Business Advice
How to Become a Professional Speaker (and Actually Get Paid)
How to become a professional speaker comes down to three things: always find a way to get paid, rehearse far more than you think you need to, and become someone people want to hear, not just someone with something to say. Topher Morrison, who started getting paid to speak at 19 and had been speaking professionally for 26 years when we talked, says the difference between a professional and a public speaker is simple. If you’re not monetizing your talks, you have a hobby.
Topher is a best-selling author, speaker and trainer whose books include Stop Chasing Perfection and Settle for Excellence and Collaboration Economy. He jokes that speaking is the only thing he knows how to do well. “You get me in front of a one-on-one, I’m worthless. Put me in front of a thousand, and I’m awesome.”
A lot of our listeners are up-and-coming entrepreneurs and business owners who want to stand up more and present on stage. So I asked him straight out what advice he’d give anyone stepping into the speaking circuit. His answer took about two seconds.
Rule one: always get paid
“Best advice in the world. Always get paid,” Topher said. “There’s too many speakers out there right now that are so desperate to get up in front of a group of people that they’ll do it for free.”
He was clear that getting paid doesn’t always mean a speaking fee. If you’re volunteering your time on someone’s stage, there has to be some way you monetize it: product sales, clients, a program, something. “Otherwise, you’re not a professional speaker, you’re a public speaker and you have a hobby.”
He sees only two good reasons to speak for nothing. The first is philanthropy. He mentors at the University of Tampa and has spoken for women’s groups and abuse shelters, and he’s happy to do it for free. The second is practicing new material, going to groups where you can test new jokes, concepts and ideas.
Beyond that, he warned against what he called the biggest promotional lie out there: get up on our stage and you’ll get a lot of exposure. “You’ll get the exposure, but that doesn’t mean it’s ever going to convert to business.”
Why so many speakers give themselves away
I asked him why so many people won’t put a price tag on themselves. His answer was economics. Any industry with an overabundance of supply and not enough demand becomes commoditized, and he sees it in almost every service field: attorneys, CPAs, financial advisors, dentists, chiropractors, and also professional speakers and authors.
“Anytime any business becomes a commodity, it boils down to one thing, which is price,” he said. “And what’s the ultimate price? Free.”
That’s the trap. When everyone is giving it away, giving it away feels normal. But free doesn’t make you stand out. It just makes you cheaper than the next person.
If you speak for free, pick free that gives you feedback
So what if you’re brand new and somebody offers you a slot? I asked whether it’s fine to take the first one for free and charge after that.
Topher was realistic. If you’re brand new with nothing going on, you may have to. But pick a free venue where the exposure actually works. His example was TEDx, because you’ll very quickly find out whether what you’re saying has any innovative thought in it. It’s exposure with feedback built in.
He was blunt about originality. Even with a huge number of people wanting to speak, he thinks there’s less originality now than ever. He still hears new speakers teaching SMART goals and expecting an audience to be blown away. A talk like that tells you fast whether you’re saying something worth hearing or “just parroting back what you heard from a motivational speaker that got you into the business.”
It’s the same test worth running on anyone who teaches business. We’ve covered how to spot a fake business guru, and the overlap is real. If the only thing on stage is recycled advice, the audience can feel it.
Master the craft even if you never go pro
I mentioned that public speaking is apparently the number one fear out there. Topher laughed and said his number one fear would probably be not being able to pay his bills. But then he made a point every entrepreneur should hear.
“Even if you never want to become a professional speaker, master the craft anyway,” he said. Because so many people are terrified of it, being able to stand in front of an audience and speak well puts you in a marketable position above most of your competition.
He used a rough, made-up example to show the math. Take any profession with tens of thousands of practitioners and ask how many of them feel comfortable in front of a thousand people. The number drops to a tiny fraction. “I’d much rather compete with 1,500 than 150,000,” he said. Those were illustrative guesses, not real counts, but the principle holds in almost any industry.
Toastmasters gets you started, not paid
When I asked how to overcome the fear of speaking, Topher said there’s only one way: do it over and over and over again. He called Toastmasters one of the best organizations for getting comfortable in front of a group.
But he drew a hard line. In his view, Toastmasters is built to help you comfortably deliver a toast or a short speech, not to turn you into a keynote speaker who travels the world. He’s seen people stay for years thinking it’ll build their career, and he says it can actually do them a disservice. Some come out so polished, with no ums and no ahs, that “it’s lost all its heart and all its personality.”
The goal, he said, is to sound like a conversation. “The best compliment I could receive as a speaker is to have people come up at the end and go, ‘Phew, you got it easy, man. You just get up and talk.'” The worst is being told you’re so polished. Use it to beat the fear and clean up your nervous habits, then, in his words, cut the umbilical cord.
The three levels of preparation
I told Topher about my first keynote, when I was asked to speak at Mindvalley in Malaysia in front of around 250 to 300 people. A number of people told me to go to Toastmasters, and I didn’t. I practiced and practiced, made an audio version of my speech and went over it again and again. Then I wrote out the dot points of the structure and tried to remember as much as I could. I said I think a lot of people try to learn their speech word for word, and that makes them sound like a robot.
Topher pushed back. He agreed word-for-word memorizing rarely works for most people. Speaking from notes and bullet points is the second level, and even that needs heavy rehearsal. But there’s a third level for people who want to get paid serious money.
When he’s hired for a 45-minute keynote, he has to know exactly how long every story and section runs. The event coordinator might walk up two minutes before he goes on and ask him to cut to 38 minutes, or ask him to stretch to 55 because the next speaker is stuck in traffic. “You have to be precise to the minute if you really want to get booked over and over and get asked back.”
So at that level, his keynote is scripted and blocked word for word, down to where he stands, when he pauses and even the deliberate stumbles that make it sound natural. He says he’s clocked about 20 hours of rehearsal for every 5 minutes on stage. He compared it to a musician rehearsing a guitar solo note by note, because once you know it that well, you can improvise and it still sounds great.
That’s also why, by his account, he could charge $10,000 for a 45-minute keynote. “They’re not paying me for my 45 minutes, they’re paying me for my 20 hours.” He credits the approach to the late Bill Gove, who he calls the king of professional speaking and whose legacy he says is carried on by his own mentor, Steve Siebold. I said I had to look that guy up.
Speak in pictures, not cliches
This is the part most speakers skip. Topher said the best speakers keep the audience’s brain awake, and the way to do that is to speak in pictures. He quoted a big figure for how much of the brain is devoted to vision. I couldn’t verify his exact number, so I’ve left it out, but the idea that people think in images is hard to argue with.
He demonstrated it on me. He told me to ask what he does for a living. First answer: “I help speakers like you take their careers to the next level.” Did that create a picture? Kind of. Not really. And even if it had, he said, he wouldn’t know what the picture was. If he’s charging $20,000 and your “next level” is a small raise, his program suddenly isn’t worth $20,000.
Then I asked again. “I help people like you go home at the end of the day right around 5:00 knowing that your calendar is filled with speaking engagements. All of your bills are paid. And most importantly, there’s money left in the bank. So when you do get home, you can connect with and be present with the people that you love.”
That one landed. I said it back to him: the first example was vague, and when you describe things, people start pulling those visions up in their mind. So basically, get good at telling elegant and descriptive stories. He said the same goes for writing. Open a great best-seller to any paragraph and the author has put a picture in your head on purpose.
Give the room a pulse
Topher said another common mistake is speaking to the masses the way you’d want to be spoken to. Stay authentic, but remember your style won’t hit the whole crowd. In a well-crafted keynote, he said, “there’s literally a pulse,” fast for people who like it quick, slow and methodical for others, plain facts for those who just want the facts. It rises and falls like a movie.
He’s not a fan of what he called happy-clappy crowd tactics copied by wannabes who’ve never asked why the masters use them. He was quick to add no disrespect to Tony Robbins, who he called “the undisputed king of professional speaking.” I’d said I respect anyone who can hold that much energy for days. Topher’s point was that great speakers don’t need gimmicks to keep people awake. They’re just that engaging.
Nobody hires great speakers anymore. They hire influential people
When I asked about collaborating in a crowded speaking market, Topher zoomed out to the big picture. His view is that a culture pays for what it values, and right now information is free. “There’s nothing I can tell you that you can’t Google.”
He pointed out that I give information away, and he’s right, I do. His view is that we’re moving into what he calls the collaboration age, where people pay for who you are, not what you know. That’s why he’s a fan of Daniel Priestley’s book Key Person of Influence. “The majority of all business in any industry is going to the most influential people,” he said, not the most skilled or the most knowledgeable.
So his advice for anyone getting into speaking is to stop focusing only on having something great to say and focus on being somebody great. If you want a starting point, we’ve broken down how to build a magnetic personal brand that people actually trust. When I asked for his last 30 seconds of advice, he only needed five: “Until you are a key person of influence, your full-time job is to become a key person of influence.”
How to become a professional speaker: a checklist
- Decide how every talk makes money, even when there’s no fee.
- Only speak free for causes you care about or to test new material.
- Choose free stages that give you honest feedback.
- Get comfortable through repetition, then move past polish to conversation.
- Time every section so you can cut or stretch on the spot.
- Replace every vague phrase with a specific picture.
- Build a pulse into your talk, fast and slow, story and fact.
- Grow your influence so people book you for who you are.
FAQ
How do you become a professional speaker?
Find a way to monetize every talk, rehearse until you can adjust on the fly, speak in specific pictures and build your influence. Topher Morrison says unpaid speaking without a business reason is a hobby, not a profession.
Should you speak for free when you’re starting out?
Sometimes you may have to. Topher Morrison suggests free talks only for causes you care about, for testing new material or on stages like TEDx that give you real feedback on your ideas.
Is Toastmasters good for becoming a professional speaker?
It’s great for overcoming fear and cleaning up nervous habits. Topher Morrison says it isn’t designed to build a paid keynote career, so use it to get comfortable, then move on.
How long should you rehearse a keynote?
Much longer than most people think. Topher Morrison says he has clocked about 20 hours of rehearsal for every 5 minutes on stage, so he can cut or extend a talk on the spot.
What does speaking in pictures mean?
It means replacing vague phrases like “take your life to the next level” with specific images the audience can see, so their brains stay engaged and you control what they picture.