TJ Walker describes a radio host pulling a gun on him during a talk show and explains how he recovered. He argues great speakers win through storytelling, not facts, and breaks down how to build stories from real conversations with setting, character, dialogue, and emotion.
Chapters
If you show me a great speaker, I'll show you somebody who's had some awful speeches, awful days, things where nothing worked, just fell flat or got booed. Now, I've had some successful speaking days and I've had standing ovations and that's nice and wonderful, but I've had some lousy days of speaking and presenting to live audiences and the media. I'll never forget my worst speaking opportunity ever. About a quarter of a century ago, I was on a talk radio show in South Florida in the United States. It was political season. And I walked into the station in the studio, I remember sitting, it was really low seat. The host was this high seat, looking down at me. We're talking about politics. And I said, Mr. K, what I really think. Before I could say anything else, he pulls the microphone out of my hand. Mr. Walker, I have more respect for a Ku Klux Klansman than I do for you. I was a bit shocked. I hadn't said anything that provocative. But at this point, I'm already a public speaking coach and media training coach and I already have confidence. So I think I'm really tough. So I'm now pulling on the microphone. He's pulled the mic out, I'm pulling it out. And I said, yeah, yeah, but Mr. King, what I really think. Before I could say anything else, he reaches under the table, the console, pulls out a gun. Now it's talk radio in South Florida. There's palm trees outside. No one can see this. Now do you see my point, Mr. Walker? You know what I said at that moment with my silvery tongue, with all my oratorical experience, not much of anything. I see your point. Not my best moment, speaking. In fact, this guy was really theatrical. So he then says to his producer, call the police, get this guy out of here. Remove this guy immediately. I'm pushed out the studio. Not my greatest speaking event ever. In fact, I had some friends listening to that. They recorded it and they would replay the audio of that radio show for years, anytime I came over their house. It was awful. I did a horrible job. But you know what? I went back to that station. Now I stayed away from that host. I still think he's crazy. But I went back to that station and I actually co hosted other shows. I didn't let one bad speaking opportunity, one bad media experience destroy my self confidence. I'll never do that again. I love speaking. I love helping other people speak. And I just learned from it. And I went back to it. And after a while, everybody forgets it because there's so many other speeches, presentations, media interviews. I've probably done 5,000 network TV and radio interviews since then. So no one really remembers that. That's the key. If you have a bad speaking opportunity and you learn from it, you just do more and more. Typically, no one will remember the bad ones. What did I just do there? I told a story. Why did I do that? I just wanted to make the point that everybody can make bad speeches. And the real lesson is you got to learn from them to get better. I could have said that in five seconds, but if I said it in five seconds, it much less memorable. The biggest difference between great speakers in the world and everybody else. Bad speakers, average speakers. The biggest difference is not the quality of the voice or the hand gestures or the eye contact or how expensive the clothes are. The single biggest difference between great speakers and everybody else stories. Great speakers illustrate every important point with a story. And you can say, well, teacher, I don't have any stories. Yes, you do. All human beings have stories. It doesn't have to be as dramatic as someone pulling a gun on you. The most important thing is it's true and it relates a conversation you had with someone. By the way, my story was true. That actually did happen. Is it a good story? Is it going to win a Pulitzer Prize? No. But does it work? Yes. My clients remember I have sometimes people come up to me 10 years after I've seen them the first time in a training, and they say, hey, dj, had any guns pulled on you lately? They remember it. That's how I know it works. And they get the point. The point, of course, is not that I am subject to guns being pulled on me all the time. The point is everybody can be awful or bad one day. You just have to learn from it. So what are the elements of a story? I tried to incorporate them right there. There is a setting. I was in a talk radio station in South Florida. Whether you've ever been one, not you have an image in your brain. The second thing there is a character. There's me and this talk show host. The third, there's a little bit of dialogue. What he said to me, what I said back. Fourth, There is a problem. There's a gun pulled on me. Fifth, there's an emotional component. How did I feel? I felt scared. 6 There was some resolution meaning to it. Well, I got out alive and I actually went back to the station. So those are the elements of a story. And you have stories happen to you all the time. People ask me all the time, well, T.J. can I just make up a story? Well, you could, but it's really hard. Again, I want you to be, in a sense, lazy. That was a really easy story for me to tell because I'm just reliving an actual experience and that's going to be easiest for you most of the time. It doesn't have to be wildly dramatic. All it has to do is involve a conversation you had with a real person about a real problem, how you felt about it, how it was resolved. That's all it is. And you have to ask yourself if here's one of my important messages. If I've never had a single conversation with anyone about this issue, maybe it's not really an important message. So that's one of the tests I have for you. You can't think of a single story to flesh out a key point. It's probably not a very important point. Remember, your story setting can simply be you're sitting in your office in your cubicle, you pick up the phone and you talk to the guy or the woman two floors down about a problem with this customer. How did you feel? How was it resolved? This feels hard. I understand that this feels difficult. It's actually the easiest thing in the world. Human beings are hardwired to communicate by telling stories. So much of what makes public speaking difficult is we're trying to do something very abnormal, listing lots of facts, bullet points in an abstract way. Think of it this way. If you go in Monday morning to the office or Sunday morning, if that's the first day of your work week and someone says, how was your weekend? You don't typically say, well, I Woke up at 6am Saturday morning. At 6:02 I went to the kitchen. At 6:03 I started fixing coffee. At 6:04 I went and opened the bread rail. That would be really hard to list every single thing you've done the whole weekend. And yet that's how a lot of people give speeches, listing every single fact in some logical order. Instead, someone asks you, how was your weekend? You might say something like, I was fantastic. My family loved watching the Olympics, the ice skater did. You see you hop right into a story involving a setting, how you felt, who was involved. We do that instinctively in human conversation. What great speakers realize is that when you're giving a so called formal speech, formal presentation, talk briefing, you don't want to throw away the stories. That's the part you want to keep. You don't want to give people a boring data dump so you can ignore half 95% 99% of what I say in this whole course. If you illustrate every key point in your presentation with an interesting, memorable story, you're going to be the best speaker anyone in your audience has seen that day, that week, that month, maybe ever.
