A big common misconception of becoming a motivational speaker is that a lot of people feel like if they have the right information, and have enough knowledge in any particular area they have a keynote speech. What I have learned is having knowledge and wisdom is part of being a great motivational speaker. How it is presented is every bit as important if not more important, than the information you present as a motivational speaker.
First, you must understand that you are not an information speaker but a motivational speaker. It doesn’t matter what your speech is about as much as how your speech touches people. How it is delivered and how you say it. Let me illustrate an important point about being in the motivational speaker business.
Did you ever see the documentary that came out about the Titanic a few years before the blockbuster movie did? The documentary was unbelievable. Someone had spent a lifetime of research, and found out every fact, detail, that involved that ship. This is new stuff that a lot of people hadn’t even heard before. It was an incredible two-hour documentary, but you havn’t heard of it and neither have I, and it didn’t make any money because no one really cared to see a documentary on the Titanic two or three years after that the Titanic movie comes out. Was the movie true in every sense of the facts, no. Did everything happen the way the movie said, no. The difference in the two films was that the Titantic movie won more Oscars than any movie in the history of cinema. There in lies the difference. Your keynote speech must be more than just a compilation of facts, or wisdom. It’s got to be so much more than that.hen you craft a motivational speech be thinking as you write it that your not doing a documentary right but a movie. In the end were in the entertainment business. It doesn’t matter what your speech is about because were in the entertainment business and if you’re not entertaining people, people could care less what you’re talking about.
Good points here, James.
Delivery trumps content every time!
Thanks for the Post!
Alan that’s great! I love that.
Gospel groups used to say “we ain’t here to entertain, we’re here to minister.” A mentor once said to a friend, “I must be getting ministered to; I sure ain’t entertained.”