Chapter 15 My Speaking Career

Here's an example of how useful it is to have a smart friend. When I was a few years into my cartooning career, a Canadian woman called and asked if I would give a speech to an organization of petroleum engineers in Calgary. I said I didn't do that sort of work, but she persisted, saying the organization had asked for me, specifically, and that there would be a healthy payment involved. I continued to balk because I had very little flexibility in my schedule. At that point, I was still working my full-time job at Pacific Bell and creating Dilbert before and after work, plus on weekends. Traveling to Canada just wasn't a practical option.

The Canadian woman suggested I give her a price for my services that would make it worthwhile for me. If my price was too high, at least she could take it back to her organization and say she tried. She made it sound as if I would be doing her a favor to come up with a price for something I didn't want to do.

But how does one come up with a price for giving a speech? I had no idea where to start. So I did what anyone in that situation would do: I sought out a friend who might have a template for this sort of thing.

At the time, Dilbert was syndicated by an organization within United Media, a large licensing and syndication business headquartered in New York City. I figured correctly that someone in that hierarchy would have experience with professional speaking. I called a Senior Vice President who had once been a bestselling author and had decades of experience that made him far more qualified than I was for this sort of topic.

I put the question to him: "What should I say is my price for speaking?" I told him that I would be perfectly happy to price myself out of the job. He said, "Ask for five thousand dollars. If they say no, you avoid a trip to Canada." I laughed at his suggestion, knowing that I wasn't worth that kind of money. But I had my plan. I practiced saying "five thousand dollars" until I thought I could say it without laughing. I called back my Canadian contact. That conversation went like this:

Canadian: "Did you come up with a price?"

Me: "Yes ... five thousand dollars."

Canadian: "Okay, and we'll also pay for your first-class travel and hotel."

I flew to Canada and gave a speech.

As time went by and Dilbert became more well-known, more speaking requests flowed in, often several per day. I raised my price to $10,000. The requests kept coming. I tried $15,000. The requests accelerated. By the time I got to $25,000, the speakers bureaus started to see me as a source of bigger commissions and advised me to raise my price to $35,000, then $45,000. The largest offer I ever turned down because of a scheduling conflict was $100,000 to speak for an hour on any topic I wanted.

All of this was possible because I had access to a smart friend who told me how to find the simple entry point into the speaking circuit. All I needed to do was overprice myself and see what happened. As simple as that sounds in retrospect, I doubt I would have taken that path on my own. I think I would have politely declined the invitation.

It's a cliché that who you know is helpful for success. What is less obvious is that you don't need to know CEOs and billionaires. Sometimes you just need a friend who knows different things than you do. And you can always find one of those.

Chapter 16  My Voice Problem Gets a Name

Six months after losing my voice back in 2005, I still didn't know what the source of the problem was. It was immensely frustrating. I don't mind a fair fight, but this invisible, nameless problem was kicking my ass, and I didn't even know which direction to punch back. I needed a name for my condition. I figured if I knew its name, that would lead me down the trail for a cure.

But how could I find the name for a condition that was unfamiliar to two ear-nose-throat doctors, two voice specialists, a psychologist, a neurologist, and my general practitioner? There was only one creature smarter than all those doctors put together: the Internet. (Yes, it's a creature, okay?)

I opened a Google search box and tried a variety of voice-related keywords. I found nothing useful. My searches were too broad. Then something interesting happened. It's a phenomenon that people in creative jobs experience often, but it might sound unfamiliar to everyone else. Suddenly, out of nowhere, two totally unrelated thoughts—separated by topic, time, and distance—came together in my head. For some reason, I had a spontaneous memory of the problem with my drawing hand that I had experienced several years earlier. In that case, I lost control of my pinky. Now I was losing control of my voice. Could the two problems be related?

I entered the search string "voice dystonia" because my hand problem was called a focal dystonia. Bingo. The search popped up a video of a patient who had something called spasmodic dysphonia, a condition in which the vocal cords clench involuntarily when making certain sounds. I played the video and recognized my exact voice pattern—broken words and clipped syllables—coming out of the patient in the video. Now I had its name: spasmodic dysphonia, which I discovered is often associated with other forms of dystonia. As I learned with further research, it's common for someone who has one type of dystonia to get another. (Luckily, it doesn't tend to progress beyond that.)

My secret assassin had a name, and now I knew it. It felt like a turning point.

I printed out a description of spasmodic dysphonia and took it to my doctor. He referred me back to one of my ear-nose-throat doctors, who in turn referred me to a doctor I hadn't yet seen in the Kaiser healthcare system. She turned out to be an expert in that exact condition. Within ten seconds of opening my mouth in her office, the doctor confirmed the diagnosis. I had a classic case.

"What's the cure?" I whispered.

"There is none," she replied.

But that isn't what I heard. The optimist in me translated the gloomy news as "Scott, you will be the first person in the world to be cured of spasmodic dysphonia." And I decided that after I cured myself, somehow, someway, I would spread the word to others. I wouldn't be satisfied simply escaping from my prison of silence; I was planning to escape, free the other inmates, shoot the warden, and burn down the prison.

Sometimes I get that way.