speakers bureau Archives

I learned a lot this past weekend from a very humbling experience.

I had the honor of doing a few Reset Breaks at the IASB Convention in New Orleans. This is some of the top speakers bureau agents, owners and employees in the world. Therefore, it can be a really intimidating audience to say the least. They’ve seen and heard it all. From celebrities to CEO’s to authors, they have new information coming at them daily and get to hear all the top speakers in the world.

Somehow I got lost and forgot what I was doing this for in the first place. I made it all about me. I was concerned if they would like it or not. Had they heard of anything like this before or would what I would be doing be new and fresh for them? I’ve got to make it fun, funny, serious, important and have them feel refreshed and re-energized at the same time. Is it dumb that I’m opening the conference wearing a dress and heels even though we are doing some stretching exercises? And the thoughts go on and on…

It’s no surprise to me that with all of these thoughts running through my mind that the first break I did out of three I had a moment where I froze up a bit. I forgot all of the wonderful statistics I wanted to share and was wishing that I had slides like I normally do. I’ve been in this industry since 2003, so I know many of the audience members. I also know now that you can’t possibly prepare yourself enough for this audience. No visualization or preparation cut it for me because I was ready. But, the minute I saw certain people and owners of these top bureaus in the audience the more I froze up and forgot all the things I wanted to say.

It was truly one of the scariest moments of my life that seemed like it lasted an absolute eternity.

I ended up nervously pulling it together somehow and kept going, but it wasn’t easy. And luckily, before my 3rd break, I had an incredible conversation with one of the other speakers. I was reminded of why I was there in the first place and that somehow along the way I had lost the whole reason of why I’m so passionate about this work in the first place.

I had made it all about me vs. all about them and what they could take from it. It’s why I’m in the business is to help people live their lives to their fullest potential and taking care of ourselves is in line with one of the big things I like to be teaching. Here I was having that opportunity to some of the most influential people out there and I lost track of why I was there because I let my nerves get the best of me.

The good news is I was able to switch to that mentality before my last break and even better news is now I’m pretty sure I could speak in front of the President of the United States and all of the top level CEO’s in the world and it would seem like a piece of cake. At least I’m well prepared for anything that comes along in the future 😉

Have you been humbled lately and if so, what did you learn from it? Or do you maybe need to be a bit more humble around a certain area and perhaps even ask someone for help?

Curt Steinhorst - 1 Preferred

Do you know how distracted you are? This guy certainly does!

Meet my friend, Curt Steinhorst, the distraction expert.

Curt and I worked together many years ago booking speakers and celebrities for corporate events. Now, Curt owns his own business helping speakers and celebrities perfect their speeches, owns his own speakers bureau where you can book any of those people that you wish and he is also an excellent speaker himself.

I have been working with Curt recently to help manage his speaking business and I’m amazed at all that I have learned from him and how much more productive I’ve been the past few weeks. Like, more productive than I’ve been in months, if not years!

I won’t give away all his secrets (not to worry, his website is at the bottom of this post), but there are some amazing tools and techniques out there that can keep us from being so distracted. Curt is so excited about this topic he’s even writing a book about it and thinks it’s the most important issue that organizations face today. With all the iPhones and other technology we have coming at us these days, actual productive work has never been more challenging.

Did you know it takes an average of 23 minutes to get back on task once we have become distracted? How scary is that?

When you sit down to do a task what all do you have going on? Do you have music playing in the background, your cell phone on your desk just waiting for the next text to come through, your email, calendar, google, Facebook and other windows open on your computer? It’s a wonder we ever get anything done at all.

The next time you sit down to do an important task, I’d like to challenge you to see if you can shut off everything else and close out all the other tabs and just focus on that task. See if you are able to get more done. You might be surprised!

Until next time, cheers to a more productive next couple of weeks!

To find out more information on Curt Steinhorst, check out: www.curtsteinhorst.com

Tag Archives: speakers bureau

What I Learned From A Very Humbling Experience…

Do You Know How Distracted You Are?