Tips From My Worst Speeches | Brian Tracy

Hello, I'm Brian Tracy and today I want to talk to you about bad speeches. After you've given 5,000 talks, you can't look back and say that everyone was a great talk. So there have been some that didn't work at all. As we say in the speaking industry, remember, no one is perfect, no speaker is perfect. Everyone messes up, stumbles, and sometimes just gives a flat out bad speech. I remember giving speeches where people started to get up and walk out from the back of the audience forward because it was so bad and it was always based on lack of preparation. I learned a lot of lessons from that. Nothing more insulting than to see your people get up and leave while you're still speaking. So it's a part of growing as a speaker. I've spoken to millions of people in my 30 plus year career and I want to let you know that all of those speeches haven't been perfect. As my friend Harv Eker says, every master was once a disaster. Today I'm going to share with you the lessons from some of my talks, that it didn't run as smoothly as I would have liked. In order to help you give the best speech you possibly can. And remember, it's okay to mess up as long as you learn from it and carry that lesson forward as I have. One of the first things I learned early in my speaking career was that venue problems like sound or lights play a big factor in the success of your speech. For example, one of my worst speech experiences was all about temperature problems. When I was doing a seminar in Tampa, Florida, the room was 80 degrees. People were perspiring, sweating, waving their seminar materials as fans, and generally unhappy and dissatisfied. Oh, and by the way, they always blame everything on the speaker, not on the organizers, not in the hotel or the facility. It's always the speaker who's responsible for everything that goes wrong. They were starting to leave and ask for their money back on the way out. So I asked the organizer to call the hotel and have them turn the temperature down. She called them repeatedly, but to no avail. They all gave the usual excuses. The excellent engineer is working on it. It's computer controlled. We're doing everything we can. The real reason, by the way, in that case was that it cost money to run a big air conditioning system for a big room. And what they wanted not to do is spend the money on the electricity for the air conditioning. So they always had excuses not to turn it on. So finally at the break, I remember this. I called the head office and I told them that I was the speaker, and that if the temperature did not come down and the air conditioner was not turned on within two minutes, we would cancel the seminar, refuse to pay for the room, and sue them for lost revenues. It was amazing. As I stood there, I could feel the air conditioning coming on. After pleading with them for two hours and listening to every excuse imaginable, as soon as we threatened not to pay, the air conditioning roared on and stayed on for the rest of the seminar. Some speeches, however, don't have such a happy ending. My second worst speech experience shows how news and current events can turn a good speech into a disaster. I was once called in to speak to a large group of managers of a major multinational corporation. The company had just announced a series of layoffs of managers at all levels, and I was speaking to the survivors. However, just before I arrived to give my talk on personal productivity and leadership effectiveness, the company announced even more management layoffs and that many of the people in the audience would be cut within the next 30 days. As a result, my audience was less than responsive. While this news wasn't necessarily in my control, I do wish I would have been given some awareness of it to possibly address it, or to at least adjust my tone of the speech to match the audience's current feelings. Many of the people there were going to be laid off, and they didn't know who they were. Try speaking to an audience who is thinking like this during that time. So speaking of these unresponsive employees reminded me of the prospective clients in my next example of a speech experience that I wouldn't put in my top performances. This speech was, in reality, a business pitch. But there's a lesson to be learned in how to end a speech in a way that leaves your audience wanting more. When I was selling a restaurant discount card from office to office some years ago, I would give an enthusiastic presentation. But when it came time to ask for the sale, I would freeze up completely. Then I would blurt out, well, what would you like to do? It seems that every customer said the same thing. They said, well, it looks pretty good. Let me think about it. Call me back. After a few weeks, I had people all over the city thinking about my product, but the telephone never rang. I quickly started to catch on that the words let me think about it or why don't you call me back? Where customers speak for farewell, goodbye, we will never meet again. One day I had a revelation. I realized that the problem was not my product or the customer. It was a good product at a good price. That paid for itself with one usage, it was me. My fear of asking a closing question was holding me back. I resolved that from that day forward, I would not be put off by a good prospect. The next morning, I walked into a prospect's office and I was cold calling. I gave my presentation. He nodded and smiled as they all did. And he said, well, it looks pretty good. Let me take a look at it. Why don't you call me back? I summoned up my courage and I said, I don't make callbacks. He looked at me sharply and said, what did you say? I replayed. I repeated, I don't make callbacks. Sir, you know everything you need to know to make a buying decision right now. You will never know any more than you know now. Why don't you just take it? He then said those magic words that changed my sales career. Well, then he said, if you don't make callbacks, I'll just take it right now. And he signed the order form and gave me the money. I walked out of that office on cloud nine. I immediately walked into the next office and I gave my presentation. And when the prospect said, as they did, it looks pretty good, why don't you call me back? I said the same thing, sorry, I don't make callbacks. You know everything you need to know to make a buying decision right now. Why don't you just take it? And he did. And so did the next customer. And the next customer after that. From that moment on, I sold to almost everybody I spoke to. I sold more in a day than I was selling in a week before. I began asking for the buying decision. Clearly at the end of the talk. The moral of this story is that never be afraid to close your speech or pitch if you like, for that matter, with confidence. I hope these examples of three of my worst speeches inspire you to keep learning and keep growing as a public speaker. For many years, I sold my audio programs at the back of the room. I sold more per person, dollar wise and unit wise than anybody else in history. I sold tens of thousands of programs and millions of dollars worth of programs because I developed a method of presenting the program and asking them to buy it. And they did. As you can see, it's possible to go from disaster to becoming a master. I have now spoken to more than 5 million people and you can too. To help you get started on your next speech, I invite you to download my five minute speech formula, no charge. This is the same prep formula I use to create all of my speeches. And I've taught this to more than 2 million salespeople and had countless salespeople write to me and said, you changed my life. You made me rich. I've had countless people write to me and send me emails saying that you made me a millionaire. It's before I heard your talk, heard your methodology, I was struggling. For every dollar today, I live in a big house on a river. I have a beautiful boat and lovely children. I have more money than I could ever spend and it's just the most wonderful thing to hear. So now I'd like to hear from you. So my question today is what is the worst speech you've ever given and what lesson did you learn from that that you can apply to becoming a master speaker? Leave a comment below and I'll be sure to follow up with you. Thanks for watching. And remember, if you want to change your future, take action. And take action now. If you enjoyed this video and feel it was valuable in teaching you about learning from bad speeches, subscribe to my channel like this video and and share this video with your friends. Don't forget to click the button on the screen for a free gift. Thanks again for watching.