Episode 074 Speaking From Experience

3 Near-Miss Public Speaking Disasters

TL;DR

Three times, the event changed underneath me minutes before I spoke. A 15-minute talk became an hour for a completely different audience. A 40-minute keynote shrank to seven. And a text arrived that no speaker wants to read before logging on. Here's what I did each time, plus the storytelling structure I used to tell these stories to a room full of speakers.

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Last week I spoke at a speakers' training. Talking to speakers about speaking is its own kind of pressure (you can feel yourself being analyzed). So I told them three near-miss disasters from my own speaking life:

the conference where my audience and my time both changed while I had one foot on the stage steps;
the staff gala where a 40-minute keynote became 20, then 7, and 500 people ended up writing a book together;
the virtual keynote I delivered minutes after learning someone close to me had died.

In this episode I walk through what actually saved each one: a modular talk built from images, a backup plan that fits in a bag, and a sixty-second state reset.

Then I pull back the curtain on how I told the stories. I used nested loops, a structure from hypnosis and storytelling that holds attention by leaving stories open and closing them in reverse order.

Underneath it all is a single lesson: Even though the lights are on you, the talk belongs to the audience and to the people who brought you there to serve them.

Timestamps (estimated)

00:00 Speaking to speakers: "a different vibe"
01:00 Near-miss #1 begins: the agenda that didn't list me
02:30 One foot on the steps: "There's been a change."
03:45 Near-miss #2 begins: 40 minutes… then 20… then 7
05:00 Near-miss #3 begins: the text before a virtual keynote
06:00 Resolving #3: a smirk, Do Not Disturb, fully present
07:45 Resolving #2: index cards, Sharpies, and a seven-minute book
10:30 Resolving #1: "connect-tile dysfunction" and slides that bend
13:00 Why tell speakers these stories: service to the audience and the organizers
14:15 The reveal: nested loops (A → B → C → C → B → A)
16:00 The pull to finish what's unfinished
17:15 Keep the frame on them
18:30 Close

Key takeaways

The first change is information. When your time gets cut once, launch the backup plan prep right away, just in case.
Build talks in sections you can move, skip, or expand. Image-based slides work as cues, so one image can stretch to five minutes or pass in five seconds.
Carry a backup that needs nothing but paper. Index cards and Sharpies turned seven minutes into a book written by 500 people.
State management is a skill you prepare in advance. Know your sixty-second reset before the day you need it.
Organizers are carrying far more than your talk. Absorbing the chaos quietly is part of the service.
Nested loops (open A, open B, open C, close C, close B, close A) hold attention because people are pulled to finish what's been interrupted. Close every loop you open.

Useful quotes (maybe)

"It's about your service to the audience and your service to the ones that brought you there to serve the audience."
"I always bring a backup plan with me."
"Most of my slides are images anyway… they're more like cues. I can expand on a single image, or I can contract and save time."
"Keep the frame on them, because that's who it's for."
"Start story A, don't finish it. Start story B, don't finish it. Start story C, finish story C. Finish story B, finish story A."

Helpful Links

Book Dr. Tori to speak: https://drtori.com/speaker
Apply for 1:1 influence coaching: https://www.drtori.com/coaching-application-1on1
101 Ways to Manage Your State: https://drtori.com/101
Always Kiss Me Good Night: Instructions on Raising the Perfect Parent by 147 Kids Who Know, compiled by J.S. Salt (Harmony, 1997)

Tags

public speaking, keynote speaking, professional speaker, speaker tips, last-minute changes, state management, storytelling, nested loops, open loops, Zeigarnik effect, Ovsiankina effect, event planning, audience engagement, influence, Influence Every Day

Episode Transcript

074 Speaking From Experience - 3 Near-Miss Public Speaking Disasters

The Influence Every Day Show with Dr. Ed Tori

influence-074-speaking-from-experience-3-near-miss-public-speaking-disasters-01-audio.mp3

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Last week I was speaking at a speaker's training. The audience was full of people who do public speaking. I was talking to them about potential disasters that were narrowly avoided from the public speaking stage.

I called it "Speaking From Experience," and I told them a series of stories and I'll share those with you right now because you may benefit from them. But also I'll share with you the tactic used for the storytelling to speakers. So keep in mind like when you're speaking to speakers, that's like a different vibe, lemme tell you.

'cause you, you feel like you're being hyper analyzed, right? So here's what I did. I started off with a story. I started off telling them about a time that I went to a city in the south where I was invited to speak and I was being sponsored by another organization to speak at a conference that was not theirs.

They were paying me to go to speak at someone's conference, but the organizers hadn't reached out to me at all. I had been proactively reaching out to them. They said, yeah, I'm on the docket. But then I saw the agenda that was published and I wasn't listed. I still flew to that city because I owed it to the folks that were going to pay me for that speaking.

And my daughter lived in that city at the time, so I thought hey, I could at least get a visit out of this and visit my daughter if it all falls through. The night before I'm supposed to speak, my wife gets a see, sends me an Instagram screenshot that I am on the agenda. Okay. When I had spoken to the organizers, they had told me that I was to speak for only 15 minutes to all of the volunteers and med students at this medical conference.

So that's who I thought I was speaking to. Well, here's what happened. The time came for my talk. I am getting ready to walk on stage, so they're actively talk, you know, they're actively introducing me. and I have one foot up the steps.

And I'm carrying my laptop 'cause I'm going to connect it when I get there. And the person who was standing behind the one introducing me leans down to me and says, "There's been a change. You don't have 15 minutes, you have an hour. And it's not to the med students and the volunteers for the conference, it's actually to all of the physicians at the conference."

So I'm getting on stage and they're changing the duration from 15 minutes to an hour and they're changing the audience from volunteers and med students to the actual full on conference that's there. So I'm getting up there, this is what I'm faced with. I was telling my daughter this story and she's like, "Bruh! I would've crashed out."

And she spun around, right? And many people would have, but there was a very simple solution. Another incident that occurred where a near miss disaster was that I was booked to speak at an organization to their it was like a gala to all of their staff. And so people had come in from various parts of the organization.

There were maybe 500 or so people there. I was hired to come in to be the keynote speaker and. I was told that I had 40 minutes, so I was coming in prepared to speak for 40 minutes. As I entered the hall, they told me I had 20 minutes. While I was waiting to speak. The person before me had a video and their video wasn't working, but apparently it was vital for the whole audience to see it, so they kept working on the technical difficulties that they were having.

And my talk that was originally supposed to be 40 was now supposed to be seven minutes. So I had to figure out how I was going to deliver the value of the high fee that I charge in seven minutes. Another near miss disaster, I was about to log in to a virtual keynote, and as I was setting up, I probably had three or four more minutes.

I was all prepared, but as I was getting some of the notes situated and things around me that I might want to either props or things like that. As I was setting all that up, I received a text. And now, normally by the way, before I get on stage or a virtual keynote, I don't look at any messaging. But this one

was that somebody had passed away. Somebody that was relatively close to me had passed away. And so here I am about to log in, about to deliver a keynote and I'm getting this news. So I sat with that for a minute and I thought. Wow. First of all, obviously I was reflecting on the person I lost. And then at the same time I was feeling this pressure, like, how am I gonna show up for all these people?

Should I even show up for these people? It's probably okay if I don't I have a great reason, but I owe it to them, like the organizers prepared so I thought about it for a moment and I thought. You know what, the person that passed away is in another city.

It's not like I can do anything for the next hour, so I might as well deliver this keynote and I'll address everything afterwards, call all the people, do whatever, and, give condolences and reach out to closest friends, et cetera. So how am I gonna manage my state before I log in?

I pulled up YouTube on my phone and I pulled it up to a late night talk show host who, whenever I see his face, like he has this slight smirk and it just gets me ready to laugh. So I got really centered with that and I just watched his opening monologue and I didn't watch the whole monologue 'cause I only had like a, a minute or two and I only got to the point where I saw his smirk.

That was enough. I turned it off, I put my phone on Do Not Disturb, and I logged in and I delivered the keynote fully present for that audience. In the other instance when I had 40 minutes. They took me down to 20 minutes, and then there were technical difficulties. I had seven minutes. Here's how I solved that.

When I went from 40 minutes to 20 minutes, I initiated a backup plan. Since right as I arrived, they told me they reduced it from 40 minutes to 20 minutes.

That was a cue to me that I just needed a backup just in case. So I put a bunch of index cards and sharpies that I bring with me. I always bring a backup plan with me. I put them on all the tables. Now there's 500 people there. So I put them on all of the tables and I and then I went to the green room to prepare for my talk.

By the time I put those things on the table, made it to the green room, and they were going through the technical difficulties, then someone came in and said, can you keep it to seven minutes because we have X, Y, Z happening. So I said, sure. And then I instituted the backup plan. Now, the backup plan happened to be, I have a workshop called How to Write a Book in 14.7 Minutes Without Ai.

And what I do is I basically tell the story of a book that I once bought, my wife called, Always Kiss Me Goodnight. it was written by a bunch of elementary school, students that had written advice to parents. The teacher scanned all of their drawings and writings and put it into a book.

So it was like advice from kids to parents, and it's an incredibly powerful book. So I took that concept and I turned it into this workshop, How To Write A Book In 14.7 Minutes Without Using Ai. I gave the audience this a, a, a prompt and had them write out their advice or their tips, or I think it was like "small kindnesses" or "ways to pay it forward" or something like that.

They wrote it down. Each person wrote one thing on an index card, and after I was done, I scanned them all, made it into a book, and then gave it back to the organization. That was a way for me to provide the high fee value to that organization. Was to have all of them write a book together, and that was all I could do in seven minutes. Afterwards, I could still provide value because I created a landing page, they could download the book, and I gave them a couple extra videos there that I would've covered had I given the keynote. That's how that one was solved.

[ ***** Book Dr. Tori to speak at your next event: https://drtori.com/speaker ***** ]

And then the other one, the de the, the, like. My daughter would've crashed out thing when I was getting on stage and they changed the duration from 15 minutes to an hour and they changed the audience from volunteers to, high level professionals. What did I do there?

As I got up onto the stage, I pretended like I was connecting my laptop. I had already connected it 'cause I could do that super fast and I'm usually like pretty adept at that, right? It's almost seamless. I typically start my talk and people don't even realize I'm connecting the laptop. As I was connecting, I acted like I was just having a little bit of trouble.

So I bought time with a joke. I was like, yeah, I guess I have "connect tile dysfunction." Which is a joke to physicians, right? and so they all laughed and right, and I'm, but what I was doing on the screen without it be showing up on the big screen was I was adjusting my slides. See, when you have Keynote or PowerPoint, you can nest slides underneath each other.

each talk had sections sectioned out, and I just moved some of those around. Those full sections I moved them around to make it like an hour long. And not only that, most of my slides are images anyway, like I don't actually even need them. They're more like cues. I can expand on a single image, or I can contract and save time.

So if it goes from 15 minutes to an hour, or if it goes from hour to 15 minutes. It's no change in my slides because they're just images anyway, and I could even go without them, right? So anyway, that's what I did. I just adjusted the slides and then I started my talk. Now what's really interesting is that so many talks were booked from that audience.

In other words, I was speaking to an audience, they had no idea that the audience had changed and the duration had changed so dramatically seconds before I got to the podium, but still delivered so well that I was booked for other talks. Now, why was I telling these stories to this audience of speakers?

When you are a speaker. It's not about you and it's not about your content. It's about how you serve the audience, and it's about being professional for those people that have booked you to speak. they're putting on an event, they're stressed out. They have people that they have to answer to.

They have the entire audience to serve. They have so many moving parts in any event like that. You can't be a thorn in their side or a problem or if you've ever seen speakers that get up there and they're like, "You know, yeah, well, given that, uh, I don't have so much time left."

Don't say that. So I was telling them these stories. Now here's what's. Pretty here's what's pretty ninja about the way I told those stories. I didn't do it necessarily for you here in this podcast episode the same way I did it from the stage.

It's a little more animated on stage and and also I was really connecting with that audience because they're speakers. So they got it. They know what that feels like. As I was telling the story, you may have noticed that I didn't tell you the story straight through.

I didn't tell you about going on stage and having the audience and the duration change from the beginning to the end. I started the story, but I didn't end it. I moved to the next story and I started to tell you about it went from 40 minutes to 20 minutes and then to seven minutes. I didn't finish that story either.

Then I went to the next one where I received the text that somebody had passed away, and I started that story. I finished that story. Then I finished the one before it, and then I finished the one before that. This is what we call in hypnosis and in storytelling "nested loops."

Start story A, don't finish it. Start story B, don't finish it. Start story C, finish story C. Finish story B, finish story A. Why does it go like that? Because you maintain attention when somebody starts a story, but they're wondering, well, what was the ending? How did you resolve that? When my daughter said, "Bruh! I would've crashed out."

Yeah. A lot of people would've crashed out. So the audience of speakers is thinking, well, what did you do? How did you solve it? But I moved on to another story. So they're left wondering, they want to hear the end of that story, right? That's also related to something called the Zeigarnik effect, where we like, we need completion.

So you keep that going and you maintain attention. And just the nature of storytelling and being animated and being involved like that keeps their attention as well. But when you don't complete the story, it's "Oh my gosh, what? How did it end?" It's like a cliffhanger for a Netflix series and you gotta see the next episode, right?

That's why they exist. So you start story A, start story B, start story C, finish story, C finish story B, finish story A. That was the pattern in which I told these stories, all with the lesson of: You have to be professional. You have to show up for the organization. Realize that it's not about you.

Although you're the keynote and the lights are on you and you're the one speaking, it is not about you. It's about your service to the audience and your service to the ones that brought you there to serve the audience. That was the lesson to this group of speakers.

that talk was called "Speaking From Experience."

I hope you got some benefit out of this. Just keep in mind that. It if you are doing public speaking, and I know a ton of people are like deathly afraid of doing that. If you're asked to speak, realize that it's not about you. It's not even about your content. It's about your service to the audience.

What's in it for them? How you show up affects how you deliver what's in it for them and keep the frame on them because that's who it's for.

I hope you found this helpful.

I'll see you in the next episode.

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