Professional Professional Speaker

I often refer to professional professional speakers, and that's not redundant. There are many people who aspire to be professional speakers, and a professional speaker is someone who has learned their skill and craft and has a good message and delivers professionally and is financially compensated for the work that they do. But to be a professional professional speaker means you've done a little bit more work than that. But to be a professional, professional speaker means that you need to develop the various skills and styles that are required for professional speaking. So what does that look like? It's very easy for people to just assume that a professional speaker is a keynoter, a motivational speaker, an inspiring speaker, that they stand on big stages and they rouse the audience with some meaningful message. There are a few people like that, but there's difference between being a keynote speaker, a breakaway speaker, doing a short 5-minute talk, speaking online versus speaking on stage, speaking to huge audiences with spotlights versus really connecting and being able to make eye contact with an audience, being a workshop facilitator, hosting a panel, being a panelist, and being an MC. These are different skill sets. In my opinion, a professional, professional speaker knows how to do them all, has experience in learning how to do them all, and then has worked out where they are best and does that kind of work. We look at the keynoter on a big stage and think that that person has arrived, but if you're a good MC, if you're a really, really good MC, Oh, it is something wonderful to behold because many people who keynote really well think that they can easily walk onto a stage and be an MC, but it's a different, a very different kind of engagement with the audience, with the organizers, with the agenda. There's a unique set of skills and management and holding the space for that entire event in your power during the time that you are MC. The people who do MC work really well should be respected and financially compensated, and it's a different skill set from other kinds of speaking. Why should we learn them all? Because as a professional, we are partners to the event organizers. If something goes wrong, if the MC gets food poisoning minutes before they're supposed to go on stage, a professional speaker should be able to put their hands up and step in and do a good job to make sure that the show goes on. If a speaker overruns their time allotment and the next speaker comes on and is asked very politely and desperately by the organizers to please reduce their talk to half the allotted time, they should be able to do that on the fly because they had that kind of experience. If a panel host doesn't arrive and somebody needs to take care of that panel, then we need to have that experience, and we need to know that being on a panel is not the opportunity to do a mini keynote. But once we have that experience, we can step in and support the program, support the purpose of the event that we are there for. But when we know our own unique space, then we can own that, we can show up for that. So if somebody goes to you and says, hey, can you MC this event? You might have the opportunity to practice that skill set, but if it's a really big-ticket item and the client has the budget and the opportunity to hire an expert MC, Don't put your hand up for something that you are not the most qualified person to do because you will not do a good job. You will feel that lack in yourself. Somebody else will miss out on the opportunity of having a really good speaking engagement, and the audience and client will also not have the best experience. So let's be professional, professional speakers. Let us learn all the skills and techniques to do the work that we're supposed to do, find our unique space, really excel at that, and then partner with our event professionals to put on an event that really satisfies the client and the audience.