In this monologue, the presenter outlines a personal framework for categorising professional speakers and stresses the critical importance of aligning with a client’s definition of those categories. She first cautions listeners that her definitions are her own and may differ from others, but the key is to clarify what the client expects. She then describes five speaker types: (1) Motivational speakers who energise audiences to take immediate action; (2) Inspirational speakers who share personal stories of overcoming extraordinary challenges to spark hope; (3) Content speakers who deliver data, knowledge or insights and must blend motivation techniques to ensure retention; (4) Celebrity speakers who leverage fame or public‑figure status to attract audiences, regardless of speaking skill; and (5) Speakers who present to other speakers, focusing on peer‑to‑peer knowledge exchange rather than generic keynote material. The presenter warns against assuming a speaking‑colleague is a market for one’s products, urging speakers to treat peers as collaborators and support networks rather than sales targets. The overall message is to identify one’s “sweet spot” by matching personal style with the client’s expectations and to tailor delivery accordingly.
Chapters
Now, there's another way to categorize what kind of a speaker you are. And at this point, I want to pause to— I kind of give myself a bit of an out here. I'm going to give you some definitions of what these speaker categories are like, but these are definitions that I have considered and developed for myself and how I understand these speakers to be. Some speakers see those definitions as completely opposite to what I'm about to tell you. So this is one of those cases where you want to be cautious about the advice you're receiving. It is really not important how I define these categories of speakers, how you define these categories of speakers, or how any dictionary online defines these categories of speakers. The most important thing for you is to find out how your client defines these categories of speakers. Because your client is going to be hiring you to do something, and it does not matter what the correct definition is. You need to understand what they really feel and believe and think it is that they are asking you to do. Once you have that clarity on what it is that they need, then you can deliver on it. But if you don't take the time to clarify what it is they're looking for, you will run into trouble. You will do something that you think goes with that kind of type of speaker, and it's going to actually fall short of what the client was expecting. So let's look at some of these different definitions. The first is the distinction between motivational and inspirational speakers. So motivational speaker speaks to the audience and gives them these insights and, and this content and gets them all excited. The adrenaline is pumping through their veins. They cannot wait to go and do something like that to turn their lives around to resolve this problem, to overcome that challenge. They are motivated to go and take some action. That is a motivational speaker. An inspirational speaker, on the other hand, is someone who shares their story, maybe of hardship, maybe of overcoming something terrible that has happened to them or some challenge that they have faced, and it's very often a challenge or a circumstance that the majority of the audience will not ever encounter. It is something beyond our experiences. And when we look at that inspirational speaker, we are inspired to say, if that person can overcome those challenges, then I can overcome my challenges. We are motivated to do that because we've been inspired by the action and the example that they have set. The 3rd kind of speaker we could look at in this categorization is that of a content speaker. This is someone who has got information, data, knowledge of some kind that they need to transmit to the audience so that the audience learns something or knows something or has an insight into why something is important. And that content needs to, for whatever reason depending on the event, needs to be transmitted to that audience, and you're going to hope that the audience takes action on it. So a content speaker cannot just deliver a whole batch of, of content and download it into the audience. They need to still be motivating with it. They need to other techniques to make sure that what they share is transmitted, is taken on board by the audience so that the audience can respond to it. But it is primarily content or data or information of some kind. And then of course we have celebrity speakers. And a celebrity speaker is someone who is a celebrity, a public figure for some reason. It could be that they are a journalist or they are a radio or television personality. We've seen them online and they're going to come and share something to an audience. It could be that they've won awards, that they've written books, that they're politicians, but they are celebrities for some reason. The thing about celebrity speakers is that they have earned their celebrity status in some other part of their lives. They're bringing that to the speaking world, and they do not necessarily even need to be good speakers to do this. But that celebrity speaker has the, the aura of that celebrity status that they're bringing the audience so that the audience wants to hear from them. And the audience is not actually evaluating how good a speaker they are. The audience doesn't care about their business model or anything else. They just want to be in the presence of these celebrities to hear from them, to hear their stories or their background. There can be messages attached to it. There could be content attached to it. But primarily, a celebrity speaker just brings that aura of something important and famous to a particular event. And then there is one other category of speaker that I would like to bring to you, another speaking style, and this is when speakers speak to speakers. The reason I add this in is that as part of the professional speaking bodies around the world, we very often get asked to speak to our colleagues. We get invited to speak either to our own home association or to some other association, either to a big annual conference or to a local chapter meeting, and we get asked to share some content. And the question of what is it that we actually are going to share with our colleagues is an important one. Sometimes we're invited to share our content. So the kind of keynote or the kind of presentation we would be giving to a client, we're asked to share that with our, with our colleagues, with our peers. And that happens if, if we are in any way a celebrity or if the content we're sharing is of value to our, our colleagues. Most often, however, when a professional speaker is invited to speak to professional speaking colleagues, we're not actually interested in what your topic is. We're not interested in the motivational, the inspirational stuff that you are talking about because very often we have similar content ourselves. What we're looking for from our speaking colleagues is that insight, of how you did something. How did you develop this part of your speaking business? How did you break into that market? How did you write your book? Why are you using podcasts to promote yourself? So that kind of experience that we have as a professional speaker that we share with our professional speaking colleagues could be the reason why we are invited. So again, it is incredibly important that you are clear with the person inviting you, with the client, as to what is it that need from you. Are they asking for your insight, or are they asking you for your regular keynote? Another reason to make sure we get this right is that far too many people come into the speaking world with their product or a service, and then they immediately look at their speaking colleagues and see them as a potential market. We love you, but we don't want to buy your book. We don't want to buy your product or your course because we have our own. We're trying to sell as well. To people outside of the profession. So unless you have a distinctly very clear solution for your speaking colleagues and you have the experience to demonstrate that, try not to sell to them. Try to support them, share your content with them, exchange a book for somebody else's book, go online and support your, your speaking colleagues, but don't see them as a market. See them as your colleagues, your support system, your encouragement, your fan base to help you to go and find clients outside of that market.
