Why Start a Speaking Business?

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I asked myself this very question many times and I came up with two basic answers. The first answer is so I could stop existing as someone else’s employee. There’s nothing wrong with working for someone else. There’s just something very fulfilling about being able to take care of yourself and your family doing something that you love to do. The second answer is because it allows me to live a more fulfilling life by using my passion and gifts to help others live a better life. 

Now, if you already love what you do then perhaps you’re already on the right track and just have to make a slight switch at the next ‘junction.’ Maybe it’s time to change from working in the trenches to helping all those people that are in the trenches with you.

The reality is that too many people feel trapped in a job they hate going to everyday. Just look around you the next time you’re at the grocery store, the coffee shop or at the mall. Sometimes it feels like you’re living in a zombie movie surrounded by the walking dead. 

So many people doing the same thing day after day, existing for the sole purpose of producing for someone or something else, and once those widgets have been produced, they get their reward of returning home to the sofa and their television or computer each night. They sit there, remote control or mouse in hand feeling unfulfilled and empty, ready to give up the idea of searching for a more meaningful way of living. 

In the early 1980’s I began my journey as one of the walking dead. I was just out of the US Air Force and my grandmother told me I should go into the field of data processing because it promised good pay and good benefits. My grandparents were hard-working immigrants who came to this country as children. They did whatever it took to pay the bills and they did it well. But, they also complained about their employers, their jobs, the neighbors, and pretty much everything else. They weren't fulfilled and happy. Still, I had great respect for my grandmother so I took her advice.

Within a few months I found myself working for a bank, mounting magnetic reels on tape drives and loading and unloading giant reams of green and white striped paper called green-bar into humongous printers. I spent my days punching cards and bursting forms until I eventually moved into programming and from there onto management. 
I’m not telling you this to fault my grandmother; she was only doing what she had been programmed to do too. 

Besides, I was making good money and had good benefits. I’m telling you this because back then, I didn't know it was okay to dream of being all that I was meant to be in this life. I didn't have any idea that I had a passion for speaking about families and parenting just waiting to be found. 

Maybe you've been living your parent’s dream, someone else’s dream, or you've become a member of the ‘walking dead’. If this sounds like you, then this is the perfect time to discover new dreams or to reconnect with dreams you've been denying all along. Right now is the perfect time to reach deep inside yourself to discover and remind yourself of all the ideas that light your soul on fire. 

What do you love to talk about so much that when you talk about it, you feel alive? What have you discovered in your life that you’d like to share with others so that they can start living a better life too? What guilty pleasures would you love to bring out into the open? 

Are there things that you know how to do really well? Do you have natural talents that others would love to hear about, or that you could teach? What have you learned ‘the hard way’? What insight or knowledge do you possess that you could talk about right now rather than waiting until it’s time for your last lecture?