Should I Warn my Audience that I will be Boring

31 Dec 2025 · 2 min

Episode

31 Dec 2025 · 2 min

0:00

TJ Walker advises speakers not to lower audience expectations by complaining about being tired, unprepared, or otherwise unwell before a presentation. Instead, he recommends focusing on delivering the best possible speech, assuming the audience cares primarily about themselves, and projecting confidence even when feeling lousy.

Chapters

I'm sorry. Today's episode really isn't as good as usual. I was up late last night. I didn't sleep well. My daughter wanted a drink a moment ago. I was distracted. My wife was a little upset with me, the blah, blah, blah. Do you really want to hear any of that? Here's the tip of the day in this of the week in this episode. Don't whine. Don't complain. Don't tell people in advance. Oh, I'm sorry, my speech is boring. Don't try to minimize expectations. It doesn't work. There are a few things that are 100% consistent with audiences all over the world, but here's one that I do think is true. Your audience doesn't care about you. They care about themselves. And if they do care about you, they care more about themselves than they do about you. So don't tell them that your plane got in late and you didn't have time to rehearse. Just give them the absolute best speech you can give. Don't tell them you didn't have time to rehearse the slide deck or look at it, because that's telling them that your time is a lot more important than theirs, and it's contemptuous of the audience. It does not help to minimize expectations for those of you who are single or those of you who at one point were single. Imagine going out on a first date and telling somebody, hey, full disclosure, I'm a really awful, boring date. Is that going to help? I don't think so. Focus on delivering the best ideas you can to make the presentation interesting and memorable for the audience. Just do the best you can. You're hungover. Don't talk about it. You got a cold. Nobody cares. Your dog ate your speech. Nobody cares. Just deliver what you have in the best possible way. Don't cut yourself down. Don't say you're boring. Don't say you're uninteresting. Don't say you're unprepared. There's plenty of other people in the world who can criticize you. You don't need to be one of them. When you're giving your speech, you need to act like this is the best speech you've ever given. You're happy to be here. You're happy with how your presentation is going. Do that and you'll be in good shape, even if you feel lousy.