I had just come off the stage in LA when the event organiser said, “I thought you would have been better, you seem so confident in person. At least you’re easily forgettable.”
‘Ahh, thank you, and feck you very much,’ I thought & so desperately wanted to say.
That D bag’s comment would haunt me for the next 7 years.
Like a pill going down your throat without water, I came to realise with every subsequent talk, there was a painful truth to his words I had to swallow.
I had become sooooo bloody good at being confident in small groups.
I would have centre stage of my small circle of new connections, laughing at my sass, stories, and appropriately apologetic, occasional, soft-porn swearing.
He was right…
Ouch.
At some point in time that was so unremarkable I never took note, I stopped FEELING fake. I had genuinely become more confident in what I was talking about.
Remember that “you’re dumb” post I wrote a few days ago?
It was one of my most popular posts on LinkedIn. Not one of you gave a hoot about my pain. Many of you remarked that you loved how I wrote.
Not what, how.
This is telling because it was the first time I had ever written like I talk in real life.
Yesterday, I decided to do a little social experiment.
I spoke at the 3rd Annual Executive Assistant Congress. I made the conscious decision to be myself on stage.
It takes oodles of courage and days of preparation to be at-ease being yourself on stage (which is why you must always pay your speakers)!
To prepare I did five things:
1. I met with speaker [for the same congress], my dear friend Bron Williams. We talked about what we were going to present & gave constructive feedback. “Timing will be your issue,” she said, “especially as you want audience participation.”
2. I presented the new material to a small audience. Doing so helped me with the order of the content, the pace of the delivery and tested the engagement.
With the content reworked,
3. I journalled what I would say to each slide.
4. I recorded the talk like I was giving a webinar. It came out brilliantly but, still I relied too heavily on the presenter’s notes which meant I was using memory not knowledge.
So finally, navigating the traffic on route to the congress, I decide to test my unconscious mind’s recall of the knowledge.
5. With my bestie on speaker while she looked at the slides, I presented the material. Three times she had to correct which slide I was talking to but this was irrelevant because I proved that with my conscious mind fully engaged on the road, I knew each point I wanted to make with each slide.
Three words sum up my social experiment:
Sensational.
Funny.
Me.
So very me.
If you’d like me to speak at your next event, hit me up. Being myself is sooooo bloody good!!!
