Public Words Newsletter
September 2011

How about a career in public speaking?

Who hasn’t wondered about trying out the life of a professional public speaker? You get to travel to exotic locales and get paid fabulous sums of money for an hour’s worth of work. What’s not to like? At Public Words, we get inquiries all the time from people wondering about how to get on this potential gravy train.

Pam Slim

Well, before you quit your day job, Nick has some hard-won advice on both creating quality speeches and making it in the hyper-competitive world of professional speaking.

Listen to this interview with Nick by Pamela Slim

How to develop a paid speaking career

At a SXSW speaking event where Nick shared the platform with Tim Sanders, the two talked about how to develop a paid speaking career. That inspired Nick to write a series of blogs covering the topic in more detail – all the stuff he didn’t get a chance to say during the talk. Here are all your questions answered about that speaking career in a handy blog series.

How much is a speaker worth?

Recently, Nick generated some interesting discussion when he asked readers on Forbes and his blog how much a public speaker is worth. If you’ve got a New York Times bestseller, you can command fees of $40K per speech. Is anyone worth that kind of hourly rate? In these two pieces, Nick explores the issues.

How much is a public speaker worth? How much would you pay?

Are you worth $40K an hour?

How to produce a great speaker video

Speakers need a speaker video, or a show reel, that highlights them speaking, so that the people who might hire them can see what they’re buying. But it’s hard to make a good one, especially if you haven’t done a lot of speaking. Here are a couple of articles about how to create a good one.

What makes a cool speaker video? Ask David Meerman Scott

How to Produce a Great Speaker Video

Be vigilant – watch out for speaker scams like this one

The longest running comment stream on Nick’s blog, by far, is the commentary around a speaker scam that he warned readers about over a year ago. This scam refuses to die, and all speakers should be on the lookout for it.