Motivational speaking is a by product of the entrepreneur culture. Everyone wants to start their own startup and market a product, which is a space colonized by these grifters.
I work with a lot of these people and they usually fall into three categories: obvious grifters with a single gimmick, marketing reps who are just there to talk about their brands, and failsons looking to cash in on their famous dads.
Many people who go to motivational speakers are only there to sell their MLM. Because who is more likely to buy your crap than people that spend 2k on 1st semester psychology tricks. A friend went once because she know the guy. They were 18 People, and half of them already knew each other from other seminars. It's almost like the work cults you have at some restaurants.
I couldn't imagine paying $10 for someone to tell me how to buy over-leveraged property, much less $15,000. There needs to be a new category in the DSM for people who fall for these scams.
Now, I went and asked them if their refrigerators were running. They said, sir, we don't have refrigerators here. Now, what kind of customer service is that? No one wants to hear that negative bullcrap.
Well I was gonna post 'yes' but everyone else did that so I'll post 'no' hahaha ;)
Well, not so much 'no' as 'not always'. I might be misusing the phrase 'motivational speaker', but I think there are a lot of people who give these talks who make important contributions to peoples' lives. I'm thinking of people who, like, do the rounds talking at high schools about things like addictions support, queer acceptance, de-toxifying masculinity, and the like.
There's no one in the school system proper teaching those things, and I think they make positive impacts on people! :)
e: of course, all the bland corporate speakers who teach about the 15 Rules for Being a Rich Prole are 100% grifters doing pyramid schemes hahaha
i like looking through the entrepreneur instagrams and literally every single comment is just a bot making a nonsense comment to promote their own entrepreneur tips page, or someone pushing a MLM. the entrepreneur types, they're not smart
