Speaking Fees
Nobody answers this question. You search it, you get twelve articles that say “it depends,” and at the bottom of every one of them there’s a contact form. So here’s the whole thing. What the market charges, what I charge, and what makes the number move.
Most motivational speakers in the United States charge $2,500 to $10,000 for a keynote.
Below that, from about $500 to $2,500, you’re looking at newer speakers and local talent. Above it, from $10,000 to $25,000, you’re looking at nationally known speakers and published authors. Past $25,000 you’re into celebrities, bestselling authors, athletes and former public officials, and that range runs well beyond $100,000.
My keynote fee is $2,500 to $5,000. Travel is billed separately, at cost.
Typical U.S. keynote fees. Useful for building a budget before you start making calls.
| Tier | Typical keynote fee | Who this is |
|---|---|---|
| Local & emerging | $500 to $2,500 | Newer speakers, local business leaders, pastors and coaches building a platform. Often excellent. Usually less predictable. |
| Established & certifiedWhere I sit | $2,500 to $10,000 | Full-time professional speakers with a track record, formal certification, and a body of work behind the message. Most corporate and association events land here. |
| Nationally known | $10,000 to $25,000 | Published authors, speakers with national media presence, recognized names inside a specific industry. |
| Celebrity & bestselling | $25,000 to $100,000 | Bestselling authors, professional athletes, television personalities, well-known executives. |
| A-list | $100,000+ | Former presidents, global figures, household names. Usually booked through an exclusive agency. |
These are keynote fees. Workshops and multi-day training run higher at every tier, because you’re buying more hours and a lot more preparation. And at the top three tiers the fee is quoted before travel, where travel for one booking can cost more than a mid-tier speaker’s entire fee.
My Rates
I’ve been on the other side of this. Sitting in a room trying to put an event budget together, with a committee looking over my shoulder wanting to know whether we could afford a speaker. And every website I pulled up said the same four words. Contact us for pricing.
That’s not a price. That’s a phone call you have to make before you know whether you’re even in the neighborhood.
So I’m going to save you the phone call. Here are my numbers.
$2,500 to $5,000
45 to 90 minutes. Corporate, association, and conference events. Built around your theme after a prep call.
$5,000 to $7,500
Up to four hours. Ziglar Legacy curriculum, interactive, for teams that need tools and not just a talk.
$7,500 to $10,000
A full day with your team. Attitude, relationships, goals, ownership. Workbooks quoted separately.
$1,500
Live, not a recording. Same prep, same message, no travel line on your budget.
Quoted per event
Retreats, multi-day training, a keynote plus breakouts. Bundled, and it costs less than adding the pieces up.
Fees current as of September 2026. Travel billed separately, at cost.
Three things, mostly. The rest is noise.
A 45-minute keynote and a full day with your leadership team are not the same purchase. The day costs more because it is more. But if you want the keynote in the morning and a breakout after lunch, that second session gets added at a reduced rate, not a second full fee. The travel day is already paid for.
Every talk I give is tailored. That’s not an upsell, that’s the job. But there’s a difference between shaping a message I already know around your theme and building something from the ground up for a specific rollout, a specific merger, a specific hard year your people just came through. The second one takes weeks. It gets priced like it.
Spring and fall are conference season and those dates go first. A Tuesday in February has more room in it than a Thursday in October. And if your event happens to fall near travel that’s already on my calendar, that helps you. So ask. Sometimes the answer is good news.
What’s the point of me telling you all that? So you can stop guessing and start planning. You’ve got enough to worry about without wondering whether you can afford the phone call.
The hour on stage is the delivery. It isn’t the product.
My fee is my fee. Travel goes on top of it, billed at cost, and you see every line of it.
I’m in Mayfield, Kentucky. If you’re inside about a five-hour drive, I drive. Inside three hours that is mileage and nothing else. Between three and five, add a hotel room the night before if you’re putting me on a stage in the morning. If you’re past that, I fly. A coach ticket, a hotel, and a rental car or rides to and from the airport. See cities and drive times.
I don’t mark travel up. And I don’t charge a flat “travel fee” that’s really just more fee wearing a different hat. You get the receipts. If your organization would rather book the flight and the room through your own travel department, that’s fine by me, and it usually saves you money.
Why there’s no number in that box.
I’m not going to put a price on this page for a church.
Every church I’ve ever talked to is sitting in a different spot. Some of them have a line in the budget for a speaker and they know exactly what it is. Some of them have a love offering, a fellowship hall, and a whole lot of heart. I’ve said yes to both of those. Same message. Same preparation. Same everything.
Same goes for a school assembly or a nonprofit banquet. If I put a number here, somebody who needed to make that call wouldn’t make it. And I’m not willing to trade that for a tidier web page.
Here’s what I know. Money has never been the reason I told a church no. Not once.
So call me. Tell me about your people and what they’re walking through. We’ll figure out the rest of it together.
Questions
Most motivational speakers in the United States charge $2,500 to $10,000 for a keynote. Newer and strictly local speakers run $500 to $2,500. Nationally known speakers and published authors run $10,000 to $25,000. Celebrities, bestselling authors and former public officials start around $25,000 and climb well past $100,000.
My keynote fee is $2,500 to $5,000, plus travel at cost.
Because you’re not buying an hour.
You’re buying the prep call, the time I spend learning your organization, the message I build around your theme, the travel day on either side of your event, and about thirty years of getting good enough at this to be worth standing in front of your people. The hour on stage is the delivery. It isn’t the product.
No. Travel is billed separately, at cost, with receipts. Nothing marked up.
Inside about five hours of Mayfield, Kentucky, that’s mileage, plus a hotel room the night before for a morning event. Inside three hours it is usually just mileage. Past that it’s a coach airfare, a hotel, and ground transportation. And if you’d rather book the flight and room through your own travel department, that’s welcome. It usually costs you less.
Tell me on the first call. Don’t dance around it.
There are usually options. A shorter session. A virtual keynote. A date in a slower month. An event that sits near travel already on my calendar. And if none of that gets us there, I’ll point you toward somebody good who fits your number, because you having a great event matters more than me being the one standing on the stage.
A planner who tells me the truth about a budget gets a straight answer back. Every time.
Yes, and it’s handled case by case instead of at a published rate.
Every church is in a different financial position. Some have a budget line. Some have a love offering. I’ve said yes to both. Money has never been the reason I told a church no. Here’s the longer answer, and the same approach goes for schools and nonprofits.
Six to twelve months is comfortable for an annual conference or a big corporate event. Spring and fall go first, because that’s conference season.
That said, calendars move. If your date is ninety days out, ask anyway. The worst thing that happens is I say no and point you somewhere else.
Yes to both, and neither one is complicated.
A simple written agreement covers the date, the fee, the session length, and the travel arrangements, so nobody is remembering a phone call differently six months later. A deposit holds your date on the calendar and the balance is due at the event. All of it gets confirmed in writing before anybody signs anything.
Yes, and it costs less than you’d think. A breakout after the keynote, or a closing session to send everybody home, gets added at a reduced rate rather than a second full fee.
The travel day is already paid for. What you’re adding is preparation and platform time, so that’s what you pay for.
Not much on its own. A room of forty gets the same prep call and the same preparation as a room of a thousand. I’ve never once phoned it in because the room was small.
Where size matters is what tends to come with it. A bigger event usually means more sessions, more customization, and sometimes recording or media rights. Those move the number. The headcount by itself mostly doesn’t.
Recording it internally for people who couldn’t be in the room is generally fine. Just tell me ahead of time so we can put it in the agreement.
Public distribution, a paid replay, or turning the session into something your organization sells is a different conversation, because that turns one event into ongoing content. Not a no. Just a conversation.
Yes, and live. Not a recording I made in April and sent you in September.
A virtual keynote runs $1,500. Same prep call, same tailored message, no travel line on your budget. It works well for distributed teams and for organizations that want to bring somebody in more than once a year.
No. Nothing is bundled in and nothing is required.
If you’d like a resource table at the back of the room, I’m glad to set one up. If you’d rather not have one, that’s completely fine and it won’t come up again. Workshop workbooks are the one exception, and those get quoted separately so you can see exactly what they cost.
A keynote moves a room. Forty-five to ninety minutes, everybody in one space, and the goal is that people walk out thinking differently and feeling like they can do something about it.
A workshop puts tools in hands. Half a day or a full day, smaller and interactive, working through the Ziglar Legacy material on attitude, relationships, goal setting, and personal ownership. People leave with something written down and a plan they built themselves.
Plenty of events do both. Keynote to open it, workshop to make it stick.
Not much. A lavalier microphone, my slides loaded on the house computer, a podium on stage, and a confidence monitor if you have one. No raised stage required.
Your AV team can find every detail on the meeting planner resources page, along with the bio, the stage introduction, and downloadable headshots.
Tell me about your event. If you’ve got a budget number, put it in the message. It won’t offend me and it’ll get you a straight answer faster. I read every one of these myself.
