It occurred to me yesterday that…

Now don't get me wrong, being paid to speak is great, but there's a time and place.

I see a lot of people become so seduced by the idea of it, that it becomes a distraction and massively limits their potential.

If you're building a portfolio career, some of the most valuable, lucrative talks you'll ever do will be for free.

The skill is in:

1. Attracting the right opportunities 🧲
   Ones that will compound for years to come.

2. Knowing how to make them compound 🚀
   Without the cringe hard sell energy (🤮)

The idea of speaking for free is extremely triggering for some people. Rarely does a month go by where I don’t see someone on their soap box saying they deserved to be paid for their expertise.

And sometimes it’s valid.

If a commercial business is asking you to come in to deliver something for their team, be it a workshop, training, panel, keynote - you should be paid. And your fee should be representative of:

1. The type of event 🎭
   Awareness days: £ | Training, offsites, meetings: £-£££ | Big budget events for teams and clients: £-£££

2. The seniority of the audience 👥
   The more senior the better

3. The perceived value of your topic 🧠
   Often a huge disconnect between our perception and their perception of the topic.

4. The perceived value of your reputation
   Your credibility, unique insights and personal brand matter

But outside of this context, for us mere mortals who aren’t famous, the numbers don’t add up.

An Uncomfortable Truth

One of the reasons so many people are against speaking for free because they've never managed to make it work for them.

They put loads of time into delivering the session, everyone gets loads of value from it, except for the speaker themselves.

This isn’t how it’s meant to work.

A huge part of what we do inside MicDrop is support our members with their free speaking strategy.

Specifically:

1. Choosing the right gigs 🤔
   The ones that actually compound vs vanity ops that go nowhere

2. Turning your audience into fans 👏
   That become your biggest advocates over time

3. Attracting high-calibre opportunities 🧲
   Without feeling the need to hit them with a dreaded sales pitch at the end

When you can solve for this everything starts to change.

These free gigs become your biggest growth lever and you start getting messages from people you thought were completely out of your league.

✅ Clients | ✅ Publishing deals | ✅ Advisory roles | ✅ Speaking ops | ✅ Travel

People you've looked up to for years the start treating you as a peer 😍.

That's where some of the most interesting, random, wonderful, fulfilling opportunities begin.

Our members speak across a variety of formats: workshops, panels, keynotes, podcasts, masterclasses, leadership briefings.

Our job? To support them in making them count.

We're welcoming a very small intake in March. Another place went yesterday, so we're down to our final 6 spaces. Here’s a link to book a call.

Alex