Speaking Engagements and Other Ways of Making a Living

I began the day by reading this article about trying to make a life as a writer/performer when one has disabilities.  I mention it here because a lot of the ideas are good ones for all of us, regardless of our abilities.  And even for those of us who have no disability of any kind (do such people exist?), we will all age, and we will all face some element of losing ability as we age.

Yesterday I spent a lovely afternoon with friends whom I first met when we were colleagues at the Art Institute of Ft. Lauderdale.  Through the years that we've known each other, we've talked about other ways to make a living:  writing, food truck, selling quilts, teaching, leading retreats/conferences.

Yesterday one of them told me about another colleague who has just spent $7,000 to have her book published.  She's also trying to launch a business where she's got speaking engagements at conferences/gatherings and leading corporate team building events.  I wondered two things:  how long will it take her to make back her $7,000?  And are there enough week-ends in the year to go to conferences to make enough money so that one could quit one's day job?

I'm guessing that if we're not the Elizabeth Gilberts of the world, we might make $5,000 to $7,000 per speaking engagement at most, and maybe we'd have our travel costs and hotel/food costs covered too.  That's a lot of engagements needed to come up with the mortgage payment, the living expenses, and the health insurance that the paycheck from one's day job would cover.

In addition to the money, there's the matter of attention span.  There are very few things that I love doing enough to do for 8 to 10 hours a day.  Fourteen years ago I was making a lot of baby quilts--it was one of those times when it seemed like everyone I knew was having babies.  My cousin's wife told me how much her friends had loved the baby quilt I made and how it wasn't like anything else out there.  She suggested that she had many friends who would buy them and suggested that I start a business.  She even thought she could drum up enough interest that I could leave teaching behind and devote myself to quilting.

I did some calculations of how many quilts I'd need to make to have enough to sell to support myself.  I didn't even need to take the next step to calculate how much fabric I would need to buy.  I knew that I would need to be making quilts for at least 12 hours every day, including Saturdays and Sundays, to make the equivalent of my teacher's salary.  Much as I love fabric arts, I don't want to quilt 12 hours every day.

It will be interesting to see what paths unfold for my colleague--I do wish her well, but I don't envy her.