Don Hutson has enjoyed a 40-year run of more than 5,000 speeches and programs that has taken him from the University of Memphis to the top of The New York Times bestseller list of business books with The One Minute Entrepreneur, coauthored with Ken Blanchard. The 130-page book is a fictional parable loosely based on real events in the authors’ careers and sprinkled with “one-minute insights” at the end of each chapter.

Which immediately raises two questions. If wisdom can be dispensed in one-minute doses, what does that say about the one-hour speech or the two-day seminar? It’s all in “the takeaway,” Hutson explains. And what place does the speaker’s message of optimism, uplift, and inspiration have in a struggling economy where millions of workers have lost their jobs through no fault of their own because giant companies went out of business or moved their operations to other countries?
“In times of challenge,” Hutson says, “we can go toward abundance and prosperity or we can go toward scarcity.”

He elaborated on both of those questions and several more in an interview the day after Thanksgiving at his office in a converted warehouse in downtown Memphis. Three days earlier he had returned from a speaking trip to Singapore with his wife, Terri Murphy, who is also an author and business consultant. They live a few blocks away in a bluff-top house in the South Bluffs.

Hutson, 64, grew up in Whitehaven and majored in sales at the University of Memphis. Selling was not considered a “real” academic discipline by some professors, but Hutson strenuously refutes that notion. It has been said that Ray Kroc of McDonald’s succeeded by taking the hamburger seriously. By the same token, Hutson made his fortune by taking sales seriously. In addition to speaking engagements, his books, DVDs, tapes, and training seminars propel a marketing powerhouse called U.S. Learning. His client list includes over two-thirds of the Fortune 500 companies.

His three-room office is decorated with photographs of CEOs and speakers, awards, sales materials, and bookshelves that hold part of his considerable library. His favorite author is Orison Swett Marden, a physician turned motivational author who was popular a century ago. Marden and Hutson are part of the American store of proverbial wisdom that goes back at least 250 years to Benjamin Franklin’s Poor Richard’s Almanac. (“Time is money.”)

In his landmark 1921 book The American Language, H. L. Mencken wrote, “The American literature of ‘inspirational’ platitude is enormous and almost unique. There are half a dozen authors who devote themselves almost exclusively, and to vast profit, to the composition of arresting and uplifting apothegms, and the fruits of their fancy are not only sold in books but also displayed upon an infinite variety of calendars, banners, and wall cards.”

Practitioners include such sages as Ralph Waldo Emerson, Will Rogers, Dale Carnegie, Paul Harvey, and — somewhat surprisingly given his reputation as a wiseacre — Mark Twain. (“Keep away from people who try to belittle your ambitions. The really great make you feel that you too can become great.”) Sentiments may be dispensed with a spoonful of sugar (Hallmark cards) or a dash of salt and pepper, à la one of Hutson’s favorites, Brother Dave Gardner. (“Everybody’s weird once you get to know them.”) Asked if speakers should use humor in their presentations, Hutson invariably says, “Only if you want to get paid.”

I met Hutson 25 years ago when he was starting to establish a national reputation in business circles but still flying under the radar in the local media. It was an odd pairing: Reporters tend to be question marks and motivators exclamation points. The “negative media,” especially the “liberal media,” is the butt of jokes and criticism from the generally conservative speakers corps, Hutson included. But he and I hit it off in spite of ourselves, and I have followed his career with admiration and a little envy.

For one thing, Hutson can do something that flusters, embarrasses, or terrorizes many of us — public speaking — and do it in a way that can bring a smile to the face of a cynic. For another, the brief, well-turned phrase that becomes the “takeaway” of a book, speech, or newspaper column is the shared goal of all us who call ourselves communicators in the age of the Internet, Twitter, Colbert, and Limbaugh. Benjamin Franklin understood that 250 years ago, and so does Don Hutson.

MBQ: Do you remember your first speech?
Hutson: The first paid speech was in Atlanta for Southeastern L P Gas Association. I think it was for $150. But it was pretty cool. Making a speech is easy. Getting a speech in today’s marketplace is the challenge, and then getting there to do it. When I got out of college I was working for sales training firms. We had to give speeches to small groups. At age 21 I was scared to death and incompetent. But I had a good manager, and over time I got pretty good. My first 1,500 speeches were little 30-minute freebies to six or eight people. That’s where I paid my dues.

What advice do you give aspiring speakers?
There are not enough days to go to lunch with everyone who wants to talk about becoming a speaker. So many times people think they have a singular skill that they can translate into a successful career that requires multifaceted skills. That’s one of the biggest problems with entrepreneurs and with speakers. They don’t think about where they’re going to get the work or how they’re going to spread their name and what they’re going to do to create centers of influence.
Do you still customize each speech?
I do, and at this stage of the game it’s what keeps it interesting. Most speakers who have been in business a long time have dozens of what we call vignettes, typically a 4- to 12-minute story to target a certain area of content. The tailoring is all the in-between and the peripheral comments based on things management has told me when they hired me to be their speaker. But most speeches are a series of vignettes. The tailoring is what keeps it interesting. You can stand up and do Talk Number 2 and go stir crazy after a while.

Quoting from your book: “The best advice we’ve ever received was given in less than one minute.” What does that say about the 45-minute speech?
If you have an audience of 300 people, John sitting here and Megan sitting over there might get totally different takeaways from a speech. It’s almost like a smorgasbord where different people get different things from a speech or seminar. When you craft your program you’ve got to be very conscientious about trying to deliver content that is going to be as compelling as possible for as many people as possible.
How did the whole one-minute insights thing come about?
Ken Blanchard and I were in Speakers Roundtable for many years with a mentor named Charlie Tremendous Jones — and that’s his real name, by the way. I had a vision of writing a book as a tribute to Tremendous called The One Minute Mentor with Ken. He said it sounded interesting but he wasn’t all that excited about it. Ken has a publishing committee of six people at Blanchard’s, and every Monday they have a meeting to talk about potential books. We were on the back burner. Our young coauthor, Ethan Willis, suggested we make it about entrepreneurship. So we repurposed it from mentor to entrepreneur and the excitement level went up. Still, it took five years.

Why is entrepreneur a better choice than mentor?
It wasn’t so much any negatives about mentoring as it was excitement about entrepreneurship right now with a lot of people getting laid off and doing their own thing.
In “The One Minute Entrepreneur,” the wife is named Terri, which is your wife’s name. Does that make you Jud, the character who goes overboard in his business and personal life before Tremendous Jones sets him straight?
A qualified “yes.” But the book is not really autobiographical except for some specific elements. Ken and I for the most part were teaching skills we had been teaching for several years.

Have you ever reined in your career to spend more time with your family?
I have. There have been times when I would be too busy, and I would try to slow things up and get more focused on the kids, and I think I pulled the reins in successfully. But it’s hard to say no when people call you and the date’s open. I’ve had an airplane for almost 40 years, and when the kids were little I would take one of them with me.

Do positive thinkers have negative thoughts and doubts like the rest of us?
The phrase that is used a lot is, Who motivates the motivator? The answer is that, in its purest form, motivation comes from within. It’s virtually impossible to motivate someone who refuses to be motivated. So as motivators we create an environment around people that encourages and induces them to motivate themselves: an environment of trust, upbeat behavior, and thinking about possibilities rather than problems, and going toward abundance rather than scarcity and keeping people pumped up by showing a positive example. And that’s a very viable process.

But what keeps you pumped up? You have to be “on” every time you go on stage.
I have never had any problem with that. I hate to say it, but it doesn’t require much for me. I remember giving a three-hour seminar one time when I had a fever of 104 degrees. I remember being back in the green room, and I got a wet bath rag to wipe my face and I looked in the mirror and did a little positive self talk, and my goal was, I don’t even want them to know I’m sick. And I went out there and I did a really good seminar.

Is your business off in a slow economy?
In February 2009 we had our Speakers Roundtable mid-winter conference. Meetings were down for all of us. There just was not as much business out there. We allocated two hours to talk about that, and eight hours later we had zoned in on the concept of what we call the Prosperity Series. It is an annual membership in our speaker’s series. We bring in our Speakers Roundtable and are speaking for each other on a reasonable basis. So the 2009 engagement count is down from previous years, but our Prosperity Series plus contract training business has gone through the roof. I’m having one of my best years in the last decade.

There is a strain of blame in your book, that the salesman is not working hard enough or is using the wrong techniques. Can that make someone feel worse instead of better? If an industry or a company goes away, it’s not their fault.
When that happens you have got to do one of two things. You can say, “The window of opportunity has closed here and I’m going to get into better space. I’m moving on.” Or you can say, “I’m not giving up on this business. I know it’s down for us but it’s down for our competitors too.”

In times of challenge we can go toward abundance and prosperity or we can go toward scarcity. Too many people go toward scarcity, and they freak out too early and they give up too soon. A lot of our training today is about what can we do to be different from and better than our competition. While our competitors are whining, let’s be winning. Let’s go after their market share and increase our call count. Some people are thriving in this. I’m not suggesting it’s easy.

How is that playing with your audiences?
Pretty darn well. Most people think there are only two types of differentiation — product and price. In fact there are seven types. The manager who brings all his people together and taps their collective intellect is very smart. Too many don’t do that.

Are you getting more tough audiences?
I wouldn’t say they’re tougher. This is an era when people want and need to laugh a little bit. So I’m staying with my balance of humor and motivation along with content. But people are groping for answers more than ever. You’ve got to do your homework and come up with some viable answers for your clients.

An example?
I did a talk last week for a floor-covering manufacturer. They’re calling on dealers who are resellers of their product. They go in and schmooze. I told them the era of going in and schmoozing and being a commercial visitor is over. You’re going to perish. You’ve got to go in with the premise that market share is preceded by mind share and get inside their heads and convince them what a valuable resource you can be to them.

In your book, a hard-charging finance guy named Forrest pushes the company too hard and winds up going away. Is that reflective of your personal feelings about the American economy and the last five years?
A little bit. Blanchard and I are both fervent believers relationship building.

Also in the book you say the media has a vested interest in negativity. So what? Isn’t honest analysis the starting point for individual or corporate improvement?
Absolutely. The most successful people and companies are those that analyze their strengths and build on them, but they’re also open-minded enough to know they’re not perfect. I’d say it is the function of the press to be critical in its analysis sometimes. And that isn’t negativity.

Doesn’t honest analysis work well with your pitch?
I think it does, and I think that is the role of the press. It’s too bad they’re not doing it today in the current political arena. The liberal, northeastern press has given Barack Obama a total bye. He hasn’t made a good decision since he got there and nobody has said a word. What’s up with that?

Is it a speaking device to set up a “bad guy” whether it’s the press or the hard-charging finance guy or whatever?
I’ve gotten some good one-liners out of that over the years. I don’t do that like I used to. I heard Tim Russert give a good speech at The Orpheum in Memphis a few years ago. I always kind of wondered, is he a liberal or a conservative? After an hour of his speech I still didn’t know. Now that, to me, is a really competent member of the press. And there are not many of those people left.

I looked up your guy Orison Swett Marden, and one of the things he said was, “Charm of personality is a divine gift that sways the strongest characters and sometimes even controls the destinies of nations.” Does that make you think of anyone in our times?
No doubt Obama is a skilled communicator. And I thought Reagan was one of the greatest. Dr. Phillips Brooks, the theologian of decades ago, said few things are more impactful than the contagion of a victorious personality. To me, that says it all about why we need to be optimistic human beings and give people hope.

How did you discover Marden, who died in the 1920s?
I bought my first Marden book for 25 cents at a garage sale over by Rhodes College. I didn’t have a clue who he was. But I liked his title: The Miracle of Right Thought. I read it cover to cover and thought it was incredible. Then I found out he wrote 46 books. So now I’ve got about 42 of them. He is my literary mentor.
Probably. Terri and I wake up, and if we’re not having a great day, we go get a Marden book, and one of us will read two or three pages aloud, and, man, it is like a magic elixir. It erases any negativity, reduces any stress, and gives you hope for the day.

You’re doing wonders for his publisher.

There’s a line in “Death of a Salesman” where Willy Loman tells his sons to bring him some good news because, as he says, “the woods are burning.” Are you a fan of that play?
I am. It’s extraordinary. I’ve got a first-edition copy of the book.

You know the dark side of sales?
I sure do. There’s nothing worse than being on straight commission and feeling hopelessness. That’s why I think what I do is important even though everybody probably doesn’t think it is. I’ve been told by some people in my audiences and people who hire me that there’s some good that comes from what I do, and I feel good about that. I hate to say it, but it beats working.
What about cold calling?

I call them new calls. I don’t think anybody likes to make cold calls on total strangers because there is a high probability of rejection. You can make a cold a warm call by getting a referral or sending them advance information. I say the only justification for not making cold calls is you are so busy handling present customers and referrals that you have no time to make cold calls. I think it is very much part of the sales success process. When you do get rejected, you can’t take it personally. Until you get them engaged, it’s a numbers game.

There’s a new book out called “Confessions of a Public Speaker.” The gist of it is that speakers should practice, arrive early, and remember that the audience’s expectations are low. Any confessions you want to make?
There’s Murphy’s Law at work oftentimes electronically. I was speaking in Dallas one time to 1,800 people in general session and the microphone just crapped out. And while they were bringing me another one, I said, “You know, they spend $88 million on the hotel and $24 on the microphone.” Everyone laughed and I salvaged it.

Have speaker fees gone down?
For some speakers who don’t know how to sell. We do everything we can to differentiate rather than cut price.

Do you ever get nervous?
Cavett Robert used to say, “I never totally lose the butterflies but after a few decades I’ve learned how to get them to fly in formation.” He also said, “Get their restroom rating.” The Internet encourages anonymous comments and expands their reach. What’s been your experience with that? Any speaker who’s oblivious to social media and how the word spreads is doing himself or herself a disservice. Giving a speech to a private company usually stays under the radar.

What would you tell Memphis movers and shakers about our city?
There’s need for strong, positive leadership in Memphis now more than ever. We’ve got a city of great potential that can be tapped to the degree that some profoundly skilled leaders seize the opportunity. Right now there are too many people in Memphis who are part of the problem. We’ve got a racial dynamic out of the 1960s and ’70s, and we need to move on from that. Memphis doesn’t have a problem with job availability, Memphis has a problem with competent people availability. It’s time for people to try to be their best and get the training and education they need.

How do you relate to audiences that are younger than you?
Funny thing. The average audience member is 40. I used to be closer to that. I do more audience participation and interaction than I used to, and it seems to go pretty well. I’ll plug in an exercise. I talk about the importance of a good “elevator speech.” In a 10-second period of time, if you met a stranger at a cocktail party and they asked what you do, what would you say that’s compelling? So I had them share their elevator speech with the people at their table.

What’s yours?
I’m a professional speaker, business trainer, and author specializing in helping my clients sell value rather than cut price.

Not bad. So this one-minute thing is too long and totally yesterday, right?
Maybe. The point is, most good ideas come to people in the context of a short bite of information.