I recognize that ex-presidents are given $250,000 for a speech. This is simply a kind of tax-deductible payoff for services rendered. That, I understand. What I don't understand is somebody who gets paid $20,000 per speech, or even $10,000.
Some guy stands in front of an audience of 1000 people or more. You can barely see him. You're sitting in an auditorium, and he is the fourth person in a row, and he has nothing new to say. Why do you want to listen? You probably find it hard to take notes. There is no desk.
Why are you willing to pay $500 or $1,000 to attend a convention in which somebody stands up and gives a speech he could have put on YouTube? On YouTube, you could review it, just to make sure he wasn't blowing smoke.
In other words, what is the hook? What is it that people are willing to pay for that is worth $10,000 or $20,000?
Nobody introduces much that is new in most public speeches, especially famous people or ex-politicians who spend their lives talking, and who never give a good speech in the whole 30-year period.
The fact that you see somebody live and in person giving a speech on a podium far from where you are sitting means essentially nothing. If they had used a large screen overhead projector, and if the person had given the same speech on Skype, you would get the same information. He would not have had to come to the location, rent a hotel, come down to give the speech, go back to the hotel, go back to the airport, and go home. He probably would have given the speech cheaper on Skype. I know I would have given the speech cheaper.
Skype is a phenomenal technology. You can give a speech to anybody in the world, and you can do it from your office. The sound is just as good when piped over a standard electronic speaking system. Every large hotel or venue has a speaker system of some kind, and that's what people use who give speeches. Nobody speaks in front of a large audience without a sound system. In some cases, in a large venue, the organization uses video cameras, and then projects it on a large screen. So, nobody actually watches the tiny little figure at the front of the room. Everybody watches the large-screen TV that is overhead.
I finally figured this out about 30 years ago. I went to a speech delivered by the #1 Christian guru on families, who had never been married, and who ran an outfit called Basic Youth Conflicts. I do not know why people went to see the guy. He never had much to say that was unique, and what was unique was dead wrong. People would fill a pro basketball arena to come and hear him. There he was, on the floor of the arena, about the size of an ant, and above him was a huge arena screen. Everybody looked at the screen. As far as anybody knew, the tiny figure on the floor of the arena might have been a Disney mechanical robot. He was live. He was in person. But nobody paid any attention to the little man without the curtain.
Last year, I did a seminar held in Bulgaria, and I did it from my basement office. There was no way that I was going to fly to Bulgaria to give a lecture, free of charge, to about 100 people who spoke Bulgarian. They had to have a translator. I was willing to do it as a favor, but only because I could stay home to do it.
As far as I'm concerned, it really is crazy to go across the country or across an ocean to give a speech, when you could have given it on Skype. It just makes no sense to me. Yet I know that little groups are desperate to have some aging guru show up, give a speech, maybe given in translation, shake a few hands of strangers, and fly home. Why? I don't get it. I have never gotten it. I have held conferences that people paid a lot of money to come to, but I still don't understand it from their point of view.
ERSATZ LEGITIMACY
I think it has something to do with a kind of baptism. It's a strange kind of baptism. It is the baptism of a little group whose members want to feel that they are important enough that somebody vaguely famous will show up at the little group's meeting. Otherwise, why does the speaker have to show up? Why can't he just do it on Skype?
As long as the little group is not paying him anything anyway, why does the little group want him to give up three days of his life to give his one-hour speech? Why is this so important to the little group? It's not going to make the group more important. It's not going to change the lives of people in the group, or at least it shouldn't. Yet the little group wants the guru to show up. What is the deal?
People will not come out to see a live presentation on Skype. They think it is beneath them. What if the presentation were a video that had been made earlier? Would that be less informative? If people didn't know it was recorded earlier, would it be less exciting? But if they know it is an old speech, then they will not show up. They would think to themselves: "This could be on YouTube, and anything on YouTube is free, and something free is not worth paying for." Yet if the speaker is barely visible on a podium, people will pay to come. Again, I don't get it. I guess there should be a reason for it, but I can't figure it out.
I got an invitation from a group recently. The group wanted me to get on an airplane, fly to the city, give a one hour speech, go to a motel, wake up the next morning, and fly home. For this, they were willing to pay my plane fare. Well, whoop-de-doo!! I spoke free to 2,000 people every week when I was in high school in 1959, because I was student body president. Some group wants me to speak for free, and give up three days of my life, in order to speak to a group of 100 or maybe 200 people, 56 years later, thereby proving that I was more popular 1959 than I am now. They are basically saying this: "You weren't worth anything in 1959, but you're worth plane fare today -- coach. Congratulations."
Obviously, nobody offers this except Christian groups. Any other group would know that they have to pay something. But Christians want everything for free. The laborer is not worth his hire.
I might have considered a Skype presentation, but nobody wants a Skype presentation. Everybody knows that's worthless. You have to be there live and in person. So, the ideas are irrelevant. The presentation is irrelevant. The size of the screen is irrelevant. The quality of the sound system is irrelevant. There just has to be a live and in-person body, way up at the podium, to make anything he says worthwhile. Otherwise, he's not worth a dime.
This is intellectually suicidal. It means that ideas don't have consequences. All that has any consequence is the live, in-person presence of some guru at the front of a room. His presence supposedly makes things worthwhile. This supposedly makes things worth paying for, or at least plane fare.
This is about ersatz legitimacy. The desperation of small groups to gain some ersatz legitimacy because some aging guru shows up at their meeting, is what drives the members. They don't have a sense of self-worth. They don't have a sense of the importance of what they're doing, simply because they are doing it. They have to have the presence of some supposedly important person who sacrifices himself to come and give a speech that he could have given on Skype. The speech is irrelevant. The information is irrelevant. All that matters is some kind of reflective legitimacy.
Don't fall for this. The issue is the quality of the information, and then secondarily, the effectiveness of the rhetoric, which includes the digital setting of the presentation. If you don't go to a meeting because you're going to get useful information, or motivational information, or to meet people before or after the meeting who may be important to you, then don't go to the meeting. The meeting is not important. Your time is valuable. You have to drive to the meeting, get a parking place, and get into the lecture hall. Lecture halls are not the place to learn anything new. They don't have desks for taking notes. Then you have to drive home. Maybe you have to pay to get in. Don't bother.
Yet people do bother. I don't understand why they bother, but they do.
My view is almost the opposite of the average attendee. I figure that if the speech is not good enough to put on YouTube as a permanent source of information, then it's a useless speech. The speech that is never going to be on YouTube is not worth paying for. It is certainly not worth giving. My attitude is this: it is ridiculous for any speaker to go to the trouble of giving a speech that is not to be put on YouTube and kept on YouTube. At least you get a kind of immortality by having your speech on YouTube. You may influence somebody a year later, or 100 years later. That's a tremendous thing. But to go to some convention, where the speech is not put on video and then placed on YouTube within 24 hours, seems to me to be an appalling waste of time. Yet people do this all the time. I don't know why. If they do this for free, they really place no value on their own time. If they do it free, the organization bringing them in also has no concept of the value of their time.
Do you know what it is like to offer some guy nothing for his work? If you run a Christian outfit, of course you do. But I mean in the real world, where people of influence achieve something of value. I mean the world in which the laborer is worthy of his hire. In that world, offering somebody plane fare to give up three days of his life would be an insult.
When you're just getting started as a speaker, give live, free speeches. You are gaining legitimacy, not providing it. But at some point, stop speaking for free. If they want you to speak live and in person, make them pay for the privilege. They're not buying information from you. They are buying legitimacy from you. If you have legitimacy to provide, make them pay for it. Make them pay retail.
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