Disclaimer: the following is not an apology for Hillary Clinton’s Goldman Sachs speeches. She doesn’t need one. Rather, this diary is intended to deliver some insight into how a similar arrangement might play out, in the hopes of redirecting many of the assumptions, accusations and explanations toward a more reality-based appraisal of Secretary Clinton’s speaking career.
Let’s say you’re a meeting planner. You’re doing contract work for, let’s say, Goldberg Max, an investment bank in Manhattan with a rich history of providing complex financial services to corporations, nonprofits and governments all over the world. This next event they want you to do is a humdinger: a partner appreciation conference at a PGA-rated five-diamond golf resort & spa, scheduled for about a year from now. The project manager, who reports to the VP, Sales & Marketing, is working to achieve two simple objectives that are common to all events of this scale: to fill the resort with top level buyers of her company’s services, and also to make the event so appealing to ancillary services providers — insurers, staffing services and the like — that they will be unable to resist the opportunity to sponsor speakers and activities at the conference, thereby relaxing the impact this event is going to have on her company’s bottom line. She gives you a budget, and everything is really top drawer: spa treatments, golf, F & B — nobody is to pay for anything out of pocket. You are given full license to be ‘innovative’ — which means that you may serve any starch and veg you like with the inevitable steak-n-seafood combo.
Among all the anticipated costs, your entertainment line is massive: $750,000, which is to cover three days of speakers and performers. Two must be keynoters, which is to say that she expects very, very well-known power players in the worlds of government, business or entertainment — the kinds of people whose names everybody knows. You let her know that you couldn’t possibly deliver the kind of lineup she wants for less than 850K. After a little back and forth, you get 785, which leaves you plenty of breathing room to book a top-flight ‘80s pop star with millennial appeal — Cyndi Lauper or Joan Jett or the like — for the opening night party.
Delighted at the latitude you’ve been given to plan a three-day series of perfect parties, you assemble a list. For each slot on your schedule, you deliver eight to ten names to the PM. She scratches some off — too controversial, too risque, she’s just never understood the appeal — and then adds several of her own. Some speakers are going to be straight-up entertainment — actors and athletes; some are going to be inspirational or vaguely spiritual (these are great for early afternoon, when everyone’s attention is flagging and they’d really rather be playing golf.) The political and business figures are always selected for their ability to deliver insider information about critical moments in their professional lives. Your very tip-top names are reserved for after dinner the evening of the first day, and for luncheon on the third, shortly before everyone heads to the airport — like every good meeting planner, you save the best for last, so your attendees don’t bail on your lovely conference until they’ve been well-macerated in every last expensive minute of your client’s munificence.
At the top of your list, naturally, is former First Lady, Secretary of State and Senator Fillaree Claxton. No surprise there: since leaving State for embark on her lucrative career as a speaker, she’s the most desired, admired and required celebrity speaker on the circuit — excepting, of course, her husband Dill. Your PM highlights Claxton’s name in orange: must have. You can book her for any day and time she’s available — just get her. Sure, you’ve got a couple ex-presidents, a half-dozen CEOs, three Nobel prize winners and a member of the royal family on your A list — but there is only one name at the top of everybody’s list, and that’s Mrs. Claxton.
You call your occasional best pal, a booking agent by the name of Joanne1, and together you go over your list. Joanne ballparks your speakers for you, and together you begin editing down the list — Joanne has a pretty good idea what each name costs walking in the door, and what it’ll take to get them to rearrange their schedules. The Supreme Court Justices that your PM added to the list are no-gos. They’re super-cheap, and they usually bank their nominal honoraria to charities. But they love law school commencements and nonprofits, and they avoid corporates. Joanne steers you away from a B-list (former A-list) actor: she doesn’t tell you what bad behavior he’s known to indulge in; she just tells you to call so-and-so at the National Listeriosis Association and have her fill you in. That’s all you need to know.
Claxton is problematic: Her ‘customary’ fee2 is so high — up to 350K — that she’ll blow up your brilliant idea to have Annie Lennox and Dave Stewart reunite (again) for the closing night party. But Joanne knows that Claxton is doing a gig that week just a couple hours’ flight away — if you agree to pick up the cost of a private jet3 (12K) to or from the next engagement, and throw in a soft promise of two or three more gigs in the future, you might get her people down to 250 or so. Sounds good to you — the Eurythmics reunion might be back on after all! — so you tell her to put together an offer4: $225,000 fee, private jet travel from her home city and back plus the leg to her second gig, and right of first refusal to speak at future events. She emails the PDF over to you; you sign it and email it back.
The next morning, Joanne has the response: Claxton’s office advises that the Secretary is currently unavailable for the day and time you’d most prefer: she’s soft-booked to headline the annual fundraising gala for the American Foundation for Salmonella Research. Your other time slot is also problematic: she’s scheduled to depart on personal vacation for two weeks. Naturally, you understand that what they really mean is, ‘try again.’ You tell Joanne to send over a revised offer letter: 265K. Three hours later you have your answer: Claxton’s office will advise the Salmonella people that she is unable to attend their event. Relieved, you tell Joanne that she can now axe Jessica Simpson from the list. (Joanne wastes no time in pitching Simpson to the Salmonella group….)
Claxton herself probably knows nothing about this schedule change until the final contract is presented for her signature a week or so later. Since it wasn’t firm, she’s never known about the Salmonella thing, except maybe as a vague shadow on her calendar, so she has no opportunity to regret not headlining such a meaningful event. Her office sends, via Joanne, their rider5. Burbling with delight, you proceed with the rest of your entertainer wish list. Once you have settled on an entertainment bill for the entire three-day conference, you begin farming out projects to subsidiary event planners and production managers who will handle on-site details for each activity at the conference.
On the afternoon of her speech, Claxton arrives at the venue, accompanied by her personal assistant. She takes an early dinner6 in a suite you’ve reserved (she won’t spend the night: her next day’s gig is scheduled for lunch time and Claxton, a true professional7, never risks being late.) She declines a walk-through before the event begins, and appears in the backstage Green Room exactly on time for her call, fifteen minutes before she’s scheduled to step onstage. Your PM’s CEO, nervous at the prospect of introducing such an important public figure, goes long on his intro, a common gaffe which Claxton handles with grace and good humor, giving him a reassuringly familiar squeeze as they exchange places at the podium. As she begins her anodyne8 45-minute speech, hundreds of personal devices glow in the dim auditorium even though recording of any kind is strictly forbidden per the terms of her rider. After a brief Q & A, Claxton remains backstage for 15 minutes while top-level business partners and sponsors pose for brief, sweaty handshakes.
After discretely sanitizing, she shares a few moments of banal conversation9 with your client’s CEO before her assistant yanks her out of the building and she flies off to her next six-figure gig. You know none of this: if there were a crisis, you might get a call from the production manager downstairs. But you don’t; everything proceeds smoothly while you’re in your suite, donning your favorite leather fetish collar and spiking your temporarily purple hair as you prepare for the Joan Jett concert you booked for the opening night after-party.
1. There are dozens of Joannes in the celebrity speaker business. They spend every hour of their lives on the phone, either cold-calling prospective booking clients, or calling speakers and/or their representatives, trying to get bios, contact info and ballpark fees, plus some idea of what the speakers’ riders might look like, so they can market the speakers to their clients. Some speakers work exclusively with one agent. Others field offers through their assistants. The most charming are the speakers who hear of your interest in inviting them to your event, and call you themselves to pitch their services. The most annoying are the speakers who get wind of your interest and call you every day to pitch their services.
2. ‘Customary fee’ is rather like the sticker price on a new car. Corporate and association buyers are accustomed to getting soaked, because they know everybody else knows they have the budgets to pay full price, but they will move mountains to shave a few percentage points off of a fee. Bookers are in constant communication with each other, trying to figure out how to back-to-back a speaker so they get two speeches for the price of one, or work ‘charitable’ content into their event so the speaker will maybe give them a break on the fee. Nonprofits and educational bookers will almost always get drastically lower fees than corporates and associations.
3. Travel depends on the notoriety of the speaker. Minor celebs can travel without generating interest or attention; major celebrities like Claxton have to fly First Class or private jet. It’s not the luxury they’re after (not that it’s not a perk); it’s the privacy. Imagine for a moment what you might say to Sarah Palin if she happened to sit next to you in coach. That’s why people like Claxton prefer more exclusive environments.
4. Most speakers that I’ve worked with prefer not to discuss financial arrangements in concrete terms. They prefer to receive offers from clients via agents, and then, if the offer isn’t what they expect, they decline in the most inoffensive terms possible. If they tell you they have a soft booking, it means they can cancel if the money is right. Vacations can be adjusted; schedules can be rearranged. But once a contract is signed, the speaker is yours. On the other hand, if sponsorships don’t materialize or your board has second thoughts, a signed contract is a monstrous burden. Contracts often include terrifying cancellation penalties. I have had to pay speakers 20K or more not to show up.
5. Riders rarely include things like ‘a bowl full of m&ms with the brown ones taken out.’ That kind of thing is done by bands and performers who want to make sure you actually read and executed the rider. If they enter their Green Room and spy brown m&ms, then they will legitimately question the sound equipment and instrument rentals you provided for their performance. What’s more common is ‘no photography, video or audio recording’ and ‘one bottle of domestic bottled water to be placed onstage for the speaker’s use during her speech.’ Riders will also specify what the speaker will and will not do: no photo-ops, or no Q&A, or the like.
6. Most speakers, especially women, don’t eat with the guests. They don’t want to be seen or photographed with food in their mouths.
7. I have seen speakers behave shabbily onstage, but I have never had a speaker behave shabbily to a client. Speakers always behave with kindness, warmth, and genuine concern for the success of the event. If they don’t, they develop a reputation. What they do onstage may not be quite what clients had in mind: one speaker I saw, engaged to speak at a corporate travel conference, launched into an extended appreciation of the gay porn his in-room entertainment feed delivered to him. I thought it was hilarious. Many of the other attendees, not so much. Another speaker invited a random attendee onstage and then proceeded to sexually harass her in front of 4000 people. But he was super nice backstage.
8. It would be imprudent for any speaker to aggressively challenge her audience — not simply because of the money, but because not all the people in the room need to be challenged. Not all bankers are evil; also, you catch more flies with honey. ‘Bringing them in from the wilderness’ is a term I’ve used to coach employees who’ve exceeded their scope of action or violated standards of behavior. Anyway, they don’t hire speakers like Claxton to deliver tough messages — they hire her to give her not very controversial views on public affairs and tell a few mildly amusing insider-ish stories about life in the headlines. Keep in mind that, at the time Claxton makes this speech, she’s a private citizen. Neither an official nor a candidate, she is simply an expensive hireling with a job to do. And that job is not to admonish or shame her audience; that job is to make them feel really good about being trapped in that ballroom, waiting for the signal to hop on the shuttles to the Joan Jett concert.
9. Anyone who thinks that Claxton, or anybody else, might have time before, during or after one of these speeches to plot the takeover of the global economy or even deliver calming assurances about future regulatory activities, doesn’t understand the nature of the business. There is simple no time, no privacy, no opportunity. There are dozens of people hanging around, trying to act cool about being this close to you-know-who; there is a line of major donors, top customers, star employees or whatever, standing by for their personal photo op; the speaker always has somewhere else to be: travel takes up an enormous amount of time, and there are constant demands for the speaker’s attention. If Claxton wanted to plot or double-deal or pal around with her bankster buddies, she could just schedule a private at-home meeting. It’d be much comfier, much easier, much less risky and much more likely to result in an actionable scheme.
