For Motivational Speakers, Nothing Succeeds Like Failure
Those Willing to Divulge Their Defeats Are in Demand,
Can Draw Fat Fees
By ROBERT JOHNSON Staff Reporter of THE WALL STREET JOURNAL

Those champions of rah-rah rhetoric, motivational speakers, are turning to an unlikely new tactic to hold their audiences: talk about failure.

Oh sure, the mission for professional speech makers at corporate meetings, seminars and sales rallies is still to inspire listeners to success. But they're finding that the message gets across better when it includes a bit of drama about defeat.

Best-selling business-book author Tom Peters, a frequent speaker, is talking a lot lately about the value of failing "fast," learning from the experience and moving on. Only with failure, he says, can you verify wrong ways of doing things and discard those practices that hinder success.

"This is a fundamental shift in our industry: a move away from sugar-coating to realism," says Brian Palmer, president of the National Speakers Bureau in the Chicago area.

Among the new breed of speakers who are hot, he says: "People who tried to climb Mount Everest and didn't quite get to the top. There are a lot of them out there."

But tales of failure must produce lessons of recovery and fighting back, Mr. Palmer says. "The speakers must convey how they have picked up and moved on."

Thus failure has become fashionable among many of the nation's 4,000 or so motivational speakers, who often command $5,000 to $10,000 per appearance. Speakers bureaus, such as Mr. Palmer's second-generation business, are essentially brokers that match speakers with companies, industry groups or other organizations.

Why are such customers demanding speakers who talk of failure?

"This is partly a reflection of the dot-com era. A year ago, companies wanted their workers to hear big success stories. But now there's so much chaos going on in the high-tech world that people want someone to share how to deal with it," says Michelle Lemmons-Poscente, president of the International Speakers Bureau in Dallas. She adds, "People want to know, 'How do you get up in the morning when the value of your company's stock is plunging?' "

She says the sort of story that grabs audiences lately is the one often told at meetings by her husband, Vincent Poscente. He tells audiences how he didn't win an Olympic gold medal as a downhill skier in the 1980s after breaking his leg. "His skiing talent was just average, but he trained very hard and almost achieved his dream -- only to stumble. Everyone relates to that. How many can really relate to winning the gold?"

When a speaker sprinkled tales of failure into his talk last year to plant workers at Cutrale Juices USA Inc., a citrus-fruit processor in Auburndale, Fla., "It worked wonders," says James Baker, the company's labor-relations manager. Morale rose among the 550 workers at Cutrale, a subsidiary of Brazil's Sucocitrico Cutrale Ltd., after a speech by Frank Candy, an Orlando, Fla., motivational speaker who charges $5,000 for a speech. "People had been down here after a period of labor problems, but Frank gave a great talk about keeping going through adversity," Mr. Baker says.

Some workers later told Mr. Baker of identifying with the 49-year-old Mr. Candy's version of how pro basketball star Shaquille O'Neal had played for years as the game's most dominant player without winning a championship until he did so with the Los Angeles Lakers last season. "Shaq was obviously the best, but he just couldn't quite get the reward he deserved. I think a lot of us like to see ourselves that way and hope if we stick with it that eventually we'll be recognized," Mr. Baker says.

Mr. Candy says he was an extra in the movie "Rocky," portraying a member of the audience at the boxing match between Sylvester Stallone and Carl Weathers. "I didn't think that movie would be a hit but I learned something: There's nothing people love more than hearing how someone else crashed and burned but got up like Rocky Balboa -- and says through swollen eyes, 'Come on man, I dare you to hit me again.' "

Mr. Candy says he was hired for about 100 appearances last year, his best in nearly two decades of paid motivational speaking.

David McNally, 54, an Australian based in Minneapolis, is also in more demand than ever. His speeches, $5,000 each, lean heavily on a business failure: The 1970s rise and fall of his Sta-Power brand automobile gas-tank additive. "We were trying to be another STP, and we almost made it."

Mr. McNally tells audiences of his initial success in marketing Sta-Power. "I was a great salesman. I drove a Rolls-Royce and had a beautiful home. But I wasn't a great manager, and the business went into a decline that I couldn't stop. By the age of 28, I was flat broke and heavily in debt, which were goals I can't remember setting."

One of Mr. McNally's main points to audiences is that "failure in business or a career doesn't condemn you to failure. You have to see yourself separate from failures in your job. I wouldn't be a true failure unless I never took another risk in my life, if I went down and never got up."

Mr. McNally tells people that he got back up and they can too, from whatever may have happened to them. Mr. McNally's voice rises with enthusiasm, and he pauses for applause. Mr. McNally says he switched to the speech about his failure and rebound a few years ago when he was offering seminars in "skills-oriented tips on becoming a better manager or marketer." During a break at one seminar, he says, a member of the audience asked him to personalize his advice. After he launched into a revealing biographical speech about his failure with Sta-Power, Mr. McNally says, "The feedback was extraordinary. People came up, grabbed my hand and said, 'Thank you.' "

He has since dropped the seminars altogether and just makes his speech.

In a ‘reader’s choice’ survey for Corporate Meetings and Incentives Magazine, the readers of CM&I selected Frank Candy, MBA, PGA, CPC as one of their favorite professional speakers in America.