How to Become a Great Motivational Speaker

Last updated on July 7th, 2023

Motivational speakers are not unknown to most people. They greatly impact their followers’ everyday personal and professional lives and help them in their tough times. That is why it is not strange that one would like to become a motivational speaker.

Some questions may arise in the mind of a person who is willing to learn about this topic. What is a motivational speaker? Are there any steps to becoming a motivational speaker? Who needs a motivational speaker? This informative article will answer these questions along with many other important factors.

So, to get a full insight into becoming a motivational speaker by following some easy steps, make sure to read the entire article content.

Who is a Motivational Speaker?

Motivational speakers, aka inspirational speakers, try to motivate, inspire and influence their listeners through the power of their words and the art of persuasion.

They make sure to present an alternative yet positive picture of the different life aspects and try to help people who struggle in their lives. These speakers can transform the lives of their listeners by influencing directly on their minds.

Who Needs a Motivational Speaker?

After understanding what a motivational speaker does, a person may ask which person will need a motivational speaker to get influenced and motivated. There may exist a variety of people for whom motivational speakers can play a significant role. Some of them are given as follows.

A depressed and unmotivated person may need a motivational speaker to get motivated again and live his best life.
People facing some kind of physical or mental stress may also need to listen to an inspirational speaker who can give them a dose of positivity and hope in their tough times.
An unhappy person can get motivated and recharged with happiness after listening to the charismatic words of a motivational speaker.

Why Would Someone Hire a Motivational Speaker?

Let’s say you are an employer or business owner who runs a company comprising numerous employees. What can a motivational speaker do for you in this situation? Are there any other benefits of hiring a motivational speaker for businesses and institutions? Let’s find out.

The morale of your employees gets increased

Employee burnout is a real phenomenon and can become troublesome if left unchecked. That is why, to cope with the lower morale of the employees, probably caused by excessive workload, changing workplace conditions, modifications in the project, and more, you may need a motivational speaker to give your employees a fresh dose of enthusiasm.

You can give them a purposeful meaning that depicts how valuable their services and contributions are to the company. By enhancing your employees’ morale, you can definitely boost your company’s productivity.

You can remind them of your business’s vision and mission

With a hectic work routine, any employee may get sidetracked from a company’s vision and end up working in an unsupervised direction.

That is why you must continuously keep your employees informed of your mission and vision to hit your business’s targets in an actionable manner.

A motivational speaker can effectively do this job for you and significantly impact your workforce’s minds for a greater period of time.

Teamwork gets improved

Among many other business requirements, teamwork is one of the most influential attributes of any company. It directly affects the overall business’s performance and productivity and can compromise any organization’s efficiency if neglected. That is why organizing your employees and professionals into a team to achieve your business targets effectively is always a most sought-after element.

A motivational speaker can convert a group of scattered people into a team by making every single individual realize the special role that he plays for the organization in general. He can devise special activities and workshops to strengthen their team bond and lead them towards the path of excellence.

Motivational speaker education requirements

An aspiring motivational speaker usually has a bachelor’s degree in either business, psychology, or communication studies.

According to popular career counseling platform Zippia, almost 58% of the motivational speakers hold a bachelor’s degree, while nearly 16% of them are master’s degree holders. According to the same platform, almost 23% of motivational speakers pick business as their major, while 12% pick communication and 11% pick psychology. Hence, the importance of these motivational speakers for companies and organizations can be measured effectively through these statistics.

8 Most Crucial Motivational Speaker Skills

In order to become the best motivational speaker, you should have some specific attributes and characteristics in your personality. A significant amount of time and practice is required to become a charismatic motivational speaker.

However, here are some motivational speaker skills that you must have to influence others effectively and achieve your goals and objectives.

He/She must be a good leader with effective communication skills.
He/She should be self-confident.
He/She must have clear articulation.
He/She should be able to develop and present engaging presentations.
He/She must be a great storyteller.
He/She must have passion in his words and adapt to every possible situation he/she may have to face.
His/her content should be authentic and immersed in empathy for others.
He/She should manage his speaking time efficiently and deliver his desired message in an actionable manner.

Steps to Becoming a Great, Successful, and Professional Motivational Speaker

Becoming a motivational speaker and pursuing a long-term career in this field is not as difficult as it may seem. Actually, with the next steps we will mention, it will seem quite easy for everyone to become the next Tony Robbins. How to become a motivational speaker? Steps to becoming a motivational speaker are given in an actionable manner as follows.

Step #1. Start with something you are familiar with

The very first step is deciding about your specific niche or areas around which your whole motivational speaking career will revolve. You need to identify the subject of your interest and get further expertise.

For this purpose, if you are having difficulty deciding about a specific domain, start building a list of topics you are familiar with. If you are able to find something about which you have sufficient knowledge or information, you will have a significant amount of content and words to say about it in your motivational speeches.

Step #2. Developing distinctive content

A unique idea or concept always grabs the listeners’ attention and helps you convey your message effectively.

For different types of audiences you may encounter in your career as a motivational speaker, you need to be able to develop exciting, unique, and appealing content. Speak on a subject with which people are not already familiar. Deliver something that offers value to the listeners.

Step #3. Understanding your target audience

Your audience is going to make you a successful motivational speaker. To win their hearts, you must first pay attention to their specific needs. Develop something that resonates with their areas of interest.

You can conduct surveys and interviews or use A/B testing, social media platforms, and Google Analytics to learn about your target audience’s passions, likes, dislikes, and other interests.

Step #4. Inciting the interest of your audience

Before you perform well on the stage, you should engage well with your prospective audience on different platforms and channels. You can use social media platforms to share your daily quotes or life tips and increase your personal following.

Many Instagram influencers do this and reap benefits from their unique follower base in revenue generation, marketing, and business-related opportunities.

You can create a website and write helpful blog posts there to incite the users’ interest. You must be creative with your words and visuals to outshine the competitors. After developing a significant audience base, you can go to the stage and speak directly in front of the audience who is now willing to interact with you.

Step #5. Developing useful public speaking skills

You should be able to speak freely without any shyness or mumbling in front of the public. A motivational speaker does not hesitate to deliver his message and achieve his goal of influencing others.

For this purpose, you must work on your public speaking skills. Along with this, you need to be good at presentation skills as well.

As many motivational speakers use some kind of visual aid along with their speech to deliver their ideas and convey their thoughts to the listeners, it becomes equally important for them to develop engaging visuals and graphics.

One of the great ways to solve this issue is using slider presentations and verbal speech. Slide presentations are used where you need to convey your verbal message more effectively in a digestible manner. They allow you to incorporate images, videos, tables, infographics, charts, and much more in your presentations so that your audience stays hooked throughout your presentations.

As the human brain captures and understands visual data and information 60,000 times faster than verbal data, the importance of using visuals in your speech increases. If you are a PowerPoint user, you are in luck. Our website Free PowerPoint Templates offers thousands of free premade PowerPoint slide presentation templates free of cost. You can leverage these useful PowerPoint templates for sale and find many other types of templates for varying purposes as well.

You can also set up your motivational speaking business with this free template. The opportunities are endless when it comes to using PowerPoint for your public speaking or motivational speaking activities. Speaker notes in PowerPoint help the speaker to stay on the right track and remain focused on the desired ideas and thoughts. Try rehearsing your speech in front of a mirror or your friends before you go to the stage. Indeed, practice makes a man perfect. Also, learn how to start a speech from real-life examples of speeches given by great speakers.

Step #6. Investing in your business and applying for speaking gigs

Once you have enough speaking skills and expertise, it’s time to show your potential to the world. In the beginning, you may need to allocate some budget for marketing purposes so that your name may spread around the community and people start getting familiar with your name, content, and future seminars and conferences.

You can also apply for some ongoing exhibitions, conferences, webinars, and conventions to speak to an already existing audience and develop a stronger network. You can look into the content of the speakers who are already speaking at similar events in which you are interested in speaking.

You will get numerous ideas regarding how to deliver your own thoughts, ideas, and concepts in a unique yet persuasive way.

The Best Motivational Speakers That You Should Learn From

In order to become the best motivational speaker, you need to learn from the best. The motivational speaker skills found in some of the most seasoned and renowned mentors of the present and the previous era can help you become the best version of yourself and climb the ladder of success more speedily as a remarkable motivational speaker.

Some of the most distinguished motivational speakers from whom you can learn are given as follows.

Dave Ramsey

Dave Ramsey is a renowned American motivational speaker and educator. He shares his thoughts on finance, personal growth, wealth generation, and more on TV, radio, and social media platforms.

He is the author of some of the best-selling books as well in which he explains how to get out of debt and live a debt-free life in all circumstances. He is considered one of the top mentors in his niche and has mentored thousands, if not millions in this regard.

On Google, Dave Ramsey is searched 361K times a month on average and has a 942K Follower base on Twitter.

Tony Robbins

A self-help guru, personal finance educator, and overall an astonishing motivational speaker, Tony Robbins is a person who is not strange to public speakers. He is one of the most followed motivational speakers in the United States and is a gem of a person.

He is also the author of best-selling books like Unlimited Power, Awaken the Giant Within, and Unleash the Power Within.

Tony has a staggering 3.1M Follower base on Twitter. Apart from Twitter, he is searched almost 261K times/month on Google.

Nick Vujicic

Nick Vujicic is a very special motivational speaker who has inspired millions of his followers.

He himself is a differently abled person with a special disease called Phocomelia, to which he lost his legs and arms. Ever since his birth, he has strived to make a difference in his life and that of others and achieved the objectives by becoming one of the most famous motivational speakers of the modern age.

His thrilling thoughts on life, success, failure, career, and self-improvement have proven to be life-changing for millions. He has a notable Twitter following with 412K followers. He is searched 201K times/month on Google.

Final Words

Becoming a motivational speaker is not hard if you follow a proper strategy in an actionable manner for a specific time period. By following the steps mentioned above, anyone can achieve the goal of becoming an influential and inspirational speaker who not only changes his own life but of others as well.

Your business may need a motivational speaker to increase the morale of your employees, guide them regarding your company’s mission and vision and convert them into a team to achieve your business targets effectively. Specific qualities like dedication, confidence, integrity, leadership, and team and time management must be present in an aspiring motivational speaker so that he can best utilize his intrinsic skills and become a persuasive and results-oriented orator and inspirational speaker.