WASHINGTON — Colin Powell wants to get you motivated.

And for a mere $49, the man who served as both secretary of state and chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff will do just that at the Verizon Center in Washington on September 6.

A full-page advertisement in yesterday’s Washington Post promises the price is “ALMOST FREE!” but it will rise considerably to $225 at the door if you fail to purchase the tickets ahead of time.

The retired four-star general’s speech is part of a roster of motivational speakers that will include a former boxing champion, Sugar Ray Leonard; the president and CEO of Forbes Inc., Steve Forbes; the Reverend Robert Schuller, and a man billed as America’s number one motivator, Zig Ziglar. Yesterday in a telephone interview, Mr. Powell said he has been giving speeches to these motivational seminars for years. “I enjoy them enormously. It allows me to speak to a different group of citizens,” he said. “They are the largest audiences I speak to.”

Mr. Powell said that when he speaks on these motivational tours, he can attract up to 12,000 people. Once, when he spoke in Orlando, Fla., he said, he was flown with Mayor Giuliani to a nearby arena to give a second speech.

Yesterday, he declined to say how much money he was paid to speak at the “Get Motivated” seminars, but the Washington Post in February reported that Mr. Giuliani earned $100,000 for an appearance with the same group.

Mr. Powell acknowledged that the advertisements for the seminars are “not quite the way Forbes, Fortune, or Business Week would do it.”

The ad contains 11 exclamation points after such phrases as “Get fired up,” and it promises “Motivation! Inspiration! Career Skills! Wealth Building!” Mr. Powell’s speech is billed as a seminar on “Take Charge Leadership.” He is scheduled to discuss “how to improve processes, organizations, and people;” “how to remain focused in crisis;” “how to forge winning alliances,” and “keys to creating diplomatic solutions.”

The motivational seminars are the brainchild of Mr. Ziglar, who bills himself as an authority on the “science of human potential.” Many conservative speakers have participated in his seminars in the past, including President George H.W. Bush.

Others who have joined Mr. Ziglar include a retired general, Norman Schwarzkopf, and radio personality Paul Harvey.

Mr. Powell said, “In these kinds of audiences, I talk about the need for America to remain vigilant against terrorists and at the same time to remain an open nation. Since these are motivational seminars, I also talk about leadership: what I learned in the Army, my corporate work, and nonprofit work.” He added that he tries to leave the audience on an “optimistic note,” about how “we are not facing the kinds of enemies we were facing before and that is a good thing.”

When Mr. Powell was secretary of state, he was beloved by the Foreign Service. At the time, he said the policy that led to American engagement with Sudan and ultimately helped broker the end of the civil war there — between the Muslim North and the Christian and animist South — was because he took on the proposals and ideas of the Africa desk.

Mr. Powell also earned a tough reputation as a bureaucratic infighter who allowed his subordinates to leak to the press when he disapproved of the president’s foreign policy. His fights with the civilian leaders of the Pentagon were legendary inside the administration.

One of Mr. Powell’s defenders in Washington, the director of foreign-policy programs at the New America Foundation, Steve Clemons, said Mr. Powell was trading on his reputation.

“It was bizarre, it looked like something you would see at 3:00 a.m. if you had insomnia,” he said. “Is Colin Powell going to sell us real estate in Boca Raton next? This is pretty sad. Everyone from Bill Clinton to George Bush’s father to Richard Armitage to Richard Clarke to John Bolton are out making speaker fees. Typically, the kinds of speaker fee arrangements they get are done for corporations, labor unions, and trade associations, clubs, people interested in broader issues, public policy. Even though the speakers are being compensated, there still seems to be something worthy and enlightening in the exercise.”

“This just looks like a pretty gross selling of his status,” Mr. Clemons said. Mr. Clemons has worked closely with Mr. Powell’s second chief of staff, Lawrence Wilkerson, to advance the criticism that the president and vice president often ignored foreign policy professionals in the run-up to the Iraq War.