Daniel Priestley maps his 25-year climb from paying $20K a week to speak at his own events to commanding six-figure keynote fees, and names the one trade-off almost nobody warns you about.
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4 days ago
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educational
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Big Idea
The argument in one line.
Speaking fees scale with how well known a speaker is for one signature topic, not with how good they are on stage, and the climb runs through five distinct stages before the big fees arrive.
Who This Is For
Read if. Skip if.
READ IF YOU ARE…
A consultant, coach, or founder with an existing business who wants speaking to become a real lead-generation and revenue channel, not just a hobby.
Someone who's been offered a free or low-paid speaking slot and wants to know whether it's actually worth taking.
A business owner weighing whether to write a book as a credibility and speaking-career asset.
SKIP IF…
You want professional speaking to be your only business with no other product or service behind it; this model assumes a back-end business funding the early climb.
You're looking for stage-delivery technique or a presentation script; this is about the business model around speaking, not the performance itself.
TL;DR
The full version, fast.
Daniel Priestley traces his 25-year path from paying $10,000 to $20,000 a week to run his own events, through sponsoring other people's conferences for a slot, to being invited to speak for free once his first book landed, to eventually earning small fees plus travel, and finally large fees once he became known for one signature topic. The core mechanism: speaking fees track topic recognition, not stage skill, and taking a fee usually means giving up the right to sell from stage, often forfeiting far more in indirect sales than the fee itself. The actionable conclusion: build a book and signature content before chasing paid gigs, and track podcast appearances, not stage polish, as the real lever for recognition.
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Cold open: Daniel states the premise, he now earns more from one talk than most people earn in a year, and promises the real story of how he got there.
00:39 – 01:38
02 · How I started my speaker journey
His first era, 2000 to 2010: paying $10,000 to $20,000 a week out of pocket to run his own events specifically so he'd have a stage, with speaking purely as a marketing tool for his business rather than an income source.
01:38 – 04:03
03 · Event sponsorship as a strategy
From 2010 to 2012 he shifted to sponsoring other promoters' events, $5,000 to $10,000, in exchange for a speaking slot, a deal only available once he had a published book; lucrative (one sponsorship returned $250,000 in sales) but risky since he had no control over whether the promoter delivered the promised audience.
04:03 – 05:32
04 · The turning point
2012 to 2015: his first two books took off and he started getting invited to speak for free at other people's conferences, which he treated as pure lead generation and took every opportunity since it still drove new business at no out-of-pocket cost.
05:32 – 08:06
05 · Travel and small fees start to come in
Event organizers began covering travel, hotel, and bulk book purchases, a cost-neutral gig with no fee yet; publishing Oversubscribed in 2015 escalated bookings into workshop and full-day formats, where first small per-day fees ($2,000 to $5,000) appeared.
08:06 – 09:51
06 · The trade off for getting paid
States the central trade-off plainly: once a fee is involved, the client controls the content and usually bans selling from stage, so a $2,000 to $5,000 fee often means giving up $20,000 to $50,000 in indirect sales, and the fee rarely accounts for the 3-plus hours of unpaid prep time around the 1-hour talk.
09:51 – 12:19
07 · Signature content
The real unlock for the largest fees wasn't speaking skill, it was becoming known for one signature topic (he cites Simon Sinek's 'Start With Why'); podcast appearances (Diary of a CEO, Ali Abdaal, Chris Williamson, Chris Doe) were the actual turning point, alongside needing roughly 50,000 combined social followers to be credibly seen as the expert.
12:19 – 13:54
08 · The journey to becoming a KPI
At the top tier, big speaking fees compound into a flywheel: large stages generate more bookings, board and advisory offers, podcast invites and book deals; closes by framing the whole climb as becoming a Key Person of Influence, with a CTA to book a free Gameplan Session.
Atomic Insights
Lines worth screenshotting.
Daniel Priestley spent a decade, 2000 to 2010, paying $10,000 to $20,000 a week to run his own events just to have a stage to speak from.
Event sponsorship deals that buy a speaking slot only open up once a speaker has a published book; organizers won't sell stage time to an unproven presenter at any price.
One sponsored event can return $250,000 in sales off a $5,000 to $10,000 sponsorship fee, but the deal carries real risk since contracts rarely guarantee the promised audience actually shows up.
A book that genuinely takes off is the single event that flips a speaker from paying for stage time to being invited to speak for free.
Taking a fee for a talk usually means losing the right to sell from stage; a $2,000 to $5,000 fee can cost $20,000 to $50,000 in forfeited indirect sales.
A quoted speaking day rate typically covers three-plus hours of pre-event briefing calls on top of the one hour on stage, so the effective hourly rate is lower than it looks.
The size of a speaking fee correlates with how well known a speaker is for one specific topic, not with how skilled they are at speaking.
Roughly 50,000 combined social media followers is the rough threshold where event organizers start treating someone as a leading voice on their topic.
Podcast guest appearances, not stage performances, were the actual turning point that built the topic recognition behind the largest speaking fees.
At the top tier, big speaking fees become a self-reinforcing flywheel: each major talk generates more bookings, board offers, podcast invites, and book deals on its own.
Takeaway
Speaking Fees Follow Authority, Not Talent
SPEAKING FEE LADDER
Six-figure speaking fees are the output of a slow authority-building sequence, paying to speak, sponsoring for a slot, speaking free, then signature content, not a shortcut anyone can skip to.
02How I started my speaker journey
Paying out of pocket, sometimes $10,000 to $20,000 a week in ad spend, to run your own events and put yourself on stage is a legitimate first stage of a speaking career, not a failure state.
Early-stage speaking earns no direct speaker income at all; its real return is using the stage as a marketing channel to grow the underlying business.
03Event sponsorship as a strategy
Sponsoring someone else's event for a speaking slot only opens up once you have a published book; organizers need proof you can hold a stage before they'll sell you time on it.
A sponsorship-for-stage-time deal hands control of turnout to the promoter; a contract can legally protect them even when they deliver 50 people instead of the 300 to 500 promised.
04The turning point
A book that actually gains traction converts you from someone who pays to speak into someone who gets invited to speak for free, the real inflection point in a speaking career.
Taking every free speaking opportunity in a growth phase is correct strategy: the return isn't the missing fee, it's the direct new business generated per audience you stand in front of.
05Travel and small fees start to come in
Covered travel and hotel costs are the first tangible 'payment' tier before cash fees exist, treat them as a real milestone, not nothing.
A second or third book that actually sells, not just gets written, is what upgrades a speaker from a free keynote slot into multi-hour paid workshops and small per-day fees.
06The trade off for getting paid
The moment a fee is attached, the buyer controls your content and typically bans selling from stage, so a $2,000 to $5,000 fee can mean forfeiting $20,000 to $50,000 in the indirect sales a free talk would have generated.
The quoted day rate is not payment for the hour on stage, it covers three-plus hours of pre-event briefing calls plus arrival and wrap time, so real effective hourly pay is lower than the headline number suggests.
07Signature content
The size of a speaking fee tracks how well known you are for one specific topic, not how skilled a speaker you are, generic competence doesn't command premium fees.
Podcast guesting, not stage performance, was the actual lever that built topic recognition at scale; roughly 50,000 combined social followers is the rough threshold where organizers start treating you as a leading voice on a subject.
08The journey to becoming a KPI
At the top tier, large speaking fees compound into a flywheel, each big talk generates more bookings, board seats, podcast invites and book deals on its own.
The entire climb described here is really the process of becoming known as the go-to expert with a scalable business model behind you; the speaking fee is a symptom of that status, not the goal itself.
Glossary
Terms worth knowing.
Key Person of Influence (KPI)
A person widely recognized as the go-to expert for a specific topic, typically backed by a book, media presence, and a scalable business model built around that authority.
Signature content
A single, well-known framework, book, or idea that a speaker becomes publicly associated with, used by event organizers to justify booking and paying them.
Gameplan Session
A free one-to-one strategy call offered by Daniel Priestley's company to map out the assets (book, speaking kit, personal brand) needed to build a Key Person of Influence business.
“As soon as somebody is paying a fee, they're in control of what you say and also whether you sell from stage.”
names the hidden cost of paid speaking in one line→ TikTok hook↗ Tweet quote
09:28
“The reason that they're paying you five grand is actually, it's not just one hour on stage, it's three hours of preparation time.”
reframes a 'high' day rate as modest once prep time is counted→ IG reel cold open↗ Tweet quote
10:21
“The thing that separates the big speaking fees is not how good you are as a speaker, but how well known you are for your topic.”
contrarian thesis stated in one sentence→ newsletter pull-quote↗ Tweet quote
12:08
“It becomes a reinforcing flywheel situation where big talks lead to the conditions that create even more big talks.”
names the compounding mechanic at the top of the ladder→ IG reel cold open↗ Tweet quote
The Script
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Recently I've been traveling the world as a professional speaker. I've been invited to go and speak at conferences around the world and they pay me big speaking fees. A lot of people have been asking me how do they get to the point where they get paid to speak.
In fact, how do they get paid? more in a single talk than most people might earn in an entire year so if you're one of those people who is not afraid of speaking in fact you would love to be a paid speaker you'd love to be on more stages you'd love to travel the world getting invited to speak getting paid to speak this will probably share with you some of the steps that make that a reality and i want to give you the real story behind the scenes so that you don't have expectations that aren't in alignment with reality and i'm going to share with you my story as to how i ended up as a paid speaker okay so in the early days i had to pay to In fact, what I would do is spend a fortune on advertising, sometimes as much as 10 to 20 ,000 per week.
And we would promote these events and I would be the speaker at the events. And that was really great because I controlled end to end, absolutely everything. I controlled the marketing.
I controlled the venues. I controlled what gets set on stage. I had full control, but the downside was it was very expensive.
I had to pay a lot of money to speak. It was the engine of my business. I was running events in order to grow my business, but no one else was really interested in.
paying me to speak. It was just me personally growing my business by being on stage. So the truth was that my speaking journey began with me using speaking as a marketing strategy.
I was using speaking as a way to leverage my marketing spend and to be able to talk to lots of people all at once. So this was my decade of paying to speak from 2000 to 2010. I never got invited to speak at other people's events.
I just spoke at my own events and I was paying every single week in order to be in front of audiences. Eventually, I started to get a little bit more notoriety.
In fact, I wrote a book in 2010 called Keep Person of Influence and people started taking more notice of what I was doing. However, they weren't willing to pay me to speak just yet. The book hadn't really taken off.
I hadn't really promoted myself as a personal brand just yet. But I was getting opportunities to sponsor other people's events in exchange for a speaking slot. So back here, I would have paid 10 to 20 grand in order to be in front of an audience.
I had to pay for everything, organize everything and do everything in order to be in front of an audience. This was great because a typical sponsorship might have been five to 10 grand. I didn't have to pay for anything else.
I could just turn up and speak. My sponsorship included the venues, the marketing, everything. I had a ready -made audience and I could just spend five to 10 grand.
in order to be in front of somebody else's event. Now, some of these events that I sponsored, they were great events. They were events where they had 250, 300, maybe even 500 people in a great venue.
The venue alone would have cost me more than $5 ,000 to $10 ,000 to hire the venue typically, but I got to pay for my sponsorship. And as part of my sponsorship deal, I got some time on stage. Now, here's the interesting thing.
Those deals typically only work if someone is very comfortable on stage because the event promoter doesn't simply want to put you on stage just because you can pay the sponsorship fee. They want to collect the sponsorship fee, but they also want to know that you're comfortable on stage, that you do a good job of giving a great talk.
The turning point for that being acceptable was the fact that I had a book out. Once that book came out, those deals started to land in my lap and they were some of the best deals. There were certain deals where I spent five to 10 grand to sponsor the event and we did 250 grand worth of sales off the back of each event that we would sponsor.
So it was an amazing time sponsoring events in order to get up on stage and speak. Some of those were incredibly powerful and lucrative. so the downside of this is there's only so many of these events that you can actually do i found that there was probably four or five of these per year so one of the downsides is that you have to trust the promoter you're going to hand over five to ten grand to sponsor an event there have been many events that i've sponsored where they said oh yeah we're gonna get three or four or five hundred people at the event when i turn up there's 50 to 100 people in the room and i've sponsored an event and they haven't been able to deliver the result and unfortunately it's in the contract that anything could happen so that was a real failure and unfortunately that meant that I suffered the downside of not hitting sales targets because of somebody else's inability to hit their targets.
So it's a little bit where you're out of control. In 2012 to 2015, my first book, Key Person of Influence, really started to take off and I got known for that topic. I also wrote another book called Entrepreneur Revolution and people really started to say, hey, this guy Daniel is talking about a particular topic.
He's becoming known for that topic. And I got invited to speak at all sorts of conferences and they would just invite me to be a speaker for free. Now, I absolutely loved this because I couldn't believe it.
I'd been used to spending 5, 10, 15, 20 grand on my own events. I'd been used to spending 5, 10, 15, 20 grand sponsoring other people's events. Now they're willing to put me in front of an audience for free.
I could not believe my luck. I went and spoke at all sorts of events. Anytime someone wanted me to speak at their event, I would jump on a plane.
I would jump on a Zoom call. I would go along to a conference. If they would put me on a stage in front of 100, 200, 300 people, I was super pumped to speak for free.
I couldn't believe my luck because this was generating a lot of business. A lot of people would come to my company as a result of seeing me on stage. I would take every free speaking gig that I could.
I knew at this point that getting paid would naturally happen if I was in front of audiences. I just could not believe it. I didn't think it got any better than that.
Now the only downside is that because I was speaking for free, I had to sell from stage, right? I had to be selling all the time. Now, this was kind of a normal thing for me.
I was selling back here and I was selling here. I was selling here. In order to make this work, I had to focus on the sales follow -up as much as I was focusing on what I was saying from stage as well.
Okay, around 2015, things really started to change. People started to offer me travel costs. So they would say, we won't pay you to speak, but we'll cover your train tickets.
We will cover your airplane if you're going to fly in. We'll cover your hotel if you want to stay the night beforehand. So the travel costs started to get paid.
And that was pretty cool. That was like, oh, wow, it doesn't actually cost me anything to speak. It doesn't even cost me the travel costs.
The other things that was happening here is people were buying my books. So it was often the case that people would buy 100 copies of my book as well. So books pass travel.
If you know anything about books, you earn about a pound per book or two pounds per book or a couple of dollars per book. So I was making a couple of hundred dollars plus my travel costs in order. to go and speak but the real value was being in front of an audience of a couple of hundred people at a time and that was growing my business and that was hugely valuable.
In 2015 I wrote the next book called Oversubscribed. Oversubscribed really started to take off. That sold tens of thousands of copies in its first year and it just got bigger and bigger and bigger year after year after year as people recommended it to people.
This is where people started to say, actually, we want to book you for a couple of hours on stage to really go through your content in depth. In some cases, I was even getting invited to do a full day or a two day workshop. And that was pretty amazing as well.
Now, this is what led to small fees. Now, the small fees was by this stage, I've got multiple books out. I'm starting to build a profile and now I'm earning pretty reasonable fees.
I'm earning thousands per day in order to deliver content, in order to deliver workshops. I'm getting my travel, I'm getting books, I'm getting my hotel and all of that sort of stuff included, but I'm also getting paid some fees. And this was really, really cool.
And I thought this was as good as it gets, to be fair, because off the back of this, we're also growing the business. This is where I would get all my best customers. I would even get great employees coming off the back of this.
And you can't believe your luck that you actually get paid to promote yourself and promote your business. Because my back -end businesses were set up in such a way that I didn't need to get paid to speak, it was very, very nice to get paid to speak. So in the speaking industry, the typical amount that people get paid around this area here is 2K to 5K per talk or 2K to 5K per day.
Typically, that's pretty cool. You might get a couple of those per week or a couple of those per month. Actually, it starts to add up.
It can be really great, especially if that's not your core business. I know a lot of entrepreneurs who their core business does seven figures and they've got their great business over there. And then they do 10 talks a year and they make an extra 50 grand, but they're making an extra 50 grand while also promoting.
everything else that they do. So this can be really nice. Now, the one downside I should mention is that as soon as somebody is paying a fee, they're in control of what you say and also whether you sell from stage.
So in some cases I was earning two grand to five grand as a speaking fee, but I was giving up on 20 to 50 grand or even more because I wasn't allowed to sell from stage. So by accepting a speaking fee, I had to get rid of the call to action from my presentation. I wasn't selling from stage.
I was just giving a keynote. It's great to give a keynote. actually wonderful you still generate sales indirectly but i wasn't generating direct sales see down here i was actually instructing people to go and talk to my sales team or to fill in forms or in some cases to actually sign up and do something but actually over here, you're not really allowed to do that.
As soon as someone's paying a fee, they've got a particular brief in mind. Also, this can involve a lot of corporate speaking, large corporations. They're very happy to spend two to 5K on a speaker for a conference, but they want you to fulfill the brief.
Now, some people hear five grand a day and they think, oh my goodness, that's a lot of money. And it is a lot of money. But one thing to keep in mind that the amount of time that you spend on stage is nothing compared to some of the time that you will spend in the lead up to the event.
See, a lot of the time with those They want to have three or four meetings in the lead up to the event. So you might have three hours of actual planning and discussing what you're going to talk about for your one hour talk.
that's very common so the reason that they're paying you five grand is actually it's not just one hour on stage it's three hours of preparation time and it's also arriving an hour before your talk staying for an hour after your talk all of that sort of stuff so it's actually not quite as highly paid as you think but hey it's still pretty nice and especially if your business model is set up to benefit from all of that then it's a fantastic thing to do Okay, the big turning point moment for me, obviously, was going on podcasts.
And the big Diary of a CEO moment, that changed everything. But there was also going on Ali Abdaal's podcast, Chris Williamson's podcast, going on Chris Doe's podcast. Those were all big moments, big turning point moments.
And this is where I went from being a decent speaker to being more well -known for my topic. And I think the thing that separates the big speaking fees is not how good you are as a speaker, but how well -known you are for your... topic.
If you are the number one expert on a particular topic, then people want to bring you to the conference and there's a lot of people fighting for your time. So when you've developed something called signature content and a lot of people know that signature content, that's where you get the big speaking fees, especially if you've got something that's a current hot topic.
So some of the highest paid speakers in the world, people like Simon Sinek has got a signature piece of content in his book. He's got the signature start with why content that he puts out there, right? So he's got the big fees because is very widely known for a signature topic.
So the key thing that we need to get here into this big speaking, we need to have a signature topic. Ideally, we wanna have a book, we wanna have online social media presence, and we want it to be known that we are one of the top people. And it typically means that you're gonna have to have something like 50 ,000 followers across your social media platforms to demonstrate that you're very well known for that particular topic.
If you've got all of those things and you're a confident speaker, you're in line to get those biggest speaking fees. And those big speaking fees, they can be astronomical.
In many cases, the big speaking fees can be more in a single talk than a lot of people earn in six months or 12 months. It can be an extremely lucrative business if you're in demand as a speaker. When you get to this level, your speaking business could be a standalone business.
You could have a seven or an eight figure business off to the side that you started. And also your speaking business could also be a significant business as well. Once you're a big name speaker and you're speaking in front of big conferences, you'll often find yourself in front of a thousand, two thousand, three thousand people at once.
And that leads to all sorts of opportunities. It's actually such an incredible thing that for every big talk that you do, you'll probably be booked to another talk. You'll also be invited to be a board member or an advisor to a company on a regular basis.
You'll get invited onto podcasts. You'll get invited to do a book deal. All of those things happen as soon as you're a big speaker.
So it becomes a reinforcing flywheel situation where big talks lead to the conditions that create even more big talks in many ways this whole journey is also the journey of becoming that key person of influence that person who's got signature content signature topic you've got a book you've got products you've got a business model all of that stuff is happening now we actually have got something called a game plan session a game plan session is where you talk to one of my members of my team and they will talk you through the entire ecosystem that produces these kind of results the ecosystem of becoming a key person of influence with a scalable business model we do this all the time we talk to literally of entrepreneurs each year and we learn from all of them and we share stories with all of them that move them forward.
I would like you to book a game plan session because in the year ahead, I would love for you to put some of the assets in place that drive this journey forward. I'd love for you to be more known in your industry. I'd love for you to have a book, a speaking kit, some of the other digital assets that really ramp this up.
And we know how to do this. We've got a playbook for you and we want to share that playbook with you in a game plan session. So there's a link below.
You can book a one -to -one game plan session. completely free, or you can use the QR code on the screen. Now, here's the other thing.
Because we give these away for free, I want to ask you a big favor. If you do go and book a game plan session, treat it like a paid for coaching session. I want you to pretend that you paid a grand for it.
I want you to actually put a value on your time and a value on our time and really get the most out of it like it's a coaching session. And if you do that, you will get so much more value from it. So book yourself a game plan session, turn up to the session with the high expectations to get a lot of value out of it.
I look forward. to hearing how it goes all the best see you soon and if you haven't done so already give this channel a like a subscribe leave me a comment i read them all and i look forward to seeing you soon
The Hook
The bait, then the rug-pull.
Daniel Priestley now earns more from a single talk than most people make in a year, but he's quick to say that wasn't always true. This breakdown follows the whiteboard diagram he draws live, the five-stage path from paying out of his own pocket for stage time to commanding fees most speakers never reach.
Frameworks
Named ideas worth stealing.
00:39model
The Speaking Fee Ladder ("Speaking Flywheel")
Pay to Speak (2000-2010): fund your own events to get stage time
Sponsor to Speak (2010-2012): pay an event promoter for a slot, requires a published book
Speak for Free (2012-2015): invited at no cost once a book gains traction, still selling from stage
Travel and Small Fees (2015+): costs covered, then $2,000 to $5,000 per day fees, no selling allowed
Big Speaking Fees: signature content plus roughly 50,000 followers commands fees that can exceed a year's income
A five-stage progression Priestley draws live on a whiteboard across the video, each stage defined by who pays whom and what the speaker gains or gives up at that point.
Steal forany coach or consultant plotting their own path from self-funded visibility to paid authority
CTA Breakdown
How they asked for the click.
VERBAL ASK
12:47link
“I would like you to book a game plan session... There's a link below. You can book a one-to-one game plan session completely free, or you can use the QR code on the screen.”
Single soft CTA placed at the very end, around 12:47, after the full value content, reinforced with an on-screen QR code; paired with an ask to treat the free session like a paid coaching call so leads show up prepared.
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