TJ Walker gave an hour speech in Belgrade to 300 people without his printed notes. He winged it using an outline he'd prepared, but the stress taught him a hard lesson: get your notes days early, don't rely on others at the last minute, and stick to a few practiced points.
Questions this video answers
Belgrade, Serbia.
About 300 young people.
September 26, 2018.
Chapters
It was a beautiful spring day and I found myself in Serbia. I was in Belgrade, the capital city, and I was about to give a speech to 300 young people. And I do what I normally do. I was in the hotel preparing, about to print out my notes because I always believe in working from a one page outline for a speech. It was going to be an hour long presentation, only I got rushed, stayed out to lunch a little too long, kind of rushed, and figured, you know, I'll just email it to my colleague Malenko, the local PR representative who had set up the speech. He assured me, he said, tj, no problem, there's printers there at the facility, we'll print it out. So I emailed it to him, relaxed, thinking, great, I'll have my notes. This is going to be a great speech. I get to the venue, driver brought me up there, got me out early. Plenty of time, as I always like to do it. There's Malenko. Malenko, do you have my speech? Oh, no, I forgot. Let me go get it. Follow Malenko. Problems. Somehow the email didn't come in. It didn't get there. No outline. I don't have my computer and it's now two minutes until I'm supposed to go on stage and speak in front of this audience. I've never given a speech to this big of an audience without notes. What do I do? Well, at this point, I did wing it. Now I say I was winging it, but I thought about what I want to say. I had prepared, I had made an outline. So even though I didn't have it, the fact that I'd gone through the process of making an outline did frame things in my brain. So I get out there, I do give the speech. I think it was well received. I asked people afterwards what they remembered and they remembered my core messages. That is as you are going to get from this course too. Narrow your speech down to a handful of ideas, have a story for each point, practice on video until you're happy with it. So they did get it. It was still a success, but it caused a lot of stress for me. I don't want to kid you. I was nervous for the first time in a long time because I'm used to that now is the answer that should never be nervous. Therefore you should be thoroughly prepared and not need notes. No, the answer. I think the real lesson here is have your notes, don't wait till the last minute. I should have had it two days in advance. Extra copies, so I shouldn't be relying on any other colleagues. Certainly five minutes before the venue. So that was my fault. My mistake. Okay, what's the lesson there? Be prepared. Don't wait till the last minute. You don't want to give yourself stress in a presentation opportunity. You. You want to have everything you need well in advance. Because even if you speak a lot, even if you're good, if you're counting on something and it isn't there, it's going to increase your stress level.
