then just to reach out to their clients. Why should I spend time trying to, you know, build this thing and try and promote stuff to people that I’ve gotten either no interest in booking a speaker or if they do have an interest in booking a speaker, they don’t have the fee or if they do have the fee, the um, the maybe is not the, the, the, the topic for example that I speak on.
Speaker 2:
So really why I did is I, and I, I, this is like simple. Um, I think about marketing, but I would say if you’re looking to get speaking gigs and especially if you’re starting out, just find 50 competitors who are already out there doing it the fee level and then just sit and go through the testimonials and go through where they’ve spoken for the past five years. I’ll speak as a terrible being. Self-promoters so we’re always putting stuff up on social media as on stages at different things. So just go through the social media feeds of your 50 competitors that’s going to give you enough leads to go after for the next 12 months. And then you just reach out to them. Cause at least you know those people, they’ve got a budget, they hire speakers, professional speakers, and they’re interested in your topic. They book books because on your topic.
Speaker 2:
Yes. That’s brilliant. I love it. And give me an example of now I know that you’re a paid speaker, but you also in some ways must do some kind of platform speaking because you do speak at events for free where there are speakers who might sign up for your speaker. You right? Yeah. The only time I speak for free is two times or I wouldn’t say speak for you. The only time I waive my fee one is, um, if it’s for a charity I actually have some personal connection with. So for me, my wife and I, we give, um, percentage of our income to, uh, animal causes cause we really care about animals environment. So that’s, that’s, you know, if, if, uh, if, if Petter came to me and say, would you come and speak free dispense, then I would do it. Um, and so I, I, that’s, that’s one group.
Speaker 2:
So charities that the nonprofits, uh, that I personally have a connection with. Um, the other way is if I’m speaking to speakers, uh, because I think when you’re speaking to speak as you just, there’s, you’ll kind of, you’re just passing on the knowledge and the you’d hope someone else would pass on to you a previous time. So for that, I don’t do that. And, and I’m, I also, you know, we have this distinction between often keynote speakers or platform speakers or people platforms because it’s sell from the stage. I don’t sell from the stage. Um, and it’s not because I don’t want to do it, it’s just because I can’t do it. There’s a really hot to do as a real skill and I’ve got, I’ve got some money, my friends are brilliant at it and I look at them think, Oh my goodness, how can you do this amazing?
Speaker 2:
And they’re getting people to ramp to the back of the room to sign things. I just can’t do that stuff. And I’m not just kind of wired that way. My audience is mostly large multinational companies and that’s not going to work there for style. And even when I speak to speakers, I’m, I basically say, you know, here’s all this stuff for free and you know, if you want me to coach you one on one, that’s great. Cool. Just give me a card or I’ll have a conversation. So it’s very, very low is not, it’s not a high sales thing, but are the only times I waived my fees is nonprofits or if it’s a, if it’s for speakers. But that’s great advice because there’s lots of people like you that don’t want to be like a pitch person on the stage. And yet what you’re saying is huge is you give a bunch of free tools and eventually a certain number of people are going to go pack, I want more this guy. And they’ll contact
Speaker 1:
you.
Speaker 2:
Yeah. So I’ve got the, the, the slow burn. I mean, I’m, sometimes I look in our CRM and I see people becoming a speaker, you member and they’ve been on my list for four years and, uh, and I look and I see them, they’ve opened up watching different videos or free things that were put out there, but something, you know, maybe the time wasn’t right before or the or budget or whatever the thing may be. But you just want to be kind of top of mind. So when they do decide to make that decision, you are the, the logical choice for them. Um, I know it’s not, that’s not very high pressure type of sales. Um, it’s just personally what works for me is not the only way because, um, a friend of mine works a lot with, uh, Tony Robbins. He’s got guilt to sell.
Speaker 2:
He’s Tony Robins, his biggest business partner, so he’ll bring, uh, you know, he, he just ran Tony’s event in Moscow, that 24,000 people in that room. And I’ve seen, you know, Tony stuff and I’ve seen Gallo stuff before and they’re just amazing at doing that kind of platform style of selling. Um, and I, I just think you just have to kind of get back to yourself and understand, uh, who are you? What is, how do you like to, to communicate with the world? And if you do want to do that type of thing, go and get good training at it. Um, just go and do it. You’re going to improve that skill because it’s like any other skill that you can, you can learn it and become better at it. But I knew for me it would be such a long, long road. I didn’t want to put that, create that pain in my life.
Speaker 1:
Right. I get it. Now you do a lot of international speaking as you said, and I certainly have a lot, and I know a lot of our listeners are wanting to do more international speaking. So how did you branch out from, at the time you, I think you started doing pro speaking, you are based in Scotland. Is that,
Speaker 2:
that’s right. Yeah. Yeah. So it’s a, and this is a funny thing, it was actually taught to me by a friend, Manoj Vasudevan, who you won the Toastmasters, uh, world’s best speak I think last year, maybe the year before as well. Um, and so my nausea is Indian, but he lives in Singapore and we’ve having this conversation and he said, you know, he never gets booked in India. Like I never get booked in Scotland, my own, my own home country. And he calls it the alien advantage that you’re always more interesting outside of your own home country. So for me in Scotland, I’m just another score’s British person is nothing particularly interesting. But if I go to a Ecuador or if I speak in Brazil or if I speak in, uh, Vietnam, there’s something that’s different about you. So this is the can’t intuitive thing. And I’ve seen this happen time and time again.
Speaker 2:
A friend of mine is a great speaker. Um, and she’s based, uh, the name Dennis Jacobs. She just speak on the same topic and in creativity. She lives in Florida, but she works allude in Europe. Um, because she’s pitching herself to many of these conferences and it, and it for a conference, a lot of them, like the, the ability say we’re bringing in the international speaker. So she probably works more outside of her, said the U S than she does in the U S likewise, I’ve seen European speakers that work more in Asia or more in the middle East. So this is something to think about. You know, when you’re thinking of your opportunity to go and pitch for yourself for, I would almost argue, and this is certainly what happened to me, is I didn’t go pitching myself first for things in my own country. I went and pitched for places I actually wanted to go and visit and spend time in and explore.
Speaker 2:
So please middle East, um, places in Asia. And those were the first gigs, international gigs I started getting booked for. And so give us an example. Say you go, okay, I’d love to go visit Singapore. And so how do I, how did you find like your first Singaporean gig? Yeah, so the first, um, I mean this is an interesting one. Some places, uh, have very good networks of speakers. And actually Singapore is one of those because Singapore is really a hub of Asia. Um, so Singapore is I think something called Asia professional speakers. Singapore, which is a great organization, um, is uh, they just really good speakers from all Southeast Asia, but it will kind of congregate there in Singapore. So what I did is I think I was going, I was going out there, I want to go out there anyway cause my wife who was spending a little bit of time in Thailand for a winter and I said, well let’s go via Singapore.
Speaker 2:
And this was when I would just starting to think about becoming a speaker. So, and I reached out to someone there and said, listen, I’m, I’m, I do this stuff about, I know a little bit about marketing online marketing. Would that help any of your members? I said, well that’s great. Come and speak to our members. So the very first gig I did was free [inaudible] wait my feet. And it was for APSs, it was a masterclass I did for them. And with that I then got to me, I think about a hundred speakers who are based there and we had conversations and they told me this is these, the territories here that doing well, this is what the market’s looking for, these are the kind of fees, these are, the bureaus are really active here. And from there then I started to do is I started to really figure out a few speakers.
Speaker 2:
I thought they might not speak in the same topic as me, but they speak in that they hadn’t the kind of feed I’m looking for. So then I started going through previous gigs that they had done and started pitching myself directly. And then very quickly off that in probably a few months after I was back in Singapore again speaking for other clients. And I think at that particular event I may be even a match to a idea. I’m actually get a Bureau, uh, who’s actually based in Hong Kong who is going to be there anyway. Um, the Bureau owner, she came along to my speech and she saw me and then she ended up booking me for another client a few months later back in Singapore. So it just kind of, you know, it just can feeds on itself after a little while. Nice. Okay, perfect. That’s a great example. And what are your tips about how to speak internationally?
Speaker 2:
I’m assuming you’re often talking to an ESL group, but mostly you’re speaking English, right? Because most business meetings are in English, but sometimes people don’t. That’s not there. I think this is, it depends on the, and this is where I say, um, Facebook is out there. Let’s say if you’re North America, Europe or Latin America, why? I would highly suggest starting to look at Asia as a region, um, because what’s happening, um, if you just follow a business more generally outside of speaking, more big companies are making more of their profits in Asia. This is the race, the rise of Asia. So as a result of that, more conferences, the big global conferences where they’ll bring all the CEOs together are happening in Asia because they want to bring those executives there to say, this is where our profit, this is where our growth is coming from.
Speaker 2:
You need to understand this market. And that was difficult a few years ago because even in places like China where English wasn’t as well spoken, it is today or more is it say, but more these conferences are happening in Asia. Um, so I would, I would really start to be thinking about, you know, kind of starting to build things, um, over there. For example, when it comes to the language, uh, I’ve done it in all different ways. Uh, most of the time if you’re speaking in places like Singapore, Hong Kong, you’re going to be speaking English. Everyone understands English. Likewise, if you’re speaking, my audience most of the time is, uh, senior managers, C-suites, vice presidents. That’s kind of my audience. Most of them speak English because it’s the, it’s the language of business. But sometimes like for example, the other day I was uh, speaking in Latin America and uh, that was, we were the three events back to back.
Speaker 2:
One was for bank, one was, um, uh, be for educators. And then the other one was for a large company that has shopping malls. And for all of those I had different uh, someone doing like translation for me. There’s, there was someone doing, um, cause I’m doing English, someone doing uh, uh, Spanish. So one of the things I would advise if you’re going to do that, sit down with the, whoever’s doing the translation beforehand and just talk them through your speech [inaudible] and ask them if there’s specific difficult words that you say, um, or unusual words. Say LA, how would you see that in Spanish? How would you say it in Arabic? And just so you can, you can kind of get the field so they know what’s going on. Also tell them if there’s busy in your speech. A funny at, tell them the way where the funny bits are and even rehearsal line.
Speaker 2:
Because sometimes that thing that you think is really funny in English doesn’t translate into the other language. So you just have to kind of test that out as well. And then another little tip is, I actually will sometimes keep the translator in my ear. They’ll all have headset thing just in one ear, even when I’m speaking. Because as I’m speaking, delivering my lines, I, I’m hearing the cadence and the speed of the person that’s doing the translation. I can quickly work out, do I need to go a little bit slower here? How much slower? So for example, if I’m speaking to a Spanish audience, Spanish is going to take about 30, 30% more time. The same thing because in Spanish it doesn’t English. So I’m going to have to slow myself down. So that’s a good way of just kind of getting your ear used to the, the, the, the, the kind of timing of a particular, um, country as well.
Speaker 2:
And so those are just some classic things. And my preference is to, is to do it as translation to do live translation. So there’s actually someone there who’s being paid to kind of translate me live for the audience that need it. Um, sometimes you have to do, um, the kind of non simultaneous translation and I’m, I’m not a big fan of that because that 45 minute keynote ends up taking nine, you know, 90 minutes or something. Um, and if you lose the, you lose a little bit of the pacing as well as not quite as, um, is enjoyable. So if you can try and get the, you know, something to do the, the live translation
Speaker 1:
yes. With the technology. Yeah. Yeah. And there’s more and more of that lately. Okay, great. Now you, your a, you call yourself a creativity keynote speaker. What made you kind of hone in on that topic? Creativity and innovation. I know you come from like a music background, so that’s kind of an obvious fit. But I’m just curious, you know, a lot of people are, was going, you know, you gotta pick a lane, you got to pick a niche, you know, how am I going to differentiate and how do you differentiate yourself from the other creativity, innovation speakers?
Speaker 2:
Um, so the, the advice I normally give to other speakers, I just get people aspiring to speakers is to do something like icky guy. Uh, which is that kind of, if you’ve ever seen an image of the Venn diagram of, you know, what do you like, what are you good at, what people are going to buy? And just, it’s just such an such icky guy. I K I G a I is a very good little model to very quickly kind of work out what you should perhaps be speaking on. Um, for me, I knew that when I started there was probably three areas I wanted to talk about. One was the area that I knew a lot about, which is marketing. One was on creativity and one was really about things like AI, those kind of technologies. And I assumed that I had to the whole time I’d be very different speeches, but someone told me early on, I think this was a, a good little piece of advice, um, was really create a signature keynote, uh, and then you adapt that signature keynote based upon your audience.
Speaker 2:
So my signature keynote is called super creativity, augmenting human creativity in the age of artificial intelligence. And that allows me to actually talk about two things. It lets me talk about creativity and artificial intelligence and depending on what the audience is looking for, I can kind of go different directions with it. And if I’m speaking to a marketing audience, which I do a lot, I speak to of Mark big marketing groups, um, then I even get to bring the third band cause I get to use case studies and stories related to, to them. But the reason I choose kind of creativity as my core is just because I’m really fascinated in, uh, curiosity, uh, asking questions. Um, I, I’m people for whatever reasons, I think, I think quite creatively, I love spending time sitting down with anyone, whether it’s a business owner and just talking about creative ideas about how to grow their business.
Speaker 2:
Um, I, and I just looking around and just doing a bit of research and analysis. I couldn’t really find any speakers that spoke on about creativity in the way that I speak about it, which is really about business creativity and things like, uh, technological disruption and artificial intelligence. Um, so that’s of where I can, I found this little thing that I thought I can make this mine and, and I quote super creativity and then maybe you can try and get a word that you can own that is in that space and you become the owner of that word and you become the owner of that space. Um, and then it’s great actually because what this also means is once you find your space in that topic, let’s say creativity. I’m, I’m friends with all of my competitors on that topic. So, so like, you know, whether it’s in simple like some like Frederick car and he’s an amazing speaker on creativity or um, Dixon Tang or cereal co 11 in, in Europe.
Speaker 2:
So these are all creativity speakers, but we all come at it from such a different perspective. And this is something that can sometimes hold new speakers back because they think, let’s say if they’re going to talk about, um, resilience as a topic and that they’ll say, well you know, there’s lots of resilient, I can see lots of resilience because out there, but in the same way that on a, on your bookshelf you’ll have lots of books about topic and you might, I might like that particular book there because I liked that person’s voice, the way they talk about it, their particular take on it. Whereas my wife or my friend will go for a completely different book because they like someone else. So you kind of have to confine your voice in that space and then can, she has allowed your place and your unique thing in that space. So for me, I just found creativity cause it was like a big catch or topic is an evergreen topic. People are going to still want someone to talk about creativity probably in a hundred years. Um, so why would you, why wouldn’t talk about social media, social media marketing? I might talk about if I was a social marketing person, I might talk about um, something like uh, influence or connection or something, some, a bigger topic. And then you have social media and said something Ethan.
Speaker 1:
Right. And in terms of finding your voice with it, how much did you do course correction as you saw what the marketplace would bear
Speaker 2:
a huge amount. You can go in and again, I think this is what the market wants and then you quickly get feedback. Anything that’s not really what the market wants. So let me give you an example for this. The very first paid keynote I the, I have a gave, um, I just got started and I did, Y mentioned they, which is I find of my competitors. And I pitched to some conferences and within a few weeks of me just starting, I got one conference come back to me and said, they were based in Saudi Arabia. And they said we’d, we’d love maybe to tie, have you come in keynote our conference anyway, fantastic. Great. Let’s make this happen. Let’s do this. And then they said to me, what’s your fee? I had no idea, because I’d never had to quote a fee before. And I thought, what do I say here?
Speaker 2:
So I asked a friend of mine and he just said, listen, just tell me your fee. $15,000 except where the pig last year’s keynote speaker. And they said, Oh, that’s fine. We pay last year’s keynote speaker $10,000. So my first ever paid speaking gigs was per $10,000. Um, but the problem was still here is that gig was in three months time. I’d still never delivered that speech. It was only an ID on a piece of paper on a, uh, on a PDF. So now I had to do is I had to figure out what the speech wasn’t, what speech up. So I had obviously a few months to work the speech out. And this is a, this is a great thing to do. So I mentioned either free speeches, speak to speakers or to um, uh, charities and organizations. Uh, so we have here and we have, you know, the rotary local rotaries and rotaries are amazing places to try out material because you only get 20 minutes most times.
Speaker 2:
So, and you, uh, you often have an audience who are not that interested in what you’re saying. So you have to really kind of work is obviously a lot of something depending on where you are, which country in. But what was great about it was I was able to book 20, I think 22 or 25, uh, rotary association meetings before I had to go and do that Dick in Saudi Arabia and I gave speech over and over again and then I’d get feedback and I’m like, okay, that, that bit’s not, people aren’t laughing at that Bay or there, I’m kind of losing it a little bit here. This red, get rid of that. Like a comedian would work up the material. And that speech I gave at the end was a dramatically different speech than I gave it a star. Um, so that’s, you just have to kind of get out there.
Speaker 2:
There’s nothing you can’t really replace, just kind of getting out there, giving it, getting feedback from the audience and you’ll feel it. You’ll feel on stage sometimes when things don’t work. And this is the other little tip I would give is video record. Every single speech you do, it’s horrible. I hate watching myself speaking, but it’s a great thing for you to start to do in order to figure out, Oh, I, I’m not using my body correctly here, or I’m, I’m not pausing enough just before I land that line or not pausing enough after I land that line. And you could only do that if you can have like a sports person watches them plays, you can have to sit and watch it. Yeah, absolutely. Well that’s amazing. I know. I certainly did that too. I just booked my first gig and then had three months to practice. And if I focuses the mind, doesn’t it, it forces you.
Speaker 1:
And so, you know, I think I spoke at like five free, like a rotary and then something else. Right. But you did 25, like that’s commitment. Like everyone who’s listening, I mean that would make you feel so confident. Yeah,
Speaker 2:
I think I gained a few pounds because every time you get lunch and you get, I would do like two a day. Sometimes you got lunch and it did by the end of it. Like, okay, I’m even need to cut back on this. And how do you discover what’s relevant and important in terms of your speaking topic? Um, different ways. Research. I’m researching the, the uh, my area can expertise and creativity and AI all time, but then I’m probably having this, have to think about this. I probably do at least one pre event cold per week with a client, uh, about an event that’s coming up. And then I’ll probably do maybe five, what we call discovery calls with clients who are interested in booking me. And I’m just asking them what their challenges are, what their problems are. So I’m here like six times a week.
Speaker 2:
I’m hearing from people in executive level positions about what’s kind of going on. So that’s one way. That’s a really good way of doing it. The other way is if you, what bureaus, bureaus are always having these conversations. So just for example, the other day I was, I met with a Bureau in Dubai and they were telling me, I said, what’s the, what are you hearing what the trends, and they were saying in the UAE, wellbeing is the big trend. Uh, companies are really fixated on how to improve wellbeing. Um, so if you’re a speaker and even you go speak on buying on wellbeing, if you speak on something that you could relate to that, then there’s an opportunity there. Um, especially cause you’re about to go into the Dubai expo, which is starting in October and then runs for about six months and they’re going to have so many events. Then they’re going to be looking for so many different speakers.
Speaker 1:
Thank you. Okay. So if people want to know more about you and speaker you, where should they go?
Speaker 2:
Yup. So just go to speak as you a SPE, a K E R S u.com, um, speakers, you, uh, you could also, if you could, international speakers, summit.com you can get free pass for, um, and listen to me interviewing all these 150 top speakers. You can learn from them. Learn why Ireland and if you’re just interested in checking out my stuff, uh, James Taylor. Dot me is my website.
Speaker 1:
Cool. Yeah, that speaker summit was amazing. There’s so many great tips on there. So definitely check that out. I certainly did. And it was, it was great. So thank you for all the work you do out there. Not just improving creativity with all the Csuite people, but, uh, giving, uh, our speakers, all those great creative, innovative ideas. So,
Speaker 2:
and thank you for doing this podcast and sharing this with the world as well. And uh, I’m a huge fan of podcast, so, so I love listening to podcasts. I love being on them. Yeah. And you have a podcast, right? Yeah. We’ve actually got two. We’ve got dad speaker’s life, uh, which get learned about speakers. You don’t come, but we also have one called the creative life. I interview leading creatives from different industries. Very nice. Okay, well check those out everybody and we’ll wrap it up here. Thank you so much. Bye for now.
