I myself am a keynote speaker in customer service, customer experience and hospitality, so I've experienced many of the triumphs and trials of the keynote speaking business. Keynote speaking is a financially rewarding business, but it's not for everyone. In my estimation, those who succeed all share the following six qualities.

Keynote speaking has an allure that's easy to understand: it's a profession where you get to stand on a stage for an hour and bring home thousands of dollars. But that time on stage is the final manifestation of hours of preparation, negotiation (with inevitable disappointments and misunderstandings), travel and paperwork. So, while this is a profession with low (if any) barriers to entry, it's not going to work out for you or your audiences if you aren't committed.

Notice that I am not saying you need to be an extrovert, or that you need to have performed on Broadway, or anything like that. In fact, extreme extroversion and "staginess" can negatively influence how an audience perceives you.

So what do I mean by comfortable onstage? Some of us actually relax when speaking on a riser to a hundred or a thousand people sitting right in front of us. (These can be the same........

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