I’ve been an international public speaker since 1994.  So I found it so amusing recently when someone posted that I earn $1000 a lecture plus a nice hotel.  Wow, so I could potentially be earning $365,000 a year at that rate.  Goodness, I could buy my own hotel!   So how true is the fantasy that as an autistic person working as a public speaker that I might live a decadent life of luxury?

I talk locally for Community Houses where members of the community can attend one of my 2 hour talks for $2 per person with half of that going to the Community House.  I’ve done these for as few as a dozen parents and as many as 150 people.  Sometimes I give presentations for free.

For registered charities I have a sliding scale which is anywhere from $150 down.  Hosts will usually charge attendees up to $5 each with which to cover their costs.  I get paid the same amount whether they get 50 or 250 attendees.  I also put my artworks out at my lectures and donate 1/3rd of all takings from art sales to the hosting organisation.    So they usually find my lectures work as fundraisers for their charity.  From my side, after 1-2 hours driving and 2 hours presenting, that’s $50 an hour which sounds pretty good.  But employment as a public speaker is highly intermittent.  You might do one talk a week, one a month or even only one every 2-3 months.  So whatever you earn gets spread across the living expenses for that duration.  So if I do a lecture that’s $150 income that may be my only income from public speaking on which to live for anywhere from 30-60 days.  That’s between $1.60 and $5 a day.  That’s less than the cost of an average fish and chip dinner.

At the other end of the scale I charge funded organisations $250 for the same amount of time.  They also earn from selling my artwork and may (or may not) charge a small fee for entry (usually $2-$5) or put a donation box for people to drop coins into which they use to help pay themselves back.  With 1-3 months between lecture bookings, the $250 they pay me sustains me at a better rate of around $2.70-$8 per day.  I could at least by a bag of rice for that and a fish and chip take away.

Once a year I also travel the 10,000 miles to the UK where I charge almost 3 times this amount, or to the USA where I charge four times this amount.

This travel generally means at least 2-3 weeks away from home from my husband (unless he paid for his own ticket and traveled with me) and away from the daily life this routine junkie and agoraphobe thrives on.  The flights take around 16-26 hours of flying time in economy class on airplanes which  usually mess up my GF/CF meal so about 1/3rd of my flights I eat the peanuts or apples and miss meals until I arrive.  I sleep sitting up and my feet and hands go numb but I try and wake and move them to avoid DVT.   It’s very tough on knee and hip joints to sit in a cramped seat for 16-26 hours so by the time I arrive I usually have pain in one of my knees (it aggravates a knee I injured in my teens when I was in a car accident).  The bugs of people on the plane circulate for 16-26 hours through the air conditioning system so its an ideal way to arrive with a cold or flu at the destination.  For a while I couldn’t fly due to primary immune deficiencies, but since (the very expensive) treatment for them I can fight the bugs I catch now.  And I know there are those in mundane full time low or moderately paid jobs who’d love to swap places with me.  And you know what?  When I’m up there in the air I so wish I could swap places with them so if anyone wants to give me full time mainstream job with pay at even basic award wages, I’d love to know ;-)  Whilst I’m waiting, I’ll continue to plod on with whatever intermittent work self employment can bring.

On the way to the USA from Australia there is no stop over so I arrive jet lagged as my body is working on a completely different time zone.  This means digestive disturbance and loose stools if not diarrhea and cramping are common with jet lag as is inability to sleep in what is night where you’ve arrived but day where you’ve come from.  So I have to take over the counter sleeping tablets to get a night’s sleep.   Its hard to eat because all the meal times are completely out of sync with my body clock.  I’m expecting to sleep when I’m meant to have lunch and expected to have lunch when my body thinks its 3am in the morning.

On arrival I’m often off on a domestic flight from LA to whichever state and city has booked me which can be another 3-6 hours flying.  Even though I’m jet lagged I have to meet and greet and deliver a good lecture.  For this the host’s organisation has paid $1000 and provided me with a hotel overnight.

The Americans are pretty good.  Although I’ve stayed at the hosts house sometimes, the hospitality has been great.  Other times I’ve stayed in quaint bed and breakfasts but generally the Americans seem too embarrassed to put me in anything too dodgy.  But there’s no expensive hotels, in fact I explain that I’m intimidated by lush hotels, don’t like the over service in them and request something middle of the road.   My hosts also buy me fennel tea which helps my stomach through the jet lag and pick me up some GF/CF cereal and rice milk so I can have a breakfast.

When I do lectures in the USA I’m usually booked by up to 4 different states so each host shares a percentage of the cost of my international flight (economy is $2500).  So this may cost them around $750 each on top of the $1000 speaker’s fee they each pay and they also have to get their own venue which some get for free but others pay for.  They recoup these costs by selling my art prints and art cards, for which they earn 30% of all takings, from selling my books, which they get on sale-or-return basis (so no outlay) and earn around 30% on all sales.  They also charge participants usually as low an entry as they can afford and still pay back their costs so usually people pay around $10-$15 to come to one of my two hour lectures in the US, about the same cost as a ticket to a movie.   I get paid the same whether 50 people or 500 people attend and the hosts don’t pay me until after the lecture so they are never out of pocket.

In the UK no hosts contribute directly to the cost of my flights at all.  I pay for my own international flights to the UK (around $2500) and pay myself back out of my lecture fees.  The hosts pay around $700 per lecture.  I  break the 26 hour flight with a stopover in Singapore which I pay for.  That way I arrive in slightly better shape which is just as well because my UK tour schedules are pretty grueling.  So I’m generally out of pocket by about $2750 (Singapore hotel and taxis plus international flight) by the time I arrive in the UK.  So it takes several lectures before I break even.

The UK hosts also pay for one night’s accommodation each.  So how luxurious does it get?

In Edinburgh in 2008, for example, we stayed in a Best Western hotel, something like a Novotel.  They’re sort of a backpacker’s hotel.  It had no parking so we parked on the street with a metre and had to track the time or we’d get fined.  The room was all grey and white, quite like an office, very nondescript and incredibly tiny.  Just enough space for the bed and then a 3 foot space before being in the fluorescent lit all white bathroom with its plastic rinsing cups.  The bed had one thin blanket and we were cold so we tried to find a porter and finally did.  He said they had no spare blankets but opened an unoccupied room and got us one from a spare bed. The room had a plastic kettle, tea and coffee sachets, long-life milk samples and polystyrene cups.  Breakfast was in the bar with the TV going and they couldn’t provide GF/CF so I brought my own food.

During UK tours around 70% of my accommodation is in a budget chain hotels; Best Western, Novotel or, if we’re lucky, a Holiday Inn.   The rest is Bed and Breakfast accommodation in small family run houses which can be anywhere from like staying in your Aunty’s spare bedroom to being a delightful affordable room in a large farm house.  I don’t find these ‘horrible’.  I’ve done homelessness in my teens and 20s, that’s ‘horrible’.  By comparison, yes, I live a life of luxury.

At the end of the tour I fly home having covered the cost of my flight, my meals, my hotel room in Singapore each way and having seen many motorways and Chinese restaurants (they sell GF/CF dinners).  After paying all costs I will have earned a bit of income to pay a few bills and expenses, buy some art materials, pay for my diet.  I go through jet lag again readjusting at the other end.  After about a week my bowels and sleep and eating return to normal and I get back into my much valued routine.

There’s no complaining as, at least it’s work.  Unlike the 80-90% of adults on the autism spectrum who are unemployed and receiving Government benefits, I could apply for the same but always felt that if I could support myself in any other way that I’d choose not to.  As someone with autism underpinned by meaning deafness, context blindness, face blindness, information processing tumble, co-morbid mood, anxiety and compulsive disorders and managing gut, immune, metabolic disorders, mainstream employment is out of my league so I consider myself abundantly lucky to have whatever employment I have.  And my audience seem to appreciate my work.

Ah, the life of luxury 🙂

Donna Williams *)

http://www.donnawilliams.net

http://www.aspinauts.com