Speaking As A Side Hustle
Today I want to talk to you about professional speaking as a side hustle.
Hey, it’s James Taylor here, keynote speaker and founder of SpeakersU. The other day, I received an email from one of our members, and he was a new member that had just recently joined a speaker’s you. And he was telling me about the situation that he’s in. He is a full-time employee of a successful executive in a well-known company. This is a company’s investment, the world of banking, finance, investment, that world.
Professional Speaker
But his real passion, the thing that he really wants to build over the next few years, is as a professional speaker, he has a message that he’s really passionate about, he wants to gradually transition from a nine to five kind of job to be a professional speaker. But he doesn’t want to do it in a big job. And I think that’s really smart.
So I wanted to use this video just to kind of talk about how you might think about building professional speaking as a side hustle when you already have a current job.
World Of Virtual
There’s a couple of ways to do this. And first of all, I’ve got to say, now is an amazing time to do this. Because now unlike even a few years ago, we have virtual speaking and virtual keynoting virtual workshops, the whole world of virtual is now open to us. You see before, if you were an employee of a company, and you wanted to go and give a keynote, involve, you may be taking some time off flying to that city, giving that keynote coming back, you know, checking in with your co workers, there’s I’m going to be at the office for a few days to go and do this thing that might have been some issues about whether you allow doing that was you allowed to take that time off may be using into your vacation time, it was a bit of a pain if you had a nine to five job that you’re also having to do. But now we have virtual keynoting. So it’s really easy. Now most executives, are spending a certain amount of time working from home anyway. So as long as you get it clear, obviously with your employer means you don’t have to take time out to travel to places. So you could be working from your home Mondays and Fridays, you may be giving that virtual keynote on a Friday when you’re working from home anyway, doesn’t really require additional travel time.
Speaking As A Side Hustle
Now, there’s a couple of ways that you can do this. And the first thing this is I would suggest unless you’re in a certain job, which has a very high profile job, I would think first about seeking forgiveness, not permission, especially at the start, because you’re not quite sure if you’re really going to enjoy the work of speaking, even a side hustle and you just kind of wanted to get your feet wet a little bit. So I would start doing it. And in those early days, you start to experiment with speaking as a side hustle. And then if things really start to take off and really start to develop for you, then, by all means, go and tell other members of your team. Now the only exception for that is obviously if you happen to take time out of your main job at nine to five, in which case you should definitely be saying to your boss or whoever is your line manager there. Now there are two ways of thinking about this if you’re going to build professional speaking as your side hustle.
Under The Radar
The first is the under-the-radar way. Now, this works particularly well. I would say if you’re a speaker who’s you have a job, your day job is not anything related to the topic that you speak on. So let’s say if you’re in the case of this, the member I was talking with, he speaks a lot of Finance. If he was speaking at lots of building a professional speaking career, speaking at lots of finance conferences, then there could be a bit of an issue. And so he really has to raise that with employers. But if it’s a very different thing that he’s looking to do, in his case, he’s looking at speaking as completely a topic and his industry is targeting and not necessarily the financial services industry at the start, then there’s not really a big issue there. So you can do this under the radar to a certain extent. So you can reach out to conferences, reach out to prospective clients, put yourself forward to be that person to be that keynote speaker at either event.
Above The Radar
The other way to do it is you go above the radar, and you put plant your flag in the sand and you say I am a professional speaker. So you would create your website and you would create all the videos, showreels, all the things you would look to do to create as a professional speaker. And then it’s very public that you yes you work. Your main job is this thing here but you also do keynote as well on the side as a side hustle. Now if you’re going to do that, depending on how well known you are in your industry, and the Above the radar, people that tend to do this are people who are in an industry, they’re quite well known in the industry or in their company, they may hold a senior position. And they really have to get approval from legal affairs and other people to go and do things. And maybe speaking for the same industry, in which case,
Finding A Bureau Partner
There’s a little suggestion I want to put to you just now if you’re the kind of person that’s may be in demand, let’s say, You are well known in a particular industry, you will work for a really famous company the other day, I was talking to someone that works for Amazon. And they’re very high up in Amazon, and they wanted to do, you know, speaking on the side. So in their case, I’m actually suggesting Listen, you can already get fees in excess of $10,000, for your speaking because you’re with a great brand already. You’re in a job, where you’re very skilled at what you do, very knowledgeable, you have a profile and your job, lots of people would want to pay you to come and speak and talk about that. So in that case, if you’re in that situation, I’m going to suggest you actually try and find a bureau partner to work with. This works really well. I know people who are in the world of economics, for example, maybe they’ve been in politics, or maybe they work for a big business, the big command, they don’t really want to do all the hassle of negotiating contracts and doing all that stuff and thinking about logistics. So if you’re in that situation, you’re already likely to get fees of over $10,000, you are a bit of an established name and your industry, then I would try and find a bureau partner and work with them on an exclusive basis. Now, that means that they can, they can smoothly sell you on to other bureaus who can sell your on to other clients. That’s not a problem. But it means that you just have one single point of contact for your speaking bookings. And that’s going to simplify things. I was talking to a bureau the other day, they do a lot of this for people that work in the world of technology, big tech firms. And these people, you know, work for some of these firms. They don’t want to be giving 50 100 keynotes a year, they want to be doing maybe once a month, in which case, they put that through the bureau partner, the Bureau, and they can deal with that as well.
So definitely if you’re above the radar, there are different ways of doing it. But what I would say is if you’re in that situation just now and you have a full-time nine to five job. And you want to maybe gradually over time transition perhaps to being a professional speaker and having just now having to speak as your side hustle, bring in some nice revenue, kind of learn your craft, develop your skills, develop your brand, then now is the perfect time because we have virtual keynotes virtual conferences, virtual events, and you’re accessible perhaps for the first time. So have a think about that. If you want to learn more about that process, that transition about going from and having that speaking as a side hustle, then just check out speakers u.com we have a membership that you can learn all about that. My name is James Taylor. Thanks for watching.
-Professional Speaking As A Side Hustle
