SECRETS TO MOTIVATE YOURSELF
SECRETS OF MOTIVATION
13 Secrets the Best Motivational Speakers Know
Experts agree: Whether speaking to a few coworkers or an auditorium of hundreds, these few simple secrets from motivational speakers will make or break you.
1. The key to a good speech is to have a surprising truth.
Find something that everyone thinks is one way, and explain that really
it’s this other way. If you can achieve that, you’ve hit a home run.
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2. Silence is deafening.
Most people think the way to add emphasis is to raise your voice. But if
you really want to attract attention, be silent for a moment. I always
pause before I say something
important, and all the heads that were
looking down jerk up.
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3. Don't make it about you.
Here’s the key to good networking: Think about what you can
do for
others, not what they can do for you. When you meet new people, don’t
make the mistake of marketing yourself. Instead, think about someone you
know who would be helpful to them. Connect two people, and suddenly
you’re a hero.
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4. Delivery matters.
When I have an important speech, I record it and listen to it repeatedly so there will be no mistakes whatsoever.
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5. Don't let the unexpected stop you.
Last spring, I was giving a speech in a multiplex theater, and the power
died. It could have been terrible, but it was great. First one person
turned on his phone’s flashlight to light me up. Then
everyone did. And
I just kept going.
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6. Educate yourself.
Never before have we had more power to educate ourselves. If you give a
smartphone to a Masai warrior in Africa who’s never seen technology, he
will have access to more information than the president of the United
States did in the year 2000. That’s a stunning statistic; take advantage
of it.
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7. Want to get noticed?
I built my career by soliciting exotic international gigs where I had
credibility because I was an American from Silicon Valley.
Meanwhile, I
got credibility at home because I was speaking internationally. That
one trick made me an
established keynote speaker.
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8. Smaller audiences are murder..
...because people lose focus. The sweet spot is any group of about 150
to 200 people; that size allows you to establish a collective crowd
reaction.
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9. Be prepared to start from scratch.
You have no idea what they do
to us backstage. One time I had
a
keynote speech that was cut from half an hour of talking time to seven
minutes because the speakers in front of me were going on too long. So I
ripped up the speech I had, wrote a few notes, and winged it.
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10. The best speakers don’t always command the highest fees.
Case in point: Rutgers paid Jersey Shore reality TV star Snooki $32,000
in 2011 for two Q&A sessions. That was $2,000 more than it paid
Nobel Prize–winning author Toni Morrison to deliver a commencement
address.
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