Can you make speaking your ultimate career? Do you want your voice and thoughts to influence people’s lives in a positive way and solve some of their everyday problems? If the answer is yes, you can make a career out of it. Want to know how to start your career as a freelance motivational speaker? Read this post!
Speaking For A Living…Sounds Interesting?
Speaking for a living – many people dream of but only a few actually achieve. Motivational speakers, freelance or not, use their lives and real experiences to talk to people and stimulate them to change their lives for the greater good.
A motivational speaker can be from any professional and educational background. For instance, you could be a scientist or a teacher or even an entrepreneur; but what counts most is that you should be an expert in your field and must have survived life-altering challenges.
Road to become a motivational speaker is quite narrow and people who are truly determined can only reach the exit line. We have outlined a few essential steps that shall guide you through to becoming a motivational speaker.
Okay, What Is The Demands?
The demand for freelance motivational speakers is huge, especially because of the changing lifestyles that have made us mentally affected. However, the demand is highly dependent on external factors like the subject matter, the speaking ability of the speaker, popularity of the chosen field, their experience as a speaker and their life story.
Communication Skills is the Epitome…
In addition to speaking clearly and articulately, the speaker should also be capable of keeping his audience engaged, should be familiar with the presentation and public speaking techniques, and should be confident and comfortable in answering questions.
Apart from these important skills, a speaker must also have stage presence and have a unique ability to reasonably and smartly argue. And lastly, they should possess a strong charisma and remain energetic during sessions.
Tracing The Steps To Become A Freelance Motivational Speaker
Step 1: Choose a Unique and Inimitable Topic and Style
Here, the words expert’ and ‘Topics’ are general terms that describe a person’s life experiences and academic training. Many go through compelling life experiences, but not everyone is capable of evaluating those experiences to determine if the lessons learned could be helpful for others too.
On the other hand, successful motivational speakers frequently analyze themselves, so that they can influence their clients or audiences with valuable and useful information.
Some of the common topics, most motivational speakers use as their key subjects, including life stories, family relationships, surviving a life-threatening disease, overcoming addiction, handling abusive marriage or racial issues, coming out of fatal accidents and other possible stories that involve personal growth.
Once you have a chosen inimitable list of topics that separate you from others, its time you get to the work of selecting a style of speaking. You can do that by analyzing yourself and identifying which elements you respond best to. For example, your stimuli could be a series of pictures more than audios.
This means you should include visuals while presenting your speech so as to give more character or importance to your words, thoughts, and ideas, and help the audience reciprocate to it.
When you analyze your style, ensure you cover all the basics of speech presentation and public speaking, like the tone of voice, personality, hand gestures, facial expression, and your language. Your friends and family should be your first set of analysts to gain a truthful and accurate description of your personality, character traits, and speech skills.
The analysis will help you understand and stay focused on your strengths and give ideas about your weak areas.
Step 2: Know What People Seek
Your topic of discussion could range from time management, productivity, relationships, jobs, career to food or illnesses. But, before you speak about a topic, you should know what exactly people are seeking. You need to sort out the issues people face or have trouble within your chosen topic.
What you should do is start talking to as many people as you can, from different demographics if need be, and identify the main problem most of them are struggling with. Devise a system or strategy to solve those problems and get the people back on track.
Your speaking topic should really meet the needs of the audience. The topic should also relate to the majority of people. Only if you know the issues and frustrations of people, will you be able to design help for them.
Step 3: Market Your Product, i.e. You
After topic selection, identification of the main problem and finding a suitable solution, it is time for you to start promoting yourself on the market. You can be an expert on a topic, but unless you start promoting and branding yourself as a refined motivational speaker, your efforts will not be given credits.
Therefore, you need to advertise yourself in all possible places, through all social means and let people know that you are open.
Some of the resources you can use for promotions are meeting planners, speaker’s bureaus, business meets and online communities. You can also get in touch with marketing services providing companies for a portfolio and website development.
Step 4: Build Speaking Experience
You need to have real-world experience to be recognized as a renowned inspirational speaker, as well as to develop your own presentation style.
To gain experience and insight, you can volunteer to speak at local motivational events or business meets. If you have good contacts, you can also volunteer to speak at schools, colleges, community clubs, and charitable organizations.
Keep in mind that even a small event could be a door to opportunities. Make sure you pay attention to the company organizing the event and the kind of audience it calls. Mold your presentation according to the audience type.
You have to do a lot of homework on presentation and public speaking skills, like venue recognizing, sound system, time allocation, starting and ending speech, etc.(1)
Remember, in the beginning, it won’t look easy or satisfying. However, you can’t reach the river, without encountering a stream or two mid-ways. Similarly, you have to take the slower but steadier path to reach where you want to.
Make sure you laugh a lot; poke fun at yourself, make pun jokes and relax the atmosphere to bring everyone in a positive mindset.
