The Top 5 Reason Why I think Motivational Speakers Suck — Live Mana Worldwide- Connecting the Best With the Best

Joshua T Berglan
Jul 27, 2017 · 6 min read

When I was going through the darkest times in my life I often went to YouTube searching for motivational speakers videos to “save” me from myself. Truthfully, a lot of times it helped and gave me a momentary burst of motivation and inspired to make a change, for a day or so.

The short term effect had nothing to do with the skill of the speaker, it had more to do with me not doing the necessary work that is needed to apply the lessons I learned from the speaker. That failure is on me and is not why I have a problem with motivational speakers.

After I turned my life around I still sought out these motivational videos to use for personal development along with reading my Bible, praying, and writing. This time, however, I made the commitment to “do the work” and I started attending motivational seminars and training. My experiences could not have been more disappointing.

I will not name names because I would never hurt anyone’s business intentionally but I will list the Top 5 reasons Why Motivational Speakers Suck! For the record, I hate making list and hopefully, this is the last one I ever make. This is for you Mat Shaffer!

  1. Motivational Speakers “steal” or recycle other peoples stories and information from other speakers. Motivational Speakers are worse the comedians stealing material from other speakers. So many of the big names on the speaking circuit steal more bits than Dane Cook! It does not matter if it is intentional or not because when a motivational speaker is asking you to take money from your kids college fund to pay for their “exclusive” 3 day seminar, they should at the very least provide original content. Look, there are millions of preachers out there all reading from the same Book and they have no problem not plagiarizing sermons! Or do they? If they do then I will have to creat a new Top 6 reasons why preachers suck.
  2. Motivational Speakers “preach” different philosophies. I realize this can contradict what I said in the #1 reason why motivational speakers suck but the flip side of stealing material is the extreme differences in philosophies can cause a lot of confusion. This is especially true for speaker junkies who look to these speakers as a savior not knowing that what they are listening to is the equivalent to taking marriage advice from a meth addicted swinger. Ok, that is probably a little extreme but when speakers are teaching their audience it is “wisdom” as they see it. The unintentional contradictions in philosophies can cause the audience to be confused therefore causing more hopelessness than they had before the seminar.
  3. Motivational Speakers Do Not Practice What They Preach. I have a question. DO you have any Facebook personalities in your friends list? I have hundreds of them and I had often wondered if the people were anything like the person they portray on social media. I think we are all guilty of only showing our highlights on social media however I always wondered if the “motivational quote guy”, “the baller” socialite was try to what they portray on social media. So, when I traveled to a city, I would look up my “friend”, contact them and arrange a meeting. I have done this in 5 states and here is what I found. 50% were spot on the person they portrayed and I am literally dear friends with all of those people now. The others? The other people I met were absolutely the furthest thing from authentic too what they showed on social media. I was blown away at how one of the girls that was a preachy, motivational quote posting druggy who did not give 2 craps about any human outside of herself. I have noticed the same thing about some of the paid motivational speakers I have met. As crazy as this sounds, I find this harder to swallow than a Hell-Fire and Damnation styled preacher getting caught doing drugs with a hooker in a sleazy hotel room. Why? Because so many people have turned their backs on religion and religious folk should understand we all sin and make mistakes. These motivational Speakers become gods and have cult like followings.
  4. Motivational Speakers have cult like followings. I do not begrudge fans of anyone or anything. Cult followings are scary because worshipping every move made, every word spoken and following any man can never end well. We are all human and there was only One who was perfect and worth Following in my opinion. Outside of Him, all humans make mistakes are are prone to let their followers down. It can not be avoided really so outside of applying what you learn from a speaker, the obsessive nature in which these speakers are worshipped is sad, scary and will not end well. I also understand how this happens because so many of us are broken, hurting and need relief from our struggles. It is easy for us to fall in this trap but it must be stopped.
  5. Motivational Speakers Suck because you are there only to be up-sold on an ultra exclusive series of up-sells. Have you shopped online? Have you ever had a pop-up flash on your screen offering you a huge discount if you “click the button” right now to get an exclusive, VIP package that will solve all of your sales problems and you will only get his if you click now? As soon as you think you have the world solved then you get another pop up, then another? What in the heck happened to the exclusive VIP information? How do you get more freaking VIP, than VIP? HOLY FREAKING CRAP i hate when this happens. Guess what? Motivational speakers do the same thing. If you go to an event FREE to hear motivational speaker speak, it is not really free. You are there in a real life “click the button”, click funnel of up-sells. Even if you pay for an event you are being prepared for endless up-sells. It is crap in my opinion because very rarely is the extra expense really worth it. I know of a guy who offers multiple “advanced” courses that cost thousands only to lead you to being up-sold to “private” trainings that cost $30,000 and up. I guess I would not have an issue with this if these speakers and their teams were upfront with everything. They hard sell people on attending events and make it sound like the event will change your life. They use high pressure sales techniques that eventually lead to way more expensive up-sells. When the speakers are on stage they give off this impression that they really care about you and want to help you. “it is about the people” “It is about giving back to the world!””Help your fellow man!”. This is all just part of the formula to connect with you so you will buy the BS.

Look, I know of motivational speakers that are the real deal. I also get why people have up-sells but I believe there is a right way to go about offering advance courses. I also believe that when a speaker is preaching about being authentic they should take their own advice or at the very least tell people that they are “just a man, not perfect and they too, struggle with life.” That they believe that “applying these principals to their lives could dramatically improve your state of mind and lead you to a new positive direction”.

I have always wanted to inspire others from stage and not ever by acting like I had all of the answers. I listen to motivational speakers everyday and I take bits and pieces of everything I hear and apply them to my life as needed and forget the rest. These speakers are not my god and they never should be. These speakers, including me, are here to share stories about struggles and how they overcame. Maybe something we have done to improve our lives will help you or offer hope but what we say should never become your gospel.

Send hate mail to [email protected] and God bless you.


Originally published at livemanaworldwide.com on July 27, 2017.

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TV & Radio Host, Master of Ceremonies, Branding and Strategic Planning Expert

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