A well-motivated Ron Godfrey plays plankety plank with Steve McDermott, the main speaker at next week's Evening Press Business Awards

EVEN after positively blasting through a half-inch thick plank my positive chopping wrist was still in a condition positively good enough to shake the hand of professional Yorkshireman Steve McDermott.

After all, that plank-splintering mind-over-matter energy was given to me by Steve, 44-year-old motivational speaker extraordinary and - what is positively anomalous - author of the book, How To Be A Complete Failure In Life, Business And Everything.

Bespectacled Steve, who sprays words and ideas like an out-of-control fusillade of bullets, is the guest speaker next week at the Evening Press Business Awards 2001 at the Merchant Adventurers Hall in York on Thursday, December 6.

Clearly there will be a lot of super-successful people there in need of urgent conversion to the faith of failure big-time but if they listen to him with the right attitude they will begin to understand his strategy of reverse psychology and learn...

His book is a prelude to his tactic. Sub-titled Thirty Nine And A Half Steps To Lasting Under-achievement", his introduction is headlined, How To Get The Most From This Guide. It urges: "Don't read it. Just leave it by the side of the bed gathering dust.

"It can then act as a powerful reminder that the worst thing you can possibly do, in order to sabotage your chances of future failure, is open up your mind to any new ideas or take any sort of action."

Using this perverse approach Steve, a copywriter and creative director, now a member of the Speakers For Business organisation, burst upon the stage of conferences and business gatherings all over Europe and the UK ten years ago.

He has even gone so far as to arrive at some events in a Sinclair C5. But next Thursday, powered by feet and feisty ideas only, he'll prove how a double dose of negative energy makes a positive - and he'll use a few pine planks to prove it. "I once got through 1,000 blocks of wood at a Travelodge Company conference. I have a really good deal with a timber yard," he laughs.

His approach is enthusiastic, though not US-style clappy-happy evangelical. "We Yorkshire folk are put off by all that high-pressure razzmatazzy ra-ra and over-prescription which warns of hellfire damnation forever if you don't do as they say.

"I am often described in pre-talk build-ups as one of Europe's leading motivational speakers. Now that's OK in Paris, Berlin or Rome but if you are in York you walk out to the sound of your own footsteps. And you hear them saying under their breath: 'I'd like to see you motivate me, pal.'"

But the negative psychology works. "You can't say 'don't drop the milk' because a child will then surely drop it. If the sign in the hotel says: 'Don't steal the towels' you consider nicking four of them. You can't process the negative in your mind.

"Successful people only think and talk and focus on what they want to hear next, but most focus on what they don't want and that's called 'worry'. Want success? Then don't talk about what you don't want to happen."

This mind-knotty thinking was echoed in his book where he announced that a recent survey found that 10 per cent of people in the UK thought they would be better off dead, 25 per cent could see no hope for the future and 33 per cent described themselves as downright miserable most of the time. "If you are already part of this 68 per cent majority, well done, your failure is already assured."

Steve is 44 but it took him some years for his Road to Damascus realisation which fathered the advice in his book to "instantly stop working for a living."

He says: "It all happened when I was working for Brahm advertising agency and was promoted from copywriting to my level of incompetence, looking after 20 people and requiring management skills I didn't have at the time.

"So I got some training and so enjoyed teaching ideas to my team it became a hobby and I began to help other training organisations with their programmes."

Then after the sudden realisation that he could do it full time, that is exactly what he did. "My original vision was to run a specialist training company for advertising agencies and TV companies on presentational and management skills. The great thing was that ad agencies' clients began offering me work too."

Now, apart from guest speaking all over Europe and the UK, he runs a regular workshop on canal boats in Leeds, with parties of up to 50. "You literally launch the boat as more than a metaphor," he says. "The cruisers always say 'Where is it going?' and I say: 'I don't know but there are a lot of people who don't know where or even when they are going.'"

And his success through failure is passed on to his wife, Candy and no doubt will be part of the life-instruction for his three children Tom, 11, Finley, eight and Megan, six. Namely: "If you choose the money it will always run away. Find something you are passionate about and the money will follow you."