Profit from the Podium: A Side Income on Stage | Lexi B.

Brandon (00:14) session with my good friend Lexi B. This session is profit from the podium. You're gonna hear.

In my opinion, one the most gangster corporate stories out there, where you have someone who has been extremely successful in their career and while doing so, built a public speaking business that has delivered up to 70% of what she has been making in her corporate job. While here's the strategic piece, building more job security because she is bolstering her brand as she executes on a public speaking circuit. So

This is, you know, multi-dimensional chess we're talking about. We're talking about income streams. We're talking about doing something that you love. We're talking about independence from your corporate platform while also creating more security along the way. And so that's what Lexi B is going to be diving into in this session. And I need to introduce her. Lexi B, thank you for joining the Owner Mode Summit. we really appreciate you taking the time out of your busy schedule to

Drop some gems on us on how maybe we can do the same thing.

Thank you for having me. I'm very honored to be here. So thank you. Yeah. All right. So let's get into it. You know, first off, you know, you have a very interesting path into the space you're in today, right? so, you know, you have a very authentic personality. You're someone who if if they, you know, I've been fortunate enough to get to know you as a person, generally what you see is what you get. And that is something I always say is very

inspiring about you, Lexi, is that you are the same person on the court, off the court, and you've now created a platform for you to, you know, create value for yourself in a way that feels comfortable to you. And in many ways, corporate is kind of designed to be a place where you must conform, you must, you know, kind of fit within a certain box to be successful. You have found a way to be successful in corporate and break outside of that box and create another level of success.

in addition to that. And I feel like some of that must come down to how you were raised, your philosophy on life. So let's kind of get just give us a little bit of overview of of your pathway career wise up to this point today.

Yeah, I was born in St. Louis, Missouri. shout out to the Midwest. And speaking of growing up, I I didn't grow up with people, specifically my parents, my family, my kinfolk. I didn't grow up in a home that wanted me to be palatable. So even as a child, I would get in trouble for being palatable. Right. so I grew up in this very militant southern, Midwesterner, black American home.

Where I it was ingrained in me that in order for me to be successful, I had to be myself. Because if I became a definition of success and I wasn't myself, is it really me being successful? Left St. Louis at a very young age at 18 to come to the Bay Area and go to college. And that's when I was introduced to the tech industry and did not want to go into tech, but accidentally found myself there.

As the folks say, if you want to make the ancestors laugh, tell them your plans. And so I started my first tech company at a company called NetApp when I was three weeks after college graduation, learning on the ground how to do this tech thing. And since then have found so much value and passion in it and have worked at multiple companies since then, doing some pretty cool things and while that building a speaking career. Yeah. Okay.

So for a lot of people, this idea of public speaking makes them nervous, right? They just that the it gives butterflies in their stomach just thinking about it. Nature or nurture, like as we talk about this pathway and and its accessibility, do you believe that this is something that you innately kind of are are given and then you you develop it? Or is this something that you believe is actually democratized and anyone and everyone should and could explore doing this?

I think both. I think that public speaking is a spectrum, like many things in life. And I also think that it's a skill that even though you are not getting paid for it, if you would like to be successful in your career, you need to tap into it. Because all public speaking is, is storytelling. Depending on how good you are slash how much effort you put into it, it could be a tool in your toolkit that you use at work to sell your story to your client, to sell your story to your manager.

To learn how to work a room in a boardroom, which is really important, or it could be something that is making you a considerable amount of money. That takes skill, that takes passion. I would argue in some cases that could take nature. Some people are more naturally talented. But do I think that just because you're not naturally gifted at something, you can't figure it out? I disagree with that. I think that if you put your mind into it, if you find the right people to help you, if you really focus on it.

You can build a public speaking career and do it wonderfully and be great at it. Yeah. I love that because, you know, we're in some some really dynamic times and so much is changing. And I think a lot of people are wondering like what's going to remain true, what's going to stay the same. And some of what you're saying is human connection will always be something that is needed. Sales and ability to to influence people will always be something that's important.

And ultimately, at the core of both of those is storytelling. And you're saying, look, whether you're public speaking or not, you need to understand storytelling because that's gonna help you accelerate your career, that's gonna help you accelerate as an entrepreneur, it's gonna help you accelerate your side hustle. Anything that you're doing to kind of create value for yourself, your your ability to tell stories is gonna be a fundamental part of that. So let's talk about how how you groomed your own storytelling abilities, you know, and I know that.

for the beginning you kinda had this little spark for, you know, for stories and and for telling stories. But like walk us through your own journey in storytelling.

So I will not lie, my mother put me in musical theater when I was five or six years old. And that's very important to this story because I can recognize the intense training that I did in professional musical theater from five years old to 18 and how that manifests in my storytelling today. So I do not lie. So that is a true statement. so I have been on stages since I was five, I have been entertaining since I was five.

And while I'm no longer doing fly kicks and tap dancing, there's a lot that is very similar. And to add to that, I wasn't doing this stuff, you know, this art form at school. I was literally in professional theater. So at the age of eight, nine, and ten, I'm learning from adults. I have to go to auditions. I'm getting paid in some capacity. It's very cutthroat. so I was I was trained.

I was classically trained to be on a stage and classically trained to have a stamina of what do you do when you are on stage and things don't go the way you have practiced. And that has been helpful in this career. And what happened was that I started my tech career. I was very confused. You know, I'm new to this. I just graduated from college. This is not the job that I thought I was supposed to have. So I'm learning. And what did I do? I went into survival mode.

And I said, well, the one thing I well, two things that I'm really good at is I can make friends and I can tell stories. And so I started doing that at work. And it came from this place of, I have no idea what's going on. So I'm gonna lean on to survival tactics in order to keep my job long enough so I can learn how to do it and know what's going on. And what happened was was that I would get a lot of great feedback from leaders about how Lexi, you should

present more and meetings and you are very good at taking these stories and telling them. And what I realized in my first year of my career was one, I am a good storyteller. People find value in what I'm doing, something that I think comes naturally to me because I worked on it for almost 18 years straight professionally. But two, I'm only gonna be a good, a really good storyteller if I learn how not just to tell the story.

But how to create the story and then also tell it. And in year one, it was very clear to me that I can tell the story of my team. But because I'm not putting a lot of effort to get to know my job, I can't create the story. And that really, really kicked me in the gut to start learning how to do my day job well. Because, in my opinion, I said I have to learn how to create the story. So if I can be the person that can create the story and create the content and then tell the story.

I'm unstoppable. And from that, I started doing more speaking engagements. The company would say, Hey, do you want to go talk to the new college grads? Do you want to go talk to the, you know, the recruiting team and go to colleges with the recruiting team? Cause you'd be great at that. And then what really put it all together was a few years in, I went to go speak at this conference for a group of HBCU students.

on the East Coast that would come to the Bay Area once a year to visit Silicon Valley companies and just be inspired to be in tech. And they offered me money to speak. And no one had ever told me I could do that. And they just offered it. They were like, we're gonna give you six hundred dollars. And I said, for what? And they said, to speak. And it unfortunately was someone telling me that this is actually you need to get paid for this. And since that time

I was like, okay, well, let's build this. If you're gonna pay me $600 to do something that I like to do, then other people would pay me to do it. And then it just grew from there. And so my speaking career really started as this very much like, let me inspire these college kids to be in tech. And then someone said, you can get paid for this. And then that led to how do we build a strategy? How do I get on bigger stages? What are the assets?

That I need in order to do it. And all of those things really built a playbook for me by speaking and then being backstage and just building relationships with other speakers to learn what they do and really piecing together, I don't have that. I need to I need to work on that. I don't have that. I need to work on that. And then lastly, all the money in my first six years of speaking went back into my business. So every time someone paid me to speak.

It was spent on the new website. It was spent on a publicist. It was spent on headshots. It was spent on plane tickets to go speak. It was spent on hiring a lawyer for two hours to help me create a contract. Cause I don't know how to do that. And I had somebody tell me, like, you need to pay someone to build your contract instead of you trying to piece it together on Google.

And it was some of the best $3,000 I've ever spent, right? And so that's what I did for the first five or six years was say, if I'm gonna make money, I can make more money if I spend money. So all the money that I'm making speaking, that's what I'm gonna do. And it wasn't until then that I actually started having a strategy for how much I should get paid. Because I would literally be requested to speak, Brandon, and then they'd ask me how much money you want. And then I'd say, Well, I need three grand for my website. I was

I was piecing together my speaking price based on the things that I needed to grow my career. I'll never forget when I found my lawyer and he was $3,000 and I said, give me two months. And I did a speaking engagement and said, I need $3,000. And I just literally gave him the money. And that's how it all started. Yeah. Wow. All right. We have a lot we have to unpack there. and I think to me, what I loved about the story is you had a light bulb moment when they offered you 600 bucks. And I and I would imagine the audience here.

Will also potentially have that light bulb moment as well. They're like, wait a second. I'm talking to students that are coming in at my job, right? Like I'm I'm addressing an audience at, you know, a stand as what do you call it? A a TGIF or, you know, a group, whatever it might be. You realize, wait a second, 80% of this overlap that I'm doing already in corporate, and you know, you you you you honed your craft, so you were good at that storytelling. And so they were asking you to do it more of.

But a lot of us need to do that already in our jobs anyway. We just never contextualize it as: wait a second, this is like an opportunity for me to potentially create value for myself. And then you move into this like, let me, now that I've seen that light at the end of the tunnel, let me professionalize. And then you invested in professionalizing over time. And then you kind of hit a place where the investment was sufficient for you to now get some profit coming in. So let's talk about that.

Professionalizing process and what that actually looks like. You kind of gave us some breadcrumbs on it. But if you were to advise somebody stepping into they get the light bulb and they're like, you know, if I could just make like just another 20% on the side, right? You know, and I can save that, that'll make me feel more secure. What would be the steps of professionalizing from your perspective? Like what would you do step by step? Yes. So if you want to make at least 20%, do you understand you have to spend money to make money?

And like I said, it took me five or six years to really do this because I was again like, I need 600 bucks there. I'm gonna do $600. But if you have the cash to like put 10 to 15K in up front, you will be very, very shocked. I d I I piecemealed mine together. Looking back, I probably would have gotten the lawyer first. because you need someone to create your contract. And I'm talking about things that

This is when I was in my early mid-20s that I didn't think about. So it's very easy to say, hey Brandon, you need to pay me 25K to speak. Okay. But when is that money coming? Because Brandon, you could give me that money six months after I speak. And so I I remember I had a speaking engagement and was talking to one of the keynotes, and she was this dynamic executive and it was for a lot. And I What do I need to know? I just said, if you had some advice right now, she said, get a lawyer. And she told me, she said, Lexi,

When I sign a contract, I need 50% of my money up front. And then I need the rest of my money before I get on stage. She was the person who told me do not get on that stage and say something in that mic unless your money's in your bank account. And there have been times where I have been backstage and I am on my banking app and my money is not there. And I do not go on that stage because of that woman.

Things like, okay, you signed up for us, you know, you said you're gonna do this, they're gonna pay you what you want. It's on June 1st, six months away. Fantastic. So what happens? What if you get hit by a bus? What if the company implodes? What if there's a natural disaster? So many things can happen between the day you say you're gonna come and the actual day you get on stage. How do you protect yourself? One of them in my contracts is that if this gets canceled.

because of the other party, I receive sixty percent of my money. So right off the bat, if I do not get on stage because of a reason of the other party, I need sixty percent, which is not a hundred percent, but that's in my opinion a pretty good check not to be on stage. Right? And so it was little things like this where I said, I need to go talk to a lawyer. And she said, you should.

So I recommend if you if you have some money saved up, go talk to a lawyer. It's only a few hours, and a contract's lawyer, and they can write up a contract for you based on your needs, your wants. I know speakers who asks for really random things. I met a speaker once where in his contract, you have to have gummy bears on site. And I love that for him. And I and even though I don't care about gummy bears, I love that he knows his worth enough.

That he says, you owe me some gummy bears, right? I have speakers who literally have lines in their contract about travel. If you want me to physically be there, this is what you have to pay for. These are the types of hotels that I must stay at. I will or will not accept Airbnb. So you decide what that is for you and have it written down. And having a lawyer do it is so much easier. Also, you need a website. If you don't know how to make a website, find somebody who does.

Fiverr is fantastic. Upwork is fantastic. And then also I think, especially when you are a busy corporate person, paying two to five grand to have someone build you a website while you do your day job is money well spent. And get your website up because when you start talking to people about speaking, when they hear your name, they're going to Google you. And your website should come up first.

They're also going to go to YouTube. They want to see where have you spoken before, right? I had to learn the hard way to put in my contract that every speaking engagement I do, I get the footage. No one taught me. I literally learned the hard way that, like, I need to ask for my footage. It should just be in my contract, right? That I get the footage because that footage helps me book more. so you need that website. As we all know, a website has to have content in it. You need a bio.

And so if you're gonna write the bio, great. If you're gonna hire someone to write the bio, it's up to you. You need some pictures. You need some good pictures. And I know AI is out there, and I love AI for many reasons. I need you to go see a photographer and stand on a wall and take a picture because we know the difference, right? So you need content on your website. You need those pictures. And then depending on how intense you want to go on this spectrum.

You may want to think about trademarking, and that's up to you. I did trademarking about four to five years ago, so I did not do it initially, but it really depends on like how far you want to go on this journey. And then obviously you need a speaker kit or people call it a speaker deck. And what that is, is that's like one to three pages. People make them look really cool. You can find a graphic designer to help you, or you can do it on Canva yourself now that we have things like Canva. And it includes, it's basically.

Like your walkable website. So taking very similar content that is on your website, I'd probably add that headshot that's on your website. And then just giving the high-level stats. I had a friend tell me, think about it as like a baseball card, right? What are your stats? How many places have you spoken at? How big is the audience? What are the three topics you speak about? Here is my website. Here is how you contact me. Maybe a few quotes from people who say that you're dope.

And that's your walkable deck. Because when you talk to producers at these events and conferences that are booking speakers, they want to know the website and they want the speaker deck. And they usually look at the speaker deck first. And if they like it, they're going to click that website. And if they like that, they will send you an email. And that's how you start. That was a masterclass right there. Thank you, Lexi. Now, in there, what I'm hearing is.

leverage, right? And and I think some of it is maybe mental, some of it is real. And it it shows up in terms of like the things you put in your contract. Like the person that puts gummy bears in there, they feel that they can command gummy bears. pricing, right? Can you command pricing? Where does the leverage come from? I would imagine it's you really have a unique perspective that is there's differentiated in the market.

Maybe you've done some things that automatically put you in a certain level, you know, from a perception perspective. Maybe it's that YouTube channel. you've spoken here, you've spoken there. What are the key points of leverage and tell us around tell us around the differentiation and and how folks should come up with their own, you know, kind of lane within this public speaking space? I think that

I'm gonna give you two answers to that. I think that most people assume the leverage is where have you spoken, the number of people you've spoken to, things like that. People that have very intense titles that can say you spoke at their event. Cool. And that'll get you on some stages. But the actual leverage to make you at the top of the speaker band is actually can you entertain people? Are you a great storyteller? And the

The example that I'd like to give is that many times you don't have to be doing something unique to be a great storyteller, right? One of the best storytellers in the whole wide world actually kidnapped all the stories they tell. And that is Mickey Mouse. Every original Disney film was not an original story. The majority of them were Grimm's Brothers stories. One of them was Shakespeare.

And so when you when you look at Disney, who I think many people would argue is the ultimate children's storyteller, it's an a billion dollar storytelling machine. The stories that got them on the map in the first place were not original stories. What happened was, was Walt Disney said, Hey, so instead of telling the story like this.

Once there was a girl who lived in this random place and her stepmother hated her and didn't, you know, just treated her like trash. Her dad somehow died. We don't know. He's just gone. And then one day the community had a party and she decided to sneak out, put on a cute dress, goes to the party, and falls in love with this dude who happens to be the richest man at the party. And then somehow he loses her, but then he finds her and then they get married.

Well, Walt Disney said was so take that story, and we're gonna add an Academy Award winning music selection. I want animation to the gods. And then I want you to tell the story like this. Once upon a time in a faraway land, there was a girl who sat by the fire. And because the cinders would get in her hair and face at night, they called her Cinderella.

I'll pay for that story. Right? And so I do want people to know that yes, you having a unique story, sure, people love new stories. But I do think that that stops people becoming speakers because they'll go and they'll see speakers and they'll say, I have a similar story, I can't do it. No, but do you know how to tell a story? Do you know how to tell a story? Because we could be having the same story and we tell it differently. And speakers who are getting paid mega bucks.

They know how to tell an entertaining story. And that's what gets you paid. Because the number of conferences, Brandon, that we go to, the number of times that we're inundated with information, sometimes it's not about the information being unique. It's, well, do you make me feel good while you tell it to me? Do I leave the room and go, okay, that was, that was gotta fly. No, that was gotta fly. And I think that that's what people really need to hone in on.

Sure, you telling a unique story will get you paid. You telling a Disney story will change your life.

Yeah. Wow. And that example you gave was was crystal clear in terms of how a same story could be told in in different ways. Let me ask you, when it comes down to storytelling, because you mentioned that Disney did not create these stories. Is it I'm speaking from the perceived of someone who wants to step into a speaking, you know, possibility, right? Is it the story they're choosing or how they personally are delivering it?

That matters the most.

It's both because you cannot deliver well a story that you don't know. And I know I I have I have witnessed and observed people try to tell stories that they did not create. And if they're really good at it, it's okay. Right? But when you have stories of people saying, Yo, I lived this, and they know how to tell it, those are awards.

Winning stories. That's why you have companies that you know for their annual all hands and things like that. They'll hire this random person who you've never met, who's gone through homelessness eight times and got back up somehow, and had this one mentor and now is a billion-dollar day trader. That story's fantastic because that person lived it and now they're telling it.

And that's why from the beginning I learned like, yo, I'm a pretty decent storyteller when I'm telling other people's stories. But if I can create the story, which means I've lived it, I've experienced it, and tell it to you, it's just a whole different game. It's a whole different game. And that's why I think it's important for people when they decide on their story. We usually call it a speaker beat. When you decide on your beat, I really recommend it's a beat that you know well.

Because you have lived it. That's really like that authenticity. And if you don't do that, I'm not saying that you won't get paid. Speaking is a spectrum. But if you do do that, then I'm talking about, we're gonna give Brandon $1,000 for coming to our panel to like, okay, so we want Brandon here and his bill is 40K, so who's paying for that?

That's those are that that's different money. That's different money. So Brandon gets to decide where he wants to be on that spectrum. And I fully support whatever side that he wants to be on. But that's that's the difference. Yeah. Okay, let's guide people through finding their beat by you telling a story of where you started and where you ended and maybe the evolution along the way. Yeah.

Yeah, my beat has definitely evolved. So my beat first started because my company was putting me in front of these college kids. I was 23, 24. And so, you know, college kids, 18, 19, 20, they will they are more comfortable listening to a 24 year old talk about that next step than a senior VP. Because when you're 20 and you have this 45 year old person looking at you, you're like, that's just so far away, right? But when you have this 24 year old looking at you,

It's like, okay, well, she was just here yesterday. So she knows, right? one of the reasons why I rarely talk to college kids anymore, because I'm now the old person. So I'm very far away. and so what I started doing was they asked me to speak about my experience being a new college grad. Well, I know that. I'm doing it right now. And I had someone before I start getting paid pull me aside and they said, it's okay to talk about the bad stuff too. Someone had to tell me that.

And then I said, well, you've just opened the floodgates. Don't tell me twice. And so my original speaker beat really came from this idea of adulting is hard.

Adulting is hard. And that was my first speaker beat. And I was talking to new college grads. And then in my mid-20s, it became, I'm sorry, I was talking to college kids. And then in my mid-20s, it became the new college grads. Like, you just became an adult. Let's talk about that. And I would talk about, I would really make fun of myself on stage. Like, this is what happened when I tried to do my taxes in the middle of a Walmart. Right?

Why did college never tell me how to change a tire? Or at best, tell me where to change the tire? Right. And that's what really started. And so all of my speaker beats really have evolved to these lessons that I just learned as I built my career. My speaker beats have never really been about my day job. And the reason why I did that is I think originally, as I shared, you know.

I started my career in a profession that I never thought I would be in. So there was a lot of imposter syndrome for me when I was in my 20s about like, am I good at this? Like, am I gonna get on a stage and tell people what I do? What if someone's in the audience and they're like, you have no idea what you're talking about? Right. But then when I got good at my career and comfortable, I also loved this idea of separation of church and state. So none of my speaker beats have ever been about what my day job does. They have always been really around this concept of

How you humanize work, regardless of what work you do. So it started as this like adulting is hard and how to build resilience and how to figure out how to adult while doing a great job. That transformed into what does it look like to be a manager? What does it look like to be human with people? And why it's important for managers to understand certain things, defending your people. You want to save space, but you're not gonna defend them.

Right? What does it look like to actually build a team where these people want to work for you and therefore they're gonna go above and beyond for you? Then that turned into what does it look like to freedom fight in the workplace? Because when you're talking about managing people, you're also talking about how to advocate for people, which is very aligned to like differences in people. I remember in a lot of my manager talks, I would have this one slide.

About how you do not manage people the same. And then I remember I was speaking and I was talking to someone after the talk, and they said, I'd love to do a one-on-one with you of learning how to do that. And I said, well, that's a that's a keynote. We don't do that. And so then I transformed that into what is freedom fighting look at the workplace? How do you identify your own privilege? And then how do you leverage your privilege to help other people? Because in my head, that's the definition of management.

As a manager, if I know my privilege levels and layers in this space, and then if I do the work to get to know your privilege layers or lack thereof, I help fill in the gaps. And then you would you want to work for me. I've basically met you where you uniquely are, right? And then that turned into how to build relationships with people. I think that's one of my strengths in the workplace. And so in 2025, as I was kind of figuring out.

The new me of what I wanted to talk about and something fresh. I've really honed in on this idea of lunching up and lunching down. And how in the workplace, how do you actually build relationships first by humanizing people and then bring in the work? Because if you do it that way, you will have more long term leverage and alignment on this relationship. One, because you are a human and you should want to.

treat humans appropriately. But then two, you both can leverage this relationship to get what you need done at work and everyone can be happy. And so that's how my speaker beat has transformed. It really has transformed as I've just grown up and been like, I learned something new. Ooh, I kind of want to talk about that. Ooh, this is a new like these are new colorful sprinkles to add to my ice cream sundae.

That I didn't think about until someone brought it to me and I sat with it and said, Yeah, we should talk about that. And so that's how mine grew. It reminds me of of of stand up a little bit because you had an idea of what would resonate. But then the feedback you heard from people around like, Can I do a one on one with you based on this thing? You're like, that's a keynote. So then you get back on stage, you now come up with your, you know, your next set or whatever y you want to call it. And then it brings down the house, right? And so you're like, Okay, I got a thing.

Let's talk about how pricing overlaid on top of your evolution, right? So you're changing your beat. You also are building more experience. You know, there's, you know, exterior or external factors that are playing in where pandemic pandemic hits. Tell us what your philosophy is on pricing and then tell us some stories around how you've thought about that and navigated that over time.

Yes. So my original, which has now evolved, my original idea on pricing was, every time someone pays me, I want more. So little Lexi B's pricing analysis was if I get paid to speak on Monday for $600, then I'm getting paid a thousand on Tuesday. And then I'm getting paid fifteen hundred on Wednesday. And that was my pricing strategy for a few years. And then I'm

was backstage at a speaking engagement. And I don't know how this conversation came up, but it did. And I was talking to one of the keynoters and they said, that's not a strategy. That's dumb. And I said, Excuse me. Let me get my notebook out. And they said, if you don't know your worth, then people are going to tell it to you. And so you're sitting here saying, well, I know my worth is more than what it was yesterday. That's not a worth point. And she said, you're cheap. Level up.

And I did. this is also the same person who told me in that same story. She said, When you go to Louis Vuitton and you say you want this bag, does the person say, Well, this bag is more expensive than yesterday? And I said, No. And they said, Yeah, the bag's just always expensive. And I remember I told her, I said, Well, what if they can't afford what I want? And she said, Well, then they need to shop someplace else.

And just tell them to come through when they can afford you. And that was a really huge learning lesson, I would argue, not only for speaking, but just for life in general, for romantic relationships, for platonic relationships, for my work. She was she basically said, if you don't, if you can't price your labor, that's a big issue. And so I went to the drawing board and I started doing an analysis of not how much is this keynote? Because a keynote is what?

I've never done a keynote for more than 90 minutes. After that, even the best of entertainers get boring, right? So I was trying to price myself based on how much do I think I'm worth on this stage for 90 minutes. And what this woman made me realize was like, no, my keynote, my keynote's not 90 minutes. My keynote is all the work that I had to do to get here to be able to even think about a keynote, to then put the words together, to then put the slides together.

To then decide how I wanted to entertain you to the practice, to the outfit, to the hair change, to the lipstick color from MAC, to then me being here on stage and telling you the story. And that's when pricing changed. And I think that that is a mental shift. And it's very similar, I would argue, to when you negotiate offers at a corporate company, right? Just because

You're 20 years in the game and you can do a task that 20 years ago would take you two weeks to do, and you could do it in an hour. Your current company's not paying you by an hour. They're gonna pay you for those 20 years of work that you did to be able to now do it in an hour. And that's the speaking thing. But then also I want to add to this is that I also had to learn the hard way that when you say the word price, especially in speaking.

Price is not just monetary. And people are going to lose out on a lot of long term money if they feel like, well, they can't pay me what I want, so I'm out. And my story for that was I'll never forget in 2018, I went to go speak at a conference. I paid for the flight. I paid for the hotel. I paid for everything. And I did that because this company said they couldn't pay me. But what they offered me, because I nego I said, Well, what can you offer me? And they said,

We're taking it was it was the Lesbians Who Tech conference and for folks who don't know about it, you should definitely try to speak there. and because I knew the CEO of the of the nonprofit and we had a good rapport, she knew that I had some home training, she goes, Lex, I can't pay you, but what I can do is the night before the conference, we are having this rooftop dinner.

Where we are inviting all the executives that are coming from all these conferences who sponsor this to this intimate dinner. And I was like, I'll be there. You're gonna offer me a rooftop dinner in New York City with like 30 to 40. I'm talking about CISO of Verizon. I'm talking about CMO of Autodesk. Yes, pass me a crab cake. I will figure this out. And so I bought the ticket on points. I got an Airbnb and paid for it because I had some Airbnb credit.

I went and what happened was when I spoke, there was a woman in the audience who I had never met, and she hit me up on LinkedIn after, and she said, Hey, I'm from Poland and I am about to produce the largest women in tech company, I mean tech tech conference in the world. And I want you to keynote it. And I said, We should, we should talk. And I told her my speaker price, and she said, This is our first year doing it. We don't have the money for speakers.

And this is what I told her. I said, you know what, honestly, I've never done an international speaking engagement. So if you pay me to get to Poland and pay for my hotel, I'll do it. So again, it wasn't the money. She was offering me a huge opportunity where I could put on my website, I'm an international speaker. I could put on my speaker kit. The next time that I'm negotiating, that's a huge thing. And remember, this is Warsaw, Poland.

Who knows who's in the audience of 14,000 people? Maybe that can even open more international opportunities that pay. And that's why I went. And I went and I spoke, and this is November 2019. I met a lot of amazing people, a lot of people that have the power to book speakers. March 2020, the world shut down because of COVID. And a lot of speakers lost a lot of business because what we're doing right now.

was never done in speaking. You would always meet in person, right? 2020 was my biggest financial speaker career year of my life. Because I met all these people in Poland and by the beginning of beginning of 2020, January 2020, I have I was already locked in in my contract for 10 speaking opportunities that were paid and that were all over the world. But because of the contract that I have, when the world shut down,

About half of them decided they're not gonna do their thing anymore. And I still got paid. And the other half turned virtually. So while all these other speakers were like, I don't know what I'm gonna do, because I took an an unpaid speaking engagement randomly in Warsaw, Poland, I was booked and busy for two and a half years virtually. And so I like to remind people of that. As you figure out your price, it is important to know your worth. Like my mentor said, you need to know how much.

You are worth and be very comfortable in telling people that. But also in speaking, not everything is about money. And if there's a way that you can negotiate certain things that you want and this person is willing to give it to you, maybe you take a decreased cut. Maybe you don't take a physical paycheck. Because I remember when she said she couldn't pay me my speaker fee for Warsaw.

The amount of money that I made because of Warsaw, I remember my financial advisor and I like did the numbers. I I was like my speaker, my usual speaker fee times like 15. So Warsaw was worth it. It was very worth it, which means New York was worth it. And when you look at, I didn't pay to go to Warsaw, they paid for it. But when you look at how much money I paid to go to New York, I think I paid $75 for my plane ticket because I had some points.

And I think I paid $200 for my Airbnb. Okay. So let's just say $300. I paid $300 in New York. And within two years, that came back multifold. New York was worth it. Right. Wow. That's that's an incredible story. A lot of lessons in there. So a lot of the audience right now, they're intrigued by this concept of, you know, diversifying their income streams by public speaking, right?

The reason obviously is I want to make more money, but the other part of it is in theory, you know, when you talked about this idea of what you talk about is different than what you do at work, these things can coexist. But I will go a step further and say you can even build more security in some ways. Can you talk to us a little bit around this idea of when you go out and you represent yourself as Lexi the speaker, not Lexi the big tech executive?

What are some of the things that you've noticed or you've observed that you actually thought potentially increased your job security in many ways?

Well, number one, I think that the higher up you get in your career, especially when you have a certain type of title, people are people assume you know how to do the job. You're not getting paid to do the job. You have a team that does the job and things like that. You're getting paid to storytell to encourage people to do the job. I have received many opportunities to interview for companies on site, over the phone, because I was on a stage. And I would get off stage and they'd be like, Where do you work? So what do you do?

You wanna come do that over here? And these people have no idea if I can do my job or not. But it's because they're like, yo, I need someone to manage this team to make them do the job. I don't need you to do the job. So if you cannot bag groceries, that's not what I'm paying you to do. I'm paying you to encourage and empower the people to bag the groceries. And that definitely has happened. I've had managers in the past make a lot of jokes.

About how, like, I have to treat Lexi right because you know she will go find a job. She'll be at a speaking engagement next month. And and then I respond, not joking, and I'm like, you are so right. You are so right. And then also more importantly, my network of people. I meet so I I meet so many random but wonderful people when I speak. I always tell people the the dopest place to be at a conference is backstage.

Whenever I speak, part of my thing is that the amount of time I have to be there so I have more flexibility. You know, back in the day I would go to the conference all day. So if anyone's like, I'm not doing that anymore. Like if you want me at one o'clock, I'll be there at this time. And many times I'll be there hours before hanging out backstage. Because building that network is key. And even though those people may not know what I do on my day job.

Building that network, starting from a humanization perspective of like you're cool, I'm cool, let's stay in touch. When there have been times in my career where I thought, you know what, it's to jump ship, or I'm thinking about something different, being able to reach out to them and have a coffee, have a dinner, have access to their network is probably the most profound. Yes, the most powerful place to be at a conference is backstage. And I would argue, even if you don't want to get paid for speaking,

You physically being backstage, that's the most powerful place to be at a lot of these career conferences. Yeah. Hmm. Because they know if you're backstage, right, then you must be somebody who's bringing something to the table. So you're entering with positions, regardless of, you know, whether you know these people or not, that they're gonna respect. So, Lexi, I've known people that worked really closely with you and they say they love Lexi at work.

They really love Lexi at work. And you're in spaces, you're you're in you're in spaces where, you know, a lot of folks don't look like you, right? Even though you went to Stanford and and you've been in in in the you know Silicon Valley for a long time. Culturally, right, is not a place where knowing Lexi, you're a very authentic person, that a lot of people will feel really comfortable being themselves in. That does not seem to be the case with you. And ironically, a lot of what people would generally try to conform to look like.

is actually you do the opposite and it's actually gotten you even farther. What is the unlock? What was what's the secret behind that that ability to really be yourself and use that as like a superpower to get people who are nothing like you to love you and want to work with you and advocate for you and sponsor you in the workplace?

Think going back to it, I humanize people. I do not go into working situations and think that you are better or worse than me because of your title. I humanize people. I also bring snacks. People like snacks, especially when they're adults, because adults are just children with credit cards. But jokes aside, I humanize the work. And so I want to get to know you as a human and not because.

You know, if you do it in a very cringe way, it comes off as like, you're just trying to get information to use it against me. I genuinely want to know about you. And more importantly, I want to know why you do this job and what you want out of this job. Because if you feel comfortable telling me what you want out of this job or out of this project, I can take that information and make sure or do everything I can for you to get it. So even after the labor's over, even after the hard conversations, even after the long nights.

you got what you wanted. And I want to make sure you get that because that's how I want people to treat me. From the authenticity piece, my first year out of college, I really tried to be everybody else. I was had severe imposter syndrome. I was new to the tech world, really didn't know what I was doing. And so I was really literally modeling behavior from different people. And then I was put on a pip. I was put on a pip nine months after

I started my career. It was very devastating. I think initially embarrassing, but now such a great learning lesson for me. And I remember being on the pip. I'm not gonna lie, the manager and I we had a layered and complex relationship. But what I remember after having that hard conversation, I was crying in my car and I called my dad.

And he was, and my dad's a doctor. So he's What's a pip? Like I had to explain to him this corporate lingo. And he said, Okay, so what did you do? And I said, What do you mean? And he said, What did you do wrong? And I said, Well, I just I just did what they did. And he said, So you basically copy pasted behavior of other people who have different types of seniority because of their title, who have different types of privilege because of their identity.

And then you tried to put it on you and expect it to work for you. And I was like, dang, well that was that was a sermon. And he's like, Yeah, don't do that. Gotta go by. And it was my dad who really gave me permission. And I don't think he knew it at the time, but it was the permission that I needed. And so a pip, which is very much a performance improvement plan, which says, You can come back and try tomorrow. And the next day I went to work and I dressed the way that I would dress.

I wore the earrings that I would wear and I treated people the way that I would treat them. And there were a lot of people who didn't like it, and there were tons of people who did. And I got off the pip. I got a new manager who loved it. And so that was the thing for me is that if I'm going to get fired, I'm gonna get fired as me. Like I can't, I don't have it in me to pretend to be somebody else.

I have too many things that I'm juggling in my life to then on top of that become an Academy Award-winning actor. Not to mention just like the anxiety and mental stress of all of that. And then to have that experience where I almost got fired for it, literally. And what I learned was a hard lesson to learn, but within six months after that happened, and the more that I was my professional self, the more people that I attracted.

Who loved my professional self. And it was this huge enlightening Brandon for me, where I thought I don't need to be everybody's cup of tea. I want to be someone's flute of champagne. And so, yeah, there are gonna be a lot of people that do not like the professional Lexi. And real talk, I love that for them. Be blessed, beloved. But there are a lot of people who also like me and see my value and see my worth. And I'm just gonna.

continue attracting those people. And for the people that don't like it, please show yourself quickly so I don't put in effort because you don't have to like me. I tell people that you don't have to like me. My goal in life is not to have everyone like me. My goal in life is to find the people that want to love me and want to ride for me and want to support me and know the value that I can bring to them so I can support them. And so yeah, I

I am no longer trying to find, book, or be part of money that doesn't want me there. Y'all can keep it. Yeah. Mm. And the reality is that's a fact. And in people either w will admit it or not, but it's impossible to get everybody to like you. It is a lost cause. And so

You know, lean in, be yourself and lean into the people who appreciate what you are and give them your energy. I think that's brilliant. I think another area I want to, you know, kind of bring up is social media, right? And and I was guilty of this. I was someone who I'm I'm Mr. I'm not on social media. I'm living my life. I don't feel the need to put my life out there. I you know, my resume speaks for itself. Yada, yada, yada. And I had to learn the hard way that.

is actually important, right? You know, you're on the stage performing, but in many ways, the way that you present yourself on social media creates a lot of opportunity. and that's increasingly true. And a lot of the folks I would imagine in our audience have kind of shied away, right? 'Cause they got the corporate gig and and and they're they're making their money and they may be underinvested in building this personal brand outside of their their platform.

You have been someone who I've been inspired by in the way that you show up consistently on social media, you've built a substantial following, you've been authentic in how you approached it. And more importantly, you know, I would argue you've created again a independent platform that allows you to create opportunities for yourself outside of the great work you do right in your your corporate job. What would you say to people who really struggle with this?

You know, it could be the systems aspect and staying consistent. It could be the I don't know how to feel comfortable putting my my you know, my business out there. There's a lot of reasons why people kinda, you know, don't really invest in it. What would be your your philosophy and what would you tell someone who's in that situation?

I think you're leaving a lot of money on the table. And that's a hard truth to hear. And if that's what you want, I want that for you. You're leaving a lot of money on the table. Cause I would even take it a step back. I think social media, especially LinkedIn in a corporate career, whether or not you ever get on a stage, it makes you more valuable. People, the higher you get in your career, and you know this, you don't you don't put in a resume in a portal.

Someone says, call Brandon. Right? And so, first and foremost, forget speaking. If you are building a corporate career, you need to have a presence on LinkedIn and you need to have an opinion. Opinions matter. But like we said before, you have to get comfortable with the fact that some people will not like your opinion. I have known that I have lost job opportunities over my LinkedIn.

Think my LinkedIn is that egregious. I could be wrong, but I don't think it's that crazy. I don't think I say anything controversial. I think I say the thing that no one says out loud, but tomato tomato. And it's okay. I'm okay with that. Because again, I am really rooted in this idea of I do not have to be everyone's cup of tea. And I think that.

A lot of people in the corporate space, they're very scared of that. You know, you hear, don't burn every bridge. I'm not saying that I blow up bridges, but what I'm saying is that when it comes to my character, it comes to my values, this is who I am in every space. And if you don't like that, then we don't have to work together. So you have to be comfortable with someone on LinkedIn seeing your posts and whether or not they tell you, they're like, I disagree with this.

And I think that if you don't leverage your LinkedIn, you are losing a lot of money because opinions matter. And I will say that the number of times that, to my knowledge, I have lost an opportunity because of my social media is much smaller than the number of times I have gained monetary opportunities because of social media. So life is a risk, and I think life is a risk worth taking.

And you have to decide the risk that you want to have. But you are losing a lot of money, whether you are just doing it for your corporate brand. But if you want to be a high-paying speaker, you have to have it. Because remember, most speakers, we get paid not because we send our speaker reel to a lot of people, because someone in the audience saw us and said, book them. So if I have a speaking engagement tomorrow and it's an audience of 2,000 people.

That is 2,000 possible people that'll think, hmm, I would love to book her at my company. But of those 2,000 people, maybe three have the power to actually make it happen. But I speak for an hour and then it's done.

So that that's it. It's a very short-term marketing campaign, right? So if I want to book more, I have to continue to tell people that I'm not new to this. And so I use LinkedIn to tell stories and the number of speaking engagements I've gotten because people were like, yo, that post was hilarious, or that post resonated so much. I would love to talk to you about how we can talk about that specific thing at this function. So that's how I use LinkedIn.

To say, hey, I'm only gonna be on stage for an hour and then it's over. So how do I continue my billboard marketing? Right? and when you speak, you don't speak every day. Could you imagine doing like four one hour speaking engagements for like seven days a week? That's crazy. So I may have I average a keynote like every 60 days, just because it takes a lot out of me. So that's 59 days.

that I have to figure out how am I gonna get booked for my next thing? How is my team gonna book me for my next thing? And that's how I use LinkedIn. But again, regardless of how you are using it or why you are using it, if you are not using these free spaces that you put yourself on, you are losing a lot of money. Hmm. Tell us a little bit around your advice for someone who's trying to break through and like you mentioned this opinion idea and and

they they want to experiment with it. What exercise would you recommend to someone to to take that first step, writing that first LinkedIn post that fits in that lane of not being generic, right? Doesn't mean anything. It's just a big nothing burger to something that people feel.

one, just do it. Do it. there are plenty of LinkedIn posts that I write that in my opinion get very small likes or that kind of thing. And there are plenty that get a lot of likes and a lot of engagement. that's all algorithm type stuff, but I think the first step is to do it and play with it. Fun fact, you can erase anything you write.

There have been many times where I've written something and then six hours later, I'm like, this don't stay right in my spirit. I'm gonna delete that. Right. but you need to start somewhere. And as you start, I also think find people in your network. If you know somebody that has a a decent presence on LinkedIn, feel free to reach out and say, you know me a little bit. Do you think that this is, is this too much for me? And that kind of thing. And people are generous with their time.

The number of people that I reach out to to ask random questions to, and the number that respond is crazy. I mean, so people are very generous of their time because they want to see you succeed because you are their flute of champagne. but the best thing to do is start. Also, what I did is that I remember during my pregnancy, I was so sick and I couldn't, I couldn't think about LinkedIn. I couldn't think about speaking. I was like, I'm trying to survive, right? And what I started doing was those moments.

That I thought about a story that I wanted to write on LinkedIn, I would write it in a Google Doc and I never posted it. And then I had the baby. I remember six, seven weeks after the baby, I was still in postpartum, but I was like, okay, I'm coming out of the haze. I can think. And I remember I went back to that document. And over a nine and a half month pregnancy, I had like 10 to 15 stories that I was like, this is interesting. And I started going through the stories. And you know.

Dating some, taking some things out. And then I remember like this is two months into parental leave. I just started posting them. And these were pre, you know, pre-written over a nine month period. pregnant and hormonal and and you know, just not in my right mind a hundred percent. But I just started posting them. You know, I made edits and then I posted it and I was like, what's gonna happen? And fun fact, I had the most engagement in my LinkedIn of all time.

with those posts. So if you're not ready to post yet, put the story someplace and come back to the story. But you're gonna have to post at some point, unfortunately. So post and close your eyes and pray about it. But yeah. Get busy. I love it. Yeah, just get busy. a lot of folks here, they feel uncertain about the future. They feel uncertain about the stability in their current situation.

Ownership is calling them, but they they're kind of in a place where it's gonna take some calculated risk, right? And you're an example of someone who has a history and a track record of building something outside of the platform you're already successful in, but you're not fully dependent on it. And if something were to happen, you'd be able to hit the gas on what you already have going on. What would you what would you like reflect on in this day, in this age, this time that we're in today where things feel so crazy?

What words would you leave the audience with in terms of, you know, how to think about what's outside of their control and what's in their control and what you think everyone should be thinking about at this point?

Yeah, with everything that is with everything right now in this world that is so much out of our control, the only control is the only person that's gonna save you is you.

So what are you doing to save you? And why are you afraid to do things that might upset other people who are not going to save you?

Do what you need to do to save you. And the people that support it, they will find it and they will help save you. But I think we have a lot of people, Britt, who look at this corporate capitalism as like, well, I don't want to offend them. I'm not saying offend people on purpose. Like don't go to the work and call people out their name. But I am saying that with this craziness of the world and this uncertainty and instability, the only

They're not gonna pay your bills if you get laid off. The only person that's gonna save you is you. So do the thing that aligns to your character and aligns to your values, but start the thing so you can build something to save you. Cause they're not, they're not building it, beloved. You're not doing it. Yeah.

Excellent words. What a way to close it out. Lexi, thank you so much for taking the time out of your busy schedule, babies, family, on the court, off-the-court activities to literally give a masterclass in this public speaking game. We really appreciate you as always. thank you so much for joining the Owner Mode Summit. Audience, give Lexi B a virtual round of applause. and with that, Lexi, we're gonna go ahead and close out. Thank you again so much. Talk to you soon.