This content was created by Charlotte Kemp. This content was uploaded by Charlotte Kemp. This is a YouTube video titled "#3 Finding your Speaking Sweet Spot - Speaker Distinctions" (created 2025-01-17 UTC). The excerpt is a spoken instructional talk/lecture by a single presenter (labelled SPEAKER A) explaining distinctions between types of speaking—public vs. professional, salaried vs. freelance/professional, and religious speaking—emphasizing monetization, business mindset for professional speakers, and advising listeners (with a nod to speakers in Africa) to classify where they fit by observing other speakers on social media and TED Talks.
Chapters
The very first thing we need to do in terms of talking about speaking is start to make some distinctions. One of the distinctions being whether we are talking about public speaking or professional speaking. There are some very distinguished public speakers, very good public speakers, who are not compensated for their speaking financially. They don't— they have not built a speaking business around around the speaking that they do, and that could be for many reasons. They might be in government, they might be in media, they might be working on behalf of a company or a cause, but they are speaking in public without the financial compensation element. When we pursue professional speaking, then we are looking to turn our public speaking skills into a profession. We need to have a monetization around that. We need to have a business unit, a business mindset around the work that we're doing. In fact, a very good way to look at professional speaking is that it is a business first. You are an entrepreneur or a business owner, and your product is the speaking that you do. But please do make this distinction for yourself. There is nothing wrong with being a renowned public speaker without ever turning it into a profession. But when we become clear on the difference, then we can actually make our career make progress. The, the second distinction we want to make is that there are some people who are salaried speakers and others who are religious speakers. So a salaried speaker is someone who is employed by a company or an organization where part of their job description is that they will speak in public, they will speak to other organizations or bodies on behalf of the company or the cause that they are working for. So they don't get a separate speaker fee. In fact, they're very often invited to speak at conferences and they're quite happy to pay for their own company to pay for them to go to that conference, to pay for their accommodation. They don't have to get compensated. They get a nice little speaker gift at the end and they know that they're going to get a salary check at the end of the month. Professional speakers, on the other hand, are more independent and freelance. They don't have an organization behind them paying them a salary at the end of the month. So when they speak at a conference or for a client, they need to be financially compensated in some way or other in order to actually be able to do that work. And we also have a lot of people, especially here in Africa, who speak from a religious perspective, and very often they've been trained in their public speaking by religious bodies. Again, there's no reason to be concerned about these distinctions. I just want you to start clarifying them for yourself in your own mind so that you can start to see where it is that you fit and how you can best do your speaking work into the future. It's also a good idea as you are considering these different categorizations to look around you at the speakers you know, the speakers you see on, on online, on social media, on TED Talks, and try and distinguish what kind of speakers are they.
