The Rules

Rule 1, No Shortcuts Get Ready

There just are not any shortcuts on the ‘get ready’. There is all the usual stuff to do – make sure the room is set up right, the flipcharts are beautifully drawn, the slide show is loaded, the notebooks and name-cards and pens and sweets and toys are all set out. When delegates walk into a training room, or conference hall, the way it looks makes a difference; effort or lack of effort is immediately obvious.

This kind of stuff can be done the night before the gig, and it does matter, and when it is done then you are free to spend time on the real ‘get ready’.

Arm yourself with whatever you need – for me, good coffee and cigarettes are very important, along with my notebook and a pencil, preferably a Blackwing 602, but any will do – and get some time to yourself before the first delegate arrives. Go to your room, take a walk, sit in your car, climb a tree – whatever, take some time to get very clear on your content, very clear on your delivery, and what I like to call ‘crystal clear confidence’. This is the type of confidence that comes from being all set, and totally committing to what you are doing, letting go of all the other stuff that may be going on.

When you feel just right, lock the feeling in, and go meet your delegates.

All this stuff usually takes me a couple of hours, particularly if I have a lot of props and stunts to set up, but it can be done in less. My rule is simply to give it as long as it takes, and if that means getting up before I go to bed, then so be it. No shortcuts.

Rule 2, First & Last Words

My first conference gig was in Istanbul, in a huge conference hall at a swanky hotel, with a couple of thousand delegates.

There was a Very Important Speaker and I was on right before him. As I waited in the wings, nervous as you like, the Very Important Speaker took time out from signing his latest best-seller to come over and say hello. He shook my shaking hand, wished me luck and, as I walked out onto the stage, he handed me a glass of water full to the brim.

It was a classic trick – and it worked, I spilled that water just about everywhere as I walked on – and I will remember it always.

The more important memory is the advice the Very important Speaker gave me.

“Kid” he said, in a gravelly Mid-West twang, “Write the first thing you are going to say, and the last thing you are going to say, and the rest will write itself.”

It took me a long time to realise this was good advice, but after seeing hundreds of speakers without any real beginning, and thousands without any proper big ending, I made it a rule, and it has stood me in good stead.

Mind you, all these years on, I still plan to get my own back on the Very Important Speaker.

Rule 3, Stand & Deliver

This is a very simple rule. You just cannot deliver big messages sitting down, or leaning on something, or perching on the side of a desk, or hanging on to a flipchart, or with your hands in your pockets (an early mentor had the cure for the nervous inclination to put my hands in my pockets; he staple-gunned my pockets, job done).

So, an everyday rule, stand and deliver.

Rule 4, 100 Times Only

I don’t know about you, but I will consider pretty much anything to burn a message in.

There is a stunt I used to do which involved a wonderful story, an arrow, a strong message (one assured step forward, in case you wondered) and a fair amount of danger. I loved doing this stunt, and I am happy to say that audiences all over loved it too, and remembered the message.

Then one day I did the arrow stunt, and it bombed. At the end of the session, after everyone had gone, even as I stood thinking about changing my name, moving to another land and going into another line of work, I knew why it had bombed.

I had done the stunt so many times I was just plain old bored to death doing it. So I stopped doing that particular stunt, and set my rule – only do something 100 times.

Rule 5, Make Your Gig

If you are in hospital and they are calling a priest, then sure it is okay to cancel.

Otherwise, if you are booked, turn up, make your gig.

So there you are, my five rules for a gig – throw stones at them, break them, or use them, I hope they help. Better still, Dear Reader, take some time out and write down your own set of rules.

Love & Good Fortune X