Should You Be Paying Your Guest Speakers? – Episode 91

Melissa: So I see next is Mona. 

Mona: I miss you guys 

Melissa: So wonderful to see you. 

Mona: I know. Question do you pay your guest teachers when they come in to teach your mastermind so what is your opinion about that? Thanks. 

Paul: Yeah. Thank you. It's great to see you. It's been a while.

I love it. let's go ahead and open it up. Has anybody brought in guest speakers? So this is not an ongoing relationship. This is like a, one-off bringing somebody in

Mona: yeah, just once a month. We have an expert each month for the moms like us academy.

Paul: Yeah. So has anybody had guest speakers come into a program of theirs? That's like a, one-off not, not an ongoing relationship cause that's more of a commitment, but a like a one-off opportunity. 

Mona: Actually, what I'm doing is I am interviewing them on the podcast and then I give them an opportunity to come in and do a deeper teaching to the academy.

Melissa: Okay, great. Excellent. So Cindy, you have your hand up?

Cindy: Yeah, I've had guests to mine and especially when we've done challenges and different things and what I, I haven't paid them, but like we reciprocate with each other, you know, for on their platforms and such. So that's what I've done.

Mona: That's what I'm kind of doing now. 

Paul: Yeah, it's a reciprocation. So basically sharing each other's audience, one helping one, the other, helping other, do you allow them to do like a lead magnet or like say their contact info? 

Cindy: Oh, absolutely. I'll link it in the chat and we're all coaches, but they can always benefit from each other, you know?

Excellent. 

Paul: Thank you. So we'll go to Meg. Thanks Cindy.. 

Mona: So like any good attorney, I would say, like, it depends, right? For my radio show that I do in Providence it's usually just reciprocation usually like, please don't forget to post on social media.

I'll do the same. We share our audience and that's the end of it. So I guess, like I said, it depends. 

Paul: Yeah. And 

Mona: I shouldn't say "that's the end of it" but you know what I mean? 

Paul: We're going to go over to Bill. 

Bill: Yeah. I'd like to reiterate, I mean, it's pretty much the same thing that the others have said as well. I mean, I've almost never seen paid guests unless they're really high profile and that's what they're wanting, but usually even those like one time I had Don Wells on my radio show, Don Wells is Mary Ann from Gilligan's island. But she wanted to promote her book. So it's usually some sort of promotional value to them to be able to reach your audience.

And so you need to explore that with them, find out what, you know, what it is that they'd like to get from it. 

Mona: Right. That's good. That's kind of what I thought, but I'm, I'm a generous person anyways. And so I don't mind doing that and I almost always send them something afterwards, so, but . Yeah. Okay. Well, thank you.

Paul: Yeah. And I have to say on our end, on both sides being the speaker, as well, as in reverse asking for speakers, we've seen it both ways. In both cases. So we've paid people to come in and speak. We've actually been dialoguing with our one and two day masterminds that we do. We normally do them in person, Melissa and I normally run it.

And we've been thinking about bringing in a couple people that we think would be incredible experts. And our dialogue is to pay them to come . In and actually speak, you know, during those events just because we know we'll get quality, we'll get commitment and also sends a different message.

Now, every time that we've spoken either on real stages or this past year or so on virtual stages and people's space, the ebb and flow of the give and take is, is like, if you're paying me, I'm giving you straight content.

With no seating and no lead magnet, like I'm not selling you in anything I'm showing up, I'm driving value and I'm protecting your space. If you have us come in to do a training and it's all about like, Hey, can you do me a favor then it's like, sure. But we always have that conversation up front. Are you okay?

At some point in time, I let people know about a freebie or how to contact us or whatever. And normally that would be the barter. That would be the trade-off. And the great example that was already shared is that you see this in the entertainment space all the time. You know, when you, when you get the, the Jay Leno's of the world and Johnny Carson's or whatever the current people are these days is that, they're typically not paid to show up on that show.

They're there, the exchanges, they get to have a little fun conversation, get some jokes in great conversation. Oh, by the way, they have a book, they have a new movie, they have a TV show, like they're really there to promote. It's a hidden type of way of selling them, create awareness. So there's that, trade-off. 

Now, in the influencer space, typically you are going to have perceived status levels.

And what you'll find is when your status level is several ranks perceived several ranks higher than the person that's asking you to speak in the side of their platform. Typically you'll see a reaction of a fee being requested. You know, just because it's, it doesn't feel like a an a level mix, you know, type thing.

Melissa for a year over a year spoke in the over 60 something. You know, real-world things, Facebook groups, you know, virtual, things like that, but she had a presentation, it led people into a lead magnet opportunity and then that, and we built several thousand people on an email list based on her giving half hour presentations, you know?

So it was a win-win win for, for everybody. I would just say that there's not a hard. Hard steady, like, you know, consistent. There's not like this industry standard. Like everybody pays blank. We've been on some stages. And for a half hour, we got paid close to $5,000. We've been on other stages in the same year, different room, different audience, different setup, where we got 500 bucks for the same half hour, 45 minutes presentation.

It's just so there's like no consistency whatsoever. I just think it also, I think it comes back to your relationship with who you, when we had our photography membership years ago, we did that every month we brought in an expert and we actually, we did a bigger asks. We, we had them record a mini training.

As one layer and then after, and that was like in the platform. And then they would come on like two weeks later in the middle of the month and do a, a live Q and a to answer anybody's questions based on that training. And when we did that, like the one-off people, they, they would just love the opportunity to be on our platform, you know, because we, we had a big audience and they just wanted that opportunity to influence.

And I had to say that there were people that benefited from that. Now we did have experts that came in every month. Which we even have these days, we have coaches, we a hundred percent pay them probably at or above market. We make sure that everybody's taken care of, because we're looking for consistency and for people to show up at the right time and be part of the actual team itself.

That's a different deliverable. Yeah. Good, good. 

Mona: That's great. Thank you.

Melissa: You're welcome.