My career as a professional speaker began in the very early 70’s. Herb True PhD, a professor from Notre Dame, became a sort of mentor to me when I attended his presentation for our railroad people and I gave him some jokes during his intermission. He tried them out in the remainder of his talk and then asked me to become a humor writer on his TEAM.
With a new speech for myself in mind, I joined Toastmaster and presented a new segment every chance I got. Six months later I booked my first talk and somehow survived and collected my fee.
Soon after that I booked a banquet for The Michigan Potato Festival Banquet at a higher fee and the audience was wonderful to me and like they say, “I haven’t set down since then.”
When somebody told me I could double my fee if I got a motivational message for a sales force I pulled out material I had written and sold to some sales magazines and weaved them into my humor program and my bookings doubled along with my fee.
Now it you get the wrong impression that money is what speaking is all about you would probably fail in a hurry like most would-be speakers do. Unless you develop a passion for speaking then you might be better off learning to cut hair or grass or to trim trees. Which reminds me that I have a tree out where I park my Ford Escape that has a branch hanging down that needs cutting right now. I just hope I still know how to cut it.
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