TJ Walker explains that presenting and acting are distinct skill sets and that being strong in one does not imply strength in the other. He shares a personal anecdote about auditioning (recording 103 takes) for the movie Runner Runner but not being used, using the story to encourage people to recognize and accept their strengths and weaknesses in public speaking.
Chapters
Presenting is not acting and acting is not presenting. They are different things. You can be the world's best presenter, public speaker, and frankly, be horrible at acting. You can also be good at acting and be horrible presenting or speaking in your own words. How do I know this? Well, I know it because I've lived it. Now I happen to think I'm a pretty good presenter. A lot of people tell me that it is how I make my living, but nobody's good at everything. I happen to be awful at memorizing other people's words and delivering it and doing a type of acting. It's just not what I'm good at. How do I know that? Well, I got a call about five years ago from an assistant producer making a movie called Runner Runner, and it was starring Ben Affleck and Justin Timberlake. They said, we just need someone to be an Internet newscaster talking about the rise of Internet gambling and how it's affecting college kids. And they had about three sentences of dialogue, not even dialogue, just as if you were reading a teleprompter. And the assistant producer says, we found your video of you talking about similar stuff online. It looks good. We'd like to use you for this movie. I'm thinking, great, I'm going to be a movie star. I'm sure I'll be in Hollywood at the Academy Awards hanging out with Ben Affleck. I'm getting all excited. So I did a couple of versions, recorded it, sent it to the producer, like, can you try it this way? Did a few more versions, sent it to the producer. Can we have a little less emphasis on this word? Sent it back. Well, this went on every day for a week. And at the end of the week, I counted up. I had done 103 takes of this basically 10, 15 second clip of me just speaking to the camera like I'm a newscaster, but using someone else's words. And guess what? The assistant producer said, thanks so much, tj. We're going in another direction. I didn't make the cut. I ended up on the cutting room floor. They ended up using John Seigenthaler, who is a former NBC anchor and a nice guy, someone I used to deal with, who interviewed me many times when he was at msnbc. So no hard feelings there, but it does show you. It's just a different skill set. I can do videos for online courses all day long, typically in one take, but if you give me someone else's script to memorize and say it in a natural way, I might have to do it two or 22 or 102 times, it still might not be very good. So you don't have to be good at everything. I don't want to be a professional actor, so it's not really hurting me. But it's good to test and try new things from time to time because then you see what you're good at and what you're not. Okay, so why do I give that example? Sometimes when people see me speak in a training situation, it almost seems intimidating because they feel like, oh, I'm articulate and I'm smooth and I'm not saying ums and uhs. And I want them to realize I'm not great at every type of speaking opportunity. I fail. I still fail because that wasn't that long ago. And I can still be disastrous for some things. So it's okay not to be good at every type of speaking opportunity. And if it's not something you really want to do or a part of your profession, it doesn't matter. I don't aspire to be an actor. It kind of fell in my lap. So I thought, why not? Now my biggest nightmare was, oh, this is going to be one of the best movies of all time. It's a blockbuster. It's going to be a Citizen Kane. And my whole life, every time I see it, it'll be on. Once a week I'll have these pangs of, oh, that could have been me. Fortunately, I hate to sound mean spirited. The movie was a bomb and basically nobody ever saw it again. So it wouldn't have mattered if I'd been in the movie or not.
