I was driving along today and for some reason a past experience popped into my head that I thought I would share. As a public speaker, I attend a lot of other speaker's events. I am basically just there to steal any good ideas they may have so I can later present them as my own. I also study their techniques and styles and know well that the most important quality a speaker can have is confidence. We all know about the fear of public speaking, and even those that do it for a living have varying degrees of confidence. We also have our quirks; I for example am the epitome of confidence, unless I have an equipment malfunction, at which point I will get all flapped up and run around in circles like a boob.
There is a fine line between confidence and hubris. Actually, that line may not be that fine. Confidence inspires everyone; hubris, on the other hand annoys most people. The past experience that I remembered was long before I ever got involved in Public Speaking. I was involved in commercial shopping center development for many years. While I never got huge, I was involved with over 70 regional shopping centers and malls across the U.S. over about a ten year period. The trade group for that industry is the International Council of Shopping Centers, which was a big group at the time, I assume much smaller now. ICSC had their annual convention in Las Vegas every year and usually about 35,000 people would attend, so it was a pretty big group. The attendees included a who's who of the industry and of course the many vendors who support the industry. One year, when things were going good, the keynote address at the main luncheon was given by a pioneer in the field and CEO of the largest mall owner at the time. He gets up to the podium, scans the full house crowd and says "I could shoot off a shotgun from here and not hit anybody important". I am sure he intended it to be funny; I looked around a saw a few people awkwardly chuckling. I looked at this man who I had envied, respected and was looking forward to hearing and thought "What an A-hole". Thirteen words out of his mouth, changed my opinion of him forever.
At another annual event for the Society for Environmental Graphic Design held every year at the time at Cranbrook Academy in Bloomfield Hills, I witnessed a similar situation. SEGD is a trade group for graphic designers, which were integral in making shopping centers visually exciting. They had asked the Co-Founder of one of the most respected firms in the field to speak for their keynote luncheon address. Many of the younger attendees were eagerly awaiting what wisdom he might impart. After making everyone wait for too long, he comes sauntering in from stage left eating a piece of fried chicken. He continued eating while everybody was starting to look at each other confused. When he finally finished he tossed the chicken bone over his shoulder on the floor and proceeded to tell everyone that they could never be as good as he was and that they might as well just leave the business. Well, I always knew this dude was a vain S.O.B. so my opinions were simply confirmed, but I could almost hear the rest of the crowd murmur under their breath "What an A-Hole".
On another occasion I was attending a local Real Estate Investors Meet-up group for the first time just to check it out. This particular meetup was held at a Village Inn so I was already doubting the potential value and like a lot of meetups, they were going to have a speaker. I am sitting in the back room with a bunch of other people, mostly slum lord wannabees, and I'm looking around to figure out if the speaker had arrived. The host suddenly introduced the speaker who stood up from the middle of the crowd of SLWs. Here's this old disheveled guy, looking like he just stepped out of the half-off sale at the Salvation Army. He's gonna talk to us about "paper", as in property notes. He waddles up the the head of the table and says "You're All Stupid", a classic attention getter. He then proceeds to tell us how he makes "millions" owning paper.
Common Millionaire's Car
Now at least the first two examples were people who were actually successful; not that that gives anyone the "right" to be a jerk. Of course this guy was selling his "Getting Rich Owning Paper" program (normally $999, but just for us... $99 if we sign-up tonight). I was stuck for the whole windbag pitch as I was trapped between to large people and did not get to finally leave until about the same time he did. At least he waved goodbye to me as he drove off in his 1976 Ford Granada. A-Hole.
So my point, if I have one, is: Confidence
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