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 would set up the speech. He assured me he's a TJ no problem. There's printers there at the facility. we'll print it out. So I emailed it to him relax, 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 my leg Out Miko, do you have my speech? Oh, no, I forgot. Let me go get it. Follow malenko problems.
Somehow email didn't come in and didn't get there. No outline. I don't have my computer. It's now two minutes until I'm supposed to go on stage and speak in front of this audience. Oh, 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. And 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 can do give the speech. I think it was well received.
I asked people afterwards what they remembered and they remembered Michael Core messages. That is, as you are going to get from this course to 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 kill you. I was nervous for the first time in a long time because I'm used to that. Now as the answer that should never be nervous, therefore, you should be thoroughly prepared not need notes. Now the answer I think the real lesson here is have your notes. Don't wait to 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 will 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 isn't there, it's going to increase your stress level.