Jamie Turner

They're extremely famous.

Seth Godin could probably live just on a speaking revenue.

Donald Trump could live on a speaking revenue.

But the vast majority of us who are either authors or just going around being speakers, typically it's additional revenue on top of what we're already making for other things.

So I just want to be clear about that.

You can make revenue.

It is a great way.

It's a wonderful, it's the best gig I've ever had.

However, for me personally, I've got kids in college, things like that.

I was like, okay, I'm not going to be able to retire on this, so I actually have to generate revenue from other sources on top of what I'm generating.

The first speaking gig was at Emory University.

I ultimately wrote a book with a professor named Dr. Reshma Shah.

She was actually the person who turned to me after my first gig and said, do you do this professionally?

And I thought, I didn't know you could do it professionally, but if you can, I'm all over that.

So that was, let's say, about 15 years ago.

And then within about five years, I had built up enough of a thought leadership around everything and had the blog.

Now, here's a key thing.

Truth be told, to get paid as a speaker, you really kind of have to have a book.

I don't care if it's self-published.

I don't care if it's published by a mainstream publisher like my books are.