With so many statistics floating around the internet these days, it’s hard to find one that truly boggles the mind. Well, I found one.
In professional speaking circles, people who speak 50-60 speeches a year are considered active, busy and successful. Speakers who give keynotes 70-90 times a year are considered to be at full capacity. Then there are the extreme workaholics who speak in the 100-120 times a year category. These are the people who have only a passing familiarity with heir children’s names and their spouse’s birthdays.
On February 22, 2007 I found the mother of all speaking statistics: 352. That’s how many speeches Bill Clinton gave in just one year: 2006. 352 speeches in one year!!!!
That’s incomprehensible! And he doesn’t even have Air Force One to cart him around.
By all objective measures, Bill Clinton is a fantastic public speaker. But what most people fail to realize, what I failed to realize, is his absolute dedication and passion for speaking. Clinton gives a speech more often than many people in the world brush their teeth—he’s at nearly once a day, including weekends. And he’s not even a full-time speaker; he’s running foundations, fundraising, solving global problems and helping his wife try to become President.
Another interesting fact: Clinton only charges for 20% of his speeches. Granted, he made nearly $10 million in 2006 according to the Washington Post from the 1 out of 5 speeches he did charge for.
So what is the lesson here? Can everyone get rich or become a world-class speaker just by giving a speech 7-days a week? No, but I do think that to be great at anything you have to love doing it and if you love doing something, you seek out opportunities to do it. And the more you do something, the better you get at it. Even Clinton’s enemies (I think he still has a few) would concede that when they see the former President speak, they sense he is having the time of his life. Clinton loves to speak and he conveys this to his audiences. This feeling is contagious and it makes audiences have an even more positive feeling about Clinton. Clinton has generated an entirely positive feedback loop of speaking, improvement, money, praise, more speaking, more invitations, more praise, more feedback, and on and on and on.
But Clinton didn’t just start this in 2001 when he left the White House. He began his quest to seek out every speaking opportunity he could find as a very young man—long before he even heard of being paid large sums of money to give a speech.
So if you want to be a great speaker, then you need to speak. And speak often. There may be times when you don’t get rich off of speaking, or even receive any money. But if you truly want to be one of the greats, you won’t have any choice; you will simply have to speak.
Originally published as Great Speakers Speak Often by TJ Walker for SpeakingChannel.TV
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