My very first job at the age of 16 was actually a public speaking job of sorts. It was the late 1970s. And I was working at an amusement park. It was kind of like a six flags, but a little bit smaller. It was on the border of North and South Carolina. My first job ever, I show up, and they have me doing the guest shirt age and weight game.
Someone would get up stand on a scale, I'd have to guess their weight. If I got within 10 pounds, they lost if I didn't get it. That close they want I had to guess their age within two years. If I did that correctly, they didn't want anything if I didn't they want. So here's what happened though. Sorry if this sounds a little scammy I was 16 years old.
There was no incentive to be accurate because they paid 50 cents. Play. If they won, they won a prize that probably cost the amusement part. 10 cents. So it didn't matter at all. But I had to stand there with a microphone.
And as people were walking by, Hello, Sir, how would you like to play? Guess your agent? Wait. Now if someone comes up and is obviously 70 years old, I could say, well, Ma'am, I'm guessing your age is 28. Can you show me your ID, they would laugh. Show me the ID.
She said I was wrong. Here's your prize. Same with weight. I didn't want to embarrass someone. Someone's 300 pounds. I wasn't going to say that.
But what was fun about it is talking to people kind of forced me I was shy, a little bit out of my shell because I had to project my voice into the crowd to try to bring people in. I don't know if I was horrible or not. It was just the management style. I think they switched me to working in a store about three days later, but that was my first job at 16. And at some level, I'm still doing I am still speaking for a living. So why do I tell that story?
It's just to give people a little better sense of my start wasn't anything particularly glamorous. And it wasn't anything brilliant that I said. But it does show that if you speak in different ways, there are ways of making money getting paid for it. Sometimes it's not that important, what you're saying, as long as you engage people at some level, entertaining them a little, getting them involved in something. It really is that simple.