“So how much is Delta Air Lines paying you?”

Somebody asks me that almost every time I walk off a stage. The answer is nothing. I am just a raving fan and have quite a few stories because of all the times they’ve bailed me out and created an extraordinary experience for me. In 13 years of professional travel, I have never been sponsored by them… well, unless you count the gift box they sent me for their 100th anniversary.

The big question I’ve been seeming to get more and more from speakers, consultants, and entrepreneurs is, “Is Airline loyalty worth it? What about hotels and cars?” That's what I want to tackle today.

I give my perspective on Airline Loyalty, Hotel Loyalty, and Car Rental Loyalty below.

A quick word on where I’m coming from, and it cuts both ways. I’ve held top-tier status with Delta, with Hilton, with Omni, and with Hertz. I’ve also had a program zero out my balance overnight and treat me like I’d never walked in the door. I’ve been at the top of these things and at the bottom of them, sometimes in the same month. That’s the only reason I have an opinion worth reading.

Airline Loyalty: worth it

Yes, airline loyalty is worth it. And probably not for the reasons you think. The SkyClub and the upgrades are great, don’t get me wrong. But that’s not truly what keeps me loyal.

What keeps me loyal is how I’m taken care of when everything is falling apart. Am I going to trust a budget airline to get me there? Am I going to be stuck in a queue of 244 other passengers, waiting my turn on a phone line with thousands of people on it? Or am I going to be with an airline that knows me and can get me where I need to be, even if they have to sacrifice their own dollars to put me on somebody else’s airplane?

This past week, I woke up to a canceled flight on my way to a conference in Orlando. But, with that was my new itinerary. They had rebooked me automatically and they transferred my complimentary upgrades, which was a rare, and pleasant surprise.

Here is the problem…with that new flight I was scheduled to be in the air at 30,000 feet at the same time I was to be walking on stage. So I quickly reached out and let Delta know my story.

In less than 10 minutes, they had me booked on a direct flight not to Orlando, but to Tampa. To top it off, they had ground transportation waiting that they covered. I got there with plenty of time to spare, checked into my hotel, got a little work done, and was still early to my presentation.

And it isn’t just that trip. A storm shut down O’Hare and my whole family was going to miss our connection through Detroit, so Delta put all of us on a direct United flight in the same fare class and we got home sooner than planned. Another Chicago snowstorm, they booked me on American. Snow out of Raleigh that wasn’t even their problem, American again. Many years back, JetBlue.

Thirteen years of loyalty to one airline, and a meaningful share of the times I’ve flown somebody else, Delta is the one who got me the ticket.

And the everyday math is better than people think. Last Friday my talk ended at 5:00, I did a book signing, hopped from the convention center straight to MCO, and grabbed dinner in the SkyClub. That dinner would have cost the meeting or me at least $20. This coming Monday I’m speaking in Atlanta in the afternoon, so I’ll grab lunch in the Sky Club, then dinner in the SkyClub before I fly out to Tuesday’s event. Two meals in one day, $20 each on the conservative side. That’s $40, just from flying the same airline. And that’s before the upgrades where the meal comes with the seat.

People often ask, "Is it worth having a connection?"

My unpopular answer is yes. In many cases, loyalty is worth the connection. The counterargument is that a connection is one more variable that can go wrong, be delayed, and blow up your day. Fair. But I also know the airline has my back and will make it happen. And given a longer connection and a shorter one, I almost always take the shorter one, because if it breaks I know I’m getting rebooked on the next one out.

Now, loyalty doesn't always pay off….there’s the day none of it worked.

It was March 6 of this year. I had finished a day of speaking in Memphis and I was trying to get to my brother’s wedding weekend. That’s when my beloved airline failed me. I have never seen a line like it, hundreds upon hundreds of people lining every terminal in Atlanta. I am a Diamond Medallion. I am a Million Miler. But that day I was a guy with a phone that wouldn’t connect me to anyone, looking at a line that wasn’t moving. I had to book my own flight on Frontier, and it took three days for my bag to get back to me. I rolled into a morning rehearsal after being up all night, completely tired, in yesterday’s clothes, with no suitcase.

That could happen on any airline. But I do know all of the times that I have been saved because I have been loyal. It's a reciprocal relationship, and the second it becomes a one-way street, I might start shopping for a new airline.

Hotel Loyalty: only sometimes worth it, and mostly not your call

Here’s where I waffle. Hotel loyalty absolutely can pay. The problem is that as a speaker, most of the time it isn’t your decision to make.

As a speaker you’re often end up on the meeting professional’s room block, so you stay wherever they book you. The major downside is that a lot of times you don’t get the points for that room, or you get limited points.

So you might hop from one meeting at a Marriott to the next meeting at a Hilton, then to an Omni, then to a Hyatt, and then to some boutique hotel that doesn't even have a point system. And that just described my last October.

I remember speaking in the middle-of-nowhere, Iowa, and the closest hotel was 45 minutes away, and there was only one hotel in that town. I didn’t even have a choice between brands.

That said, if you do get to choose your hotel stays frequently, it pays to be loyal. I just found out today that I have quite a few free nights at Omni, because I’ve been speaking at a lot of Omnis. This year, I reached their top level, Iconic, I get an automatic suite upgrade and two room-level upgrades. Some of the nicest places I have ever stayed at are Omnis, and that’s the one I’m doubling down on. I had a sauna in one of my suites at an Omni once and some other outstanding amenities.

And then there’s the other side of it. I just tried to book a Hyatt in Utah for an engagement a few weeks from now. In 2024, and a bit last year, I did a lot of events at Hyatts. So, I expected to have some status. But I logged in and a big goose egg. ZERO. My points had expired overnight. Last year I was upgraded in a Hyatt and stayed in one of the best custom decorated suites I’ve ever stayed in. This year they treat me like I’ve never stayed before. I’m not saying I need those benefits. But it does nothing to garner loyalty.

Hilton is why I moved to Marriott. I was Hilton Diamond for the longest time, and apart from the Diamond parking spot, which was really convenient, I’m not going to lie, there was really almost no benefit. The room upgrades never happened. The late checkouts almost never happened. I normally had to ask for my welcome gift, which was free water bottles. Here is the catch, and it is plaguing all loyalty programs. So many people were buying the top-tier status by just getting a deluxe Hilton credit card that the loyalty became saturated. I'm not against using credit cards to get ahead. But the saturated market has made me switch to Marriott.

The constant unavailability of late checkout is what really got me. Plus, Hilton made breakfast a lot more expensive at their hotels, and their room credits barely covered a side of bacon.

I lean toward Marriott now, when it’s in my control. If the room is comparable and the amenities are comparable and the distance from wherever I’m speaking is comparable, I’m leaning Marriott, because they’re doing a little bit more for me.

Rental cars: not right now

Nobody has won me over.

For a while Hertz did. They gave me those upgrades, some sweet cars, convertibles to drive the Pacific Coast Highway, fancy cars more expensive than my first house as a complimentary upgrade. And now I don’t get any of that, even though I’m at the same level. I had a large group last summer, and they didn't even have the vehicle with enough seats that I had reserved. And I'm at their top-tier status.

Loyalty comes down to three things: redemption value, reliability, and convenience. Feeling special is nice, but it isn’t the point. Do I sound like a diva? Absolutely. But you’re buying my loyalty with those things, and right now nobody in the rental car business is buying.

What it costs, and what I’d actually do

None of this is free. The threshold to be a Diamond Medallion is $28,000 a year in Medallion qualifying dollars, through credit card spend and air travel. I exceed that every year. That’s the real price of everything I just described, and it’s the number to run against before you decide to chase a tier.

And I’m not loyal to Delta because it’s my only option out of Raleigh. Delta has a ton of directs out of here, but so does American. Southwest has a ton, Avelo has a ton, Breeze has a ton. If I were in some smaller town with limited options, that would be a little more concerning. And I do realize that.

So here’s what I’d actually do, whether you’re flying a hundred times a year or fifteen.

1. Concentrate. Pick one airline and stay there. When your points are scattered across programs, you lose real value in the transfer fees just getting them back together.

2. Check the numbers before you book. Cancellation and delay rates by carrier and by airport are public. Almost nobody looks at them, and then they call the result bad luck.

3. Never have one way in. On any trip that matters, know your connecting options and every airport within driving or train distance of the venue.

4. Match the connection to your recovery. Take the short connection when you know they’ll rebook you on the next one out. Take the long one when you know they won’t.

5. Tell the meeting professional up front. If you’re tight, say so before you sign. I can make that fit, but you’re going to fit between two things, here’s the risk, and here are my contingencies. Nobody has ever walked because I said that.

6. For hotels, follow your calendar. Put your nights where your events already cluster, and don’t chase a tier your calendar won’t support.

Until next time,

P.S. Tell me your Atlanta. The trip where you had the status, the tier, the card, all of it, and it still didn’t save you. Hit reply. Mine ended at a wedding rehearsal in yesterday’s clothes, and my brother has never once let me forget it.

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This summer I finally opened my book I put out seven years ago, and I want to tell you I did it out of curiosity, but the truth is I had been avoiding it. An organization wanted to buy a few dozen copies, so I pulled up the manuscript, and I sat there genuinely afraid of what I was going to find in my own writing.

I was pleasantly surprised. The thesis was right there, and I had not drifted nearly as far from it as I was afraid I had. What I found was the foundation of almost every framework I use on stage today, sitting in those pages six years before I had names for any of them.

Here's the part I'm less proud of. I did not know what I was doing. I self-published it, and somehow it landed on corporate desks, and I have been invited to keynote because somebody bought that book and passed it along. Every bit of that is a wonderful outcome, and almost none of it was a plan. It was a happy accident.

So that has had me thinking all month about books, and specifically about the ones that never make it out at all, because a lot of what made mine work is stuff I stumbled into and would much rather you do on purpose.

Whenever somebody tells me they're working on a book, I ask them one question: “What is the release date?”

Occasionally someone will say, "I'm working with an agent." That's the answer I like, because it means somebody whose entire job is the calendar is watching the calendar.

The far more common answer is some version of, "Oh, I'm not sure yet, whenever I'm done."

Here's the thing, though. The missing date isn't really the problem. It's the symptom of a much deeper underlying concern that plagues so many would-be authors.

Often, people can't name a date because they've never actually decided what the purpose of the book is in the first place.

So before you write another word, I'd get clear on the purpose. And I mean that in both directions, because an impactful book has to do something for the reader and it has to do something for you.

A book is a key

When people ask if writing a book is worth it, I often describe it as a key.

It’s a key that can open doors to stages, clients, credibility, rooms you weren't getting invited into. It's the key, and that's genuinely a great key to have on your ring, but a key only works if you cut it for a specific lock. Having a decorative key on your keyring serves little purpose if you don’t know which doors it will work to open.

A book for a book's sake is not always the best angle. There are plenty of those in existence, and they dilute the pool for everybody trying to do it well. Mine happened to fit a lock I did not know was there, and I would be lying to you if I called that strategy.

Five questions before the first chapter

When I reread the book this summer, I could see that I had generally answered these, mostly on instinct, and the ones I got right are why the thing is still working seven years later. I would just rather you answer them on purpose than find out years later that you got lucky.

So answer these, in this order, and write the answers down where you can see them.

1. What does the reader do differently when they close it? Not what it's about, not your thesis, the actual behavior on the other side. I say the same thing about a through-line in a keynote. This is the single most common thing people get wrong, and it's the thing I make somebody sort out long before we ever talk about chapters. Having good content is not the same thing as having a book. I have plenty of content. So do you, probably. Content was never the hard part.

2. Which door is it supposed to open for you? Name the specific one. More main stages. A different tier of client. Publishing a major framework or concept. Credibility in an industry you're trying to break into. A book built to open every door tends to open none of them.

3. Who is it for? Not "leaders." Not "entrepreneurs." Think of three actual human beings you could email today. Be specific. Hal Herzog opens his book, “Some We Love, Some We Hate, Some We Eat,” telling the reader exactly who should be reading it.

4. What's the release date? Pick one. Then say it out loud to somebody who's going to ask you about it in a month, because a date nobody knows about won’t hold up. Put it on your calendar. Prep your launch plan and work backwards from that targeted date.

5. Who honestly reads it before anybody else does? One of the biggest mistakes I see authors make is cranking out a manuscript and quickly self-publishing it without ever getting somebody's feedback, insight, and input on it. Who is poring over every page and every word, challenging you, and telling you honestly what's good, what's working, and what's not? And more importantly, are you willing to listen to them and change elements of your book? This is the one I did get right in 2019. A whole group of people read that manuscript before it ever went out, and I am certain that is part of why it held up.

Back to the one I was afraid to reread

Cracking the Millennial Code came out in 2019. I wrote it as an encapsulation of a keynote I'd been giving for years. It was light on framework, at least named framework, but it was rich in content. My goal was to memorialize my concept of the generational pendulum, while also hoping to increase credibility and unlock more stages.

It has Millennials in the title, which by every rule should have aged it into the ground by now. It didn't. The label got old and the framework didn't, and that gap right there is the whole difference between writing about a moment and writing about how something works.

That book has opened more doors than anything else I've made. The door it opened turned out to be bigger than the one I was aiming at, and the only reason any of that happened is that I finished it and let it out into the world.

The new printing is out now. Same text, a new preface, some more pointed birth years, and a real works cited at the back so you can check my work. You can get it here.

And if you want the long version of what I found when I reread it, I wrote that up over in COLLIDE.

Until next time,

P.S. So let me ask you what I ask everybody. What's your release date? Hit reply and give me one, even a date you're not sure you'll hit. I want to know how many of us have one written down somewhere, and how many of us are still saying "whenever I'm done."

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There's a moment on every booking call, whether it’s for a speaking gig or a consulting client…it usually pops up right after the person on the other end told you how much they love your topic or service. It’s that moment when the meeting professional takes a breath and asks, "So what's your fee?"

Whatever you say next is probably wrong. Not because your number is wrong, but because you're the one saying it.

Let me tell you how I learned that, and I'll warn you up front, I come out of this story looking pretty foolish.

I should also say that I don't like sales. It's my weakness. It's the least favorite part of any business I've ever been a part of, and I've been a part of a few. So none of what follows comes from a guy who is naturally good at the money conversation. It comes from a guy who got burned early and had to build himself a script so he'd stop freezing up.

The suite in Columbus

My first two paid speaking gigs came in the late-2000s. The first one found me organically SEO, of all things, and the second one found me through Facebook, which tells you roughly what era we're talking about here.

The first was three keynote sessions at a summer camp leadership retreat for teenagers. They offered me $1,000 plus travel, room, and board, and I was elated. Genuinely thrilled. I took it on the spot.

Then the next meeting called. This one was out of state, overnight hotel stay, ground transportation, taxis, food, the whole thing. And they said, "Hey, we'll cover your travel. What's your speaker fee?"

I had just come off a $1,000 gig. So I said, "My fee is $1,000."

Then I got there. They flew me first class. They put me up in a two-room suite on the top floor overlooking the river in downtown Columbus, and I want to say it was somewhere 1,200 square feet. It was beautiful. It was massive, at least compared to my college dorm room, which was my primary residence at the time. And I stood in the middle of it and realized I had undersold myself by an amount I will never actually know.

Here's what went wrong, and it wasn't the number. It's that I anchored my whole fee to the last check I happened to receive, and worse yet, I said it out loud first, before I had learned a single thing about what this organization could actually afford.

The rule

The best piece of advice I have ever heard when it comes to speaking fees is this: the first person who speaks always loses.

Not "know your worth." Not "charge what you're worth," which is advice I find is more of a self-help pump-up line than sage wisdom.

Now, I can’t take credit for this idea. This comes from a friend of mine—she is a high-powered executive that has won quite a few negotiations, to the tune of 10 figures…. She said, “The first preson to say the number always loses.” The person who names a number first hands the other person all of the information and either gets a fast yes (meaning you were under budget) or a fast no (meaning you were way too expesnive).

Everybody already has a number. They have a budget, it got approved in a meeting, it's sitting in a spreadsheet somewhere. Now, it may be a range. And it may even be a figure just in that person’s head, but there is a number. Your job on that call is not to be brave about your fee. Your job is to get their number into the open before yours.

The Fee Conversation Framework

So how do you actually do that without being weird about it? Here's the framework I run, in order, and I'm giving you the actual words.

Step one, just ask. "I love your organization, and I think we can make this work. What is your budget for this event?"

That's it. It's warm, it assumes the deal is happening, and it puts the question back on the one holding the purse strings. I used to dress it up more, something like "I've been able to work within many budgets, what's yours?" and honestly the shorter version is better. Ask the question and stop talking.

Let me say that again, then stop talking!

Most of the time you'll get an answer, and then you can accept or counter.

Step two, for when they say they don't know. Sometimes they'll tell you they don't have a number yet. Fine. Don't immediately push on the fee, take a side-step instead. "Okay, if you don't know the budget line-itemed for the speaker yet, do you know if you were planning to reimburse travel for the speaker? A hotel room? What's included?"

This one works because it's an easy question, and people like answering easy questions. They'll start talking. And now you're learning what's covered and what's coming out of your own pocket, which changes your number anyway.

Step three, and this is the one nobody actually does. Be quiet. Wait for the pause.

People cannot stand silence. It is the single most reliable thing about human beings on a phone call. So when they start talking, let them keep going, don't rescue them, and don't fill the gap with a nervous "but of course we can be flexible." The silence is doing your negotiating for you, and it's better at it than you are.

Step four, the comparison question. If they still haven't given you anything, ask: "What have you paid other speakers in this role?"

Sometimes they genuinely don't know, and that's okay. But most of the time they'll say, "Oh, we've paid X for other speakers in this slot." Now you have a real number out of a real budget, and you can say, "Great, that's well within my range. My fee is X."

Step five, for the call that goes in circles. Some calls go on and on and you never get to anything specific. The last thing you want to do is exasperate a meeting professional or be too pushy.

Successful speakers are the easiest ones to work with.

When I can feel that happening, I say this: "I never want my fee to get in the way of working with you. I've worked with a lot of meeting professionals on creative ways to cover my full fee and travel. Are you willing to work with me on that?"

They say yes. They almost always say yes. Then you say, "My fee is X."

Say it confidently. I was just talking to a friend who's moving from entertainment to keynote stages. We looked at some comparable speakers and helped her set a fee range. She said she practiced in the mirror for hours saying that fee and then shutting up, so that when she got on a call, she would be able to say it confidently.

So, confidently say, “My fee is X.” And then you stop talking. Again.

Never take the first no

You'll get one of three responses. "No problem." Or "that's a little more than we were thinking." Or "oh wow, we can't afford that."

Most speakers hear the second or the third scenario and immediately start discounting themselves out loud, which is really just my Columbus, Ohio mistake wearing a different hat.

Don't do that. Say this instead: "Okay, totally understand. What were you thinking you'd be able to afford?"

Because, as we already established, they already had a number. They've had it the whole time. A no is very rarely a no, it's usually a smaller yes that hasn't been said out loud yet, and the only way you'll ever hear it is if you ask and then get comfortable with a few seconds of quiet.

And sometimes the answer isn't that event at all. I turned down a gig not long ago where the money truly didn't work, and instead of just declining, I asked what their budget looked like for their other meetings during the year, the ones closer to home. Turned out several of those had higher budgets than the one they'd originally called me about. Same organization, same relationship, better gigs for me, and I got there by asking one more question after the no.

There are other times where you may be able to negotiate fee alternatives…but that’s a conversation for another time.

One thing before you go run this

I want to add some fairness here, because a script like this can curdle into something gross if you let it.

I believe in fee integrity, and I think it has a double meaning. The first is the one everybody talks about: this is my fee, and I'm not going below it. Fine, I agree with that, mostly.

But the second meaning matters more, and fewer people say it out loud. Fee integrity also means that when a meeting with deep pockets calls you, you don't turn around and quote them ten times what you'd quote a small association or a startup just because you looked them up and you know they've got the resources. Getting them to name the number first is not a license to charge whatever the budget will bear. Those are two very different things, and the speakers who confuse them tend to have short careers.

Until next time,

P.S. I want to hear your Columbus story. What's the gig you underquoted, and when did you figure it out, on the call or standing in the hotel room afterward? Hit reply and tell me. Mine was a two-room suite and about twenty years ago, and I still think about it.

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Why does it seem like every speaker writes "keynote speaker" on their LinkedIn profile?

I’m not immune to it. For a long time, my own website said both "motivational speaker" and "keynote speaker." At some point I dropped "motivational speaker," because I realized it wasn’t the best term for me, and it didn’t really suit my audience. And for a while now I’ve gone back and forth on whether to drop "keynote speaker" too. A keynote is a specific kind of presentation, and if I’m honest with myself, a lot of the ballroom sessions and breakouts I’ve done over the years were not truly keynotes.

Here’s what I’ve noticed. Whenever someone approaches me about getting into speaking, or asks about joining my speaking group, I ask them what they actually want to do. Inevitably, they say it. "I want to be a keynote speaker." And I hold up my fingers in the shape of a triangle.

Keynote speaker is the most visible part. It’s the part you see, right there at the top. And I’ll be the first to tell you there are a lot of dollars to be made in that little slice of the market.

But here’s the reality almost nobody starting out gets told. Some of the busiest speakers I know, the ones with the most reliable, steady income, live below the traditional stage line. Call it the curtain line, if you will. They are the rest of the iceberg: workshops, breakouts, trainings, retreats. And every one of those is still speaking. It just isn’t the slice everyone slaps on their profile.

And that is before you get to everything else hanging off the side of the stage. Podcasts. Books. Membership organizations and online communities. Assessments, licensing deals, sponsorships. Even MC and host work sits in there somewhere. All of it is revenue, and none of it is the keynote.

The visible slice

Let me give you a real picture of that little slice up top. I recently spoke at a conference that ran 200 concurrent sessions over three days, and it had exactly one keynote speaker. One. I happen to know that keynoter’s fee was somewhere around $50,000, and I have it on good authority from the meeting professional that between the private jet, the travel crew, and the security, that one keynote cost the organization close to $100,000 all in. Good for them, truly. But that is one seat. In that same building, everyday speakers were running sessions all day long.

I want to be careful throwing numbers around, so I’ll put it this way. I regularly get calls for speakers showing anywhere from $500 to $5,000 for someone to come run an afternoon session at an association conference. Based on my own internal database of where these actually land, a lot of them run $2,000 to $3,500 for a breakout at a conference. And unlike that one keynote, those come around all the time.

The Corolla and the Bentley

Think about cars for a second. The Corolla is everywhere, and it earned that spot. Toyota has sold more than 50 million of them, which makes it the best-selling car in history, and it still moves over a million a year. Now hold that up against a Rolls-Royce, which sold 5,712 cars in the entire world in all of 2024. That is somewhere around 200 Corollas for every single Rolls-Royce. The Corolla is common because just about anybody can have one. The Bentley and the Rolls-Royce cost a fortune because they’re handmade and rare. Keynoting is the Rolls-Royce. Beautiful, expensive, scarce, and you burn an enormous amount of time fishing for the next one.

Here’s the part that surprised even me. The people I know with the longest-lasting, most sustainable, most-booked speaking businesses are not the Bentley chasers. They’re the trainers. They’ll keynote now and then, they’ll take a main stage when it comes, but a long time ago they made peace with not being "a keynote speaker." A lot of them have quietly removed it from their LinkedIn profile. On purpose. Which is exactly the thing I still haven’t done.

I say all this as a recovering offender. For years I turned down trainings and workshops because I felt like I was better than a workshop for 30 people, which was so incorrect it’s almost funny now. The ego has tempered since, and these days some of the most fulfilling work I do is the intimate breakout, not the big stage.

The $100 math

So how do you decide which gigs to take when they aren’t all $50,000? Here’s the math I actually run.

Let’s keep the math really simple, with round, made-up numbers. Say the number I need to make every time I speak is $100. A corporation books me and the room is getting real value out of it, great, I want my full $100. But say it’s a breakout, and they’ve only got $25 to pay me. Do I automatically say no?

Not necessarily. Because what if that breakout is at an association, and I’ve got 200 people in my room representing 75 different companies, and I know from experience that five of them will turn into $50 clients down the road? Five at $50 is $250. That $25 breakout just became a far more valuable day than the one keynote. Same body, same hour on my feet, completely different outcome for my business.

That’s the whole point. You cannot judge a gig by the number on the check. You judge it by what it’s worth downstream. The keynote fantasy trains you to look up, at the biggest sticker on the biggest stage. The real business is mostly underwater, in the rooms nobody’s posting a lens-flare photo from.

So I’ll leave you where I started, with both of us and our LinkedIn headlines. You don’t have to delete anything today. I clearly haven’t. But it’s worth asking yourself honestly whether "keynote speaker" is the label that serves your business, or just the one that flatters you. Mine flattered me for years. It cost me, too.

Until next time,

P.S. Be honest with me. What does your LinkedIn headline say right now, and is it the label that pays you or the label that flatters you? Hit reply. I want to know how many of us are hiding the best part of the business below the waterline. I’ll go first: mine still says "keynote speaker."

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You have almost certainly been on the other side of this. You sat through a talk, you nodded along, maybe you clapped or laughed or even wiped a tear at the story near the end. You walked out feeling like you'd gotten something.

And then you got to your car, and somewhere in that parking lot a friend asked what it was about, and you couldn't actually tell them. You remembered the funny bit. You remembered the speaker seemed sharp. But the point, the thing they actually came to say, was already gone.

That is not you being a bad listener. It is how memory works. A psychologist named Hermann Ebbinghaus mapped the forgetting curve back in 1885, and it has held up ever since: we lose about half of new information within an hour of hearing it, and roughly two-thirds within a day. A talk is not a blank page that keeps everything. It is a line drawn in sand, with the tide already coming in.

So your audience keeps one thing, if you are lucky. One. Everything else washes back out between the ballroom and the parking lot. Which means the whole game is choosing that one thing and refusing to bury it. Most speakers do the opposite. They hand the room everything, and the room walks out holding nothing.

If you have been with me a while, you have heard me preach the fix. One question you ask yourself before you write a word. I even wrote you a whole issue about it once. And then earlier this year I ignored my own rule in a brand new keynote, and it bombed.

The keynote that sank

I had great research, great stories, a great title, a full and ready room. And when it was over, I could feel the air go out of the room.

My big idea, the thing I built the whole talk around, was that our world is fractured. However, that word is not a takeaway. That is a problem.

The question I ask before every keynote was already at the top of my notes: what is the one thing I want these people to walk away doing as a result of hearing me? Doing. This time, though, I ignored it. I got so busy proving the problem, stat after stat about everything pulling us apart, that I cared more about how heavy I could make them feel than about what they could go do about it.

I proved we live in a fractured world. Then I left them at the bottom of that hole and walked off the stage. The reviews came back kinder than they should have despite a half-baked keynote.

The same low point, a different exit

Compare that to a keynote I love, one people still stop me about years later. There is a moment where I take the room low on purpose, the hit in the gut, the lump in the throat. The difference is I do not leave them there. I bring them back out to a victorious ending, I show them how to use it in their own lives, practically, and I let them know they can pull it off.

Same emotional roller coaster, opposite exit, one idea carried the whole way through. That is the difference between a talk they forget by their car and one they quote back to you for years.

It trips up the pros too

This is not a rookie speaker mistake. I watched a genuinely talented newer speaker get a rare 45 minutes on a real stage and try to prove everything they knew, every framework and stat and tell every story and provide every analogy. I think the audiences minds were about to burst—not in a good way.

More recently, I coached a guy one-on-one for a ten-minute slot in a speaking competition. He had stuffed more points into that 10 minutes than a stuffed pepperoni crust pizza. I told him what I tell everyone: in ten minutes, you win if the room walks out remembering one thing, just one thing…that you are the guy who talked about X. He cut it to a single idea, built the whole thing around it, and won. He won the contest.

That is Seth Godin's purple cow. You remember it because it is different, it is clear, and it is concrete. One idea, made concrete, is not a lack of depth. It is what makes it stick.

What to actually do this week

Before you touch a slide or pull a single stat for your next talk, ask yourself one question, and do not move on until you can finish it honestly:

If the blank comes out as a problem, something like "aware of how bad things are," stop. You are about to dig a hole and leave people in it, the way I did. Push until the blank is a destination, something they can carry to the car and use on Monday. Then, and only then, you have earned the right to take them low first, because now you have a way to bring them back up.

Until next time,

P.S. Ever walked off to warm applause and known, somewhere deep down, that the point never actually landed? I would love to hear about the talk that taught you the most. Hit reply.

HONEST ADVICE FROM RYAN, SPONSORED BY HIGHLEVEL Lessons in Action

SPONSORED BY

As this lands in your inbox, many fellow speakers and thought leaders are touching down in Austin, Texas for National Speakers Association's annual conference, INFLUENCE.

Several years ago, in the very same ballroom, I was attending another event, surrounded by a group of fellow speakers, consultants, podcasters, and writers, all competing for a slice of the same exact pie in the same exact niche industry. And yet, one of the big takeaways from that event was that it was important to surround yourself with community. The room was full of individuals who were driven, outspoken, and most importantly, passionate about lifting each other up to make their profession better, together. It was a room full of competitors who had decided to grow the pie together instead of fighting over the slices.

There is something important for us all to remember. It is one thing I have learned for certain, across venture-backed startups, Main Street entrepreneurship, and a couple of decades as a speaker and thought leader: community is essential to life. Not nice to have. Not a maybe someday goal. Essential.

The Work is Lonelier Than It Looks

Those of us who are solopreneurs spend a shocking amount of our lives alone. Alone in the car to the airport. Alone in the hotel room. Alone in a ballroom full of strangers we're about to meet for the very first time. From the outside it looks like a stage and a spotlight, and from the inside a whole lot of it is a quiet room and a rolling suitcase.

Some of us get lucky and end up on the circuit with people we genuinely love. I have lifelong friends who came out of what I can only call my “road family,” and my kids have even have real relationships with some of these people. That didn't happen because I'm good at networking, believe me. In fact, I’m quite bad at networking… It happened because I kept showing up, and like I shared last week, I would invest in community and they would give back and invest in me.

There's real research under this, too. Jonathan Haidt, in The Happiness Hypothesis, writes about how people rooted in community stay consistently happier even when their circumstances are genuinely hard, and he shares the story of a woman whose life looked difficult by every conventional metric and who was still one of the happiest people in the study. Her secret wasn't a wellness routine or a full bank account. She showed up every week with a small group of people who knew her and whom she knew. That was it.

I think about that every time I talk to someone who's grinding in isolation. Technically excellent, working hard, running the whole thing alone, and yet something about it feels hollow, or unsustainable, or honestly both.

The Three People You Need in Your Life, Yesterday

What I’ve learned first in business, then in life, then in speaking, is that you need three types of people in your life. The reality is most of us are missing at least one of them, if not more.

The first is the forerunner, someone who has already gone where you're trying to go. A true mentor. Someone who can tell you what the road ahead actually looks like because they’ve walked it and who saves you the cost of tripping in the potholes and stepping on landmines you'd otherwise have to make the hard and expensive way.

The second is the running mate, someone running right alongside you. This may be the most important. Not ahead of you and not behind you, but shoulder to shoulder, keeping the same pace because they're running it too. This is the person who picks you up when you go down and pushes you when you want to slow up, and they know exactly what your pace feels like because they're in it with you. You have eachother’s backs.

The third is the mentee, someone a few steps behind you who's watching how you navigate the stretch of road they're about to walk. And here's what almost everybody misses about that third relationship. I hinted at it last week. Having a mentee isn't primarily about what you give them. When you share what you've been through with someone coming up behind you, something strange and wonderful happens, and you end up internalizing your own experience. The information turns into insight. The stories you tell become lessons you actually hold onto, the hard seasons finally make sense in the retelling, and you hear yourself explain what you learned and you learn it all over again, deeper this time. The mentee thinks you're doing them the favor, but the truth is it runs both ways.

I don't say any of this theoretically; this has been crucial to my personal growth and development. And I have people in each of these seats both professionally and personally.

For me, that community has looked like NSA and SCN more than anywhere else. In NSA's Million Dollar Speakers Group I've found my running mates, the peers who know exactly what's happening in my business and will tell me the truth about it. Across both groups I've found mentors a few steps ahead of me who've shown me the road, and I've found newer voices coming up behind me that I get to pour into. That's the beauty of a good group, whether it's one of those two or one of the many others I've been part of over the years.

Why Most of Us Only Have One

If you look honestly at your own circle, my guess is you're heavily weighted in one direction.

A lot of us have people in the “mentor” seat we deeply respect but never actually talk to. We follow them online, we read their stuff, we feel influenced from a comfortable distance, and we call that a mentor relationship when really it's just admiration. Admiration is free, and it's one-directional, and it will never once call you back.

Fewer of us have real co-runners, the people who know what's genuinely happening inside our business, who we call when something goes sideways, who tell us the truth when we're about to make a bad call. It feels like in culture today, so many of us are allergic to accountability. We are afraid of healthy vulnerability. Our world can be competitive enough that real peer relationships start to feel risky, and we catch ourselves wondering what happens if we let someone see too much. So we keep it all polished, and polished is lonely.

And the mentee is the relationship most of us delay the longest. "I'm not successful enough yet." "I don't have enough figured out to teach anybody anything." That isn't humility, that's leaving a relationship on the table that would accelerate everything else in your life. I even think of my own kids. When my son was in kindergarten, he had a Kinderbuddy—a fourth grader. They would read together, draw pictures together, and it gave my son someone to look up to, and it gave his kinderbuddy the opportunity to internalize the information he had learned by teaching it to another.

A common misconception with becoming a mentor is that you must have reached some level of “success.” But that’s simply untrue. You don't need it all figured out to have a mentee. You just need to be a few honest steps ahead of somebody who'd benefit from knowing what those steps looked like.

How to Actually Find Community

One of the best ways to find these individuals is in community. I’m a member of the Million Dollar Speakers Group, National Speakers Association, and Speaking Consulting Network. I find all three types of people in each of these organizations, which keeps me coming back.

The forerunner you probably already know of. The real question is whether you've ever asked them for an actual relationship, or whether you've just been quietly consuming their content and hoping it counts. Often we are afraid to ask or afraid of rejection if that person we admire says no. And a quick aside: a mentor is not paid. There is nothing wrong with paying someone a few steps ahead of you, but that’s not a mentor; that’s a coach.

The co-runner takes honesty. You have to be willing to let another person in on what's really going on, the gig that fell apart, the quarter that came up short, the decision you're genuinely not sure about. If every one of your professional relationships is polished and buttoned-up, you don't have co-runners. You have an audience.

And the mentee is closer than you think. If you've been doing your thing for even a year or two, there is likely someone in a group you already belong to who would be better off for thirty minutes of your time. You know more than you think you know, so go give the conversation away.

That abundant room in Austin, the one full of competitors who chose to grow together, wasn't built on some clever strategy. It was built on the same simple thing all three of these relationships are built on, people deciding that what they'd been given was worth passing along to the folks who needed it next. That's not networking. That's community. And community, it turns out, isn't a nice-to-have for when business is good. It's essential, to the work and honestly to the life.

So to everyone gathering in Austin this week, I hope you find that abundant room. And to everyone who isn't, whether you're part of a national association, a local chapter, a mastermind, or no group at all yet, you don't need a plane ticket or a membership to build this. You just need three people.

Until next time,

P.S. Who is your co-runner right now? Not someone you admire from across the internet, but someone who actually knows what's happening in your business this month. Hit reply and tell me. I'm genuinely curious whether most people can name one in a heartbeat or have to sit and think about it.

HONEST ADVICE FROM RYAN, SPONSORED BY HIGHLEVEL Lessons in Action

Somewhere along the way, many of us subconsciously installed the operating system that says a career is supposed to be a straight line. Up and to the right. Every year bigger than the last, every month a new high, the graph in the investor deck that only ever points one direction.

The reality is, life doesn't actually work like that. A career moves in seasons, cycles really. And I’m not talking just about monetary gain, but really attitudinal cycles.

In the past several months, I’ve spent some time reflecting and have come to realize there are really three main phases. There's the grind, the season nobody talks favorably about; instead, they often complain. There's the growth, the season everybody posts about to say, “look at me.” And there's the giving, the season many never get to. Grind, grow, give.

I’ve spent plenty of time in the first two phases, often on repeat, and have dipped my toe in the third phase on occasion. However, earlier this year, I was speaking at a local chapter of the National Speakers Association, and it clicked.

My presentation was completely hijacked. In this intimate setting, I took one question early in my presentation, then another, then another. It turned into a full fireside chat and Q&A. I didn’t even give 10% of my presentation…and it was AWESOME! I shared stories of the grind and the growth, never claiming to know the secret sauce. But through it, I stumbled into the giving phase. And it reminded me, I’ve neglected this Speak Goodr community here for the better part of the year. For that, I am sorry!

So it’s time to hit reset and refresh.

What Mic Drop is becoming - and it’s not snake oil

If you read my book, Speak Goodr, you know it's full of the wild, slapstick, wacky stories from the road with AV failures, travel kerfuffles, and the like. This newsletter is not that. (Though if one's good enough, I reserve the right to sneak it in.) This is the real, unglamorous, behind-the-scenes version of building a speaking business.

And I'll say something that might cost me a few subscribers, which is completely fine. There's a whole cottage industry out there selling the get-rich-quick, six-figures-by-spring speaker dream. Best-selling author status guaranteed. Million-dollar newsletter in six months. It's snake oil. I'm living proof you can build a real, good living building a thought leadership practice (speaking, writing, coaching/consulting, etc.), and I'm just as much living proof that it takes years and a pile of unglamorous work nobody ever claps for, even sees.

I'm not writing these from a mountaintop, because I have it all figured out—because I certainly don’t. I won't be handing you a silver bullet to get booked every time, because I don't have one. What I do have to give is that I'm in my thought leadership practice every day. Some days, I knock it out of the park; others, I feel like I struck out. I speak 50 to 70 times a year across wildly different industries and rooms of every size: some keynotes, some workshops, some virtual trainings that live or die on things I can't fully control.

I'll tell you how I built my main newsletter to 20,000+, but still haven’t reached hundreds of thousands or how I earned a YouTube Silver Play Button, but still haven't hit a true viral video and am waiting for that day… or how I became a USA TODAY bestselling author (many thanks to this community here), and I'm still chasing the dream of the New York Times list. These aren't war stories from a decade ago, or tidy strategies I'm selling you as hope, they're the real topics, trends, and trials I'm working through this week.

My motto, and why this newsletter exists

Everything I've ever done comes back to two words: Inspire Forward. Or the longer version of my mission, to inspire others toward positive change. That's the thread running under the speaking, the writing (on my main newsletter COLLIDE), the podcast, the businesses, all of it.

And here's what I've figured out about myself. When I share the real version of my speaking journey with other people, the good, the bad, and the genuinely ugly, I end up learning more for myself than anyone reading it. It’s almost selfish. It forces me to sit with why I made the decisions I made, what actually worked, and what I'd do better next time.

So let me be clear about what this is and isn't. I'm not here to sell you a framework or a coaching program. Last year, I vented about the Rise of the Guru in this video with so many people online trying to sell get-rich-quick speaking schemes or top podcast schemes or best-selling author schemes.

If real upgrades ever show up down the road, I'll mark them plainly as upgrades, and the main newsletter itself will always be free. When I have sponsors, like HighLevel sponsoring this particular issue, I’ll disclose it. What that NSA chapter revealed to me is that I want to give and add value sharing the actual problems I'm wrestling with right now.

Before you go, one thing to use today

I said those three seasons were a tool, so use them. Name yours, right now, honestly. Grinding, growing, or giving?

Then go do that season's work on purpose, instead of resenting it for not being a different one. If you're grinding, your job is reps, not visibility, so quit measuring your season one against someone else's season three. If you're growing, protect what's working and say no to the shiny thing. If you're giving, actually give, on a schedule, which is precisely the ball I dropped and the one I'm picking back up as we speak.

Most frustrated speakers and thought leaders I meet aren't behind. They're just pouring themselves into the wrong season's work. Get that one thing right and it will do more for your next twelve months than any tactic I could hand you.

I'm choosing to give again, right in the middle of the grind. So this is me, back at it, every Thursday.

It's good to be back.

Until next time,

Ryan

P.S. Which season are you in right now, grinding, growing, or giving? Hit reply and tell me. I read every single one, and it helps me write for exactly where you are.

HONEST ADVICE FROM RYAN, SPONSORED BY HIGHLEVEL Lessons from the Road

Once the crown jewel of any major event, the traditional keynote speech is starting to feel… outdated.

Don’t get me wrong, keynotes are still around.

However, what audiences expect from a keynote today bears little resemblance to what they expected twenty, even ten, years ago.

Let’s walk through the evolution together and see what it means for event professionals and speakers.

Over the last 25 years, our collective attention spans, content habits, and event preferences have shifted.

Gone are the 90-minute monologues. In their place? Short and sweet 20-minute talks, interactive panels, and dynamic, curated experiences. And if you ask me, that’s a good thing.

From Marathons to Micro-Moments

In the late 1990s and early 2000s, it was common for events to book keynote speakers for 60–90 minutes. I still remember being asked to deliver 3–4 hour workshops early in my career. I hated them. Not because I didn’t have content to share, but because I knew attendees couldn’t retain it all. Today, I’m regularly asked to deliver 20–30 minute keynotes, and I love it.

This trend isn’t anecdotal. TED’s 18-minute model redefined what makes a presentation effective, showing that big ideas don’t need big time slots. And the industry has followed. A 2024 survey found that nearly half of event organizers consider 45 minutes to be the upper limit for in-person presentations, with a growing preference for talks under 30 minutes (Professional Convention Management Association [PCMA], 2024).

Why It’s Happening

Yes, attention spans play a role. But it’s not that we can’t focus, it’s that we’ve been trained to consume differently. We listen to podcasts at 2x speed (or at least I do), scroll past videos that don’t grab us in three seconds, and digest panel discussions through Instagram Reels or YouTube Shorts. The idea of sitting passively for a full hour feels increasingly foreign, especially for younger generations.

The TED Talk, the podcast interview, and the highlight reel have shaped modern expectations. Today, people want experiences, not lectures. They don’t want to travel across the country to watch someone deliver content they can access for free online in bite-sized form (EventGroove, 2023).

Formats Are Shifting…Fast

Keynotes aren’t disappearing, but they’re being reframed. Main stages now often feature back-to-back short talks instead of one long one. Panels and fireside chats (once secondary) have become highlights. They’re unscripted, conversational, and dynamic. You get multiple viewpoints in one sitting, often including debate, which encourages open thinking and audience participation.

Breakouts and workshops still exist, but they’ve also evolved. Rather than academic-style lectures, modern breakouts focus on peer interaction, roundtables, and real-time application. People don’t just want to be informed; they want to engage.

Generations Are Driving the Shift

There’s a reason this shift is accelerating. Millennials and Gen Z have grown up with frictionless access to information. They don’t need gatekeepers or gurus to tell them what to think. They want facilitation, not just information. They value diverse opinions, concise takeaways, and flexible formats. They expect speakers to involve them (PCMA, 2023).

Older generations still value the gravitas of a keynote, but even they are reaping the benefits of shorter sessions. A recent study found that the “sweet spot” for information retention during live presentations is about 10 minutes before attention begins to wane unless the speaker re-engages with something new (GoGather, 2024). This isn’t a generational flaw. It’s brain science.

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New Speaker Reel! Excited to be unveiling my new speaker reel today! Watch the Video

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What This Means for Speakers

As a speaker, I’ve had to tighten my narrative, clarify my core message, and stop relying on filler. In a 20-minute slot, you have no choice but to deliver one idea clearly. And that’s what audiences remember anyway. Research shows that people retain only about 10% of a presentation, and that number jumps to about 30% if they write it down (Heath & Heath, 2007). As an aside, the book these stats comes from, Made to Stick, is one of my favorite books ;)

That’s why I encourage speakers to stop aiming for information density and start aiming for clarity. What’s your through line? What’s the one message people should walk away with? That’s your real job as a speaker, not to fill a time slot.

Is the Keynote Dead?

Not quite. But it’s being reborn.

If anything, we’re seeing a renaissance in the role of the speaker, driven not by tradition, but by experience. The best events today don’t just book a name for a slot. They design moments: immersive, diverse, high-energy formats that leave people talking. The speakers that thrive in this new world aren’t just talented, they’re intentional. They understand storytelling. They know how to engage. And they’re not afraid to do less, better.

When I design events now, I try to mix formats: short keynotes, interactive panels, dynamic hosts, and entertainment sometimes even magicians or musicians between speakers. It’s not about gimmicks. It’s about giving the brain a break so the message can land.

We’re not living in the age of attention deficit. We’re living in the age of intentional engagement. And the sooner we design conferences—and presentations—with that in mind, the more powerful they’ll become.

Thanks for reading!

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Works Cited

EventGroove. (2023). Event industry statistics and trends. https://products.eventgroove.com/blog/articles/event-industry-statistics/

GoGather. (2024). Shorter attention spans aren’t to blame at your conference. https://gogather.com/blog/shorter-attention-spans-arent-to-blame-at-your-conference/

Heath, C., & Heath, D. (2007). Made to stick: Why some ideas survive and others die. Random House.

Professional Convention Management Association. (2023). Innovative forum formats. https://www.pcma.org/innovative-forum-formats/

Professional Convention Management Association. (2024). Survey explores speaker-planner dynamics. https://www.pcma.org/survey-explores-speaker-planner-dynamics/

If your audience walks away unsure of what your talk was about, it doesn’t matter how many times they laughed, applauded, or complimented your delivery.

They might remember your stories. They might remember your beautifully designed slide deck. They may remember you made them laugh or even cry. But if they can’t remember your point? You missed the mark. So let’s talk about the through line, your talk’s backbone.

What Is a Through Line?

Your through line is your main point, distilled down into one clear, actionable, memorable sentence. And this sentence is for YOU, not necessarily for your audience.

It’s the reason your stories matter. It’s the glue that holds your points together. It’s what gives your audience a sense of direction, whether they’re with you for five minutes or a full hour.

The Risk of Overload in Speaking

Most speakers don’t start with a bad idea.
They start with a big one. A good one. A clear one.
They write their title. Maybe even jot down their main point.

And then, they start adding.

A great stat. A meaningful story. An extra takeaway the audience might love.
Before long, that one “big idea” has friends. Too many friends. The stats and stories aren’t inherently bad. However, they are just far enough removed from the main point or the through line that they become distracting rather than helpful.

What started as a focused message becomes a content buffet:
Here’s a story.
And another.
And another.

Each has a slightly different angle, and instead of supporting your big idea, they have now cloned your big idea with little mutations, causing complete confusion.

Now the audience walks away remembering a great talk… but not the point of it. And soon, the talk will be forgotten.

In a world where people only remember about 10% of what you say two days after hearing it (Medina, 2014), your job isn’t to entertain them with variety.
It’s to move them with focus.

Identifying a Through Line

Your through line is your talk’s backbone.
It’s not your topic—that’s too broad. It’s not your title—that’s usually made to be catchy. It’s not your outline—that’s too complex.

It’s your one, singular message, distilled to a single sentence.

So, when I prepare a talk, I start with this sentence at the top of my page as my through line:

“After hearing this talk, I want my audience to walk away…”
(feeling ___ or doing ___)

That’s it.
One sentence. One destination.
Everything else is either helping me get there or it’s dead weight.

Think about it like a plane ticket. When I look at my boarding pass, my destination airport is clear. It is where I am going.

Regardless of delays, turbulence, or even diversions, ultimately, that plane ticket is getting me to my final destination. The pilot has clarity on where we are headed, so do the crew and the passengers.

The same is true for speakers. We must have a clear through line or that one singular destination. Within the first few minutes through the end, the audience will know exactly where you are headed.

But Here’s the Trap...

We confuse content with clarity.
And let me be clear: not everything good belongs. And quite frankly, that’s the hardest part for me personally.

A few years ago, I delivered a custom keynote that had an overall theme or topic. It was clear. But I could not honestly answer the question of where I wanted my audience to be when I finished. What did I want them to feel or do as a result of sitting through the keynote?

As I researched and prepared, I found numerous incredible illustrations, compelling statistics, and a few stories that I just had to include. Categorically, they all fell under my topic, but just because they were topically aligned does not mean they had a clear, unified destination.

Before I knew it, I had not one, but three major points. Each point had its own structure, story, and supporting stats. They were solid. They were adjacent to my main point, but they stepped beyond my main point and confused the destination.

They didn’t support one takeaway.

The result?

People said nice things. They remembered a few funny or powerful stories.
But when I asked, “What was your biggest takeaway?”, I got blank stares.

If they can’t remember your point, your talk was forgettable.

Let’s Call This What It Is

This is the difference between a good speaker and a memorable one.

Good speakers have great content.
Great speakers have a through line that ties everything together.

That through line is ultimately what helps the audience remember the point.

If your audience remembers you, but not your message, you missed out.

Try This: The Through Line Test

Once your talk is drafted, ask yourself:

• Can I summarize my talk’s message in one sentence?

• Does every story, stat, and slide tie back to that one sentence?

• If I removed the slides or lost my place, would the core message still land?

• Could someone else explain my talk in 10 seconds?

If the answer is no to any of those, you may be taking your audience on a roundabout tour of a general topic, but not delivering a compelling and actionable talk.

Until Next Time,

A special thanks to our advertising partners for keeping this newsletter free:

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Quite often, someone will approach me to speak at their event, for free.

This sparks the opportunity for me to discuss the value I can provide, and at some point we come to the question of “the speaker fee.” This allows me to share my cup of coffee philosophy. Now, a few weeks ago, I wrote about whether you should ever speak for free or even pay to speak. (TL;DR: You can speak for free strategically, or pay to speak if you’re selling something on the back end—but if you’re building a speaking business, you should be getting paid.)

So, let’s flip it now and talk about fees:
What exactly are they paying for when they pay you to speak?

Let’s Talk Coffee.

Speaker fees are a lot like ordering coffee.

You can grab a cup of drip for $2.50. It’s mass-brewed, hot, and ready. No frills.

Or you can order a pour-over for $11. Same caffeine. Totally different experience.

The difference?

The $2.50 drip is predictable. Functional. It’s made for the masses.

The $11 pour-over is curated. Thoughtful. It’s hand-selected beans, with filtered water, precise measurements, and a barista who was trained for this moment. It’s not just a drink—it’s a craft.

But beyond the style of coffee and the level of nuance, there are some fixed and constant costs that are so often missed by speakers. They are also missed by coffee shops which is why so many fail in the first year of business.

So let’s dive into what really goes into a speaker fee.

So What Are They Really Paying For?

Here’s what a lot of people don’t see behind the fee:

A 45-minute keynote takes way more than 45 minutes. For me, if it’s new, it can take 45 hours of prep. (That’s my rule of thumb: 1 hour of prep for every 1 minute on stage.)

And the stage time is just the beginning. Your fee includes:

• Extensive research and writing

• Editing, slide design, and revision

• Travel time and logistics

• Admin, contracts, and tech

• Time away from other revenue

• Your team, if you have one

Because you’re not just showing up to speak. You’re bringing credibility to their event. And if you’ve done it right, your story will echo in their hallways long after you leave the stage.

I Undervalued Myself.

My first paid gig was $1,000 for three 45-minute sessions. I thought I’d won the lottery.

What I didn’t factor in:

• Prep time (which took weeks)

• Several days in the wilderness with this event unable to do other work (no internet and limited cell connectivity)

• Oh, and the fact that I had to share a cabin with middle schoolers with no A/C (true story, you can read the whole story in the book, Speak Goodr.)

Was it worth it? Maybe at the time, yes the cash was worth it. But in the longrun, absolutely worth it, the lessons taught were invaluable.

Now, my rate is anchored in something more durable than excitement: value, time, and strategy.

And that’s what I want to walk you through.

A Cup of Coffee is Like a Speaker Fee

Let’s go back to the coffee.

When someone walks into a coffee shop and pays $2.50 for a cup of black drip, it seems simple. Hot water, beans, done. But here’s what they’re not thinking about:

• The $0.52 in beans, filters, and labor.

• The $0.18 cup and lid. Oh and another $0.14 for the branded coffee sleeve.

• The POS system. Credit card fees. Wi-Fi. Monthly rent.

• And don’t forget the spill rate—every cup that’s remade because it’s too cold, too sweet, too late.

• Plus wear-and-tear on the machine, the water line maintenance, the marketing to get the customer in the door.

Now apply that same logic to your speaker fee.

A 💰 keynote doesn’t just cover 45 minutes on stage. It covers:

• Hours of preparation, research, and revision.

  • For a brand-new talk, I estimate about one hour of prep for every minute on stage.

• Time away from your primary business (if you’re building a speaking career, this is the business).

• Pre-event meetings, technical walkthroughs, Q&As, book signings, travel mishaps, and post-event follow-up.

• And maybe most importantly, your platform. The reason they’re hiring you is not just because you’re a good speaker—it’s because you can draw a crowd, bring credibility, and create a memorable experience.

Are You a Drip or a Pour-Over?

Some speakers scale by giving the same talk, every time. Others curate something new for each audience. That’s not a value judgment—it’s a business model.

But what matters is knowing which one you are, and pricing accordingly.

Because speaker fees shouldn’t be random. They should reflect your time, your transformation, and the value you bring off-stage as much as on it.

Until next time,

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Should You Write Out Your Speech Word-for-Word?

One of the frequent questions I get is around how to start writing your talk—whether it’s a keynote or a workshop, speakers experienced and new want to know how the sausage should be made. Should you script your talk word-for-word, use an outline, or just wing it? Short answer: It depends. Longer answer: Let’s unpack that.

Yes, I’ve Tried Them All.

Over the years, I’ve written keynotes word-for-word. I’ve also rambled nonstop into a voice recorder, then tried to piece together whatever brilliance I thought I had. And I’ve walked on stage with nothing but a loose outline and a strong cup of coffee.

They all have their place. And as much as all of the creators of the helpful speech writing frameworks will disown me for saying this, it’s not one size fits all. Everyone is different. So, let me give you the honest breakdown—pitfalls included.

1. The Word-for-Word Approach

Who it’s great for: Perfectionists, new speakers, or anyone still finding their voice.
Who it’s risky for: Also perfectionists.

See what I did there? When I first started speaking, I wrote out every single word—the stories, the pauses, the transitions. I would underline certain adjectives, bold compelling verbs, and italicize essential quotes.

That was how I processed ideas. It helped me get my thoughts on paper and wrestle them into clarity.

But here’s the trap:
You start to memorize it. And once you do, you expect yourself to recite it.

That’s fine… until it’s not.

Because the moment you forget one line, your brain short-circuits. Suddenly, you’re not delivering a message—you’re chasing a script. You’re back in middle school drama class, whispering “Line, please?” to the void.

2. The Outline-Only Approach

Who it’s great for: Experienced speakers, facilitators, and improvisers.
Who it’s risky for: Anyone with a tight time slot.

The outline-only approach can give you great direction, but it is dangerous for some, especially those who like to talk (which seems to be many professional speakers). You can ramble and blow right past the 00:00 on the timer. The opposite is true, too. If you have solely an outline but don’t have the content for each point timed well, there’s a chance you blink and you’ve talked through all of your points and yet you still have stage time left.

If your keynote is programmed for 25 minutes and you treat it like open mic night, you’re asking for trouble, either way.

The key?
Modular thinking.

3. My Real Strategy: Modular Messaging

Here’s what I do now. Every time I write a story, I write it as a module—something self-contained, with a beginning, middle, end, and takeaway. Each one is:

• Memorable (with a hook or visual)

• Concrete (with relatable detail)

• Actionable (with a clear takeaway)

And yes, I often write them close to word-for-word. But not to memorize.
I do it so I can see the rhythm. I’ll bold key lines. Underline transitions. I write it the way I’d say it. I use these as guideposts. It like driving down a two-lane road in the middle of the night. You stay strictly between the double yellow lines on your left and the solid white line on your right. You have some leway, but you have some guardrails. So I write out these modules, knowing I don’t have to stick to them verbatim.

The beauty of this approach?
You can swap stories in and out on the fly.
You can pivot to fit the room.
You can reframe the same module to fit different meanings, different messages, and different audiences.

Real Example: Watch the Pros

I recently saw a well-known, Hall of Fame speaker do exactly this. He showed up to the venue shortly before he took the stage in front of thousands with no clear run-of-show or plan. In fact, he shared as much. But what he did have was a vault of strong, practiced modules. Each story had a clear pivot at the end. And depending on how the audience reacted, he adjusted the lesson.

It was elegant.
And it was intentional.

So... What Should You Do?

Here’s how to figure out what works for your next talk:

Ask yourself three questions:

1. How critical is the timing?

   • Keynote? Stick with structured modules.

   • Workshop? Outline may work.

2. How polished do I need to be?

   • Corporate or paid gig? They expect precision.

   • Local panel or practice stage? Ad-libbing could be permissible.

3. How confident am I in this content?

   • New material? Write more of it out.

   • Signature story you’ve told 100 times? Just make sure you land the punchline.

Your Homework (3 Action Steps):

1. Write your next story as a module.
   Don’t script the whole talk, just one story. Give it a strong opening, a turn, and a takeaway.

2. Underline key phrases.
   Bolding makes it memorable to you. You’re training your brain to recall structure, not lines.

3. Practice swapping stories.
   Take one story and brainstorm three different lessons it could teach. That’s when you know it’s a real asset.

Thanks for reading!

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Do you remember that story about the starfish?

Of course you do because speakers grossly overuse it… But I am not here to fixate on that.

Let’s talk about storytelling.

Not the “once upon a time” kind, but the kind that makes your message unforgettable.

You see, storytelling isn't just a nice-to-have; it's a must-have. It's the difference between being heard and being remembered.

Stories Are Sticky

There's a widely cited claim that stories are up to 22 times more memorable than facts alone. While the exact origin of this statistic is debated, the underlying truth remains: stories resonate.

In their book Made to Stick, Chip and Dan Heath talk about an experiment at Stanford University. Students were asked to give one-minute speeches containing statistics and stories. When tested later, only 5% remembered any individual statistic, but 63% remembered the stories.

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Fabels to Personal Testimonies - Be Retellable

So what do Jesus and Jelly Roll and the Starfish Story have in common? Concrete imagery.

A story that is memorable and then, more importantly, retellable.

Consider Jesus. He taught profound truths through simple parables—stories about seeds, sheep, and sons—that have endured for millennia. Regardless of your religious views, think about how common it is to use the language “Good Samaritan” or “Prodigal Son.” It’s a sticky story. It’s concrete. It’s retellable.

💡 But what inspired me to write this post was a recent replay of a video I just saw…

Fast forward to January 2024, when country artist Jelly Roll testified before Congress about the fentanyl crisis. In his five-minute statement, he didn't just present statistics; he painted a vivid picture (almost as vivid as the tattoos on his face):

By equating daily overdose deaths to a plane crash, he transformed abstract data into a relatable and alarming image.

Making the Abstract Concrete

I recently coached a speaker who mentioned a $1.6 trillion figure in their presentation. To make it more tangible, we broke it down:

• Big Macs: That's about 408 billion Big Macs.

• Time: 1.6 trillion seconds is over 50,000 years.

By translating large numbers into familiar concepts, the audience could grasp the magnitude more effectively. Still, breaking down a trillion is hard for anyone to fathom.

Similarly, a medical professional I worked with described a patient's heart rate and lung fluid in clinical terms. For my own edification and understanding, I asked for help clarifying it. I gave him some thoughts. A few days later he came back to me and had rephrased it:

• Heart Rate: "As if they'd run a marathon nonstop all through the night."

• Lung Fluid: "Like carrying a gallon of milk in their lungs."

These analogies transformed medical jargon into relatable imagery. And personally finally understood what it meant 😜

Relatability Over Complexity

When speaking to diverse audiences, aim for the common denominator—not by dumbing down your message, but by making it universally accessible.

For instance, I often reference Hyperion, the world's tallest redwood tree at 380 feet. To help audiences visualize this, I compare it to local landmarks of similar height. In Nashville, I once pointed out that the hotel we were in was nearly the same height—and the room audibly gasped.

It’s all about taking the complex, make it relateable to your audience and tell a story so powerful, they simply have to retell it.

Until next time,

P.S. Have a story that transformed your message? Or a story someone shared that has stuck with you? Hit reply—I’d love to hear the story.

Want to experience 40 of my wildest speaking adventures and mishaps? Check out my USA TODAY Best-selling book, Speak Goodr! Order Your Copy Today!

Is it ever okay to Pay to Speak?

Let’s talk about one of the most common (and confusing) questions in the speaking world that I get: Should you pay to play?

If you’ve ever gotten a DM offering to “get you on the speaking circuit for just $2,500,” you know the type. Depending on my mood when one of these generous 🙄 offers slides into my DMs, I either play dumb or reply with something like: “Thanks! This account is monitored by Ryan’s agent, and any attempt to hire Ryan outside of the agency’s site is a breach of contract.” That usually shuts it down.

But in the last month alone, I’ve had three very real conversations with aspiring speakers asking the same thing from three totally different perspectives.

1. The Healthcare Hustler: He wants to pay to speak because he’s got a back-end product to sell. It’s a serious business move, and he’s willing to put real dollars behind it. And when I say real dollars, I was flabbergasted.

2. The Hourly Attorney: He’s got a powerful message, but if he doesn’t make his law firm rate while he’s out speaking, it’s not worth the trip.

3. The Hopeful Keynoter: They’re trying to build credibility and think a few free stages might finally tip the scale.

Here’s the truth:

I’ve done all three.

I’ve gotten paid (hence the induction into the Million Dollar Speakers group), I’ve paid to compete (hello, speaking competitions), and yes, I’ve spoken for free—even as recently as this month.

So what’s the catch? When should you pay, when should you get paid, and when is free actually strategic?

Here’s my take:

If You’re a Professional Speaker, Get Paid. Period.

If speaking is your business, don’t pay to play. And don’t work for free.

Seriously. Don’t do it.

Even if you’ve got back-end offers, even if you’re “just getting started,” even if it’s “great exposure” (my favorite oxymoron)—get paid.

Because if you don't value your time, the meeting professional won’t either.

But if You’re Speaking Solely to Sell—That’s Different.

If your talk is a commercial for something else—your course, your coaching, your supplements, your products, your software—that’s not building a thought leadership practices as a professional speaker.

That’s sales.

You're not a keynote speaker. You're a walking infomercial.

And hey, I’m not knocking it. Infomercials have built entire empires. Remember the Snuggie? Or the Shake Weight? Multi-million dollar empires…But let’s just call it what it is.

If you’re paying to pitch, you’re in a different business model. You're not trying to master the craft of speaking. You're trying to master conversion. That’s a totally valid route—but it’s not the same as building a thought leadership career as a professional speaker.

Free Isn’t Always Foolish (But It Better Be Strategic)

Would I speak for free? I have. And I would again. But only under two conditions:

1. There’s real strategic value. A key audience, a high-leverage stage, a media angle, or something that directly drives my goals.

   • Side note, one of the other key times I will speak for way below my fee or even free is when I’m testing new material.

2. I chose it, not begged for it. The difference between scarcity and strategy is massive. Certain not-for-profit organizations were instrumental in my life, and I love to give back when I’m able. Be honest with yourself.

So… Should You Pay to Play?

Here’s the quick litmus test:

• If you’re building a speaking business: Get paid. Always.

• If you’re selling a product or service: Pay if the ROI is proven and scalable.

• If you’re just getting started: Speak for free only when it positions you to level up intentionally.

• If you’re hoping to “get discovered” by paying: Don’t. That’s not how this works.

Until next time,

P.S. Ever paid to speak and regretted it? Or found it was totally worth it? Hit reply—I’d love to hear the story.

Want to experience 40 of my wildest speaking adventures and mishaps? Check out my USA TODAY Best-selling book, Speak Goodr! Order Your Copy Today!