Professional Speakers Aren’t Just Talk

Jodi Walker turns her silver Infiniti into the parking lot of the Irvine real estate management firm. She freshens her lipstick, straightens her auburn hair and pearl necklace, and marches her compact frame toward the door.

Her blue suede pumps hammer the sidewalk, as if the briskness of her pace could replenish the seemingly endless energy she exudes. By the time she grips her appointment’s hand and flashes her persuasive smile, Walker’s pitch is in full swing. She recognizes his picture from the Internet, she tells him, where she has researched the company’s credo--to go the extra mile in serving its customers.

In the hour that follows, Walker offers to inspire Western National Group’s employees with a tailored talk on “entrepreneurial thinking” and “personal bottom line”--how far they will go to make themselves and their employer successful. Her fee for the keynote speech: $3,500. And for an extra charge, Walker offers, she will write, set to music and even perform a customized theme song for the company conference.

Jodi Walker’s job is being Jodi Walker. A motivational speaker and trainer, she is a member of a growing profession that numbers in the thousands. Her one-woman show, operated as Success Alliances out of her Northridge home, has given a boost to Fortune 500 companies and small-business organizations in the United States, Britain, Australia and Scotland.

To many, a job on the speaking circuit may sound breezy: The gleaming teeth. The “Have a Great Day,” delivered in a forceful sing-song. The be-all-that-you-can-be speech. All for a fee that can climb as high as $10,000 per event for noncelebrities, and many times that for household names. But think again.

The life of a professional speaker involves relentless self-promotion, often with little early payback. Then there’s the personality requirement: Motivational speakers must be upbeat, even when they are jet-lagged, sick or otherwise beaten down by circumstance.

“You lose your luggage. Your material doesn’t arrive. The equipment doesn’t work,” Walker says. “You have to remember you are there for the audience. You’re allowed to have a bad day, but you’re not allowed to show it.”

Still, the profession is gaining steam. A recent survey by Glendora-based Walters International Speakers Bureau found that demand for “motivators” may have grown by as much as 48% during the last year. Fifty-eight percent of speakers responding said their bookings had gone up. And fees traced the same upward trend: The local keynote speakers surveyed will pull in an average fee of $5,493 this year, compared with $2,514 in 1997.

The bureau’s founder, Dottie Walters, knows firsthand how lucrative the field can be. Her company motivates the motivators, at a noteworthy price. Her weekend “Speak & Grow Rich” seminar goes for $599, and a four-day “Master Marketing Seminar” goes for nearly $1,500.

But those who slave away daily to build a business--most of them working alone and from home like Walker does--say growing rich is not easy. Many speakers initially work for free, and those who do find success tend to grow their businesses through referrals and repeat customers.

Some start out delivering programs and seminars developed by better-known speakers, handing them a good chunk of the earnings as part of the deal, and forgoing the ego boost that comes with being the star attraction.

“I compare it to acting,” said the Missouri-born Walker, 41, whose first paying job to a group of brokers in Palm Springs netted her $300. “You can’t get a job until you get a job.”

Even established professionals earn only about half their income from speaking engagements, according to a 1997 survey by the Tempe, Ariz.-based National Speakers Assn. (https://www.nsaspeaker.org). Speakers hustle to close the gap through consulting, coaching, teleconference training, book and cassette sales. In fact, a book is almost essential to building credibility, said NSA Executive Vice President Stacy Tetschner.

Walker’s recent day spent inching through gridlock traffic to pitch her wares in Irvine will pay off only if she lands the job. Another recent day involved an unglamorous three-hour conference call to analyze results of a training session for a pharmaceutical sales team.

“A lot more people today want to work for themselves but they’re finding that this is not the easiest way to do that,” Tetschner said. “Many people saw the dreams of big money. While we don’t want to discourage them, we also don’t want them to think this is a get-rich-quick scheme.”

The increasingly competitive business can also be cutthroat. Key to success are personal tales of accomplishment and the ability to make those relevant to bored and tired strangers.

But not everyone plays by the rules. Speakers have snatched the signature stories of others, spinning the stolen yarns as their own for paying audiences. Although not common, the breach of principles is prevalent enough to be policed by the NSA’s ethics committee.

The NSA boasts 4,100 members--all of whom give at least 20 for-fee speaking engagements yearly--up by 70% over the last dozen years. Downsized corporate workers built the profession’s early ranks, but today’s growth is driven by other trends.

Since 1995, the number of educational seminars hosted by associations has grown by 79%, and the number of conventions and annual meetings by 69%, Tetschner said.

Still, of the 400 calls his organization receives a month from people interested in becoming speakers, only a fraction are qualified. “This is a growing profession,” he said, “but it’s really important to have an area of expertise, a platform.”

The pressure to differentiate oneself is constant. And it can backfire. Speakers who focused on Y2K issues did booming business, but their programs fizzled with the new year, said Jeannie Esposito, president of Burbank-based Allstar Alliance, which represents speakers and matches them with clients. Now, e-commerce is hot.

The stories are endless. There are speakers who survived plane crashes and illness. There are jugglers, speedskaters and futurists. And there’s San Diego speaker Frank King, who offers a slide show of road signs he and his wife photographed on a cross-country journey.

“He can deliver that slide show and presentation with customized humor or a political bent,” Esposito said. “Who’d a thunk it?”

The Internet is helping to drive growth, said Esposito, whose office walls are lined with hundreds of demo tapes. “The technology has strengthened the link between the speaker seeking the client and the client seeking the speaker,” she said.

For Walker, speaking came naturally. She spent years in sales, working her way into a job selling laparoscopic equipment to hospitals. But with the rise of managed care, the job stopped being fun. After mulling a change for five years, she finally jumped, answering a newspaper ad for Fred Pryor Seminars.

She landed a job as a contract employee and began to pay her dues. The travel was grueling--”We were road warriors,” she quips--and the pay just $300 a day. But she built confidence and experience, then quit to go solo.

Walker’s programs focus on communication, customer service, team building and entrepreneurial thinking, a term she trademarked and the topic of a book she is writing. In addition to speaking, she offers interactive training sessions that give her an edge in the industry. She is also branding herself through music, working musical metaphors into her presentations and crafting custom theme songs.

“I call it tapping into my uniqueness,” said Walker, whose speeches urge the audience to do the same. “Speaking is one of the most rewarding jobs I’ve had, but it’s also the most challenging.”