Public speaking makes you richer, thinner and better in bed – find out how!
A few days ago many of us presentation blogosphere folk were carrying on a Twitter conversation. Somewhere during the discussion an idea was born: Let’s do a group writing project on “Public speaking makes you richer, thinner and better in bed.” Looking back on it I bet there was beer involved.
On Monday I was milling around a local Barnes and Nobles and wound up in the diet section. Man are there a lot of diet books out there. I just did a search on Amazon and the work “diet” returned 332,271 hits. And that was just for books. 179,000,000 hits for “diet” on Google. It appears that people are hungry to lose weight… I know, that wasn’t funny.
Thinner
What if public speaking were proven to make you thinner? Just think about it. I envision something similar to Dante’s 7th level of Hell. The problem is most people are terrible presenters and the question didn’t ask “what if great public speaking were proven to make you thinner?”
Public speaking and weightloss have something in common. People are seldom honest with you. You can be fat and people will tell you how good you look. You can suck as a presenter and guess what: people will tell you how good your presentation was. Since becoming obsessed with public speaking I notice such things. This applies to the famous as well as the rest of us.
The next time you go to a conference walk to the front of the room after a bad presentation. You will hear nothing but awesome, great, etc. The more well known you are in your field the more difficult it is to get real feedback.
Here is another “truth” that I have learned: public speaking won’t make you thinner but being thinner will make you a better public speaker. It is unfair but true. I am still overweight but I can tell you that losing 30 lbs did wonders for my speaking. I have more energy and am able to do a much more compelling job.
Richer
Sure, there are some people have gotten rich from public speaking — Tony Robbins, Barack Obama (he will cash in once his presidency concludes), and countless others. I think that it is true that developing your public speaking skills can help you in real life. On the other hand, being a crappy presenter doesn’t appear to hurt much. If it did I wouldn’t cringe in fear every time I am asked to attend a presentation.
I want to say the important part again: “being a crappy presenter doesn’t appear to hurt much.” I know one guy who kept his job because he gave a “great” presentation. I don’t know anyone who has been fired because of a terrible presentation.
The problem is that there is no way to tell how being bad hurts you. I would love to see definitive statistics on how much bad presentation costs in a given year. I bet it is almost as much money as the bailout. Give a terrible sales presentation; Walk away talking about the potential customer who just isn’t savvy enough to “get it.” Denial … denial … DENIAL! Most people who present a lot think they are great at it. Unfortunately, they never hear otherwise.
Folks who write books may get a little richer on the speaking circuit — Malcolm Gladwell is doing well. His presentations are interesting but he obviously hasn’t put the same effort into developing his speaking skills as he has his writing skills. And you know what? It doesn’t matter. I would pay to hear him speak.
Better in Bed
I asked my wife about this one. She said that there was no way that this one is true… Sigh… always a comediene.
The Lesson I think that the lesson here, if there is one, is that you strive for presentation excellence because you strive for excellence. Add to that a little compassion for your audience. Compassion is a wonderful thing. I wish more presenters had it.
Here are the other posts from this group writing project…
Laura Bergells, Lisa Braithwaite, Michael Cortes and Olivia Mitchell.
