Two people get invited to speak on the same stage. Same conference, same audience, same exact opportunity.

One of them walks away with a check. The other never even thought to ask if there was a check.

And that’s it. That’s the entire difference. It’s not talent, it’s not experience, and it’s not who gave the better talk (that stuff is all arranged in advance, right?). The difference is that one of them asked what the budget was. The other answered that question for herself before anybody else had the chance. She assumed there wasn’t a budget, or there wasn’t a budget for her.

One of the members of my community shared a story like this on a coaching call a while back, and I haven’t stopped thinking about it. You guys, I see this happen all the time. And it’s usually women who don’t think to ask. Sometimes it lands in my inbox: “My client got asked to speak somewhere. What do I do now?”

First of all, that’s amazing. Congrats. We love a speaking opportunity. I was just invited to speak at a women in media conference at my alma mater, UC Santa Barbara, next year, and I’m so incredibly honored. They actually offered a fee. Because it’s a student run organization and I won’t have to book a hotel or anything, I told them to keep it (you gotta give back to the school you love). I wanted them to use it for promotion and other things.

But if it were a corporate event? I would take the fee that was offered, or I would most certainly ask. If you’re going to travel, be away from your family, take time off work, prepare, and get yourself all put together, that’s a major time commitment. And you’re adding immense value.

There are a couple of mistakes hiding inside that one little question, “Is there a fee?” Let me pull them apart.

Mistake #1: Treating a Stage Like a Media Hit

Speaking is not just another media placement. Landing your client on a podcast, in a publication, or on a TV show is not the same thing as landing your client on a stage. Completely different skill sets for pitching.

When you’re pitching podcasts, it’s about relationships and timing. Speaking is about lead time. Calendars. Months and months of lead time. Conference lineups get locked in way earlier than you’d think because there’s a lot of promotion built around them. That women in media conference at UC Santa Barbara? It’s next April, which is about six months from now as I’m writing this.

You’re not going to stumble onto an event happening next week and charm your way into a keynote. It’s already been booked, planned, and promoted.

Speaking usually means starting smaller than your client would love. Maybe it’s a panel seat here, or moderating a session at another event. You have to build up to that solo spotlight, because nobody is going to hand a keynote to you or your client on day one.

So here’s my take: booking speaking engagements is not something you quietly fold into your regular retainer. We’ve never done that. Thought leadership and business press, where we use the CEO and their experience to tell stories about the brand, is quite different from booking speaking engagements. You have to track all the right rooms. You have to know which opportunities are the right fit. You have to time it right. You have to focus on the audience your client wants to connect with. And has she developed a signature talk that will captivate a room, on a topic that room actually wants to hear about?

That takes real, dedicated, specialized work. If you’ve been doing it for free because nobody ever told you it’s its own service, consider this me telling you: it is not a standard part of pitching your client to the media. That’s a pricing conversation you probably need to have with yourself first, before you can ever have it with your client.

Mistake #2: Waiting for Someone to Tell You It’s Paid

This one really gets me. So many of us treat “is this paid?” like information that’s just going to materialize. Like the event organizer is going to lead with, “Thanks so much for coming, and here’s a pile of cash.”

Nobody will volunteer that. Ever. You have to ask.

I know some of you are cringing right now. These opportunities are hard to get, and when someone’s interested in you or your client, that feels like a win all by itself. Asking feels kind of cringy. I get it.

Here’s exactly what to say:

“Thank you so much for thinking of her for this. Before we lock in details, can you let me know what the budget looks like for speakers at this event?”

That’s it. Done. (If it’s for you, swap in “me.”)

You’re not being pushy. You’re not being greedy. You’re asking a totally normal business question that this person has probably answered a dozen times for other speakers, probably men, because they don’t have a problem asking. Trust me, it is not going to shock them.

What If They Say It’s Unpaid?

You’re allowed to still want it. Exposure is real. Building momentum with visible opportunities in the right rooms, in front of the right audience, is an asset you can leverage. The difference is that you get to decide that on purpose, instead of just showing up in any room that’s interested (or finding out later that the other speakers got paid for the exact same thing).

And you can still ask for something:

“Totally understand there’s no speaker fee. Would you be able to cover travel? We’d love to make this work.”

I’ve been offered speaking opportunities where I just didn’t want to leave my family for that long (one was in Florida, and it wasn’t that big of an opportunity). For sure they would have had to cover my travel if they wanted me to show up. That’s obviously reasonable.

Notice that neither of those questions is desperate. Nobody’s saying “I’m so sorry to ask.” We don’t do that. It’s just two professionals talking to each other like adults. My husband gets asked to speak all the time, and men have no problem asking about a fee or travel.

The Person Who Asks Shapes the Answer

I spent years as a litigator before I started Jeneration PR (I’ve been doing this for 21 years, so it’s probably not new information if you’ve been around me for a while). If there’s one thing that world teaches you, it’s that the person who asks the question is the one who gets to shape the answer. And if you don’t like the answer you’re given, you can ask a different question. A better question.

Whether your client gets paid is so rarely about whether she’s good enough yet. It’s about whether somebody, and probably that somebody is you, asks that sentence out loud on her behalf.

Is there budget for this opportunity? Is there a fee for my client to speak at this event?

Here’s the quiet part. A lot of us don’t ask because deep down we feel like we should just be grateful to be invited. Like asking about money makes us ungrateful, or high maintenance, or difficult. Like we’re pushing our luck. I have absolutely been there and felt that exact feeling.

But grateful and paid are not opposites. You can be thrilled that someone thought of your client AND ask what the budget is. Both things can be true at the exact same time.

Once your client starts doing this consistently, that’s when the fun really starts. You begin building toward that signature talk, the one thing she becomes known for (or the one thing you want to become known for, if you’re pitching yourself). That talk becomes your calling card. It even starts to train AI to see you as an authority on that specific topic. I’ll be writing a whole lot more about signature talks soon, because it’s that important.

Your Homework

The next time a speaking opportunity lands in your inbox (for your client or for you), do this before you say yes. Before you start picking out the outfit. (Get excited, please. I still get excited about all these cool opportunities.) But first, ask the question:

“What’s the budget?”

That’s three words. Four if you count the contraction as two. And that’s all it takes, because you’re never going to get a yes to something you never asked. I literally built my entire business on that premise. No one is going to say yes unless I ask. The worst they can do is say no or say nothing, right? And if they say no, it doesn’t mean they don’t want you anymore because you asked for something very reasonable. It just means now you know there’s no budget.

And don’t answer it for them in your head before they’ve had the chance to give you an answer.

If you want help pitching and positioning your clients so these opportunities keep showing up in the first place, that’s exactly the work we do inside The Pitch Lab. We had an entire discussion about this on a recent coaching call, because one of our members didn’t even realize speaking engagements could be (and should be) a paid, separate offering in her business. She’s exceptional at landing them and wasn’t getting paid for the value she’s adding. A community is way more enjoyable, and honestly a much-needed reality gut check, when you’re running your business. I built Jeneration PR for the first decade by myself in a silo. I had a team, but I didn’t have a community of people doing exactly what I was doing. So I created one. Best thing I’ve ever done in my business.

So ask the budget question. Go out there and crush it this week. I’ll be here crushing it too.

Is there a budget for this opportunity? Ask.