TJ Walker (public speaking coach) argues that speaking skills alone are insufficient for career impact; substance—expertise and compelling ideas—must be combined with polished delivery. He cautions against fetishizing public speaking for its own sake, cites bestselling authors as examples where ideas, not just style, drive impact, and ends with a promotional call-to-action for his workshops and trainings.
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Are you fetishizing public speaking now? Look, folks, I'm a public speaking coach. I obviously think public speaking skills are important, but it's important to realize, critical to realize. It's never just about the speaking skills. It's about the substance too. You always have to have both. There are no awards to my knowledge for people's writing skills. There's no Pulitzer Prize for the person with the best grammar who can just write a random sentence about anything, but has good spelling, good punctuation and good penmanship. Maybe in first grade, but not for any adult. It's always packaged with what's the actual story. If it's news, news, journalism, breaking news, commentary, hard news or literature, there's something there. You need to have good writing skill, but the ability to just have a good sentence structure, good punctuation, good grammar. Frankly, nobody gives you much credit for that after about the third grade. So the reason I bring this up is there are a lot of people I find who just fetishize public speaking. They want to be a good speaker, they want to win Toastmasters competition. Nothing wrong with that as a hobby. But that alone isn't going to make a career for you. It's frankly not going to help your career that much. Because if you have great speaking skills but no expertise that can help other people, then you're just kind of a wind up doll. You're kind of TV entertainment without the on off button. And that's not really valuable. So of course I urge you to try to improve your public speaking skills and polish them. But at the very same time, you've got to hone, refine your content so that when you put the two together, it's powerful. You look at some of the best selling authors in the world. Yeah, they can string two sentences together, but that's not what makes them have impact. Robert Kiyosaki is famous for saying, look, they call it a best selling book, not a best written book. It doesn't mean you should write poorly or speak poorly. It does mean you have to have great ideas expressed in a compelling way that reaches an audience. Focus on that and you'll be in great shape. I'm TJ Walker. I help people speak more effectively. If you'd like to be a better speaker, consider coming to my monthly public speaking workshops here in New York City or my private one on one or group trainings held anywhere in the world. And also we have online training with a live component now, so check out the options below.
