Where is your event?

Please let us know what budget you have allocated for this speaking session (or consulting project). When prospective clients give us candid details about their budget, it allows us to immediately understand what we’re dealing with and look for ways to make it work. You might be surprised at the options available, even if your budget is below Patrick’s standard fee structure.

Believe it or not, we want to fit within your budget. In fact, we want the budget to be the easy part. The larger consideration should be the fit between the speaker and your strategic event objectives. Please visit Patrick’s video blog for examples of his approach and delivery and if you decide that Patrick is the best fit, there is almost always a way to make it work.

Speaking fees vary depending on (1) the event date and location, (2) the audience size and composition, (3) the likelihood of spin-off business, (4) the potential for consulting opportunities, (5) bulk book sales and (6) other details of the speaking session. Regardless of your budget, if you think Patrick would be a good fit for your event, please contact us with the details.

Fee flexibility is often counter-intuitive. For example, most people believe that a short lead time reduces flexibility, but the opposite is often true. If your event is just two or three weeks away, and if Patrick actually has the dates available on his calendar, we will be flexible to secure the opportunity. But if your event is still four or five months out, there are fewer reasons to justify a discount.

The point is: contact us either way! There are many considerations and each event is different. Our #1 priority is to spread Patrick’s message of opportunity and optimism and we will look at all possible options to put something together. Patrick has spoken at many events that seemed unlikely at first.

Yes, we do accept Bitcoin. We would be happy to send you a link to our Bitcoin wallet and the conversion will be calculated using the price of Bitcoin on the day of payment. Since the value of Bitcoin changes from day to day, the conversion rate for the 50% deposit may be different from the conversion rate for the final payment. We are not responsible for these price fluctuations. They are a result of daily Bitcoin trading on independent cryptocurrency exchanges all around the world.

Yes, Patrick works with many different Speakers Bureaus around the world including the following (in alphabetical order):

• All American Speakers in Durham, NC
• BigSpeak in Santa Barbara, CA
• Dynamic Speakers in Austin, TX
• Eagles Talent in South Orange, NJ
• Executive Speakers Bureau in Germantown, TN
• Global Speakers Agency in Dallas, TX
• Goodman Speakers Bureau in Windsor, CT
• Innovative Entertainment in San Francisco, CA
• Midwest Speakers Bureau in Des Moines, IA
• Powell Kohne Associates in Springfield, VA
• Rave Reviews Speakers & Entertainment in Beverly Hills, CA
• Speak! Franchise Speakers in Boulder, CO
• Speaker Spotlight in Toronto, Canada
• Speakers.com in Annapolis, MD
• SpeakInc in Tucson, AZ
• The Speaker Exchange Agency in Overland Park, KS
• Washington Speakers Bureau in Alexandria, VA

Unless otherwise agreed upon, travel expenses (including flights, hotel accommodation, ground transportation and meals) are always paid for by the client. Patrick is happy to fly economy for flights less than five (5) hours. For longer flights, particularly overseas flights, business class travel is strongly preferred.

For overseas events, Patrick has a three-night minimum at the event destination; two nights before his speaking session and one after. This is to allow him to adjust to the time change and get some rest before addressing your audience. Two hotel nights (one before his speaking session and one after) is acceptable if his arrival time is before 12 noon on the day prior to his speaking session.

In order to smooth out the event budgeting process, some organizations prefer all-inclusive fees. We are happy to accommodate these requests. Please provide us with the hotel rate and we will check flights for your event dates. We will then provide an all-inclusive quote and pay for the travel expenses directly. You will only be invoiced for that one all-inclusive amount and will not have to worry about unexpected travel expenses.

In order to secure a particular event date, we request a signed contract (or memorandum of understanding) and a 50% deposit of the speaking fee. Particularly for international events, Patrick will not initiate his travel before a deposit and the contract are received. We have a standard contract that we can provide, but are also happy to use your format if you prefer.

In some parts of the world, it is common to pay in cash, and that’s certainly fine with us! But please let us know if this is your intention. We will prepare a cash receipt ahead of time and provide it when payment is made (generally upon arrival).

Paying in cash does not affect the flexibility of the speaking fee. Patrick declares all of his income, regardless of its source, with IRS and the US Customs and Border Protection Services where applicable. However, paying in cash may indeed affect the 50% deposit required to secure your event date on Patrick’s calendar. Contact us for more information.

Once we have agreed on the speaking fee, we will provide you with full wire transfer instructions. Please note that international wire transfers can take two or three days to be reflected in our accounts. If your event is approaching quickly, please allow enough time for the funds to clear. Keep in mind that Patrick will not board the plane for international events before the 50% deposit has been received.

Patrick is happy to provide his Powerpoint slides in advance of your event but there are a few things you should keep in mind before making this request.

First, Patrick does dozens of events each year and often only has a week or two to focus on any given presentation. As such, he makes significant adjustments to the slide deck right up until the last minute. While last minute adjustments will be avoided if necessary, those adjustments often make material improvements to the presentation. We will meet all deadlines but request the opportunity to submit updated versions closer to the event date.

Second, Patrick’s slides are highly visual and rarely have more than three or four words on them. Looking at the slides without Patrick’s verbal narration will not provide much indication of his salient points or underlying message. Also, most of his 60-minute presentations have 100+ slides. His goal is to create a documentary-style experience for his audiences, relying on the visual slides to add perspective and depth to his comments.

Third, because of the visual nature of Patrick’s slides and the number of them in each presentation, his Powerpoint files are generally 20 or 30 MB in size. Files of that size can’t be emailed because most platforms have a 10 MB limit on attachments. Instead, Patrick will “share” a folder on Google Drive or Dropbox so you can download the file directly. Please let us know when you have successfully downloaded the file.

Finally, for the same reasons, it’s not easy to use event-specific templates for his presentations. If the use of an event-specific template is required, we will do our best to accommodate it, but the picture-based slides will remain clear of border branding unless the graphic can easily be added on top of the primary image. We are happy to use templates for the opening and closing slides and feel that that this is often sufficient to maintain branding congruence for the event.

Patrick generally wears a suit and tie to his events. Professional speakers should always be dressed slightly better than the best-dressed person in the audience. But for some audiences (like the younger Millennial Generation), that detracts from the message. Millennials instinctively distrust people wearing suits. Please let us know what would be most appropriate for your audience. Patrick is happy to wear more casual clothes like he did for his TEDx Talk on “Learned Intuition.”