Answered produced feed
D 5 · C 5 · P 4 · Cm 3 4.45
Q So what was, Jamie, the first speaking gig, how much was it? Was it 510,005 grand?
A You know, one of the early ones, believe it or not, was with a large, uh, Atlanta-based company with red in their logo, and they paid me 5000 dollars to do that, but I have to tell you, I did a couple of things to know. One is, if you think that you're going to get rich as a speaker, that's actually not true. Speaking is ancillary revenue for my main business. There are very, very few people who can actually make it just as speakers. Typically, They're extremely famous. Seth Godin could probably live just on a speaking, uh, revenue. Donald Trump could live on a speaking revenue. But the, the vast majority of us who are either authors or just going around being speakers, typically it's additional revenue on top of what we're already making for other things. So I just want to be clear about that. You can make revenue. It is a great way. You know, it's a wonderful, it's the best gig I've ever had. However, for me personally, I've got kids in college, things like that. I was like, okay, I'm not going to be able to retire on this, so I actually have to generate revenue from other sources on top of what I'm generating.
AI assessment note: “they paid me 5000 dollars to do that”
Answered produced feed
D 4 · C 4 · P 4 · Cm 3 3.85
Q So Jamie, walk us through, help us understand kind of timeline. From the first time you went to a local university and told a professor you'd like to, you know, teach one class, to when you got that 5000 dollar first speaking gig with a company with a red logo, we won't name names, in Atlanta, um, what was that time frame? A year, five months?
A Uh, the, the, the first speaking gig was at Emory University. I ultimately wrote a book with a professor named Dr. Reshma Shaw. She was actually the person who turned to me after my first gig and said, do you do this professionally? And I thought, I didn't know you could do it professionally, but if you can, I'm all over that. So, so, so that was, that was, uh, let's say about 15 years ago. And then within about five years, I had built up enough of a thought leadership around everything and, and had the blog. Now, here's a key thing. Truth be told, to get paid as a speaker, you really kind of have to have a book. I don't care if it's self-published. I don't care if it's published by a mainstream publisher like my books are, but the bottom line is you really kind of have to have that authority to say, hey, I've taken the time to write 30, 40, 50,000 words about this topic. Therefore, I'm an expert above and beyond just the person out there who's saying, hey, I know a lot about this topic. So that, that's not, that's not a Deal breaker, but really, if you want to get paid to speak, you have to kind of be in that category.
AI assessment note: “And then within about five years, I had built up enough of a thought leadership”
