3 Myths about Starting a Public Speaking Career and Business
In any industry, myths tend to come before real knowledge and it’s time to expose some of those false ways of thinking and false bits of information. Myths can hurt any professional speaking career because they often present themselves as obstructions for a growing and thriving business.
People often ask me the same kinds of questions over and over - how to make more money with motivational speaking or how to get bookings for motivational speaking. What these people don’t realize is that the answers to all of these questions come when they deal with the three myths listed below.
The first most common myth people in the world of professional speaking have is that money is bad. These people end up picking only low paying speaking engagements or worse yet working for free because it’s all they think they can get. These are the same peoples who are asking me how to get bookings for professional speaking. There is a difference between these people and the ones who use free speaking gigs as leverage to get their foot in the door or to build credibility and notoriety in their niche as an expert. These are the people who seem to think that money will come to them despite not ever being paid before.
Here’s what I learned. When I got serious about learning how to make money with motivational speaking, I decided to get “myself” out of the way. Once I got old ways of thinking and doing out of my motivational speaking career, I found that there were people who were willing to pay me a ton of money just to speak. That’s the revelation I got and the revelation you need to receive today!
The second most common myth in public speaking is that motivation is all you need. This is wrong! I teach an acronym to people about that kind of thinking - MDPYM (Motivation doesn’t pay your mortgage). Just because I was motivated didn’t mean I could pay my bills was one of the things I learned early on in my speaking career.
I now teach people to get rid of this kind of thinking because it simply isn’t going to do much for them. I teach the people I mentor to get motivated in the different ways they find to get people to give them money. As these people learn how to make money with professional speaking they also learn to start the cycle of earning to help more and more people.
The last motivational speaking myth I hear most often is that one must work harder in order to make more money. Sorry folks! That kind of thinking is again wrong! My Dad was the hardest workingman in my life but he never made more than $29,000 annually. He was the model hard worker but did he have the kind of pay that matched his effort?
Then I learned about working smart, which again, is only half of the picture. The other half of the picture is working right. The truth is that it doesn’t matter how smart you work. If you’re not working right, you’re still off. In this motivational speaking industry, people often beat themselves silly trying to fulfill their egos instead of filling their pocketbook. I also often find people who don’t have a clue about the kinds of needs that their target niche market has and as a result, they don’t market themselves correctly in their niche.
Dealing with these three myths will get your professional speaking career off the ground!