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motivational speaker

We now present the first in a series of articles about:

How to work with your motivational keynote speaker to get the most from your conference investment

 

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.

Brad Montgomery,
Motivational Speaker, Keynote Speaker, Well Worth Your Conference Dollars

 

Related Articles:
Keynote speaker Brad Montgomery – rested and at his very best!
Brad’s client shares his take on investing in a motivational speaker

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For you folks who prefer to read rather than watch, here’s a transcript of the video:

Hey, it’s Brad Montgomery from Bradmontgomery.com with another idea or tip about working with your motivational keynote speaker. The main idea here is treat your speaker well so that they can deliver their very best when it counts.

So what do I mean? Your speaker is human. They have the same stress and the same problems as everyone else attending your convention or meeting. The difference between your speaker and everyone else though is that you are counting on, you are banking on your speaker being at their absolute pinnacle peak performance best for that time slot that you’ve booked them for, right? You want them to be at their absolute best. So my question is what can you do to make sure you’re speaker is at their physical and mental best at that time slot? At, you know, 10 AM or whatever you got.

Want to get the most out of your keynote speaker? It’s the little things that count!

So here’s some ideas for you. One of them is to make sure their travel’s easier. Don’t skimp on some of the little stuff. It’s not crucial, but it makes a difference. Little things like not worrying about the car services for example are great. Taxis are great. And asking your speaker to take the Super Shuttle is not worth it.

It gives your speaker a little bit of extra energy, putting your speaker in a little bit nicer room, making sure your speaker is well fed. These are tiny little things that when you add them together put your speaker at ease and at their physical best and put them in a great mood, and it kind of sounds like a prima donna thing doesn’t it? “Put them in a great mood.”

Well we’re not prima donna’s, I’d like to think I’m not a prima donna. But I’m like everybody else and I perform at my best when I’m well rested and I’m happy and I haven’t gone through a whole bunch of lousy travel.

So if you can help with little small things like that, it’s an easy way to get the most from your speaker. Just treat them really well. Let me give you another example of something you might want to do. That dinner that you invite us to is often terrific.

So for example, if I get into the convention venue the night before a morning event I like having dinner with you and the board. I like having dinner at the big awards thing. I’m very glad to be invited, and I often go, because it gives me some good jokes I can use at the next morning’s keynote.

But sometimes if we’re exhausted, the best answer we could possibly give you is, “No, I’m tired and I don’t want to go to the dinner,” and maybe a quiet night in the room with room service and a trip to the health club in the hotel would be a better way for me to be at my physical best, rather than going out and eating heavy food or whatever, you know what I mean?

Why is that important? Because you want the very best. So your speakers are not princes and princesses, but at the same time we all of course enjoy being treated well, but in this case I think it’s worth your investment. That tiny little marginal increase in your investment to make sure your speaker gets everything they need to be at their very best for that very focused amount of time where you want them to rock your audience.

All right, it’s Brad Montgomery, funnymotivationalspeakers.com and Bradmontgomery.com. I would love to be your speaker. I love to be at my very best for your audience to get you guys where you need to be. I hope you give us a call and tell us how we can get there together. Have a great day.

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motivational speaker

 

In this video, Brad Montgomery explains his foolproof method of ensuring you get the most value from your speaker.

 

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

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

How do you get more value out of your motivational speaker? Well, I got some ideas for you. Here’s where this came from. You know, the economy sucks and so my clients are constantly, I think justifiably, asking for discounts. We got problems, we’re laying people off, our association’s getting fewer attendees every single year. We need a discount. Well, I’m not that interested in discounting, but I am interested in giving you more value and that’s something that’s very easy for me to do and so I wanted to make a quick video about it.

If you’re looking to hire a Motivational Speaker and budget is an issue, and isn’t that pretty much all of you? What I’d like you to ask yourself is how can you get more out of your speaker to justify the expense? So for example, one of the things I do is I try to offer more. You want me for a keynote speech? I love doing that, but it’s just really hard for me to do just the keynote speech without offering a breakout session following the keynote speech and I’ll tell you why. The keynote speech is fun. I’m proud of it. It gets them revved up, it buys them into my concept, which is using levity and lightheartedness and humor to create more, to deliver more, to produce more at work. And they’re ready to go and the ideas are swimming in their head and they want to go, but there’s a disconnect sometimes between that feeling that they have and then translating that into action items because I know that they’re going from my keynote right into the next breakout session that’s going to be some high content, Powerpoint-rich, crazy thing and the power already of that keynote will fall away quickly.

So I love having that keynote where we can say, alright now you got the idea, now you’ve got the buy-in, let’s roll up our sleeves, get out your notes, let’s figure out how you’re going to incorporate this into action steps. Now, how are you going to implement this stuff that we gave you earlier?

Got it? So the point is this, what I want my buyers to see is that if you’re able to book me for both, we can add both for a discount. In other words, you could get one keynote speaker and you can get one breakout speaker. But if you get one person to do the same because I’m able to offer a discount, it turns out to be a terrific savings.

But why stop there? I feel like I’m on TV with that. But wait, there’s more.

What else could you have your speaker do? Well, you know, I’m speaking from personal experience. I do a lot of corporate emceeing. I’m a comedian. So it’s not only easy for me, it’s fun for me to emcee a meeting. I just did this for a meeting in Las Vegas and it was a blast because one, I had fun, but really the best part was that the audience really got something out of it and that meant a lot, of course, to the buyers.

And the question is, what did they get out of it? Energy. So here’s what happened. I started the day with a keynote speech and then they were going to have really high content. It was a medical conference. Super high content all day long and this was information their people wanted and it was information their people needed and it was unbelievably boring. Plus, you add in to the fact that our bodies are just not meant to sit in a chair all day long and learn. You know, we can’t do that. It’s just really hard on us, so what they did is they brought me in after the keynote and between every speaker. I came in, I gently teased, but constantly celebrated that speaker. I joked about the medical issues and this medical device is what it was and then told them, here’s your break time, here’s when to come back and here’s what’s going to happen when you come back and what happened is they came back on time, but then also when they came back, I was able to raise the energy up to prepare them for this really important learning they were to do for the next session.

What Your Motivational Speaker Can Do That Makes Him More Affordable

Alright, so what’s the point? The point is that we were able to get more value to this client at a much reduced fee than hiring a keynote speaker and a master of ceremonies. You starting to get it? So ask your speaker, if you’re looking to hire a speaker, I hope it’s me, but if you’re looking to hire a speaker, I’d really like you to ask them what can you do in addition to your keynote speech that will bring me, my meeting, my conference, my people, value in a way that makes this whole thing more affordable? That’s a great question and if your speaker can’t answer that one easily with 15 ideas, they’re crazy and you ought to keep dialing. In fact, you ought to go right to bradmontgomery.com and visit me.

Alright, so added value, that’s what we’re doing all the time now. It used to be, you know I don’t mind telling you this. When I first got started, I was an entry level speaker and I had my speech like this and I hoped you booked me and I came and I did it.

Well, that’s not the way I work anymore. Instead, my questions are: tell me about your meeting, what are your problems, what are your concerns, what do your people need, what does your meeting need and then how might I be of service to help you to get all of those things?

And it might be to come and just deliver a keynote speech, but probably not. Probably it’s deliver a bigger variety, a package of services and ideas of energy and excitement to create an experience from which your people can learn, they can be excited and they can leave feeling like that was the best meeting ever and all of this is a long way of saying there’s many ways to get more value out of your speaker without necessarily getting a discount. I think that’s right.

Alright, Brad Montgomery, if you want a speaker, I’d love to be your guy. You can learn more at bradmontgomery.com. Give us a call and ask the question, well, Brad, if you’re not going to give us a discount, how can we get more value from you? Love to chat.

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