Ep 141 What if Most of My speaking audience Doesn't show Up May 20, 2016

So what do you do if your speaking audience is much smaller than you were anticipating?

Speaking the show about effective speaking in public to the media, at work and in Life. Speaking with T.J. walker.

This question comes from Brother Ted, one of our regular viewers of this program on the YouTube channel. By the way, those of you listening on itunes, the program is available in a video format on YouTube, Flickr, Dailymotion, Facebook video, other platforms. And you can obviously still listen to it on audio on Stitcher, itunes, and other podcasting platforms. So here's the question from Brother Ted. What if your audience is far smaller than you expected? I recently was supposed to talk in a room with about 60 chairs set up. Presumably about 60 people were expected. Only eight people showed up. Do I change the style? Well, this has happened. It'll happen to every speaker at some point. Here's the big thing. You want to give the people who did show up a great experience. You want to share with them, help them. You want to give them information that's great. And you want them to know that you're really happy there in front of you and that they came to this event. What you don't want to do is pout, act, and know, where is everybody? I thought there would be so many people. Look at the Nobody likes a whiner. So whatever you do, don't whine, don't complain. But I would even go beyond that. Don't even talk about how few people there are in the room. That's what not to do. I'll tell you what to do in just a moment.

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Here's what I recommend in those situations and in fact, exactly what I've done myself. There's a room, there's chairs set up for 60, 80, 100. Only eight people are there. I ask all eight to come down to the front row. Then I'll either get another chair, sit in front of them, or if there's a stage, lean on the stage. I want it to be as close as possible so people can enjoy the intimacy. I mean, if it's a small, little intimate group, you might as well get the most out of it. If everyone is 20ft away from each other, that is going to feel strange, it's going to feel weird, it's going to make them uncomfortable. So you have to politely, I believe, but persistently ask people to stand up and come on the front row. So if you did Have a room and a hundred people and there's a lectern on the stage and a microphone. You don't need any of that. There's only eight people there. You can now sit or stand just a few feet away from each person. So use this to your advantage. You can really make the event much more interactive, more engaging, more conversational, and you can make a huge, huge impact. I can tell you, one time I was slated to give a presentation, a training, an all day training. I was expecting a large group. I had one person show up and I was a little disappointed. But you know what? I gave it my all. I gave him the real treatment, as if I had a room full of people he liked me ended up giving me strong recommendations to people he worked with. And through that one connection, that one time resulted in me getting hired to train some prime ministers in some pretty interesting countries, a number of political figures at a not unsubstantial training fee. So it worked out very nicely because I treated that one audience member as if the audience were as important as if 100 or a thousand people had been there. So treat your audience with respect because that's the thing, you never really know who could help you, who might hire you, who might be impressed by who might refer you to others. If you have anyone in the audience. Sometimes it's better to have an audience of three than an audience of 3,000. But the trick of course is don't act disturbed, don't act bothered, don't act disappointed. I've told you the don'ts. What you do need to do, first of all, gather people closer to you so you can really maximize the full benefit. The smaller group, that you can make it conversational. You can make people comfortable tossing out a question to you or giving their own opinion. If everyone is sitting in theater, stadiums, theater style seating, and they're 20ft from each other, it's going to seem awkward or embarrassing to interrupt you when you're talking. If everyone's sitting closer, it'll be much better. The next thing I would advise is make a judgment of whether you want to sit or stand. If it's really just eight people and you can easily pull up a chair, I would just sit in front of them and make the whole thing seem like a great conversation. You can make a better impression that way. The next thing, give them your best stuff. If someone is in the audience, it doesn't matter to them that a thousand people didn't show up or 60 people, or they don't care how many were supposed to come up. They came to hear from you. They came to get your expertise, to learn from you, to get some insights from you. So from their standpoint, it's the same. There's one speaker and they've got one set of ears. So they want your best. So give them your best. Don't shortchange them. If you're scheduled to speak for two hours, use the two hours. Don't just say after 30 minutes, well, no one was here. I guess no one really wanted to hear from me. Let's just go. Go out and get a beer or let me feel sorry for myself. I've seen that happen when an audience was smaller than expected. Don't do that. Give people your best. One time I saw, at least by New York standards, a very famous duo, Ron Kuby and Curtis Sliwa. They've been on the air together and separately for, at this point, more than 30 years. And they are seasoned veterans of the New York radio world. But they've both been on every kind of national TV show, an international TV show, and are well known and are in demand as public speakers. Well, they had been asked to debate an issue, and I believe this was some kind of a political club. And lo and behold, there had to have been eight people there. And here these guys are big radio celebrities making a lot of money, in demand on national TV all the time. Here they are, evening of their life, away from friends, family, productive things. They weren't getting paid for the speech. There's only eight people in the room, but they stood up and they just gave it their all as if they were in front of 5,000 people and the thing had been broadcast on national TV live. It made no difference to Curtis Lewis or Ron Kuby how many people in the room. They put on their debate. They forcefully put forth their positions, and they just had at it. And they were fantastic. And even though I don't agree with all of what either one of them says, it left a very favorable impression in my mouth on their. Their level of professionalism. Now, the only thing I would adjust sometimes is you do need to adjust your energy level. Because if you're speaking to a large room of a hundred people and you're on a stage and there's some distance, you know, there's 30ft between you and the first row, and let's say you don't even have a microphone and there's no video camera on you, you may speak with more projection, bigger gestures, a little bit more volume, more energy in your voice for a large room with A large group. If all of a sudden you're talking to two people and you're gesturing loudly like it can seem a little phony and weird and contrived. I do remember once I was in Austin, Texas, and I'd hired a consultant to helped me on a business matter and he gave a presentation just to me and my colleague. There's just two of us sitting on a couch in his living room. So he knew how many people were coming, but he gave his speech with the intensity and the volume as if he were addressing 5,000 people and he was standing three feet in front of us. It was really, really weird and uncomfortable. Now, I don't know that his speech would have been great in front of Phi that, but it wouldn't have seemed that out of the ordinary because he was really big on gestures and he was speaking loudly over certain music and volume that he had in his PowerPoint presentation, which I don't recommend you ever try to talk over the music in your PowerPoint presentation, but that's a separate issue. So I do recommend you take into consideration how close you are and if you can use an even more intimate, quieter tone of voice. If it's a really small group. But I want to caution you, that's not a license to project and be loud. If you're speaking to a larger group. The best way to use your voice virtually anytime is is with a conversational tone, full variation, loud and soft with your tones of voice. So don't take the wrong lesson away there. So if you speak and you speak regularly and you speak long enough, at some point there's going to be a crowd much smaller than you expected. It's happened to famous politicians for Bill Clinton on down. It will happen to you. Don't take it personally. Don't take it out on your audience. Just give the best speech you can and make it the greatest experience possible for the people who did show up. Do that and you'll still be a winner. I'm TJ Walker. Thanks for joining me today. As always, may all of your presentations in life, large audiences or small, be a huge success.

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