#2- Decide what market and audience your message and expertise would fit best. If you had 30 minutes to speak on your best content and strategies what would your message be and who would your ideal audience be? Corporate full day training? Company executives? College students? World class athletes?

#3- Get competent help with your marketing.  Like any business, in your speaking career you have to market yourself and your small company which is YOU. The interesting thing about a career in speaking is that your product is you, your credibility and your message. If you have the world’s most important keynote speech but no one can find you then your message will not be heard, and you will not get paid. And then you will be out of the speaking business. It’s not enough to have a great message. Hire an expert who knows the speaking industry and how to get you maximum exposure with with the search engine and social media. Click here for my recommended Rock Star marketing specialist.

#4 Invest in your self by getting speaker training .

The best investment I ever made in getting my speaking career going was getting training from individuals or organizations who knew how to craft a keynote speech and all the delivery techniques. And then I invested thousands of hours in rehearsing in front of a microphone, a video camera and small no-fee audiences until my message was great! Click here for my speaker training course.

How much do great motivational speakers get paid?

Speaking fees paid to professional keynote speakers, whether motivational or not, vary based on the speaker’s skills, star power, and experience. Speaking fees for trained professional speakers range from $2,500 $35,000 per speech. Of course celebrities often demand fees from $50,000-$100,000. They are not always the most talented speakers on the stage but brand recognition can bring the crowds so they can demand higher speaking fees.

1-Learn from others! Always take notes and study the best speakers. With out being a critic observe their weak spots while being imitating their strengths.

2-Take risks in your keynote speech. Don’t be so predictable. Enter from the back of the room, or dress in a costume, use a shocking prop.

3-Disclose more in every keynote speech! Ok. Nobody likes this one. Rarely will anyone use this technique. Why? Because of our ego. We only want to be perceived as strong and superior. Share a weakness, failure or a fear and you just got booked for a return meeting.

4-Believe in yourself as a motivational speaker. You really can’t fake this one. Everyone in the audience knows if you have a presence about you. The perceive internally and know if you are confident in what you are about to share.

5-Honor your audience. Before you ever step up to speak make sure you’ve done your homework on how you can build up the crowd! Make warmth and kindness your greatest asset because it is. Having a great motivational speaking career will always be about love!

6-Get speaker training. The best athletes have coaches and continue to hone their craft. Always be working to improve and to take your speaking career to the next level.

Finally, Lincoln Steffens said:.…”The greatest picture is not yet painted, the greatest play isn’t written, the greatest poem is unsung”. Click here to kick start your speaking career today.

There are two types of motivation. Intrinsic motivation is the feeling of personal benefit or reward for doing something that seems worthwhile to the individual. People can fill this need by participating in activities that interest them, or because they enjoy it. Workers can also be intrinsically motivated by challenges, or when they overcome an obstacle or reach a goal.

The second type of motivation is extrinsic. This involves a person becoming involved in a task due to outside rewards, separate from their emotions. Extrinsic motivation can be given in the form of recognition (think “Employee of the Month”), promotions or raises.

Why should an employer know this?… Because an employee who feels rewarded for their work, will work harder, faster and produce more. Several studies show that productivity is directly correlated with pay, and that workers making twice as much as the starting rate of pay at a company were likely to double, and in some cases triple their output. Workers with more intrinsic incentives to work also reported being happier and feeling more secure with their jobs.

Employee satisfaction can be attained by fulfilling simple needs and wants of the workers. By setting difficult-but-attainable goals, the employee can gain rewards and a sense of accomplishment. All the while, the company benefits from having a more responsive work force that is faster, happier and more efficient.

By taking a few small steps and paying attention to the wants of their employees a company can maximize its gains and create harmony in the workplace.

Following are several great quotations that I hope you’ll find motivational. Copy and print the ones that motivate you most. Laminate them. Use them as motivational bookmarks. Post
them up on your job. Tape them to the ceiling at home and work. Carry them in your notebooks, purses, wallets, and in your car. Also work them into speeches for your motivational speaker jobs.

• “We become what we habitually contemplate.” — George William Russell, Irish Poet
• “Take charge of your thoughts. You can do what you will with them.” —Plato
• Be careful what you pretend to be because you are what you pretend to be.”  Vonnegut “Everything you can imagine is real.” Pablo Picasso“What we are is what we have thought for years.”  Gautama the Buddha

Let me offer you one self evaluation that will help you qualify yourself for the public speaking industry. The great English poet and artist William Blake said it best when he described the energy he felt as a writer: “Sparks emit from my fingertips, in anticipation of my day’s vocation.” That is it! Step one in making a decision to go after a public speaking job is passion. It’s as if you have a burning desire to become speaker. Do you remember the 60′s rock singer Janis Joplin? She not my favorite but one thing I do admire about Janis Joplin is — she had passion.  Her passion comes through in her songs. And when I listen to her stirring music, I hear someone who has set her soul on fire. There are many times when I am contemplating making a statement to an audience that may be a bit risky, and I glance down and see Janis’s picture in my notebook, and she literally encourages me, saying: Say it, man.  Go for it! Speak like it’s the last time you’re going to speak.  It may be the hundredth time you’ve said these things, but it’s the first time they’ve heard it.  So, go for it!

Janis= Passion. Passion,” contends Richard Chang, “is not a privilege of the fortunate few, it is a right and a power that we all possess.” Passion, then, is neither a gift nor a talent.  It is a choice, a decision. In my training course for speakers I help you identify your “Passion Point” in your presentations. Every great keynote speech must have one.  Practice and rehearse with the great passion and it will generate within you. Make it something you believe in, and you’ll be on fire every time and keep your audiences enthralled.

Careers in Public Speaking

One tip I want to pass on to anyone considering a motivational speaking career is this-Take Risks.Taking risks ensures originality.  Taking risks also ensures some fear.  The following poem stirs me to take risks.  It encourages me to play my own symphony in the performance hall of life.

Risk
To laugh is to risk appearing the fool.
To weep is to risk appearing sentimental.
To reach out for another is to risk exposing our true self.
To place your ideas and dreams before the crowd is to risk loss.
To love is to risk not being loved in return.
To live is to risk dying.
To hope is to risk despair.
To try at all is to risk failure.
But to risk we must!
Because the greatest hazard in life is to risk nothing—
The man and woman who risks nothing,  has nothing, does nothing,  is nothing. Author-Unknown

When I was first hired by AchieveGlobal, they flew me to Las Vegas for a five day certification program. The first three days were instructional.  The last two were spent actually doing a couple of forty-minute public speaking jobs in front of the leader and the group. While preparing for my Thursday presentation on Wednesday night, instead of simply doing my assignment, I risked it.

Wanting to impress everyone with my creativity, I went way out of bounds and came up with some wild exercises that I hoped would dazzle them all.  The next day, during my public speaking opportunity, I proudly unveiled my elaborate, intricate, complex exercise to the group!  Knighthood would not be far away!  And…It bombed! I’ll spare you the details (and spare myself the painful memories of dazed expressions, empty stares, and total silence)……It bombed! Never in my life had I been so humiliated.  Never had my ego been so blistered.  My boss, Kelli Lynn, quickly called for a break.  During that break, alone with Kelli Lynn, I did something I hadn’t done in years… I cried…just sat there…and cried. Turning to my manager, I began mumbling. “I blew it.  I was trying something new, and it bombed.  You’re probably regretting ever hiring me…” She interrupted my confession by handing me a brightly colored paper.  On it, written in bold neon letters were the words: Keep  on Taking Risks in your motivational speaking career!!! ]]> http://www.presentationfire.com/careers-in-public-speaking/feed 2 http://www.presentationfire.com/highest-paid-jobs http://www.presentationfire.com/highest-paid-jobs#comments Tue, 09 Dec 2008 16:58:00 +0000 Motivational Speaking Team http://presentationfire.com/?p=78 Motivational Speaking Courses-James Lloyd

If you can develop a motivational speech that will blow audiences away every time then you can be among the elite who earn high income and have one of the highest paid jobs in america.

I’ve been doing public speaking for audiences for over 30 years. I can vividly recall the “early
days” when I witnessed unspeakable horrors in motivational speaking. I actually saw audience members yawning, checking their watches, and even nodding! OUCH! There are few experiences in life more humbling than to be baring your soul to the throngs, only to be ignored in return. Thus, I made a resolute pact with myself three decades ago: “I want to have one of the highest paid jobs so…I will not be a boring speaker…Period!” Thus, I graciously hand over the following “highest paid jobs fuel tips.” These are the logs tossed on a fire that not only keep it burning, but send the flames higher and higher. These “logs for the fire” will create warmth and light…and here is the word that pays, literally, captivation!!! One key which I teach for a full day in my workshops is the skill of telling stories. If you want to be one of the highest paid in your public speaking job then learn the art of telling stories. One other key to having one of the highest paid jobs is to be funny. Have great humor sprinkled and perfectly timed to compliment the point you are making.

The highest paid people in the world and the most powerful are great speakers. In being a great speaker you’ve got to use stories and humor like a master craftsman. If you are fortunate enough to be highly compensated as a speaker then you undoubtedly have mastered these two essential skills of a motivational speaker.

Some have attended keynote speeches and thought to themselves “if that speaker can have a motivational speaking career…then I can do that too”. Well don’t underestimate the time and energy it takes to prepare a keynote speech. Learn from Winston Churchill. One day, while Prime Minister Churchill was splashing in his bathtub, his valet overheard him loudly talking. Believing he needed assistance, the valet entered andinquired, “Did you call, Sir?” “No,” Churchill replied. “I was just giving a speech to The House of Commons.”

At the small risk of leaving myself open to a charge of splitting hairs rather than implanting new growths, I’ve decided to separate speaking practice out from underneath the umbrella of speaking preparation. Practicing, or rehearsing, stands alone in effectively extinguishing fear. That said, let’s explore the value of vigorous rehearsal. You’d never have caught Sir Winston standing before Parliament and winging it.  In fact, according to James vanFleet, in his book, Hidden Power, Churchill never made a speech of major importance without first rehearsing his speaking in front of a mirror.  Imagine the man voted to have one of the greatest careers in public speaking but not be willing to rehearse?

is to go beyond comfort and stretch yourself toward greatness.
My Friend, boxer, minister, and real estate developer Chris
writes: “Average is the top of the bottom… the best of the worst… the bottom of the top…
the worst of the best… The saddest epitaph is this: ‘Here lies Mr. Average. Here lies the remains of what might have been,  except for his belief that he was only average.’”

When I first met Chris, he was, by his own account, an average public speaker. He had limited education and very little motivational speaking experience. He was determined to improve and was willing to go to any lengths to do so. He watched other public speakers, always taking notes on each little detail of how they went about their public speaking job. Chris would always asked for feedback after delivering a motivational speech or sermon.Many nights I remember Chris, in my garage, practicing his
upcoming public speaking. Using my ironing board as his podium, he enthusiastically spoke to an audience of one. At each juncture I would offer suggestion after suggestion. After a some scribbling, he would begin again…and again. Chris became a powerful as a minister and later went to be successful in his Public speaking career! Chris now has spoken all over the world. Today, he is a favorite of many, including myself…and there is nothing average about as a public speaker.