I live in a world of speaker fees.
Sometimes I charge speaker fees but most of the time I pay speaker fees.
Having an education business and inviting people to come and speak means negotiating speaker fees.
It’s an understatement to say that this is a fascinating process.
First of all, let me tell you a story that someone very wise and senior in the world of dentistry explained to me recently about key opinion leaders (KOL’s).
The story goes like this and it’s in speech marks, but it’s paraphrased.
When you work in the dental industry and start with a young KOL, they asked to be paid a certain amount and you work together for the benefit of everyone.
Relatively soon after that, in some cases, you start to see the horns growing out of their head.
When you see the horns growing out of their head, you introduce a younger KOL behind them. As soon as the horns become fully grown and the KOL becomes a p*@ck you substitute them with a younger KOL and ‘let them grow their horns’.
All of the industry and I mean non-dentists in the industry understand how this process works.
So, back to the speaker fees.
There is a value equation related to people coming to talk about how much you can take the information and use it yourself to make money (intellectual property I guess) but just as a rough rule of thumb, if you’re paid £3,000 per day as a speaker fee (that is astronomical) and you work 4 days a week (which is a reasonable working week for anyone) including holidays and development days and all that stuff, you’re easily well into £500,000 per year.
Let’s be clear that £500,000 a year is way, way, way more money than anybody ever needs to be paid.
And £3,000 per day is low for some of the guys currently ‘on the circuit’.
If you want £6,000, you’re over 1million per year.
I have watched the speaker fee pro-rata equation develop since the late 1990’s and through the massive boom of implant dentistry in the noughties with 30% growth of companies year on year on year.
I’ve watched credible guys with great reputation jump from company to company so that they could get cars to take them to the airport to fly them to the Middle East.
I’ve watched people I respected sell their soul to the devil as the speaker fee dropped in one place and jumped to another place to sell any old sh*t to maintain their income.
The speaker fee situation in dentistry is not entirely dissimilar to the LIV golf situation.
I watched Ian Poulter in the press conference before the British tournament for LIV explain that the only reason, he had changed was to make more money.
At least he had the honesty to say it out loud.
In a world where we need to be inspired and we have a duty to inspire. In a profession where most of us should keep quiet about how much we earn compared to professions and jobs that create much greater impact on society, the speaker fee discussion is a problem.
Blog Post Number - 3163