MOTIVATIONAL SPEAKER VS. INSPIRATIONAL SPEAKER?

Can your motivational speaker also inspire your audience?   YES – and you should expect that.  Read on to find out why…

Selected Posts from Brad’s Past

We found a few posts, videos and stories from Brad’s past, and thought it would be fun to re-publish them here.  So pour yourself a cup of coffee, put on some classic rock, and check out this classic blog post from a decade (ish) ago.  

Looking for a motivational speaker for your event? Contact me here.

Yours,
Brad Montgomery
Motivational Speaker, Humorist, Seminar Leader, Inspirational AND Motivational

For you folks who prefer to read, here’s the transcript to the video:

Hey, it’s Brad Montgomery from bradmontgomery.com with a quick video about the difference between inspirational speakers versus motivational speakers.

So what’s the big deal with that in, it seems like we confuse them or we see the words related. They’re not quite the same, what’s the big deal? Alright, here’s how I see it. I’m a motivational speaker who is inspirational. Go figure.

Motivational speakers, what does that mean? Here’s the deal on motivation. I think motivational speakers address this issue: so many people in our society know exactly what to do, but for whatever reason or reasons, they’re not doing it. So what’s the problem? I’m thinking it’s motivation.

So all we have to do is figure out a way to get them to do what they’re not doing, get them to do what they know how to do but for some reason are failing to do and we call it a success. So for example, if your people are completely well-trained in customer service, but they’re providing crappy customer service, what they don’t need is more training. What they do need is motivation. Aha! Pakow! Motivational speaker.

So in this case, this motivational speaker, what I do is I use humor and levity to remind them of the power of customer service. I remind them how humor and levity and bringing your sense of humor to customer service will help make customer service more fun and if it’s more fun, my argument would be they’re more motivated to provide that which they already know how to do which is excellent customer service.

For crying out loud, we’ve all been around long enough to know what good and bad customer service is. Doing it isn’t that hard if you know exactly how to do it and my guess is you have already trained your people how to do it. What they’re lacking is motivation. So at least with customer service, there’s an example of motivational speaker.

So what’s an inspirational speaker? Well, I think inspirational speakers are people who have done amazing things and inspire you to do a little bit more, a little bit better, a little bit harder, a little bit stronger, whatever. So often, these are people that have done crazy things like they’ve climbed Mount Everest, they’ve run incredible Fortune 500 companies, they’ve done amazing things, right? And then by seeing them and hearing their story, maybe they’ve had some tragic accident in the past, whatever. By seeing them and hearing their story we’re inspired and we end up thinking, wow, if they can do that, those amazing things given their difficulties and their challenges, certainly I can do a little bit more given all the advantages I am blessed with right now. So I’m inspired, right? That is an inspirational speaker.

Well, I tend to think that you need to do both. To me, a really excellent motivational speaker is somebody who is also inspirational and in my particular case, here’s how I do that. I haven’t lived through some tragic accident. I have not climbed Mount Everest. I have not done some amazing thing. But on the other hand, what I feel like I do is I share with my audience and audiences, my story and my stories and generally speaking, my stories are sort of like, I’m like you, I have a lot of things in common with you.

Here’s how I’ve approached it and thought about it and I hope you come with me and hopefully that is inspirational and inspiring in a way to make them think, well Brad seems just like me. He seems to have handled this. Maybe I can do it too, a little bit different but still on target and then for my taste, we sort of lost it if we don’t add that motivational piece. If you’re inspired but you’re not motivated to change your behavior, if you’re not motivated to create lasting change, if you’re not motivated to change what you’re doing from point A to get to point B, then inspiration is nice, but if it doesn’t create action, it’s a fail.

A Motivational Speaker Who Is Funny and Inspirational

Alright, does that help? I hope so. So generally, my marketing stuff calls me a funny, motivational speaker. Whatever. I could be called an inspirational motivational speaker, but hopefully by defining those terms, it’ll help you to feel like your speaker.

While you’re searching for speakers, I’d love to be your guy. If you’re looking for a motivational speaker who happens to be funny and inspirational, I’d like to be your guy. There’s a link here, you can check my preview video. I’m currently filming this from a coffee shop. I’m on the road, trying to answer some questions and I was thinking about this and I wanted to just knock out a video.

Alright, contact us through bradmontgomery.com or funnymotivationalspeakers.com. If you’re looking for a speaker, one of the things you ought to do is ask them, what’s your take on motivation? What’s your take on inspiration? Where do you fall in that? And if your speaker has any experience at all and if they’ve thought about it at all, they’re going to have a darn good answer for that question.

Alright, love to chat with you and answer those questions in person. I’d love to find a way to customize a speech or keynote that fits you and your needs and your organization’s needs, whether or not you need motivation or inspiration. Have a great day! Cheers!