Category: Speakers, Professional

  • Art Fettig, “Pass it on!”

    A dynamic speaker named Bill Sanders invited me to join him one day when he was visiting Jackson prison. That would be around 1980. We went into the maximum security section and visited with prisoners serving life sentences and then we would each gave a little speech and talked with prisoners privately.  I asked one prisoner why he was in prison and he told me he had murdered a couple of people when he was a young man. It was quite an experience and I will never forget the sound of that big gate clanging behind me when we entered.

    I wanted something stronger to share with these men who could well be spending the rest of their live in the prison. I wrote my Self-Esteem Credo and on a later visits I shared it with some prisoners.

    Sometime later I received an e-mail from a New Zealand prison counselor who advised me he had obtained a copy of my Credo from a friend and had been using it with prisoners for many years now and says it makes a real difference in the behavior and attitudes of prisoners that he works with.

    Several years ago thanks to Christopher’s News Notes over a million copies of my   Credo have been distributed to teens.

    The Self Esteem Credo  
    © Art Fettig 

    God made me – I was no accident,  
    No happenstance. I was in God’s plan  
    And He doesn’t make junk, ever.  
    I was born to be a successful human being.  
    I am somebody special, unique,  
    Definitely one of a kind  
    And I love me.  
    That is essential so that   
    I might love you too.  
    I have potentials, yes,  
    There is greatness in me,  
    And if I harness that specialness  
    Then I will write my name  
    In the sands of time with my deeds.  
    Yes, I must worker harder, longer,  
    With greater drive  
    If I am to excel,  
    And I will pay that price.  
    For talents demand daily  
    Care and honing.  
    I was born in God’s image and likeness  
    And I will strive to do God’s will.

  • Aspiring Speakers by Art Fettig

    Just have a fantastic message that will somehow benefit the members of the audience.
    Just have a fantastic message that will somehow benefit the members of the audience.

    My First Professional Speech

    I can remember the day I heard my first professional speaker giving a talk for our railroad group in Battle Creek, Michigan. His name was Herb True Ph.D. and that same day he put me on his team as a humor writer. That meeting changed my life. Many hundreds of times when I was out on the road giving speeches I was approached by members of the audience and they too had a burning passion to become a professional speaker. What is the secret? Pretty simple, really. Just have a fantastic message that will somehow benefit the members of the audience. Oh yes, if you want to be paid a high fee then you had better be the best speaker in the field on that topic and have a brilliant marketing approach.

    Speaking is similar to becoming a successful artist, author, actor, musician, photographer, comedian or even news broadcaster. Many believe they are called but very, very, very few are chosen.

    I have always felt that I was blessed…First to meet Herb True that day and then to have the drive to wade through all of those years of rejection as a part-time author and humorist.

    Could I make a success of it starting out today? I seriously doubt it. Not with my high-school formal education. Not with the competition that is out there today.

    When they started The National Speakers Assn. there were only around three hundred people they could round up who considered themselves “Professional Speakers.” I’ve heard that today there are over a hundred thousand. I believe it.

    Of course there are a lot more slots for professional speakers to fill but still the competition is awesome.

    So what is my advice to aspiring speakers? Don’t try it unless you absolutely have to. If you figure that you won’t be able to take another breath unless you are out there striving as a speaker go for it…but…don’t quit your day job.