Speaking Fees Average $112K

Scott Galloway shares details about his lucrative speaking career and how he approaches each engagement.

"Speaking is the most lucrative business I've ever been in. I had 340 inbound requests for speaking, I accepted 30 of them. I averaged $112,000 per speaking engagement.

My attitude is if someone's going to pay me $112,000, I can't just show up and be charming and interesting and be me on stage. I've got to bring something really unique. I spend the better part of 3 months with a team of analysts at PropG trying to come up with themes and data and slides and humor and video clips. Then choreograph it and practice it over and over and test it.

If I'm at Mastercard and they're spending $150,000 to have me speak for an hour in Barcelona, which I did last week, you can't just show up and be Scott Galloway. I've got to find incredibly smart people to pull data together and do a great job with my design team. Greatness is in the agency of others.

It's a ton of fun - I get to go to interesting places, I get to pick the most interesting cool ones, and I have an impact. I talk a lot about struggling young men, which is something I'm passionate about. It feels like my victory lap right now, but if someone's going to pay that kind of money, you just can't show up and start talking. You've got to show up with real insight or something that's going to catalyze a conversation with data they haven't seen before."