How to Choose Your Next Youth Speaker
Are you trying to find the perfect youth speaker for your next event?
Good youth speakers have an incredible impact; they inspire, entertain, and help student to move in an overwhelmingly positive direction. The wrong speaker will stink up a room and that will reflect poorly on your event and your organization.
Motivational youth speakers require a very specific set of skills. First, your speaker should be dynamic and entertaining. Next, your speaker should be able to relate to your students. Without this crucial element, the ‘entertaining’ aspect will simply look cheesy. You’ve got to find someone who is genuine. This usually comes across when you have a speaker who shares something about their life that young people can relate to.
Here are some tips on how to choose the best youth speaker for your group!
Youth Motivational Speaker Search Tip #1: Ask for References
The proof is in the pudding. Therefore, rather than looking at a highlights reel of a few minutes, ask someone who has actually had the speaker in the past. This is going to do two things: first, you’re going to get an honest idea of what the speaker is like to work with. After all, you’re speaking with someone who has booked them before, right? The next great benefit is that it’s going to separate those who have actually spoken to groups in the past with those who are trying to sell you on themselves as a newbie. You’ll quickly be able to weed out the players from the fakers with this technique.
Youth Motivational Speaker Search Tip #2: Chat With The Speaker
Here’s the key question to ask when you are talking with a speaker on the phone: “What will you do to make our event a huge success?”
Then, be sure you be quiet and listen to how they answer!
It’s sort of a trick question. What you’d ideally hear them say is something along the lines of “I’m not sure. I need to know about your event and what you want to accomplish. Once I know that, I’d be happy to tell you how I see what I do fits in with the whole program.”
See, many speakers have their own agenda. They want to do things their way. You are running an event, and unless they’re going to help you do that, you don’t want ‘em anywhere close!
Youth Motivational Speaker Search Tip #3: Know Your Outcome
With that being said, it is vital to determine what you goals for your event are. Are you having a conference to teach about leadership? If so, get a speaker that specializes in the subject. Do you want your audience to handle hardships in school, peers, and life success strategies in general? Then seek a speaker who has relevant experiences that can give light on such topics.
Youth Motivational Speaker Search Tip #4: Watch Full-Length Videos
Anybody can put together a few highlight videos where they look funny and inspiring. That’s all good and well, but what happens when they’ve got an hour in front of your audience? How are they going to hold your group’s attention and how are they going to last when they don’t have special video and audio effects to enhance their speech?
If you don’t watch full-length, uncut videos of the speaker’s performance, you’ll never know! So, ask to see a video of their speech and you’ll probably see very quickly who you do (and don’t!) want to have at your event.
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