Sink or Swim in 2009 for the UK’s Leading Motivational Speakers

I know that many of the UK’s leading professional motivational speakers will be wondering what 2009 will bring them, or more distinctly whether the demand for their services will continue.

Most simply the old saying that “the strong get stronger and the weak go under” is likely to be true for the thousands of motivational speakers who sell themselves (or we sell for them) into companies in 2009.

You’ll also here a lot of speakers and their agents telling people that a motivational speaker should be in greater demand in a negative market as existed last year and is sure to continue in 2009. Well running a speaker business I can tell you that even the best and most popular of the UK’s motivational speakers have seen a downturn in inquiries for their services.

So what should a motivational speaker do to find work to pay the mortgage? Well firstly 2009 will almost certainly prove challenging in most sectors, save the ultilities and national transport industries. My advice is that it’s a good time for a speaker to reinvent themselves and use it as a period to increase the tools in the tool kit and add more gumption and substance to their real life story telling. Why do this you might ask? Well if you won an Olympic Gold Medal in 1996 then your story has little interest to a group of people under the age of 35 years old these days. Times, stories and the people telling them move on. Steven Redgrave, a true legend of sport and possibly our greatest ever Olympian in Great Britain with five consecutive gold medals would struggle to compete on a speaker proposal with today’s stars Chris Hoy or Rebecca Adlington – you see what I am getting at, and I haven’t even mentioned that Chris Hoy’s fee for motivational or after dinner speaking is considerably less than SSR’s!

I’ll give you a current example of three of our speakers who very good at reinventing themselves. Blind motivational speaker Mark Pollock is currently doing one hell of a challenge, racing to the South Pole by foot, covering 1,000 miles in temperatures averaging -40. Alongside Mark are two of our other speakers James Cracknell and Ben Fogle. Now this is crazy stuff, but made harder for Mark in particular as he lost his eyesight in full exactly ten years ago.

James Cracknell, Mark Pollock and Ben Fogle are doing this as a massive personal challenge but also as they recognise the importance of constant reinvention if they are to maintain and actually upgrade their profiles.

Not everyone has to take on life threatening challenges but the importance of upping your game and constant reinvention is one that applies to businesses and individuals if you wish to continue to be successful.

Cutting speaking fees is only a small part of dealing with the economic crisis. My view is most definitely that there continues to be a strong market for motivational speakers in the UK.

Make use of any additional time that you may have to improve your background and pitch to the market. You don’t have to tell a motivational speaker to stay positive when the going gets tough!

My next topics for writing about will be who Pro-Motivate regard as the UK’s leading motivational speakers, based on demand over the past twelve months. I also intend to write a piece on why I don’t believe the UK has a great need for exclusive speaker representation and the damage that it does to the speaking sector as a whole.

Wishing you all a prosperous 2009

Jonathan Curran

Jonathan Curran & Jonah Lomu

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Tags: Ben Fogle, James Cracknell, Mark Pollock, Motivational Speakers UK, Pro-Motivate Speaker Bureau