Top 15 Motivational Speakers
We've ranked the top motivational speakers from around the world, based on popularity.
What You Can Learn From Them
People mentioned in this list are experts in motivation and have spent their careers inspiring people at seminars, through online classes, and with books.
Watching these top motivational speakers interact with their audience is a great way to improve your own communication skills. One of the best known is Tony Robbins, who uses a range of physical and verbal techniques to captivate thousands of people attending his seminars.
After going through the list, spend some time looking at recordings of their seminars and observe how they use their body language, eye contact, vary the pace of their voice and engage with the audience.
Here are 15 of the most popular motivational speakers from around the world.
Motivational Speakers
1. Dave Ramsey
David Ramsey is an American financial author, radio host, television personality, and motivational speaker. His show and writings strongly focus on encouraging people to get out of debt.
Website: daveramsey.com
Twitter: 942K Followers
Facebook: 4.7M Likes
Popularity: 361K searches/month
2. Tony Robbins
Tony Robbins is an American motivational speaker, personal finance instructor, and self-help author. He became well known from his infomercials and self-help books: Unlimited Power, Unleash the Power Within and Awaken the Giant Within.
ebsite: tonyrobbins.com
Twitter: 3.1M Followers
Facebook: 4.2M Likes
Popularity: 261K searches/month
3. Nick Vujicic
Nick Vujicic is an Australian Christian evangelist and top motivational speaker born with Phocomelia, a rare disorder characterised by the absence of legs and arms.
Website: nickvujicic.com
Twitter: 412K Followers
Facebook: 10M Likes
Popularity: 201K searches/month
4. Eckhart Tolle
Eckhart Tolle is a German-born resident of Canada, best known as the author of The Power of Now and A New Earth: Awakening to your Life’s Purpose. In 2011, he was listed by Watkins Review as the most spiritually influential person in the world.
Website: eckharttolle.com
Twitter: 701K Followers
Facebook: 2.2M Likes
Popularity: 201K searches/month
5. Louise Hay
Louise Lynn Hay was an American motivational author and the founder of Hay House, she authored several New Thought self-help books, including the 1984 book, You Can Heal Your Life. Louise Hay died on the morning of August 30, 2017 at age 90.
Website: louisehay.com
Twitter: 372K Followers
Facebook: 2.6M Likes
Popularity: 165K searches/month
6. Chris Gardner
Chris Gardner is an American entrepreneur, investor, stockbroker, motivational speaker, author, and philanthropist who, during the early 1980s, struggled with homelessness while raising his toddler son. Gardner’s book of memoirs, The Pursuit of Happyness, was published in May 2006.
Website: chrisgardnermedia.com
Twitter: 32K Followers
Facebook: 259K Likes
Popularity: 135K searches/month
7. Robert Kiyosaki
Robert Kiyosaki is an American businessman, investor, self-help author, educator, motivational speaker, financial literacy activist, financial commentator, and radio personality. Kiyosaki is the founder of the Rich Dad Company, who provide financial and business education to people through books, videos, games, seminars, blogs, coaching, and workshops.
Website: richdad.com
Twitter: 1.1M Followers
Facebook: 4.0M Likes
Popularity: 110K searches/month
8. Eric Thomas
Eric Thomas is an American motivational speaker, author and minister. After becoming known as a motivational speaker, Thomas founded a company to offer education consulting, executive coaching and athletic development, including athletes such as Lebron James.
Website: etinspires.com
Twitter: 435K Followers
Facebook: 1.6M Likes
Popularity: 74K searches/month
9. Les Brown
Leslie Brown is an American motivational speaker, author, radio DJ, former television host, and former politician as a member of the Ohio House of Representatives. As a motivational speaker, he uses the catch phrase “it’s possible!” and teaches people to follow their dreams as he learned to do.
Website: lesbrown.com
Twitter: 131K Followers
Facebook: 1.4M Likes
Popularity: 60K searches/month
10. Suze Orman
Suze Orman is an American author, financial advisor, motivational speaker, and television host. In 1987, she founded the Suze Orman Financial Group. Her program The Suze Orman Show began airing on CNBC in 2002 and won a Gracie Award for Outstanding Program Host on CNBC for it. She has written several books on the topic of personal finance.
Website: suzeorman.com
Twitter: 1.3M Followers
Facebook: 591K Likes
Popularity: 49K searches/month
11. Iyanla Vanzant
Iyanla Vanzant is an American inspirational speaker, lawyer, New Thought spiritual teacher, author, life coach and television personality. She can currently be seen on television as the host of Iyanla: Fix My Life, and as a frequently featured guest teacher of Oprah’s Lifeclass on OWN: Oprah Winfrey Network.
Website: iyanla.com
Twitter: 1.9M Followers
Facebook: 2.9M Likes
Popularity: 40K searches/month
12. Amy Purdy
Amy Gale is an American actress, model, world-class snowboarder and 2014 Paralympic bronze medalist, co-founder of Adaptive Action Sports, professional motivational speaker, clothing designer and author.
Website: amypurdy.com
Twitter: 65K Followers
Facebook: 153K Likes
Popularity: 27K searches/month
13. Jack Canfield
Jack Canfield is an American author, motivational speaker, seminar leader, corporate trainer, and entrepreneur. He is the co-author of the Chicken Soup for the Soul series, which has more than 500 million copies in print. In 2005 Canfield co-authored The Success Principles.
Website: jackcanfield.com
Twitter: 1.1M Followers
Facebook: 1.11M Likes
Popularity: 22K searches/month
14. T. Harv Eker
T. Harv Eker is an author, businessman and motivational speaker known for his theories on wealth and motivation. He is the author of the book Secrets of the Millionaire Mind published by HarperCollins.
ebsite: harveker.com
Twitter: 139K Followers
Facebook: 843K Likes
Popularity: 16K searches/month
15. Darren Hardy
Darren Hardy is an American author, keynote speaker, advisor, and former publisher of SUCCESS magazine. Hardy is a New York Times best-selling author, who wrote The Entrepreneur Roller Coaster and The Compound Effect.
Website: darrenhardy.com
Twitter: 237K Followers
Facebook: 702K Likes
Popularity: 10K searches/month
Turning These Techniques Into Workplace Skills
Watching great motivational speakers shows you what confident delivery looks like. Employees notice the pacing, the body language, the storytelling, and the well-placed pauses that hold a room. But watching is where the learning usually stops. People build the skill only when they practice it themselves.
For L&D teams, the opportunity is to move employees from observing to doing. Take the moments that matter most at work: a team update, a persuasive pitch to a skeptical stakeholder, a coaching conversation, or difficult feedback for someone on your team. Each one calls for the same techniques these speakers model, including pacing, body language, storytelling, and the small moves that keep an audience engaged.
Rehearsal is what makes those techniques stick. AI-powered roleplay gives employees a place to practice these high-stakes moments repeatedly, with instant feedback after each attempt, so they can adjust before the real conversation happens. Because it runs in the browser, you can roll it out across a whole workforce without scheduling a single live coach.
Explore VirtualSpeech's interactive roleplay practice exercises to see how employees turn what they admire in a great speaker into skills they use at work.