Last week was a long one.
I had prepared for a few weeks to debut a new presentation based on my new book. It discusses how honoring failure, gaining humility and obtaining resiliency are the basis of true business confidence. I constructed the presentation and practiced it over many weeks. On Tuesday night in Nashville, when I gave it for the first time to a group of entrepreneurs at an EO meeting. It bombed. I looked out into the audience and I could see in each person’s eyes that I do not connect with them and my presentation had no meaning. I had failed. I was embarrassed. I wanted to get out of there as quickly as I could. I did just that.
That night, I wanted to give up. I was scheduled to give the same speech two more times that week (once again in Nashville and then in Houston). I wanted to plead sickness. This is exactly the kind of failure I talked about in my speech that we have to deal with in business. I was about to take my own medicine. I wallowed in it. I felt good and sorry for myself. Then I looked back at my speech and took my own advice. Let it go. Learn what you can and move on. Starting something new is always hard. You are not the speech. Failure is just a rest stop. You have been here before. Have the confidence to know that it will get better. Move on and try again.
Scared, I got up the next day and gave the speech at Belmont University. It went much better. The audience got it this time. On to Houston, and the speech matured and got better. It still has a long way to go to be good as my "Crazy Speech", but it definitely has potential. More importantly and the biggest surprise was I actually practiced what I had preached!
