Victor Antonio"s Motivational Speech at the UOP - Anna Shinn

“Author, trainer and speaker Victor Antonio is proof that the American dream of success is alive and well. A poor upbringing from one of the roughest areas of Chicago didn't stop Victor from earning a B.S. Electrical Engineering, an MBA and building a 20 year career as a top sales executive and becoming CEO of a multimillion dollar high-tech company.”

 

That paragraph is quoted directly from his biography. Victor has shared the stage with many business leaders and motivational speakers including Zig Ziglar, Rudy Giuliani, Robert Schuller, Paul Otellini, John May and many others. Considered to be one of his best performances, Victor Antonio speaks at University of Phoenix in Raleigh, North Carolina in February 2010.

 

Anybody can be motivated, but not everybody can motivate others. Victor Antonio puts people at ease, instead of jumping directly into the speech as well as using light jokes that caused the audience to burst into laughter. Also, he doesn’t use the podium. When people listen to a speaker, the podium sets the audience and the speaker apart. I think that is why he doesn’t use the podium. Nobody can truly motivate an audience when their body language is telling them that “I am different, and that is why I am setting myself apart from you,” or “I am better than you that is why I am up here.”

 

To summarize his entire speech, he had condensed his understanding on the logic of success, “dream killers” and “stupid people” people, and suppressing negative people from getting you down into three simple stories that left the audience laughing. I think that the importance of him speaking about these subjects was where he was. He wanted to encourage the graduates to succeed in what they believed in, and let nobody crush their dreams. He encouraged them to ignore the people that always stuck by the rules, and to ignore the people that always felt that there was a right and a wrong to success. He also encouraged them, nevertheless, by telling them that there would always be people who would not believe in themselves and others. All these lessons are valuable to not just the people in the audience, but to everybody around the world. The most important lesson that we all should learn, is to be optimistic, even in the worst situations.

 

This motivational speaker ended the speech with what people consider to be his “signature pledge”, called the “Success Pledge”. The “Success Pledge” is all about being who you really are, believing in yourself and accepting that you can do great things in the world.