Wednesday 29 June 2011

How to become a professional speaker

I was invited a couple of days ago to hear a Canadian entrepreneur speak about his experiences at a meeting in Cardiff and how he had made his money. It started off well, giving a background to his company, how it grew, what they did and how he managed to see it, thats was the first 30 minutes, the next 2 hrs was spent evangelising / dictating to the audience on how they should run their businesses and how NLP was the bedrock for all success. Now, call me sceptical, but what had been a good start was now becoming an arrogant pr stunt  for the speaker who had now whipped himself up into a frenzy and believed he was superhuman and had the answers to everything.

What he lacked was structure. He proposed that he had always wanted to be a professional speaker and he was making money from it, yet he lacked the basic credentials of what great speakers do, they tell structured stories with a start, a middle and an end often laced with anecdotal stories, experiences and humour, but they always have structure.

I was left dissapointed, bored and annoyed that he had taken 2 hrs of my life away for not delivering what he had been expecting to deliver; so please, some advice for all aspiring speakers, keep it structured and focussed on the topic at all times.