Speeches4Less, Part Two

I had an e-mail exchange with the head of Speeches4Less, the organization that promises to write corporate speeches for as low as $7 per 500 words.

I can’t go into details, because the gentleman who runs the thing is a law school graduate. He abruptly cut the exchange off and in a dark tone that he must have learned in law school, asked me to keep the conversation confidential.

All I can tell you is what I would tell any person who claimed to be able to give people a speech for cheap:

Speechwriting isnโ€™t expensive because clients are stupid enough to pay. Itโ€™s expensive because it (ostensibly) involves talented writers spending real time getting to know clients who really want to communicate something specific to a particular group of people. Thatโ€™s what communication is. What youโ€™re doing almost necessarily disregards the speaker, the occasion and the audience in favor of operational efficiency. It doesnโ€™t do anybody any goodโ€”especially first-class speechwriters, who often have to fight the utterly incorrect impression that communication is easy and should come cheap.

I would ask the person to ask, “What kind of business am I in? Am I doing some good in the world? Or am I just contributing more banality to a world already bathing in it?”

Come to think of it, that’s a question we all ought to ask ourselvesโ€”even fancy-pants types, who make more than teenage babysitters. โ€”DM

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