In this episode of The Power Table Podcast, Taylor Smith makes a controversial case: the advice that you should always get paid to speak is quietly costing most entrepreneurs revenue and opportunity. There is a version of speaking that pays a few thousand dollars and ends the moment you walk off stage, and there is a version that pays you for years. Taylor breaks down the difference, and pulls back the curtain on exactly how she makes this call as the host of Power Table Live, including who gets paid, who doesn't, and why.

Taylor walks through the three kinds of speaking, paid, unpaid, and pay-to-play, and explains why the common ranking of "paid is best, unpaid is settling, pay-to-play is desperate" is completely wrong. She gets into the real math behind why asking for a speaker fee can cost you tens of thousands of dollars in lead generation on the back end, and shares two personal stories, including one unpaid talk to a room of 30 people that has generated over $30,000 in revenue to date.

If you are a founder who speaks, or wants to start speaking as a visibility and growth strategy for your business, this episode will completely change how you evaluate every stage you are offered.

In this episode, we cover:

• The critical difference between speaking as a job and speaking as a business owner
• Why your content alone is rarely worth a speaker fee, and the real reasons event hosts can't always justify paying you
• What event hosts are actually providing in exchange for an unpaid stage, including trust transfer, promotion, and audience access
• How Taylor decides when to pay speakers at Power Table Live, and the two specific scenarios where she does
• Two real stories of unpaid speaking opportunities that generated over $30,000 and over $100,000 in revenue
• The exact questions to ask before saying yes to any stage, paid or not

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