BEHIND THE MIKE

Ihave been blessed in my half century of speaking in nearly every crevice and venue around the world. Whether it was addressing 50,000 people in the Super Dome in New Orleans or a group of three CEO’s in a “Super Mastermind Group,” the thrill of getting it right is always the best moment for a speaker.

I am often asked about how we structure a fee for a 30-minute keynote address that sometimes approaches six figures. After all, it is only a half hour of your life. The hundreds of hours one spends developing that presentation is where the fee is earned.

Despite how hard you work at your art, avocation or profession, you will infrequently fail, not always because of yourself, but occasionally despite yourself. You just bomb! Maybe an audience had too much to drink or the audiovisual equipment goes down the drain. Things just happen.

Some things are within your control; many are not. I was speaking to Atlantic Electric in New Jersey in the 1980s when, as part of my intro, the presiding officer announced a 15% across-the-board pay cut and a 20% downsizing of the workforce. “And now, here is the motivational speaker!” He could have at least given me a heads up!

The point is simple, in every business, profession, trade or whatever you do for a living, things can and do go wrong. Some you can plan. In the speaking profession, redundancy is something I learned firsthand from one of my largest clients- NASA.

There is no greater certainty than that in some situations you do not have the luxury of a do-over or a refund of a fee. For NASA and its astronauts, it can mean life or death.

Just because what you do for a living might not rival the high profile of NASA does not mean that it cannot be just as devastating to you when something goes wrong.

Failure is very personal. We all view it the same way, whether you are one of the 60% of new-business startups that bomb or, the ultimate failure, you give your life as a first responder or pay the ultimate price to guard and protect others while defending our country.

For most of us, it is not defined by such a devastating loss, but rather what you do after you have lost everything. That defines who you are. In many cases that boils down to one question: What makes you unique?

I submit to you that the way you respond is hinged largely on your distinctiveness and rareness. What makes you rare? When mentoring a speaker want-to-be, the biggest hurdle we face is to get them to disarm mentally.

Hall of Fame Speaker Chris Haggerty once said, “The great strength of the professional speaker in the future lay in their ability to show their vulnerability… their ability to show how they deal with things when they can and do go wrong.”

For some, like Dr. Billy Cannon, the Heisman Trophy winning LSU halfback-turned-criminal-turned-dentist, it was the humility he garnered while doing time in prison. It was that humility that drove him to return to the same prison years later to render voluntary health care as a dentist. That was Billy Cannon’s true uniqueness, not the touchdown he returned that made him so famous and earned him the Heisman.

No one can define your uniqueness… but it will define you.

Michael Aun has delivered over 4,000 presentations to audiences all around the world.