TJ Walker recounts a personal speaking failure shortly after moving to New York City, describing how misjudging the audience and their political leanings led to a hostile reception. He uses the anecdote (including a dated reference to April 1, 1996) to advise presenters to research their audience, arrive early, and adjust messaging to avoid unnecessary negative reactions.
Questions this video answers
April 1, 1996.
Chapters
A couple of decades ago, I had just moved to New York City and was frankly very poor. I had been invited to give a speech at a political organization, a political club. It happened to be the same political party I was a part of. It happened to be the same political party that the President of the United States belonged to. And at the time I was also doing political commentary, talking about politics a great deal. I thought, this will be great way to introduce myself to the new city. I'd only been here for a couple of months, and I brought my video camera to demonstrate everything. So I went, gave this speech, and I noticed right at the beginning, lots of stony faces. Then I was saying more and more positive things about the incumbent president who was in the party that the members of this club were devoted to. And people were looking angry. I'm starting to make fun of the incumbent president's political opponents, thinking, well, that'll get them on my side. And they just got angrier after a while. They practically booed me off the stage. Some lady came up to me afterwards, said, young man, how long have you been here? And why do you think we want to hear from someone like you? It's like just a disaster. No applause, not even a thank you, and just people kind of walking off. So what happened? Well, it just so happened that every community can be a little different. And New York City, especially Manhattan, is different from any other place in the United States. I had been living in Florida, North Carolina, the rest of my life, and I didn't know that much about Manhattan. And in Manhattan, the politics are much more skewed. And so you do find people on more extreme. So even though I was speaking to a political club of a certain party, they didn't like that incumbent president because they didn't think he was pure enough to their ideals. So they only wanted to hear someone who was going to bash the and attack the president of their own party. And he happened to be someone I liked, so. And by the way, I'm not trying to be cute. I'm not mentioning the party in the person, because what I have found is the second you do that, everyone looks at you through a different lens. And if they like that politician, then they like you. But if they didn't like that politician, they'll end up hating me. So that's why I'm being a little bit vague, even though I don't generally recommend that when telling stories. So I walked away from that totally dejected. And I remember at the time, it was April 1, 1996, I had just moved to town a few months earlier. They practically spat on me. It was that bad. So I'm walking away, carrying my video camera, my little briefcase. I'm slumbering away, walking across town because I couldn't even afford bus fare or cab fare home. I was that kind of down and out. I'm figuring it can't get any worse than this. I'm walking, all of a sudden I look up, it starts snowing on me in April. I'm now freezing. I have no gloves, I don't have an overcoat on. I'm carrying my stuff and I'm thinking, wow, I never should have moved away from Florida. That was definitely one of my worst speaking days ever. But you know what? You learn from that or you go home and quit. I obviously didn't go home and quit. I didn't do enough due diligence. I should have gotten there earlier, really talked to people, found out who they liked, who they respected, what they thought of the current political environment, what they thought of the incumbent president. So that was my fault. I didn't do enough due diligence. I just made assumptions about the audience. Never a good thing to do. So why do I tell that story? Pretty obvious. I just want people to do more research on their audience before they give presentations so they are not surprised by a negative reaction from the audience because they misjudged the audience. You can't do it perfectly every time, but you can get there early and ask questions that will allow you to tweak your message in a way that may resonate. I'm not suggesting you just tell any audience what they want to hear, but certainly if you know certain subjects are going to scare away people or distract them or make them hate you, maybe you want to go in another direction.
