Performing Tips: Going From Free to Fee

By Judy Carter  

To transition from stand-up to speaking, I did a lot of speaking for free. In a perfect world, at every free gig, there would people in the audience who make the decisions about booking speakers.  But – even if not — if your audience really likes your presentation, you now have a large number of people who have seen what you do first hand, and can give a word-of-mouth recommendation powerful enough to help you land paying gigs.

That’s why, in my experience, when you work for free with a good marketing plan in place, free turns into fee.

Yesterday I was in San Francisco speaking for a major pharmaceutical company. It was my 12th gig for a pharmaceutical company, and all of those gigs stemmed from one free appearance.

When I first started speaking to the healthcare industry, I volunteered to do a free event for the wellness community.  I titled my talk, “Humor is Healing.”

Since it was a new, untested speech, it was rough, and it was sketchy.  But –it still was good enough to have somebody from UCLA social work say the magic words: “How much would you charge to speak at my event?”

(Whoo-Hoo!)

That one lead snowballed, and since then I’ve done hundreds of hospital events, doctor’s events, pharmaceutical company keynotes, women’s community events sponsored by hospitals, patient events, and even a Michigan hospital’s administrators event where I was flown in on a corporate jet to Mackinaw Island.

When you speak for free you give people the opportunity to see you, like you, and most importantly – refer you.  People make most major decisions based on the recommendations of others, and that’s why referrals have the power to turn a free gig into many paying gigs that can launch a speaking career.

Tips:

1.    When speaking for free, raffle something off to collect business cards.  (When you have the business cards of attendees, you have addresses and emails for future follow-up.)

2.    Follow-up with the person who booked you and ask them for two things:

a.    A “happy letter” with positive feedback about your presentation to include in your marketing

b.    A referral to their national organization (which probably can afford to pay speakers.)

3.    Keep in touch with your clients and attendees by giving them tips to continue your message beyond your speech.

If a person in the audience is asked to recommend a great speaker a year from now, a helpful tip you gave that same person just last week in your email newsletter might land you the job.