3 Myths about Starting a Motivational Speaking Career
By James Malinchak | August 15th, 2008Like in any industry, myths tend to precede real knowledge and it’s time to debunk some of those false ways of thinking and false bits of information. Myths hurt any motivational speaking career because they often present themselves as barriers for a growing and thriving business.
How to make more money with public speaking or how to get bookings for public speaking are the same kinds of questions I get asked over and over again. These people don’t realize that by dealing with the three myths listed below the answers to all of these questions will come.
The first most common myth that people in a motivational speaking career have is that money is bad. As a result, these people inherently pick low paying speaking engagements or worse yet work for free because it’s all they think they can attain. These are often the same people asking me how to get bookings for motivational speaking. Don’t get me wrong. I’m not talking about the people who are using free speaking gigs as leverage to get their foot in the door or to build credibility and notoriety in their niche as an expert. I’m talking about the people who seem to think that money will eventually come despite not ever being paid a dime!
What I’ve learned is this. If I got serious about learning how to make money with public speaking, I would need to get “myself” out of the way. Once the old ways of thinking and doing are taken out of your public speaking career, you’ll find that there were people who were willing to pay you a ton of money just to speak. This is the revelation I came to and the revelation you need to receive today!
The second most common myth in motivational speaking I hear is that motivation is all you need. Wrong! I have an acronym that I teach people about that kind of thinking – MDPYM (Motivation doesn’t pay your mortgage). One of the things I learned early in my speaking career is that just because I was motivated didn’t mean I could pay my bills!
Now, I teach people to get rid of this kind of thinking because it simply doesn’t do much for them. In fact, I teach the people I mentor to get motivated by finding different ways to get people to give them money. As they learn how to make money with motivational speaking they essentially 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?
You most learn to work smart, but that’s only half of the picture. The other half is working right. You cannot just be working smart, you have to be working right as well. People often are try to fulfill their egos instead of filling their pocketbook in this public speaking industry. Sometimes people are unable to market themselves correctly in their niche because they don’t have a clue about the kinds of needs that their target niche market has.
Get your professional speaking career off the ground by dealing with these three myths in your mind!
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