TJ Walker started at 16 guessing ages and weights at a Carolina amusement park in the late 1970s. The job forced him to talk to crowds and killed his shyness. He connects that to his career as a paid speaker: engaging people matters more than having brilliant things to say.
Chapters
My very first job at the age of 16 was actually a public speaking job of sorts. It was the late 1970s and I was working at an amusement park. It was kind of like a Six Flags but a little bit smaller. And it was on the border of north and South Carolina. My first job ever. I show up and they have me doing the guess your age and weight game. Someone would get up, stand on a scale. I'd have to guess their weight. If I got within 10 pounds, they lost. If I didn't get it that close, they won. I had to guess their age within two years. If I did that correctly, they didn't win anything. If I didn't, they won. So here's what happened though. Sorry if this sounds a little Scammy. I was 16 years old. There was no incentive to be accurate because they paid 50 cents to play. If they won, they won a prize that probably cost the amusement park $0.10. So it didn't matter at all. But I had to stand there with a microphone and as people were walking by, hello, sir, how would you like to play guess your age and weight? Now, if someone comes up and is obviously 70 years old, I could say, well, ma', am, I'm guessing Your age is 28. Can you show me your ID? They would laugh. Show me the ID. She's 70. Ah, I was wrong. Here's your prize. Same with weight. I didn't want to embarrass someone. Someone's 300 pounds, I wasn't going to say that. But what was fun about it is talking to people kind of forced me. I was shy, a little bit out of my shell because I had to project my voice into the crowd to try to bring people in. I don't know if I was horrible or not or it was just the management style. I think they switched me to working in a store about three days later. But that was my first job at 16 and at some level I'm still doing. I am still speaking for a living. So why do I tell that story? It's just to give people a little better sense of my start. Wasn't anything particularly glamorous and it wasn't anything brilliant that I said. But it does show that if you speak in different ways, there are ways of making money, getting paid for it. Sometimes it's not that important what you're saying. As long as you engage people at some level, entertaining them a little, getting them involved in something, it really is that simple.
