What makes a great speaker?

Essence is the key!

Recently I sat having coffee with two very smart fellows. The afternoon was very enjoyable as an open conversation covering events, speakers, bureau's ensued. It was of those discussions where each individual was completely respectful, listening intently and not jumping in. On that score alone I was having a ball.

One of the gentlemen who was a speaker of some reputation asked me how I would describe a great speaker.

Before I go on tell you what my response was, perhaps I had better explain how I came to own and run a Speaker's Bureau and a Speaker's Management company.

Like many who have failed at there first entrepreneurial venture, I was no exception. We only lost everything....

While my friends were busy buying houses, having children and climbing the corporate ladder, I was out chasing a dream. The Dispensary Theatre Restaurant in Newtown opened in 1994 and closed its doors in 1997 In that time I had produced hundreds of shows, managed talent, booked acts, speakers, MC's, entertained corporates such as Glaxo Welcome, rubbed shoulders with stars of stage, screen and TV, wrote, directed and produced three major musicals, ran the restaurant, built the sets for the shows, costume designed, delivered and won sponsorship proposals, cleaned, cooked, served, leading a team of inspired artists, musicians and others who anted a slice of the action. My God! It was the hardest I had ever worked and I loved it!

Phew....well as I said we only lost everything and that is another story which will be told in time.

Licking my wounds I searched the positions vacant column. I was hired as an outbound telemarketer for a large IT company, I needed to do something and IT was the in thing. I did not know the difference between a mouse or a keyboard, however four years later I was QLD State Manager (for a short time) I was doing 80 hours a week and commuting from Sanctuary Cove to Brisbane daily. I walked in one day and handed my car keys and all other debris one collects from having a high paid position and said "stick it". There is more to the story but for brevity's sake lets move on....

Michelle and I had moved to Queensland to self educate ourselves, we were going to find a business and return to Sydney to build it. We did not know what at the time.....

The big mistake we made the first time was going into business with out any idea of the basics, like so many entrepreneurs do at their peril.

We were reading and studying at home with a voracious appetite and started goal setting, visualisation, listening to CD's. Our unit was very much a study. We were absolutely determined to go back to Sydney and have another crack. We started attending conferences and watching speakers from all over the world and from Australia. We were like sponges and desperate to attract the right stuff, people, things into our life to get back to what we knew we supposed to be, business owners.

We just loved watching speakers. We had found our passion, we were addicted to conferences and speakers. They were giving us so much. As they say when the students ready, the teacher appears. We were ready and hey presto!!!!!!!!!

Around that time I reacquainted myself with performance turnaround expert and one of the foremost golf coaches in the world, Lawrie Montague.

Lawrie asked me if I would like to start work for him, running his Golf Academies and booking his speaking engagements. I gladly accepted. That was where life seemed to start for us again. Before that it was never ending story of putting everything into our debts so we did not have to go bankrupt.

Not long after I commenced work with Mind on the Game, Lawrie gave me a book called Speak and Grow Rich by Dottie Walters to help me accustom myself to the industry. I was a good student and started doing what the Dottie suggested, I called the Bureau's and asked if I could get Lawrie on their books. Well............attitude!!!! I could not believe how short and disrespectful the response was from some of the biggest Bureau's in Australia. I remember thinking these guys cannot be happy with their jobs. In fact it was then that I realised there was a place in the industry for Michelle and I and we went about making our plans to own a Speakers Bureau. Around this time I was also invited to sit down and talk with Keith Abraham (incidentally, and if you get a chance to see him speak, he is one of the top 5 speakers I have ever seen in action.) I learnt much in a short time from Keith and he shared some awesome resources with me.

My time with Lawrie (3 years) was the most informative and empowering time of my life. The lessons I have learnt from him are at the forefront of my thinking.

Ok so we moved to Sydney in May 2011. I wanted to get a job at a Speaker's Bureau for 12 months to acquaint myself with the "who's who" in the industry. I did that much more easily than I thought and I am very grateful for the position and time I was allowed to spend with this strange folk.

So....while The Entertainers seemed to fly up over night, it had taken many years of study, visualisation, searching for our passion and hard work to make it happen. Nothing was going to stop us and we knew we had a winning formula. Treat Speakers with the respect they deserve and drive value and innovation to our customers.

Now...... back to what makes a great speaker.

While opinions on speakers are always varied at conferences or within the industry from one person to the next and to a large extent is a highly subjective view point, some speakers are just amazing.

So amazing that event the most cynical of people have to at least say, "yeah she/he was pretty good."

So what is it that stands these individuals out from the crowd?

My belief as to what that is can only be described as essence. The dictionary meaning is of essence is "The intrinsic nature or indispensable quality of something, esp. something abstract, that determines its character."

You could make a case certainly and say there are a number of elements that go into the creation of an outstanding keynote, some of those could be, reliability, personality, expertise, experience, passion, humour, and the list goes on...... boy does it go on.........

To take a line out the movie The Castle, "it's the vibe". Try as you will, coming up with a formula will even have the academics scratching there head. As I mentioned this is completely subjective and therefore impossible to quantify even by those who have been on the stage for many years.

I have witnessed hundreds of keynotes, there have been times where I have come out thinking OMG that was amazing, only to hear a comment "he/she was hopeless, what a waste of time". Go figure!

So when I am asked what makes a great speaker I answer "essence". To me this is the highest compliment we can pay to a speaker. It has taken a lifetime for them to hone their craft, work on their subject matter, promote themselves, study, fall over, get back up only to inspire us again and again again.

Indeed essence is the magic that we feel when we shake our head in disbelief at the brilliance of  Speakers.