TJ Walker explains why speakers get more respect from distant audiences than local ones. A diplomat in Central Europe treated him as a high-status expert simply because he traveled there. He advises speakers to present outside their hometowns to build credibility and stronger relationships.
Chapters
When you are giving a presentation, part of the success is going to be the strength of your ideas that you're communicating. Part of it is how you're communicating, whether you're using great visuals or awful ones, examples, great stories, or bland and boring. But a part of your success is simply who you are. How much does the audience respect you? How sort of big a deal is it that they can see you and hear you speak? What I've noticed throughout my career is there's this funny thing with how close you are to someone. Now, I'm based in the New York City area, so if I'm training someone or giving a presentation to a group of people who also are in New York, live in New York, work in New York, they may show up on time for a training, they may pay attention. But it's virtually impossible for me to get them to go to dinner with me. The night before the training or after the training. Oh, I'd love to, but it's too busy. When you're that close, it's like you can see this person anytime. No big deal. If I'm training or giving a speech on the other side of the country, all of a sudden, it's a bigger deal. My clients will go out to dinner with me. They'll have a drink with me, they may socialize with me. So that's a little different now. The first time I trained in Central Europe, it's even more of a difference. When you're from another continent, then you're sort of a bigger deal. I was in Central Europe. This is one of the first times I trained there. And I found myself at a party at the Canadian ambassador's house in this particular capital city. Fancy place. I'm sitting next to the ambassador and we're being waited on, and the waiters have white gloves and tails on. It's that fancy an event. And everyone's very nice to me and charming, pleasant. I turned to the ambassador, I said, thank you so much for having me. Great party tonight. Tell me, what's the occasion? And the ambassador turned to me and said, well, Mr. Walker, the occasion is honoring you, our esteemed guest from America, and you, the celebrated author and media and presentation expert. I was shocked. Again, I'm doing the same thing. Clients, customers in New York won't even have a cup of coffee with me after a training, sometimes go to another continent, and they're literally throwing parties in my honor. So my message to you is, look for opportunities to speak outside your own hometown. You can have the same message and the reception might be much better, might be much more powerful. People may be looking up to you even more because there is this sense of the expert from afar. Someone you see every day at the coffee pot tells you something. It's easy to discount it. Someone flies in from thousands of miles away, and all of a sudden they're the expert. You're excited. It's limited opportunity to interact with this person, so you give that person extra attention. That can work in your favor. You have the opportunity to speak in other cities. So my advice to you is really look around for other opportunities to speak in different places, because it's a great way to build a stronger bond and a stronger relationship with people you want to reach, communicate with, and help.
