The Speaking Industry is Not Dead

“We make a living by what we get, but we make a life by what we give.“- Norman MacEwan

You’ve probably heard that Warren Buffett contributed $30 billion to the Bill and Melissa Gates Foundation and that Bill Gates stepped down from his fulltime Microsoft duties to focus more on his foundation work. The Buffett gift makes the Gates Foundation the largest foundation in the world. By comparison, the Ford Foundation is $11 billion, the Lilly Foundation is $8 and the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation is $5.5. The Gates Foundation will now have 60 billion dollars to carry on its good work.

What was it that made these two men shift their focus from making money to giving it away? This got us thinking about the current state of the meetings and speaking industry, which is often reported to be in danger of extinction. When we joined NSA a little over a year ago, we thought we were joining a vibrant, growing association in a vibrant, growing industry of meetings and conventions. But, at our very first meeting we learned that since 2001 companies and associations have been cutting back on their meetings and conventions – and that meant speakers were more challenged than ever to get a speaking gig. We even learned that if you want to “hit the road” to speak from the front of the room, you’ll probably need to head off to Singapore, Japan or other foreign posts. Speakers, we quickly found out, just weren’t speaking that much anymore.

But, not to worry, speakers were fighting back against these reduced opportunities. Never fear, they said, the solution to all of this is in “product.” To us it sounded like Mr. Robinson telling Dustin Hoffman in The Graduate that the future is in “plastics.”

Many of the speakers who visited our Colorado NSA chapter this past year taught us that product helps create the new holy grail of the speaker’s world – the “passive income stream.” Why hit the road and hassle with airplane delays and bad service when you can sit in the comfort of your mountain cabin and write stuff, record stuff and even video tape yourself doing stuff? We even learned that we’d reach more people with our message by creating “product.” Yes, Mr. Robinson.

But is “product” really what the world needs from speakers? Hmmm…. Let’s take a look at the world we’re working in these days. The rural fabric of America is being devastated by methamphetamines; 2 million grandparents are now raising 4.5 million grandchildren; and 35% of downloads from the Internet are pornography. Corporations are regularly eliminating employee pensions while retaining the mega-pensions of their top executives and the religions of the world are facing a rift that makes the word “ecumenical” look like fond relic from the past. And you don’t think you are needed out there?!

More than any time in history our world is in need of the passion, inspiration and commitment from those who speak at the front of the room. And, it is this world that begs for more, not less, meetings and conventions so people can come together to learn.

No one asked us and we have no special qualifications to make these observations. We are new to the speaking world and may be off-base in our conclusions or out-of-line for offering them. For what it’s worth, we often see speakers who are still doing self-esteem for the successful, meditation for the moneyed and inspiration for the in-crowd. How deeply, we wonder, can we stare into our collective belly-buttons, align our well healed chakras and meditate more meaningfully on our pocketbooks.

Too many speakers are complicit in the demise of their own industry by sinking into the morass of sales hype and passive income and continuing to try to get hired by an ever disappearing group of wealthy patrons. If I’ve heard one, I’ve heard twenty speakers say that they hate the world of overcrowded airplanes, hotel hysteria and meeting planner goof-ups. No, they tell the impressionable new speaker – instead of going out and speaking, just develop passive income and sit on your island and rake in the money.

The meeting and speaking industry is neither dead nor dying. But it is being suffocated by those who buy into the idea that that a tele-seminar is as effective as a gathering, that sitting in front of a screen is as good as mingling with others, that podcasts can touch people’s hearts the way a speaker can touch a congregation.

It’s time for speakers to leave the passive income behind, get back on those crowded airplanes and find new audiences. It’s time for speakers to go out and speak and work with people in the flesh. We gather together in groups to learn and grow. We share and hug and compare and laugh – enhancing our learning in a way that technology just can’t match. We gather together in groups to learn. It’s what we need now. It’s what we’re good at. We should do more of it, not less.