Ep 102 Josh Duggar, Molester, Wants to Be a Professional Speaker - Public Speaking April 11, 16

Is the world of professional speaking ready to invite Josh Duggar of TV's 19 and Counting fame.

Speaking the show about effective speaking in public to the media, at work and in life. Speaking with TJ Walker.

Wow. Talk about a profoundly bad idea. There have been numerous reports in the last week and I am recording this in the end of March of 2016. So you know that Josh Duggar is looking at entering the professional speaking career because he needs to support his family after all his legal troubles. Now for those of you who forgot, Josh Duggar was One of the 19 of the 19 and counting TV show series on, I guess it was the Learning Channel and revelations came out that he had molested five underaged girls when he was a teenager, including four of his sisters. Since then he's admitted to cheating on his wife, which is not a crime and is not incest or pedophilia. But it's only further worsened his stature in the eyes of many. Now he was also a spokesperson and had a very high profile position at the Family Research Council, which is an extraordinarily well known influential conservative Republican traditional values lobbying group in Washington D.C. folks, here's the thing people get confused on. They see someone in the news who sometimes engulfed in scandal, sometimes becomes a laughingstock and they are embraced by the professional speaking circuit and make a fortune. Look at Sarah Palin. Now some of you may still love Sarah Palin and she's never been involved in a sex scandal like this or been involved been alleged to have molested a child. But she certainly took some real hits to her credibility after the 2008 campaign. And yet she went on the professional speaking circuit and was making as reported, well in excess of six figures for a single hour long keynote speaker. So it is possible for people to have problems, have issues, be on a TV show and continue to do extremely well. Certainly there have been a lot of male TV stars who have been involved with lawsuits of sexual impropriety by staff members and they continued to have a lucrative side career. A professional speaker. The Josh Duggar situation is a little different, my friends. He was instantly fired and banned from the show and I think that was part of why the show basically got shuffled off. Family Research Council got rid of him and he's considered quite odious. Here's the real problem. Even if he were a good speaker and I haven't seen him speak, who is going to want to tell their members that yes, we're using your money, we're using revenues from your dues or revenues from your conference admission to pay for someone whose main claim to fame is having sexually molested four of his children. That's a hard sell, folks, there is, believe me, there is a wide range. There is a continuum of respectability when it comes to professional speakers. And sometimes just having a big name, even if you were involved with a scandal, can be enough. But there are limits. I'm going to go out on the record here and predict that Josh Duggar's career as a professional speaker is extremely short and non lucrative. When you are involved with a scandal, there are ways of overcoming that to eventually make a living. I'll talk about some other role models in that particular vein in just a moment.

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There are people who go from major, major scandals back to the speaking world and are successful. Charles Colson is one, one of the criminals involved with the Nixon administration who served time in prison for his involvement in Watergate. But here's the thing about Chuck Colson. He went back, he started a prison ministry. Frankly not a place most people ever want to go, whether they care about a particular religion, promoting religion or anything else. He spoke, and my understanding is he did it mostly for free for years and years and years and years, repented, said that he was wrong and for the most part led a humble life. I'm sure he did get some nice speaking fees eventually, but I'm pretty sure a full decade went by after his conviction before it even occurred to him to ask for more than about $100 for a speech. He devoted his life to essentially his version of public service and admittedly doing something that most people don't want to do, which is go help and speak to criminals in prisons. And regardless of your views of religion, it's hard to look at that and say he was doing that for some kind of narrow or self serving purpose. But it took a long, long time. It took repenting and it took giving people a sense that this guy had grown and realized he was profoundly wrong. Now the whole Josh Duggar situation is still so recent. I mean, it seems like it happened last week. It's been longer than that. But it certainly has not been 20 years or 10 years or 5 years or even 3 years since this scandal broke. And it looks like here's a guy who just doesn't get it. It just looks like here's a guy like I'm famous, look at me, I have my own TV show. What's my claim to Fame. Oh, my parents have a lot of babies. This isn't an episode devoted to bashing the duggars and having 19 children. Although I don't advocate most people have 19 children, but the idea that that somehow would give you a credential that would make other people want to listen to you, I don't think so. Something a little bit similar is Snooki, the character from the Jersey Shore TV show. Right after that show really hit its peak. And shortly after it went on, she was still getting offers to give speeches. And, and here's the thing. When universities gave her offers, they were roundly criticized. They were mocked and ridiculed for giving Snooki more money to come to their school to speak than Nobel prize laureates. Now, I haven't seen Snooki in the news much lately. Something tells me she's not making a lot of money as a professional speaker. Now, she may be making money for showing up at a nightclub that's more appropriate to what her brand is, what she's all about having fun, doing wild, crazy things. There's a market for that. There isn't much of a market for someone whose claim to fame is, oh, I sexually molested four of my sisters. And I just don't know how you build a keynote speech around something like that. But I really, really don't know how you convince people that that was a wise use of money. If he wants to speak for free, that's another issue. If he wants to apologize, tell people what he's learned, tell people how he's overcoming that, devote his life to setting up a nonprofit devoted to detecting and fighting sexual abuse among siblings, that's a far different beast. But even there, the revenue model, I believe, can't be him just calling himself a professional speaker and asking the traditional suspects of corporations, trade associations to give him a large fee. Instead, he needs to do it the hard way. Start a non profit, get donations, give himself a salary of about $12,000 a year, be really humble and show that he's actually helped people and come up with a real program. If he does that for a number of years, has a book, goes on talk shows, actually answers questions, there's certainly, there's a chance he could rehabilitate his career and then one day become a professional speaker. But at this point, the idea that he just wants to cash in on what limited left driblets of fame he has left and no one else will hire him and he's going to make a living as a professional speaker. No, no, no, no, no, no. Folks, I do not believe that is going to work at all. At least I hope it doesn't. What do you think? I'd love to hear from you, and maybe not about a subject as odious and as I as I suspect not really a big controversy with most of you. I'd like to hear your feedback on the show, questions that you'd like me to answer, comments on previous shows. By the way, we just had a major milestone yesterday and I forgot to mention it, so I'll do it today. Yesterday was our 100th episode of Speaking with TJ Walker. So I'd like to thank all of you who've been with us since day one. I'd especially like to thank those of you who have been with me since the beginning of the how to video series on YouTube. I've now done more than 10,000 videos on not only the main channel you're looking at now, if you're on YouTube, but on other channels. And I do want to thank a lot of you who have been with me through the years. Appreciate your support. And those of you who are just joining us today, thanks so much for stopping by. I hope I've given you enough to whet your appetite for more. Typically, this show isn't pulling something from the news. It's about answering your questions about public speaking and speaking to the media. As always, may all of your presentations in life be a huge success.

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