The job: Motivational speaker
You might like this job if: You are good at both motivating and speaking. And selling. And having a definite point of view. And telling stories. Oh, and you have to market yourself and your books, so you should be good at writing too. And organization. And if you enjoy doing all of these (and other things), you might like being a motivational speaker!
The good: You get to help people make positive changes in their lives while getting a tidy profit. You might become a celebrity! And you will be an expert on some exciting topic (probably) and get called in as a talking head for a 24-hour news channel or daytime talk show! Plus, your face and name will be all over your books, CDs, t-shirts, coasters, etc. It’s like being a Hollywood star, but instead you have a lot of cute acronyms for stuff (kinda like Gary Busey, I guess).
The bad: If you’re successful, you will travel a lot. I mean A LOT. You also have to constantly memorize new speeches to give on new topics so you can retain old speaking gigs. And there’s a lot of competition – there are hundreds of speakers bureaus representing hundreds of clients. It can take a while to get to the top of the speakers’ circuit, and once you’re there, it’s hard to transition to another field. Also, it’s mostly dependent on you being motivated yourself and having some prior experience that is a good “hook” for whatever your speech is on. There’s a lot of work that goes into being a professional speaker, and some people can’t overcome the big hump of work it takes.
Summary: If you’re a charismatic, confident, intelligent, organized, got-their-stuff-together kind of person, you might be able to make it as a speaker. But it takes an incredible amount of dedication and a conscious effort to put yourself out there as a model of whatever life-bettering patter you have. There’s high risk and high reward, but the competition and sacrifices that one has to make to do the job have cut down many people.
Rating: Three shiny 32-tooth smiles out of five
