I light business meetings every now and then. Those boring conferences where people in the same line of work gather to get worked into a frenzy in order to sell sell sell whatever it is their company hawks. They always seem to have a motivational speaker. And I hate these bastards.
You see, most of these speakers are salesman themselves. And they are successful in their business or they wouldn't be here. They are getting paid to talk about why they themselves are so good at selling. That's Ok…, until they become pompous, full of themselves assholes.
Today I'm at a hotel in Vegas. Lighting a real estate convention for a major reality company. The crowd are generally nice people. But I'm a home owner and I have decided over the years that I really don't care for people who make a living selling real estate. They are not my friends. They just want a commision on anything they can sell me. But I accept that. They are here to be motivated by some jerk from Jersey.
This speaker knows he's a jerk. He walked up to the stage manager before the show and asked if there was any water set up by the podium where he will speak. He was assured there was. His next question was "Did anybody spit in it?" The guy must know people don't like his attitude if he has to ask a question like that.
Right now my client is freaking out. She hired the motivational speaker. He writes books on selling. 50% of his show is about advertising himself. He is not motivating anyone. But more importantly, he is using dirty words. Words like "suck, bitch and dirty bastard". My client has a contract with the motivational speaker that specifies that he will never use any foul language. This probably wouldn't be a problem for many conventions. But of course the CEO for this particular real estate corporation is a Mormon. And the panning jib camera spies him sitting in the front row today. He is certainly not motivated one bit.
Some speakers can work a crowd into a frenzy and have some good valid teaching methods. But this guy today is just too far out there to appeal to anyone but a select mass I guess. But then again that same mass is probably the people who listen to Howard Stern on a regular basis for their comic relief. Somehow I don't think these realtors will remember this guy 5 minutes after he's done. And I'll just remember him as another jerk who I hopefully will never have to light again.
