Ep 136 The World Record for Public Speaking May 15, 2016

How many speeches could you give in a single day?

Speaking the show about effective speaking in public, to the media, at work and in Life. Speaking with TJ Walker.

You might think one speech is enough. 2, 3, 4, 5 might be a huge record for some of you. I don't even know how many separate speeches I've given in one day. But this gentleman I'm about to tell you about, Franco skanga, is giving 23 speeches in 24 hours. Now, he's doing this as a gimmick, a publicity gimmick. And I don't say that in any negative way. I don't mean that as a negative. I've done the same myself. So he is giving 23 speeches in 24 hours to raise money for cancer research. He's 39 years old, and he's doing this in Canada. He says, quote, I want to face a fear everyone has at one historic event for a charitable cause. He says that he has had a fear of speaking in the past. He's trying to overcome this. He's trying to raise $16,000 for the Canadian Cancer Society by beating the record. Now, here's the thing. I first heard this, and I thought, well, that's pretty easy. You just have a set speech. You may be set up a whole bunch of meetings one after another in a block. No, it turns out it's much harder than that. He has to give unique speeches. The challenge will require him to complete more than 21 unique speeches at different locations. Now, what I don't know is, do they really have to be on completely different topics or different subject matter? But either way, that's a lot of talking. Some of you, when you think of endurance speaking, you probably think of someone like Senator Ted Cruz, who filibustered for what, 18, 19 hours when he was trying to shut down the government a few years back. Or Senator Strom Thurmond, who filibustered in an advocacy for keeping the country segregated many decades ago and Speaking for almost 24 hours on the floor of the Senate. This is a different type of record. I want to talk about why I find this intriguing in just a moment.

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So here's the thing about public speaking. It is fundamentally different than just blogging, for example, I mean, you couldn't do 23 blog posts in one day and get yourself in the Guinness Book of Records, because probably people have made a thousand blog posts in a day. There's something different. There's something unique, there's something special about the act of standing up and speaking, in part because, as this gentleman Franco mentioned, people have a fear of it. He's had a fear of it most of his life, and he wanted to show that he could stand up to the fear and also try to raise money for cancer research, obviously a noble cause. And he has family members affected by it, as do most people at some point. So he's putting a spotlight on this. Here's the thing, by doing public speaking, at some level, you attract eyes and attention, more so than just putting out a press release or a blog post. By going for a record, you have even more people look at you. Now, most people are afraid to do this because they're afraid of looking ridiculous, afraid of looking foolish, afraid of failing. And truth be told, I don't know if he succeeded. I'm looking at preliminary reports in his planning stages, and for all I know, he got a flat tire on the way and didn't do more than three speeches. But it's almost beside the point at this stage because he's gotten a lot of publicity. It's gotten picked up on wire services by the Associated Press and others, and it's getting massive amounts of attention. Now. There are tens of thousands of Guinness Records. Just getting in the Guinness Book of Records doesn't get you a lot of publicity, but it can. And I'll share with you my own experiences on getting into the Guinness Book of Records for a speaking record in just a moment. But I want you to think about, is there anything you personally are willing to speak about in depth, whether it's filibustering, Ted Cruz style or giving separate speeches Franco style. And I don't mean the bad Franco. I mean Franco Skanga. Is there anything you're willing to speak about? Because when you combine the two together, the longevity of it and the fact that you're speaking, and when you put a third layer of going for a record, it just attracts a whole lot of eyeballs. So I would like to know from you, is there any cause that you would be willing to speak on to that level or anything you want to put a spotlight on? Give that some thought. Send me an email tjediatrainingworldwide.com or send a tweet jwalker. You can always communicate with us on Facebook, LinkedIn, any of the social media platforms where you're either watching this show or listening to it.

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Certainly hope Franco reached his goal of setting the world record for most separate speeches given in a 24 hour period. And hope he helped with his fundraising goals. I do want to share with you a time, this was now seven years ago. I was coming out with a new book on public speaking, Secret to Foolproof Presentations. And I thought to myself, how can I promote this book in a way to get more media attention? Because frankly, the typical big time TV producer, radio producer, doesn't really care about a new book, number one. Number two, if it's about a subject like public speaking, it's not quite as sexy as the world is going to end because of this crisis or that crisis. So I thought, what can I do? And at the same time, talking with a publicist I'd worked with who had had some success getting other clients into the Gannis Book of Records, we put our heads together and I had long dreamt of getting into the Guinness Book. I know this sounds ridiculous and it sounds egotistical and somewhat like someone who's just full of himself. I apologize if it sounds like that, but I had dreamed of being in the Guinness Book of Records for some aspect of speaking, but I couldn't get over the challenge of organizationally, how do you structure it? So in working with a colleague, we figured out, let's go for the world record of most talk show appearances ever in a 24 hour period. I'd go on the talk shows promoting my book. So I would be talking about how to talk. So there's a nice consistent theme going through there that makes sense. Now, the problem with doing TV talk shows is you spend so much time traveling, driving, getting in and out, waiting in the green room. Is it really possible to do more than eight or nine or ten talk shows? So that seemed out of the question. So we settled on doing talk radio interviews, because that you can do easily. It's just a phone call away. Also, there are a thousand times more talk radio shows in the world than there are TV shows that accept guests. So it's an easier pool. So at that point, the challenge was simply getting booked. Now, here's the thing I don't like to tell most people because it kind of takes the luster off this. The hard part of getting in the Guinness Book of Records for most talk show appearances. And by the way, I did about 112 interviews in 24 hours. The hard part isn't doing the interviews, although I did get sleepy during the end. The hard part, it was just administratively organizationally Getting all of the interviews booked and then confirming them and then the paperwork confirming that I was on the show, that was the hard part. So this took the work of a couple of PR firms, individual PR consultants, interns, staff that I had at the time. It was quite an organizational challenge doing that. But our pitch to talk show producers was at host was, hey, you can be a part of a world record. We'll put your name in the press release, promote it in your town. So it was a way of scratching the media's back. They scratched our back, we scratched their back. And I have to say, it was a pretty nice media gimmick. I did in fact get a lot of publicity. It got in the wire services, got a massive amount of waves of publicity beyond the audiences of the individual talk shows. Now, when I did it, the rules as set to us by Guinness was that you had to be on a show for five minutes. I couldn't just go on and say hi, bye and beyond for 10 seconds, go to the next one, because other people had done this in the past. And I believe the record was something like 46. I did 112 or 114 appearances. We were able to get documentation from 96. And lo and behold, I got my certificate from Guinness, got a lot of publicity. And it's just one of those quirky little things. Sometimes I have mixed feelings about it because it can seem a little bit cheesy, gimmicky, and it is a gimmick. But I certainly didn't hurt anyone. And I did put a spotlight on my book. And my book is about helping people speak more effectively. So I kind of think that it's a win for everyone and no huge downside. Now here's the postscript that I also don't talk about as much, but I'm happy to share with all of you today. It was only about four weeks later and my record was broken. There is a country music star who had a new album out and he had the full benefit of a massive PR communications department of a big record label. And they just lined up. There had to be like 200 interviews. I mean, they just blew me out of the water. And he got in the record book. I believe he's still there today. But you know what? It doesn't really matter. Records were meant to be broken. It was a fun test of endurance. Now, probably like most of you, I've never been a professional athlete. I've never been an elite athlete at any level. So winning something that is arguably a competition or that involves any kind of stamina or stretch of a physical nature is just something I haven't been a part of. I certainly competed with Little League football and basketball as a kid, but nothing at the elite level. So there is something. And I'm never going to win an Olympic gold medal at anything, let's face it. So there is something fun and sort of interesting about the competitive nature of getting in the Guinness Book of Records. To say you're number one in the world at something. I'm not suggesting you spend six years of your life or tens of thousands of dollars, but if something does happen that lends itself to this, I do recommend it as an experience. It's one of those things that stands out in life. It is fun. It's definitely more memorable than a lot of accomplishments. And it is something that gets talked about. Whether you can do yours with an angle of public speaking or not, I don't know. But if you can figure out, maybe it's doing the most limericks in 24 hours, maybe it is the most phone calls in 24 hours. But if you could think of some way of speaking and speaking a lot and doing it on a world record basis, why not? I wish you luck. I'm TJ Walker. Thanks for spending time with me today. As always, may all of your presentations in life be a huge success.

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