Nathan Barry describes when Ramit Sethi walked off stage after a hostile audience question during Q&A. The lesson: don't end with open questions. Instead, plan a "one more thing" after the Q&A so you control how the speech actually ends.
Oh my gosh. Ramit Sethi gave a killer talk. 2,000 people in the auditorium. Then they're taking Q&A. Questions are coming in and Ramit is just on it. Polish nails all of this. And the organizers are kind of like gesturing to him and he's like, okay, I'm getting a sign that, you know, we need to wrap up so we'll have time for just one more question. It's a total roll of the dice for who gets to control the last— You're doing such a good job of building tension right now on like, what do they like ask about his nationality? Like what happens? This woman comes up and says, Ramit, when are you going to be a good Indian son and give your parents grandkids? Stop it. It's so bad. And he just looks at them and goes, I'm out, and walks off stage. Oh my gosh. And that was the end of the talk. It sunk in so deeply, not to never do Q&A, but to never end on Q&A. Yeah. And so what I've internalized is the one more thing where you say, we're going to take some time for questions and then I have one thought that I want to leave you with. It would give Ramit the opportunity in that moment to say, that might be the worst question I've ever heard. Let's go to that one more thing that I wanted to leave you with.
