Ep. 162 Delivering to a Tough Audience

Hey there, Mark Brown. Have you ever had a tough audience?

Are you kidding me? Happens to all of us, my friend.

Amen. But how do you deliver? How do you leave it all on the stage when you do have a tough audience? I don't know about you, but my insecurities, when I can kind of measure up the room and take the temperature and be like, oh, this isn't going to be beautiful and magical. It's like, how do you deliver under that pressure?

Let's talk about it, my friend.

Anyone can give a presentation. Few deliver unforgettable presentations. What's the difference? You're about to find out. Welcome to the unforgettable presentations podcasts with your hosts, world champion speakers and coaches, Mark Brown.

Mark Brown, your life tells a story and there's someone out there who needs to hear it.

And Darren Lacroix. And Darren Lacroix.

Stage time. Stage time. Stage time.

Ready for some powerful presentation, Ahas. Let's dive right in.

You know, Mark, at the beginning of the career, for anyone, you take whatever you can get. You don't care about the. It's like, it's an audience, people willing to listen. However, as you grow, sometimes we should say no. And Mark, before we get into the current client, I wanted to talk about, I had an opportunity to speak here in Vegas. It was good money. It wasn't great money, but it was in Vegas. I could sleep in my own bed and I was looking at. Just be honest. I was focusing on cool. I can sleep in my own bed, make a few thousand bucks and boom, go back and get back to work the rest of the day. I was going to be the opening speaker. I still have the whole day. Here's what I missed. And this is going to sound sexist, and it is. I do not resonate with like an all male audience. I just don't like. There's. There's nothing wrong with that kind of audience. But we got to know who we are and what resonates and where we thrive because it's our reputation. Well, I thought, well, it's okay, it's all male, but. And it was a group that was having, let's just say, a night on the town. And then the next morning, I was going to motivate them. Brought in to motivate them at like 8 in the morning. I saw the problem, but my fault, my bad. I let hey take the money, fool get in my way. And it was challenging. First of all, they're all wandering in and they're not even in their seats. Ready to go. And then the introducer is already starting to introduce me. And I just remember, lesson learned. This will be a podcast someday, Mark. Whenever we have those awesome ones or those challenges before, it's like, yeah, it's a story I could use. Now it's a podcast we can use. But. But it was a mistake. It didn't help my career. It didn't lead to other presentations. Yes, I got the money. However, we got to make better decisions and I made a bad decision. So for me, I was the problem, not the audience. They were who they were. And that's just not. I'm not a man's man when it comes to presentations. There are people who. That's them. That's what they can do. I just know me as an empath. It just doesn't work for me.

Well, bear in mind also, and I'm sure our listeners and viewers will think about this, you did say the circumstances were not ideal based upon the background of the audience. And I'm sure all of us at some point in time have found ourselves being that 8am speaker and people are kind of just getting in, they're carrying coffee, they got donuts and they want the first half hour, can I get settled in? And that does happen now. There are other audiences. They get their breakfast, they're in and they're engaged. That's the ideal. But if we're going to be honest and realistic, there are times we will find ourselves with audiences where it requires work for us to engage. And just as an aside here, Darren, I want to commend you for what you regularly do. You taught and you've preached to us for years, as about before Rapport. We discussed that in greater length in a previous episode. But at least if you can get in early, become acquainted with people who are there, get a temperature of the, of not just the room, but the event itself. And, you know, if it's party time till 2am and I'm going to walk in at 8 in the morning, you and I need to adjust our expectations and really be ready and on our game. Because sometimes if we're not vigilant, we may have missed an indication that you might have a tough audience. And therefore we might not be fully prepared to face that audience when the time comes.

Yeah, and also to clarify too, I was brought in to motivate in that situation. I was a motivational speaker as opposed to an educational motivational speaker. So that also was part of the mistake if I. I'm supposed to motivate. It's 8am it's not my best audience. Okay. I just gotta get them jacked up and excited. That was my whole job. That's different from the client that I had this past week where I was brought in to teach better stories, better business. So when I got there and when I realized doing my homework ahead of time. If you're watching the YouTube version, you'll see these are my notes from. From the presentation and from my before Rapport homework. I am so thankful that I did this. Sometimes it's helpful. Sometimes it's really helpful. In this situation, it was super helpful.

There we go. Three levels beforehand. Yeah.

Three levels of helpful. You heard it here first. Boom.

That's right.

And walking in and understanding that it was going to be challenging, it wasn't gonna be magical. And we've gotta also remember that sometimes it's not gonna be magical. Here was the lesson learned. Mark, I don't remember if. Have you heard me talk about this client before? I don't. It was Core three in Stage Time University. We did the humor call, and I just talked about this because it was so recent, and I thought it was a great lesson that when I was brought in and I saw the crowd coming in and I knew from my homework that it would probably be mostly. And again, there's nothing wrong with that, but you got to know who you are and where you resonate best, to be able to multiply. Because our best marketing is how well it goes on stage. Well, if you're not in front of the right audience talking about the right subject, chances are there won't be any legs to it. So I knew I had to bring down my personal expectations, meaning what I would get from it. Yeah, I had to take the focus sometimes. Oh, we want the love. That's one of the reasons we're presenters and speakers. But some audiences just don't emote, and that's the part that we love. So bringing down my expectations and watching people as they filed in, and then there were definitely too many seats for the number of people who were there. So that didn't make it a great situation. There was also the Moses parts. The Red Sea aisle in the middle also makes it more challenging. No, we don't like that. But sometimes, look, I was paid to deliver. Like, yeah, I might know that that isn't the best situation. And I can try to educate my client as best I can. But then there's also times where, look, suck it up, buttercup. Deliver. Do the best you can under the situation. Now, Mark, here was a situation where they Were coming in late. They filtered in. The audience was half there. I brought Dawson in to videotape because you never know. And being in Vegas, it's easy to get Dawson there. It's not a huge investment, but I never know. So you never know when it's going to be the magical audience.

He's your tech guru, right? Dawson's your tech on your team.

He's my tech guru, my cameraman, my. Hey, Dawson, this doesn't work. What's wrong, guy?

I call him awesome Dawson.

Awesome Dawson. A great, great reference to him and who he is. So, Mark, when I did the homework ahead of time, I always asked, now, Mark, I actually have changed it and upgraded it a little. I always ask, what are your frustrations and what are your pet peeves? Now, Mark, my new question is, what are your top three frustrations and pet peeves? And it's fascinating. I'm always looking for the commonalities, but these were people who ran budgets for fleets of different municipalities.

Okay.

And so there are people who deal with numbers, so also not known for emoting. And again, I had to catch myself three or four times. Shut up, Darren. It's not about your joy being up on stage. It's about what they leave with your paid to deliver to them no matter what the situation. So I had to market the mindset. And there's a lesson for everyone. Catch yourself when you find it about you and your joy and redirect it. I had to do this three times. Okay, I got to deliver. I was already paid. I was paid really well to do this. What am I going to do? Say no, I don't want to. Then that doesn't work. So I had to catch myself. I had to redirect and know I'm paid to deliver no matter what the situation. So in this situation, it wasn't a bad decision because I just. But I knew it would be a tough audience because I knew I could educate them in using stories for them and their situation to. When I did my research to help retain talent that they have, that's one of their challenges, to help increase the budgets that they're trying to get from the municipalities. And here was something cool, Mark, that I kind of had the idea in the moment, but when I suggested from the stage that, look, when you're asking for a budget, what's the story you're telling? Business? Use the dialogue. So they're trying to get bigger budgets for fire engines and garbage trucks and police vehicles. So if they're trying to increase that budget and Mark, you'll probably love this. I gave them the idea of search for a true story. It can't be bs. Search for a true story. But what if you could find a good story and get the dialogue and have the dialogue come from the mother of a child who was saved. And somebody came to me after and said like, that was gold. That was gold. They gave me a situation where we need the equipment to be able to reach the third floor of a house, but they could tell that story. But to hear the mother or the father or again, the truth. And that was like a. A game changer for them. And I had these ideas, but not living in their world and trying to customize to their world and be that bridge. I always say it's our responsibility to be the bridge from our content to their world. And so I didn't know, and I had some ideas. I didn't know which ones would hit that one apparently hit. Now, Mark, here's. This was also very helpful when I'm up on stage. And Mark, this was at the Rio. I told my famous Rio joke. So whenever I book a speech at the Rio, I was like, the Rio joke. I literally. Mark, I'll even show you this. My notes. Very tough Rio joke.

First thing, Rio joke. That's it on top.

And then I look at also what's happening in the news. And the Aces, the Las Vegas Aces, women's basketball won the first Las Vegas World Championship of any sport. Now we have the Raiders. We have Formula One coming, but the Raiders haven't won a world championship since they've been here, obviously, but the Aces did, and this was huge. And they had a parade and everything. But all of these people are coming from different cities. It wasn't top of mind for them.

Right.

If I was speaking to Vegas locals, then it would be relevant. So we're looking for that relevant content for them. And Mark. So when I'm up on stage, here's what I did key on. You know, how we teach people and we've had this before where we see that one person moping, everyone else is loving it, and we see that one person moping, and we focus on them and we try to get them, which drains the energy out of us, as opposed to where most people aren't engaged. And then you find that one person who is, and we focus on them. So when you're in front of a tough audience, focus on the people who are getting it, who are engaged, because they'll fill you up, even if it's sparse, who you focus on from the stage in front of a tough audience. They will help your delivery. So, Mark, what I had noticed is some keynotes, I don't have a handout in this situation. Knowing I was teaching. It was like a teaching keynote, educational keynote. I had given them a handout. I'm so thankful I did. That was huge for a tough audience. That was a just split second decision that I am so grateful for because now they had that in front of them. The client was cool with it, and they were literally filling that out. And so many people were writing when I gave them the insights that they would all lean down and write it. And so I started saying, write this down. If you're taking notes, write this down. I don't want to offend the people who, like, don't take notes and aren't note takers. That's okay, that's a choice. But the ones who were, that is what helped me. So I look for the people who were taking notes and I fed them and they fed me back. It was this beautiful synergy. And so I delivered the presentation. And Mark, I walked over sheepishly. I will say nice word.

Darren said sheepishly, I write that down.

No, knowing it wasn't magical. And I walked over to the event planner and I said, yeah, I had kind of low energy. I didn't want to say, were you happy? And she said, and I quote, yeah, it always is. So she knew that I was in front of a tough audience. And then here was the fascinating thing. So, Mark, you know, I'm an introvert. You'll love this. The president of the association comes over to me one on one and says, hey, after, do you want to come up to the reception in the Voodoo Lounge? And I really didn't want to, especially after it isn't magical. Again, selfish being, ego being transparent. And I really didn't want to, but because he was the president, I kind of felt I had to. So I sure note the delivery and the intention, the, the intonation in my voice. And then he goes up on stage after another couple of announcements, and he says, and Darren's gonna join us up in the Voodoo Lounge. I'm like, now I have to.

Yes, no choice.

And so I go up there. Well, I went over to the trade show and it was a last minute decision. They said I could have books. And then at the last minute, they said, oh, we've got to get everyone into the trade show rooms. So Mark, you know, the two things that we have to be super careful of is food. If they're supposed to have Food at noon and we delay that in any way, we've gotta acknowledge it and gotta let them know everything's cool. Or we end at noon because we're the last things between them and food. And number two, vendor time, the vendors are the ones. Now these people paid to be there, other companies paid to be there, but the vendors, that's where the bulk of the cash comes from. So I knew vendor time is critical. You do anything, but you don't go over time. Just like in the comedy clubs, you do anything you can bomb. But if you go over time, that is a cardinal sin. So in this situation I knew I had to end because they were going over. So they last minute decision, they said, well, you can have your books, but you got to do it in the trade show. Now I would never normally say yes to that because my experience has been they don't go to trade show booths to see me unless like a client or a vendor paid for books and they could get them for free if they go to this booth. That's the exception. But in this situation I had no choice. I had to stick around for an hour and I had to go to the Vudu Lounge. So I was like, eh. So I sold a few books, I had some great conversations and here's what else happened. Mark at the booth where my books were, had somebody come up to me and I caught it on video and he said, I've been coming to this conference for 15 years. That was the greatest opening we've ever had.

You go, what? What, what?

Sometimes just because an audience isn't emoting doesn't mean they're not enjoying. And I think this is just a great reminder and I love that, Mark, you and I have these real life experiences that we can share with our listeners because they're going to come into this too. How do you handle it? So then I talked to the event planner again. She said, yeah, everybody's been coming up to me telling me how great it was. You know, the old adage in our world is like, well tell your face. You know, I mean, I've heard that before. That's not original, but it's true. It's true. But, but look, we can't put what we want above the audience and who they are and where they are and why we are there. I'm not getting paid for me to get the audience love. That's one of the reasons I do it. But that's not why I'm getting paid.

That's right.

So Mark, I go up to the Vudu Lounge. So we sold a few books. Not a lot, but that's okay. My books weren't directly Weren't about better stories, so they weren't in line with my exact keynote. But some people just want to take you home. So I sold a few, made a couple of bucks. I go up to the Vudu Lounge. Mark, I kid you not. I can't tell you how many people came over thanking me for the presentation and telling me how good it was and the notes they took. I go out on, like, there's a catwalk up there that overlooks Las Vegas. Beautiful. This vendor, Vendor, vendor, not attendee vendor, walks up to me. His name was Mark. And he said, I think every vendor should have been there to hear what you had to say. I took three pages of notes. This guy is a regional sales manager. I took three pages of notes. I have a presentation next week, and I'm gonna try some of these ideas.

Wow, that's great.

And then Mark, he says, I know a lot of organizations you need to be in front of. In fact, I'm going to send you a list. What?

Ding, ding, ding, ding, ding, ding, ding, ding.

So I followed up. I spoke to him yesterday, and in the process of getting that, and he's like, I forgot to get your book. How can I buy your book? What can I do? And I said, stop. I said, you're going to send me leads. I am going to just mail you a couple copies of the book. So each of the two books, my new books that came out, so. And he was like, no, no, no, you don't have to. I said, no, no, no. Look, you're helping me with potential $10,000, $20,000 speeches. I think I can send you a book, Mark. When I look back at my slides, a couple of ideas. If you haven't heard this before, some of you been around for a while, you probably know this and do this, and that's okay. But I want to remind you, if you've forgotten, but especially if you're new and never considered this, one of the things that we need to do is edify our audience right up front. So this is what we learned from Patricia. So when in talking to the event planner, These people run the municipalities. They're in charge of the vehicles and the maintenance of the vehicles. So one of the things that I realized is that they're taken for granted, but they need to be reminded what they do matters.

Yes.

What they do. You don't, you know, if you don't make the right decisions and the vehicles Aren't maintained. There's an issue in the community when we edify. We've got to find a way to be legit about it. We can't just say, you guys are great. No, be specific. As Patricia says, specificity breeds credibility.

That's right. She's drilled us with that. She certainly has.

So they told me about last year's conference, about what they do as essential. Everyone was talking about what's essential during COVID so I grabbed a screenshot from their website of last year. I then talked about this year and how technology and, of course, their vehicles. Well, we all know vehicles right now, people. It's hard to buy things, and. And it's hard to get them delivered. So one of their challenges was Mark, I kind of had fun with it. Remember the questions? What's frustrating now? So this doesn't make sense to me, but I heard it enough. I said, so in talking to some of you ahead of time, I learned a couple of things. Garbage trucks are a nightmare. Okay. I don't know what that means, but boom. They're actually, even though they didn't, you know, weren't emoting a lot, I got a laugh. That was good. Better than the regular responses. I also edified the vendors. And again, remember, if you're speaking at a conference, the vendors are paying 20, 30, 40, 100,000 to be there at the conference. Again, got to be sincere, got to be legit. So they did a tour of Cat Caterpillar, the company with construction equipment. And I live a mile from there. So I was like, I'm going to go check out the tour situation. And it was an hour or two before my presentation, so I just had time to pop in and meet some people and hold the door open for them. And so I took a picture. Again, remember what they do. So, Mark, I took this picture of big Jim Cashman, who had started Caterpillar 91 years ago. And this was. This was one of the six. So they had bought six of these originally, Mark, to start building the Hoover Dam.

Wow.

That's how Caterpillar started. So interesting fact related to them. Had an image to go along with it because not everyone went on the tour. So there was a small percentage who went on the tour. So I brought that up. I just had fun with it. Remember, when you're having fun, they're more likely to have fun. So I said, can you picture that meeting? Because these vehicles are tiny. Hoover Dam is unbelievable. But can you picture that meeting with the board of directors? Okay, so we're gonna take this river and run it through those mountains.

So.

We can build a dam. What, that. Yeah, somebody was. Somebody was drinking. But. But it worked. But it worked. So the vendors, Caterpillar was one of the vendors as well. And then I took, because I was the opening, I took a picture of the vendor area as well to just again, edify them, get people excited. And the other thing, Mark, that creates that connection, what I'm doing up front, so this is before I go into the content, is all to create the connection because I'm an outsider. The other big thing is first timers. Who's the first timer? Now, if the emcee just did this, we don't want to do it the same way. But if the emcee doesn't, which they didn't in this situation. I know, because we go to conventions all the time. We got to make those first timers feel welcome. So just getting them to stand up and having everyone else applaud. And then, Mark, I just did a throwaway about this is like a fleet, a big FA meeting fleet Anonymous. And I run the joke by the event planner to make sure it's going to work for them. I didn't go into a whole routine about it, but just kind of threw it out there. The other thing that I talked about was some cities don't even have charging stations. So the big thing now is obviously about electric. But what I also learned was some communities, like, there's pressure because of smog, and then there's also some outlying communities that there is no pressure about that. And it, you know, so I had to be careful what I said. And then the garbage truck joke work, and then mentioning you ordered a vehicle, you just don't know what year you're going to get it in. So I was relating to their world to create the connection, get them to listen and establish my credibility. So I'm so thankful, Mark, for this tough audience that I did that homework. Now, if I was a regular audience that emotes, this work would have brought it way up. The energy way up in this situation. It. It brought it up enough to create that connection. But when the people were taking notes, I zoned in on them. Mark, your thoughts on all this?

Well, quite a few. I mean, I love hearing the story of how you. How it's unfolded, how you put it together. But you said something earlier that I want to go back to. And I made a note to myself. My note is avoid making the audience tough on you. And the reason I wrote that down was you said, had you made A big deal about the aces winning the trophy. Now, aren't those aces awesome? But the audience is not local. You automatically create a situation where you make it tough on yourself because you tell the audience, I don't know who you are. I want to praise my local team. And you're second. You aren't saying you're secondary, but you give the. Your audience those you are, whom you are there to, whom you're there to serve. You give them the impression you don't know who they are. You care more about your local team and your spot because you're a local boy. Why are we listening to you? And the lesson that was reinforced to me, and I hope everyone catches this, is that we need to be very aware that we can say and do things to alienate the audience. And the tough audience we had is one that we have created. So be very careful not to create a scenario where you make the audience become difficult for yourself. And Darren, I. I don't know if I told you this, but for over the last six years or so, I've done three or four state conventions for trucking organizations, and that also was a difficult audience. We had one down in Florida. I drove to Florida for this state trucking association convention as the motivational keynote speaker, just like you morning program. And my beautiful bride Andrea came with me for that. I had almost the energy of a Darren Lacroix on stage. That's how much I was giving it, and I was reaching out, and it was like in the room. And I gave everything. I was emotive, I told the stories, and, you know, you got that very accepting look on their faces. And my wife was the one I was looking to because she was giving me an energy back. And the Pres was a very cool individual. He really, really was. And the program was over, and he met with me afterwards. Says, listen, I gotta tell you, a lot of these individuals here are seasoned guys or on the road a lot of the times, and they don't show much emotion, but believe me, you got it. There's a guy here who has gone through a difficult season with health and his family. And I know, I talked to him, and I know you touched him with your. With your message, your story. You did a good job. He then invited my wife and me to stay an extra night on their dime at this resort hotel to come to the beach and hang out with them and do a party at night on the deck. We go to the event, we go onto the beach, we meet people. They're very kind and loving to Us, it was wonderful. And an evening party on the deck. One of the truckers wives, he happened, she happened to serve. She, she supported his business as an independent trucking company and she had her baby with her and she said, oh, we want to hold a baby. And she and my wife were like, buddy, buddy. My wife's holding the baby, going, oh, how sweet. We haven't got any grandkids. You know, my wife's loving this and I'm seeing all this rapport and relationship happening when I thought it was going to be a bust. I need to get out of Dodge. And he said, will you stay? We'll pay for your hotel for an extra night. Come to the beach with us, come hang out with us. I did not see that coming because in my mind I'm seeing what I thought was an unresponsive audience. So I love what you said. Not emoting doesn't mean they're not enjoying. That's a nugget right there I'm going to take with me going forward. So please, we don't want to scare anybody, but we believe we are responsible to let you know it's not if but when you face an audience, that's tough. And trust me, I spent over 20 years in junior and senior high schools and I've been to schools where there was no headmaster principal, there was no dean of discipline. It was a Thursday afternoon, it was in the gym, it's 80 degrees Fahrenheit, there's no heat there. It's a four day weekend, they got Friday off, Sunday, Saturday, Sunday and Monday they got a four day weekend, it's two in the afternoon on a Thursday, the day before, a four day weekend. It is hot, there's no principal there and I gotta go inspire these kids when all they're thinking is it's afternoon, it's hot, I'm out of here, I'm gonna be going for four days. Why must I listen to a guy like him and lessons learned in those situations. But please don't be discouraged, friends. If nothing else, you grow from the experience. Listen to what Darren went through, lessons he learned, what he realized through this process. So not if, but when you face your quote unquote tough audience. We trust, we believe and we do hope that what we shared today will help you to prepare for a tough audience every time. So when it does happen, you can navigate that with the most important point being focus less on your own feelings and emotions and focus more on the gift you have prepared to give to an audience who desperately needs it. Because you never know when your tough audience really receives what you have to say.

And Mark, final idea from that experience, because the room had too many seats and these are all male introverts, not all of them, but most of them a good amount. They were sitting in the back. So there's rounds and there's two rows of rounds nobody's in. So what I did, Mark, and the situation where if I'm on the ground standing on the floor as opposed to on the stage because there was a stage there, there's a different feeling. But when I did the custom material up front to create the connection, I came down off the stage and went out into the aud so they could see me, they could be close to me, I could be close to them to again create the connection. So there are two or three times I came down off the stage. Now, doing my regular content wouldn't work as well in this situation with this setting. So most of it I did on stage. But to create that connection, when you can go down into the audience in a tougher audience, again to create the connection. I hope this idea has been helpful to you that delivering to a tough audience, it will happen. Thanks, Mark, for reminding us. But we gotta be thankful for those beautiful, magical audiences. We do get where you can almost do no wrong. And in some of these situations it feels like you do no right. But you're trying to get out of dodge. But we are. And it's because of our training, because of our past experience that we know what works and we're continuing to make our content better.

Better.

Make no mistake, the underlying secret ingredient is great content. So it's got to constantly evolve, resolve to evolve. The better your content is, the more they're going to take away in any situation. Mark Brown, take us home.

Yes. And remember, yes. When you have better content, you will do well. But know this, it's not if, but when you will face a tough audience. So be prepared even now. So when you do face that audience, when it's all over, they'll say, you know what? They were good. They were great. They were unforgettable. We'll see you next week.

Yeah. Join us next week when we're going to critique the 2022 World Championship top three speeches. It'll be Mark, me and Mike Davis. So join us for the 2022 World Championship speech critique. See you next week. See you there.

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