You’re on the right path to figuring out what makes you unique as a business when you can identify what you’re best at doing. The same is true for speaking. If you want to get speaking gigs and get paid for it, you need to bring something unique to the table.

Here’s my example: I get asked to speak at conferences all over the world where web designers and developers gather. Because I have a load of experience testing, designing and developing web sites so that they can be used easily by everyone, including people with disabilities.

And that’s pretty unique on its own. But there’s more. In addition to building and designing sites and applications, we’ve got 12 years of experience also helping people fix the problems–not just identifying them.

But wait – there’s more! (Bleh – that made me fell like an info-mercial)

I’m also a teacher. And having been a teacher, a developer, and an accessibility consultant-type means that I have the experience that allows me to speak to all team members in a way that is meaningful to them. I can speak code to the developers. I can speak timeline, resources and dollars to managers. I can speak… designery to designers.

For whatever reason, that’s a skill that I have picked up and that leads to a significant number of speaking engagements. That’s a big part of what makes me unique. For me:

Subject matter expertise + ability to cross roles + significant experience doing what you’re speaking about + teaching ability = paid speaking gigs

And you?

What makes you unique? What experiences have you had that give you unique insights that you can share? And if you don’t have significant expertise in the area in which you’d like to speak, what are you going to do to get it?

How do you Get to Best? If you can figure that out, you’re taking the right steps to getting paid as a speaker.

What to do next:

1. Determine what subject matter/topic you want to speak about
2. Can you figure out what different types of people need to understand to relate it to their job roles?
3. List at least 5 jobs/contracts/gigs you’ve had that demonstrate you’ve done the things you want to talk about

The next step is all about being able to teach it better. That’s why you’re reading this site, right? (He says, hopefully!)

In order to find paid speaking gigs, you really need to be able to find any speaking gigs in the first place.

Here are three approaches that I have used and continue to use to find speaking opportunities. Once you find them, you can start to target specific events that look like they’re a good fit for you.

The Direct Approach: Seek and ye shall find

Search the web for conferences, workshops or training in your subject area. Look at the ads that show up. Look at the first 5 or 6 pages of results. If you can’t find a list of a handful or two of events and conferences that look like they might be a fit for you, then maybe you made a spelling mistake in your search! They seem to be everywhere. Here’s a couple of examples that surprised me:

• African violet conference
• Snow plowing conference

The Indirect Approach: Associations

There are associations for almost everything. What do associations have? Members. People, just like you and me that are interested in a particular topic. And almost every association has some type of event: a yearly conference, quarterly professional development/training opportunities, or even monthly networking groups. All of those events need speakers. Many of them will pay.

Rule of thumb? Where there are associations, there are speaking opportunities.

Don’t believe me? see for yourself:

• Cactus association
• Lighting fixtures association
• Asphalt association
• windmill association

The Piggy Back Approach: On the backs of other speakers

Find a speaker that speaks about a subject in the same field as you. Then, find all the conferences that they’ve spoken at over the past year (most speakers provide some kind of a listing of where they’ve spoken). Then go to those conference web sites and look at the list of other speakers. Go find the conferences that they have spoken at. You now have a list of say, 8-20 speakers, that spoke at 5 conferences each, and each of those has another 8-20 speakers at them, each of whom spoke at 5 conferences.

Now, I know it isn’t quite that simple. Some speakers speak at more, some at less. And there’s overlap between speaker lineups. But even with 50% overlap, there’s a lot of conferences that are just out there waiting for you! All available by starting with just one speaker.

Now, where do I look?

Just get out there and start looking. There’s a gold mine out there just sitting on the internet waiting for you.

1. Google it. Bing it. Yahoo! it. (Does anyone use those other search engines?)
2. Use Lanyrd: the social conference directory. There’s more data there than you can imagine.
3. Look for conferences on LinkedIn. There are also groups for public speaking, but I’ve (so far) found them to be of very limited value (that may just be me though!).

You seriously have more data than you know what to do with. Go do something with it.

I get asked this all the time. People want to know how they can go from speaking for free to paid speaking engagements.

There are three really critical components or steps that you need to take to make this happen.

1. Find a gig.
2. Ask for money.
3. Send an invoice.

Of course, thats a completely different question from this one:

“What does it take to repeatedly get paid as a speaker?”

Very different isn’t it?

People get paid to speak for a few main reasons. You can count them on one hand:

1. they have unique experiences that can motivate and inspire others
2. they are entertaining
3. they are masters in their Subject Matter and are asked to share that expertise

They might even be all three at the same time.

And those that can do all three are the speakers that can pack the house and get paid well.

If you’re not providing value (entertaining, subject matter expertise and experiences), then you’re not going to get paid over and over again to speak in front of audiences.

The beauty of this premise is that if you can figure out how you can provide value over and over, you’ve also figured out how you can get paid to speak the first time. Seek out an event that has a budget that needs the value you provide.

Ummm… but how, exactly?

Start by answering these questions (don’t worry if you struggle—these may take time!):

1. What is your unique experience? What do you do best? Better than anyone else?
2. Which parts of your experience are valuable, and to whom?
3. Why are those the valuable bits? What’s the benefit to the potential audience?

Once you’ve figured that out, go start looking for any speaking gigs, and deliver that incredible, unique value. That’s the path to getting paid.

Why?

Simple: You want everyone to know that you’ve put in the effort to cater to them. To the city that they live in. To the sports teams that they cheer for. For their locale and their language.

Here’s some quick, lightweight examples of customizations that will take you about a minute each to prepare:

1. I use Google Maps for some of my examples. If you do, whenever possible, center the map on the location where you’re speaking and create a new screenshot. It helps to create a feeling that this presentation is for THEM.
2. Take local photos and put them in your presentations. Look for photos that have a point. They help you connect the concepts you are teaching to things in the real world that the audience may have seen near the venue. (See Use more effective photos for an example.
3. I often use screenshots of the conference web sites that I’m speaking at and use those as examples too. I teach exactly the same content and concepts but with a different screenshot or movie capture. Why? It’s about THEM.

Yes, it takes me a bit longer to get prepared. Yes, I do it anyway.

Do you customize your presentations? If so, how?

In fact I think you shouldn’t ask for feedback.

You should ask for something more.

Ask something very specific. “I’m trying a few new examples today; can you watch how I present them and give me feedback on how appropriate they are and how well I present them?”

Don’t ask “What did you think?”

Ask “Can you look for opportunities for me to improve the way that I’m framing the entire presentation? I’m not sure that I’ve got it quite right…”

Don’t ask “How did I do?”

Ask “Can you give me three things that I can work on the next time I give this talk?”

The flip side, of course, is that when you’re acting as the mentor, provide actionable feedback. Work with the person to address issues directly rather than speaking in vague generalities.

Be specific

Next time you’re asking a mentor or coach about your speaking performance, be as specific as you can. Look to uncover actionable items for improvement.

When you’re done scour the tweets that happened during and after your talk. Look for 4 things:

1. Compliments. Fave them, and thank the author and see if you can find out more. Maybe even ask them for a testimonial.
2. Negatives. It will happen. Find those tweets too, and see if you can use them as an opportunity to improve.
3. New Slides. See the quotes that people tweeted. Sometimes you say things you didn’t plan to say. It just came to you as you were speaking. If you said something and people tweeted it, and it wasn’t one of your slides, take that as a hint that it should be!
4. Photos. What slides did people take photos of? If you see the cameras come out when you have a certain slide on the screen, you know it’s a good one. What could you do to turn that one slide into something bigger?

Mine that gold…

Next time you’re done, do the regular things you’d do anyway (thank people and look for ways to improve). But go further than that. Look for those quotes that should be turned into slides. Look for the photos of what people wanted to remember and turn them into something bigger.

Look for paradoxes, ironies, and contradictions. Look for things that seem out of place. Look for confusion. Look for anything that catches your eye. You really don’t know when you’re going to find the opportunity to use the photos, so just take them. You probably already have a camera with you anyway, right?

Here’s two that I took on a recent trip to Australia:

This first photo is taken at the entrance to a park and shows a warning sign for bicyclists painted on to the path. The sign is an illustration of a person on a bicycle with that very familiar red slash through it and the words underneath “Penalties Apply.” Ultimately, no bicyclists allowed in the park.

The second photo is on a post found at another entrance to the park. This one still shows a small sign telling us that there are no bicyclists allowed and that penalties apply. There’s a difference here though—the sign post shows another sign that says “Families with children under 12 excepted.”

So its a bit confusing, isn’t it? Now the challenge is to find ways to work that into your talks.

For me, since I talk about interface design and user experience and making things easy to use and understand, this is a perfect candidate. Notice I didn’t say choice — it’s just a candidate at this stage. We still need to think a bit to see where we can make it work. I might never use these in a presentation, but if I don’t take them, I don’t have that choice.

These two photos could be used in a talk about communication and mixed messages — about the different messages or different rules that people get depending on how they are entering the park. How can you relate that to marketing? to customer service? to retail signage design? to parenting? to education?

You should be able to rattle off at least a few different uses for that set of photos. If you can’t, well, you likely just need some practice :)

Next Action:

1. Start taking more photos! Even if it is with the camera on your phone.
2. Once you’ve taken those photos, think of 3 or 4 different ways that you can use these photos in a presentation.
3. If you don’t have interesting photos of your own, go to a stock photography site or take a spin through flickr and come up with 3 or 4 ways to use the photos.

Oh, and a pre-tip before we even get into the other tips: when you’re speaking, take off your name badge. You don’t need it as you hopefully already know who you are. And you won’t get a horrible reflection off the badge from the stage lighting or from paparazzi flash bulbs!

On with the tips…

Be focused: what is the takeaway? You’ve already prepared for this but what are the three things that people will learn in your session? Nearly everything you do should focus on delivering that.

It’s all about value: Is there something of value that you can give before you even go there? I’ve been to networking events where the presenter has provided a great handout about “how to make your next networking event more profitable.” it was a resource that I got at the END of his 45 minute talk. Now, can you imagine how much more I would have loved it if he had found a way to get a few of those tips to me BEFORE the event?

Respect the audience At last year’s BWE I sat there and listened to a guy say how much money he made by putting on an event and then jokingly said “I can’t believe people actually paid money to go to the event…” dude – some of those people might have been in the audience. And how many people in the audience would go to your next event do you think?

Connect with analogies: They help people learn because it connects to things that they already know and are familiar with. When I used to teach high school it was all about figuring out what people already know so that you can tap into it and build on it. It’s like a springboard to more effective learning (see what I did there?).

Be positive: I even fall into this trap. When you’re showing things in a negative light, talk about how easy it is to fall into these traps.

Don’t be wishy washy: Avoid phrases that don’t mean anything. Don’t ask for permission to tell a story. Just tell the story.

Sell without selling: Explicit selling from the stage is not allowed. That’s good. Sell from the stage by being awesome at showing others how they can be awesome. Just focus on giving them content that can help them be better at what they do. They’ll come and find you. They’ll be come clients. And if they don’t, that’s okay — they’re still better than they were before. It’s about them, not you!

Rock on BWELA.

And, when you’re presenting on multiple screens, with a presenter view on your screen and then presenting your slides on the secondary display, it becomes very difficult to control the movie and look at the screen to see where the cursor is so that you can play, pause, rewind and fast forward the movie.

I was in Australia in July for my Tour Down Under and I discovered a whole new set of keystrokes, quite by accident and I couldn’t have been happier. When you’re playing a presentation, here are some keystrokes that really help:

B: Yes, just B. That makes the screen go black.

W: It makes the screen go white.

Why would you want either of those? Simple, really. Sometimes you want the audience to focus on you and not what you’re showing on the screen. So a blank screen can work well. For one, its a change from what was up there, so it draws attention, catches the eye and draws the audience to you. Second, it simply reduces distraction.

Now, for slides where we’re playing back a movie.

K: Pause/Play.

J: Go backwards (how much/speed depends on whether you’re paused or playing)

L: Go forwards (how much depends, again)

I: Start over at the beginning of the movie (think of it as I for “in”)

O: Go to the end of the movie. (Think of it as O for “out”)

These allow you to control that movie without using the mouse. Really easy to use – you’ll be on fire!

• View the transcript for this video
• View this video on YouTube

This is why we need to ask why when we get asked to speak at a conference.

All speakers should be entertaining to an extent. But there needs to be a balance between entertaining and whatever else it is that you are supposed to do. If you’re an opening or closing keynote, then you must realize that your role is different than the other sessions during the day.

This past July, I was the closing keynote at the Edge of the Web conference in Perth, Australia. My goals? To wrap the day. To inspire people to go forth and think about what they had learned that day and help them chart a course to do more. Specifically, I wanted them to question their own working cycles and see how we should build in recovery time into our days, weeks, months and years.

And, just last week, I was doing a main conference session at Fronteers in Amsterdam. I wasn’t an opening or closing keynote. So my job was different. My goal was primarily to give people practical techniques that they needed to know now and help them do a better job of making their web sites and applications accessible to people with disabilities.

I didn’t get as many laughs in my talk at Fronteers as I did at Edge of the Web. So, did I fail? No.

I’m completely at ease with the results of the talk, because I knew in advance that my number one goal was to share practical techniques and strategies that people can walk away with and put into practice now.

There were a number of people that came up to me after the conference and told me how much they appreciated the techniques that they learned in my session. That they really liked the pragmatic way that I approach accessibility.

Sure, I would have liked to have had a few more laughs, but at the end of the day, I’d already decided that success will be defined by what people learned that can help them make web sites more accessible, not by how many times they laughed.

Next action:

1. Really make sure you ask why so that you know your role at the conference.
2. Decide what will determine your success: how entertaining you are? How practical your session is? Some of both?
3. Ask yourself what is the most important take away from your talk and plan accordingly.
4. Be sure to judge yourself against the right criteria that you already set out in #2 and #3 above.

You should always ask though: “Why me?” Seriously—ask the event organizers why they want you to speak. It seems very simple, but it can be easily overlooked. Many of us are Subject Matter Experts (SMEs) in a particular area, so we naturally assume that the conference organizers want you to talk about that topic. In fact, we kind of pigeon-hole ourselves and the people that are asking us to speak haven’t pigeon-holed us at all! We’re sealing our own fate.

So find out, at the very beginning: “Why me?” and “What specifically do you have in mind that you’d like me to talk about?”

And if they give you a one word answer, dig deeper. Why? Why? Why? I’ll give you a recent (paraphrased) example:

Them: “Derek, we’d like you to come and do some accessibility workshops for us”

Me: “Why?”

Them: “Because accessibility is important to us as an organization.”

Me: “Why?”

Them: “Well, its gaining a lot of press these days, it has been part of our mandate for the past few years, but now it really seems like we need to start addressing it more comprehensively.”

Me: “Why?”

Them: “Well, we’re getting ready to redesign our site and our applications and we want to be sure that we’re doing it right from the get go… We feel its better to invest in doing it right the first time than it would be to go through it quickly and address accessibility later. We really want to make sure that we create a culture here that encourages our staff to be thinking about accessibility all the time in everything we do.”

See what happens there?

Now I know why they want the workshops. I know more about their end goals (creating a culture where they think about accessibility up front), the pain that the managers are trying to prevent (do it right the first time, rather than spend more money fixing them to be right later), and what content is likely to be helpful (they’re working on a major redesign and are at the beginning of the process so a getting started guide would be useful, for example).

There’s always a reason that they want YOU to speak. Find out what it is, find out what the underlying motivation is. Unlock those doors so you can find out how you can be truly valuable to them.

Next Action:

Always ask questions up front so that you can determine underlying goals and motivations for the organizer. You want to know what they’re trying to accomplish, what pain they’re trying to avoid, and how they’ll judge whether or not you’re successful.

Just start off with the story.

Get right into it.

Get rid of the preface phrases and just get on with it. You don’t need them and neither does the audience.

Speakers say these things all the time:

• “I’d like to share an example with you”
• “I’d like to start off with a story”
• “I’d like to ask you all a question”

Seriously. Filter yourself.

Just do the thing that you want to do.

What, do you think the audience is going to say no, that you can’t start with a story?

“I’d like to share an example with you…” becomes “Here is an example…”

“I’d like to start off with a story…” gets eliminated and you jump right into a powerful part of the story.

“I’d like to ask you all a question…” becomes “Question: blah blah blah…”

Not that hard is it? And guess, what? That’s you seizing the room. You’re not really going to ask for permission to tell a story are you? You’re the speaker!

Next Action:

Record yourself speaking. Listen to it. Change all instances of “I’d like to…” to something else more direct and meaningful and not wishy washy.

I’ve wanted to be a teacher for most of my life, and I’m really privileged to get invited to speak at conferences and give workshops all over the world.

I’ve learned a lot about how to speak effectively and want to share them with you here. We’re not talking about things like “not saying um” or “how to gesture” or other mechanical aspects of speaking. There may be some of that, but I’m primarily talking about things like great ways to manage your talks, how to frame things, how to decide what content to include and not include in your presentations, when to be practical and when to entertain, and how to make the most out of presentations from a business perspective. We’ll also explore planning your talks and workshops so that those longer speaking engagements are more than just you delivering a lecture for 6 hours.

In 1999, I left teaching high school to pursue my own business. I’ve been a very successful consultant ever since, and I owe a lot of our business success to the work that I do as a speaker.