Considered by companies in the sector to be the most expensive speaker in the country, businessman Flávio Augusto da Silva, founder of the Wise Up chain of English schools, sees the asking price as a market problem. It’s R$590,000 for an hour of presentation. If the entrepreneur wants an additional 60 minutes of question and answer session with the public, it will cost him an additional R$150,000. The total is R$740,000.
“I have a very limited conference program, due to my intense business commitments in Brazil and abroad. I have thousands of employees and more than 700 thousand active clients in my companies. The demand for conferences is great and I like to give my contribution to businessmen. The way I use to select is to regulate prices”, he says.
Very popular among entrepreneurs, he says he plans to participate in ten events in 2025. He will end the year with 18. To reduce the number, he will adjust the price for 2026: the conference will cost R$1 million.
Flávio Augusto, also creator of the content platform Geração de Valor, is one of the most visible faces of the speaking market heating up in the country.
There is no association or union for the category nor a reliable number for this sector. But the companies heard by Leaf estimates that around 300,000 business conferences take place every 12 months. There are also no concrete statistics on speakers.
“It’s a constantly growing market. This year I sold around 2,000 conferences,” says Diego Trávez, CEO of DMT, one of the country’s leading agency agencies.
Between 2023 and 2024, for example, it is estimated that this sector will have grown by around 40% and that the pace will have been maintained in 2025. It is a perfect storm of companies that reserve an increasing budget for corporate events and agencies that offer speakers in the most varied price ranges.
“A quarter of the talks I give are pro bono (for free), for entities I volunteer with or seek to support. The daily requests (to attend events) my office receives are between six and nine,” says philosopher, professor and writer Mario Sergio Cortella.
The consensus among businesses that host events or arrange speakers is that it is the most in-demand name in the country. “Almost his entire agenda for 2026 is already full,” says Lucas Lopes, CEO of Motiveação Palestras.
Although he claims that the price varies depending on the event and occasion, Cortella informs that he charges on average around R$70,000.
“There is a significant double change in the corporate conference market. A reduction in national events that brought together several speakers and an increase in the number of people who position themselves as prepared speakers in the field of religion, religiosity, spirituality, quality of life and overall health, especially mental. This has multiplied the offer”, adds Cortella.
“I receive more than 100 registration requests from new speakers per month. I know speakers who give more than 200 conferences per year. Professional speakers see this life as a career and invest in it. They prospect, make promotional videos, pay for advertisements. As if it were a bakery”, says Dennis Penna, founder of Polo Palestras.
It’s a market with many options because the reasons to talk are different. There are those who make it a career and there are those who use it as personal marketing for their business or to report experiences in the financial or political world. Prices can vary from R$740,000 for Flávio Augusto to R$1,000 for beginners.
“If we think about this whole range that exists, I would say that the general average of a conference, if we put everyone in the same basket, is between R$25,000 and R$30,000,” estimates Penna.
Someone can be a speaker because they believe it is a calling. Silvio Pacheco, 50, had worked as a truck driver for 13 years and was going through an existential crisis. His wife was depressed and he didn’t see his two daughters grow up. As his friends said, he spoke well, knew how to express himself, he dropped everything to try his hand at being an orator.
“My speech is motivating. I talk about the harms of poor communication in businesses. My first event was in 2022 and it has been a journey. You have to give in. I have taken several courses,” he says.
Thirteen years later, he claims to have already received R$50,000 for an event.
For businessmen and speakers, the rise of the sector is a phenomenon of this century. Companies reduced their funds to finance theoretical courses for their employees and began to focus on practical development programs. Lectures are one of them.
“It has to do with communication. Those who master communication, storytelling, can speak. That is why it is fundamental to discern who is a stage speaker (just an exhibitionist) and who has content and has been trained to do it. There are many more speakers who do not earn money and are available on the market than those who actually deliver something of quality”, says Leandro Guissoni, speaker, professor at FGV (Fundação Getúlio Vargas) and specialist in digital disruption.
Motiveação is one of those that tries to train professionals and offers a course called Speaker’s MBA. Others simply register speakers and offer them if there is an opportunity.
When recruiting, the company may have a specific request or a more generic profile. You will then receive course options corresponding to the description, always within the available budget.
“I would say that 30% ask for a more well-known speaker, but 70% talk more about the characteristics they are looking for. We select and indicate some possibilities. But the truth is that there are R$5,000 speakers who give as good a speech as others who charge R$50,000,” says Lopes.
There is also what entrepreneurs in the sector call a “supertrend” in this market: the hiring of big international names. “We have created a space just for this. (Large) companies want to innovate and this is happening with international names,” explains Trávez, of the DMT agency.
The amount charged by foreign celebrities is a taboo subject. Event organizers claim that, in cases like that of North American President Barack Obama (2009-2017) or F1 driver Lewis Hamilton, the necessary investment reaches 10 million US dollars (54.4 million reais in current value).
For players in the field, the growth of the market is perhaps linked to the awareness that speaking also means entertaining the public. And whoever succeeds will be in greater demand. And charge more.
“The higher fees are due to the fact that entrepreneurs sell tickets and sponsorships more easily thanks to my presence. In comparison, these fees are still lower than those of many country singers and artists who perform throughout Brazil. The more tickets and popularity the artist has, the higher his fees. This is how the entertainment market works. The logic is exactly the same”, concludes Flávio Augusto.
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