…might be an appropriate subtitle for the hilarious movie Little Miss Sunshine which I caught in Berkeley last night.

It’s a touching and wacky portrayal of a dysfunctional family, complete with surly adolescent son who has taken a vow of silence, a heroin-snorting Grandpa and a Mary Hartman, Mary Hartman style Mom.

However, it’s the Dad that anyone looking to make their fortune as a motivational speaker should observe closely. Here’s a guy who is trying in all the wrong ways to make it as a professional speaker. He has masses of misplaced self-confidence, almost no platform speaking skills, and an unfortunate choice of publicity agent to book his engagements and push a book contract. There’s more than a touch of pathos in his inability to grasp that he’s in the wrong line of work – especially as the family lives on the bread-line and is forced to drive from New Mexico to Los Angeles in a yellow VW Bus that is as mechanically unsound as the “motivational” techniques he applies to his family life.

The film is a wonderful satire of the weirder aspects of contemporary American life – from pre-pubescent beauty pageants to the way the health care system deals with death. Not to mention one of the more unusual motorcycle policemen you’ll ever see conduct a traffic stop.

If you’ve any interest in the professional speaking business, and enjoy mad-cap humor, this is a movie to go see.

Great to see that someone with Bert Decker’s experience posting on the new NSA Bloggers group that is forming. There’s a couple of dozen kindred spirits currently signed on to the Yahoo Group nsa_bloggers@yahoogroups.com.

If you’d like to participate in the conversation you can join here. You don’t have to be a formal NSA Member.

Bert’s post lists some of my favorite blogs, including Garr Reynolds, Seth Godin and Sam Decker. I read them all via RSS subscription on Bloglines. I had no idea Sam is the Son of Bert. Sam-I-Am has 133 subscribers in Bloglines, Dad has..a few less. Both have way more subscribers than I do — but who’s counting (OK, OK, I am – admit it!).

Bert’s post is right on: the best blogs add value and speak with a unique voice and interesting perspectives from within a given silo of expertise out to the world wide web.

Personalized, specialized and experienced blogs giving great “You” messages to a responsive web universe. That’s what I think all this will funnel down to in the coming months and years.

Many of the subject matter experts in the National Speakers Association speak with Voices of Value. Imagine the synergy if everyone took the messages delivered from the podium or front of the seminar room and shared their knowledge on blogs that linked, cross-referenced and tracked-back one to another. That would be powerful.

The good news is that the Handouts from the sessions at the NSA Convention are now available online.

In addition, you can download audio files of all the sessions and video of the main tent meetings.

These are valuable resources for anyone looking for tips and tricks on executive presentation techniques, public speaking and more.

General Session

Lola Gillebaard

Proving that there’s no upper age limit to a successful career in professional speaking, Lola spoke on Surviving the Coming of Age: Discovering the Magic and Fun of Growing Older. This 76-year-old beauty skated close to the edge of good taste in the ways that only Americans with Southern accents (and us Brits) can get away with. Her jokes contained innuendoes about teenage masturbation, incest (sleeping with relatives) and more. We loved both her spunk and her style.

She’s the sage of age. Spicy feisty Lola accentuates bold over old. She explodes the fun of activist aging.

Phillip Van Hooser

The author of the must-read You’re Joe’s Boy, Ain’t Ya? and Willie’s Way spoke on ABRACADABRA or SYLACAUGA: Magnifying the Magic of Our Mission.

He commented on the spooky fact about the conference that had struck me – the audiences watches people doing what we do. And they try and become better at what they do as a result.

He discussed his own early love of public speaking, instilled in him by his snuff-totin’ Grandmother in them there Kentucky Hills.

He observed that the almost instantaneous standing ovations each speaker was gifted is not reality. Most audiences sit on their butts and applaud. However, he strove to become so good that even staid business audiences would give him a standing ovation. In fact, he got to the point as a presenter that they would often come to the front of the room after the meeting and hug him. Men and women. This meant his wife came to accept that when Phil returned from business trips he’d often have mascara on his suit lapels. As Dale Irvin later commented, not many men are smooth enough to establish that level of trust with their spouse!

Phil showed us that real magic in the speaking profession often occurs in those unplanned, unscripted moments that offer the speaker and the audience member an opportunity to pause and connect.

Doug Stevenson

This accomplished actor spoke on Defining and Developing Your Signature Story. Doug is the creator of the Story Theater Method and author of Never Be Boring Again – Make Your Business Presentations Capture Attention, Inspire Action and Produce Results, the how-to book that teaches the Story Theater Method for strategic storytelling in business.

A signature story is a highly developed, brilliantly performed story that brands you. It contains emotional triggers of comedy and/or drama, as well as a solid point. Doug explained in compelling detail how to tell stories in present-time. He explained how a story is the emotional fast lane to the brain allowing the audience to feel genuine emotion. Deep learning takes place when the audience experiences the lesson and stories create emotional triggers so the listener feels emotion.

Doug’s nine steps to create a story structure are:

1. Set the scene
2. Introduce the characters
3. Begin the journey (from the known to the unknown)
4. Encounter the obstacle (the block that creates dramatic tension)
5. Overcome the obstacle (this is the “How To” part of the story
6. Resolve the story (Tie up loose ends)
7. Main the point (One story, one clear and simple point)
8. Ask the question (“So, how about you? Anything like this ever happen in your world?”)
9. Repeat the point

He covered the technique of stepping IN and OUT of your persona when on stage telling a story where actions, reactions and interactions convey emotion.

This was, without doubt, the single most valuable hour I spent in Orlando. Thank you Doug.

Kim Snider

This accomplished businesswoman wakes up each weekday and walks her dog to keep herself gorgeous and slender. Her next task is to sit at the computer for an hour-and-a-half and walk her fingers on the keyboard to keep her three blogs in shape. She does this each and every morning. The written results are equally appealing.

Her presentation to an audience of around 100 people was titled Blogging for Speakers: What, Why, When, Where, How?.

She covered both the nuts and bolts of setting up a blog (she uses Typepad) as well as making a clear case for the importance of most speakers taking the time and effort to blog.

The audience was covered the spectrum. Some had never read a blog, ever. Others like Bert Decker introduced themselves as active bloggers. Still others wondered if this was a fad like CB Radio in the 1970’s and would blogs last? I was frankly amazed at this lack of awareness. Perhaps it was a self-selecting factor where Convention attendees who knew nothing whatsoever about a topic decided to attend (gosh, perhaps there are 1,685 who really are prepared for a flu pandemic!). But I doubt it. I think this crowd was the best the NSA currently has to offer.

Kim dealt with the Luddites and Neanderthals with kindness and understanding. She pointed out that CEO’s blog. That her blog is read is read by Nobel Prize winners in Economics and so, no, Virginia, blogs were probably not a flash in the pan. It reminded me of a 3rd Grade teacher patiently explaining gravity or magnetism to her class.

Her compelling vision is of a critical mass of NSA members posting regular blogs.

This is a brilliant idea.

It would take the energy of Orlando and transform it into a vast network of links creating real Magic among the Community of Speakers, year-round. These interlinked blogs would open a window that allowed light to shine on the currently isolate and separate worlds of those on the pro-speaker circuit. Allowing us to post insights and share thoughts from the airline clubs and hotel rooms where many idle hours are spent. Topics that would make compelling reading include anything that other speakers, and the audience, would like to hear. Such as:

These blogs could capture the real spirit of life on the road. Of the joys and sorrows of the speakers world. NSA members who wrote and tracked-back to other blogs would offer a real sense of year-round dialog. Heck, all that would be missing would be a new Blogging Professional Expert Group (PEG) to support people getting into the program and share best practices as we grow together. And how difficult would it be to start that?

If you are an NSA Member and would like to support the formation of a Blogging PEG either send me an email or, better, leave a comment below.

In Conclusion

It’s taken me a whole day to write up what happened on Day 3 and Day 4 in Orlando. I did not cover everything. There was a black tie dinner on the last evening and a whole bunch of people were recognized for their contribution to NSA and the profession. Then the people drifted off to the bar or to dance. Then the hotel staff and the roadies came and started stacking the tables and chairs.

Now the seats are all empty
Let the roadies take the stage
Pack it up and tear it down
They’re the first to come and last to leave
Working for that minimum wage
.
.
But the bands on the bus
And they’re waiting to go
We’ve got to drive all night and do a show in Chicago
Or Detroit, I don’t know
We do so many shows in a row
And these towns all look the same
We just pass the time in our hotel rooms
And wander round backstage
Till those lights come up and we hear that crowd
And we remember why we came
.
.
People stay just a little bit longer
We want to play — just a little bit longer

Jackson Browne

Next year the NSA Convention is in San Diego. The Cigar PEG folks are already scouting down by the docks where the sailors all come in for the right kind of raunchy dive. More respectable members are planning the Agenda and other good stuff.

Thanks to everyone who put on this years conference and made it one of the most rewarding five days of the year for me.

I deeply appreciate it.

This is the third in a series of chronological reports on the NSA 2006 Conference in Orlando, Florida, July 22-25. Previous chronological posts are here and here.

I intend that these posts will give you an accurate a picture of an NSA Convention as possible. But there’s simply no way one single person can cover a convention the size of NSA’s. Check out postings from other attendees who blogged — Bert Decker and Michael Benidt and Sheryl Kay.

Anyone (NSA member or not) can review the whole of the Conference Agenda where handout materials will soon be available for download. In addition, anyone (NSA member or not) can purchase audio or video of every single presentation. These are high quality recordings and well worth investing in if there’s a topic that interests you. It’s also a pretty good guarantee that my blog is an honest summary of the event – I can’t very well fictionalize content that’s available for public review, can I?

Monday General Session

Shep Hyken

Shep kicked off the morning General Session with his speech Moments of Magicâ„¢: Strategies to Get and Keep Clients.

What’s with it with guys who shave their heads? They seem to fall into two groups. On the on hand there’s the Bulldogs who work construction jobs, drive pick-up trucks, and whose drug of choice is probably nicotine or meth. On the other hand there’s these scary-smart professional speakers with charisma to burn. People like Shep, Randy Gage, Willie Jolley and Lewis Harrison. They are either aggressively drug free or have a fondness for iced Stoli. They’re intelligent, but you can’t call them Eggheads, they’ve more chutzpa than that. I see them in pool-halls hustling up a million or two with a soft smile for the unsuspecting marks. So let’s call them Eight Balls: testosterone-filled, smooth as silk and hard as nails.

Shep reminded us that a hustler’s job is not just giving the speech, it’s getting the speech. We have to spend all day every day marketing. We have to multiply the bottom-line – think of ways to increase your income not by a factor of one or two but 10-fold. Leverage what you do best and outsource the best: hire an administrator if you need one, hire sales assistants if that’s your weak spot. Join NSA, attend workshops, look to organizations like The Young Entrepreneurs for great ideas. Take speech content such as your Signature Story and turn it into articles and a book. If you have a website or blog, repurpose the content into a subscription newsletter.

Don’t be ordinary, be extraordinary. What differentiates you? Amp this up. Be so customer-centric that the persons relatives don’t treat them as well. Shep told of an unforgettable taxi-driver who supplied everything this side of intimate massages to his passengers, followed-up with a Holiday card every year, and showed how to turn a commodity product (be it a cab ride or a 45-minutes motivational keynote) into something special.

Ask clients this important question to juxtapose your current program with perceived future benefits and position yourself for repeat bookings :

If we got together one year after the program, what would have to happen for this to be the best speaker engagement you’ve ever had?

Analyze your important clients and try and duplicate what you do with them across more people. Strive to make each speech so great that you cheat the audience you spoke to the day before.

PS. There’s much more to Shep. Shep is a blogger so you can deepen your understanding of his message anytime, anywhere.

Jeff Tobe

Jeff is the antithesis of the man-in-the-grey-flannel-suit-corporate-presenter. He relishes the rebel in us all. His talk, Coloring Outside the Lines—How to Look at You from Their Perspective, exploded the stereotype of the speaker as the reinforcer of an audience’s prejudices (Baptists only preaching in Christian Churches; Sun Microsystems executives only speaking to Java Programmers and Unix administers; the late George Wallace only speaking to residents of Southern trailer parks).

Jeff encouraged us to see the world with fresh eyes, to look at things differently. Get the messages by renting Harvey on Netflix where Jimmy Stewart sees the invisible as an opportunity, not a limitation. Read Blue Ocean Strategy and break out of the red ocean of bloody competition by creating uncontested market space that makes the competition irrelevant.

At 9:30am we filed out of the General Session to the first of a dozen different concurrent Break-Out sessions. My blog will only report on the Break-outs I attended. Other blogs might cover the rest. Again, you can review the Agenda online to see what I missed and order the tapes of any that interest you.

Warren Evans

There was an unexpected bonus to the first break-out I attended. Warren had assembled a Panel to discuss
Building a Genuine International Speaking Business. Panelists were:

David Price from Australia
Paul Bridle from the UK
W. Mitchell from the USA
Paul Du Toit from South Africa
Randy Gage from the USA

Recommendations from these trans-national express road warriors were:

The panel was divided on the all-important question of cultural sensitivity. American’s should certainly avoid introducing themselves to attractive ladies in London pubs with the phrase “Hi, I’m Randy” or suggesting people look for their “roots” in Australia. However, when people hire an American speaker they want someone with clearly identifiable characteristics. Don’t try for uchi (insider) status in Japan when your soto (outsider) status will get you much further (i.e. people usually think foreigners are cute and should be honored).

It’s been my experience that many American’s love to listen to a person with a pronounced British accent – and find even their use of expletives quite charming.

Lunch-time General Session

Back in the main ballroom, 1,700 hungry delegates gave the traditional twirling napkin welcome to the events professional summarizer:

Dale Irvin

Dale is one of the funniest guys in NSA. He makes his living summarizing meetings. Really. His ad-hoc comedy is wicked-funny. Many of his jokes have that “but you had to be there” quality and so I won’t try and list them. However, if you want someone to use humor to drive home the message at a business convention, Dale is your man.

I skipped the awards ceremony hosted by Al Walker.

Robert L. Cox, MD

Kicking off the afternoon was a sobering reality check from this expert in infectious diseases who gave a talk titled Don’t be an Ostrich: Vaccinate your business against Avian Flu. This was one of nine concurrent sessions on offer to 1,700 delegates and 15 people deemed it important enough to attend. The others had their heads firmly planted in the sand. Maybe it was the filet of chicken served at lunch that made people avoid the topic.

As with seismic threats on the West Coast or the planetary-wide denial of the inevitability of Climate Change, Avian Flu in one topic that sends many people on a mental trip up that Egyptian river. They are in denial and prefer not to think about the consequences. So stop a minute. Think. What’s the chance that a professional speaker will have the income potential they have today when (not if) a pandemic hits. Instead of this:

This:

Instead of the departure lounges you experience today, this:

An avian flu pandemic will positively, absolutely shut down any gathering of people in crowds. The audiences will stay home. Period.

So, 15 people out of 1,700 thought this worth finding out about. Bob Cox patiently explained the relentless spread of the disease in birds worldwide (migrating flocks will arrive in North America soon). The 231 human cases reported to date resulted from the transfer of the disease to domestic fowl and pets. When (remember, not if) the virus is “blended” with seasonal flu then the resulting virus will have the characteristics of both “parent” virus: the easy transmissibility via coughs and sneezes from Seasonal flu and the mortality rate of Avian Flu. Quite what the potency of each aspect of these will be in TBD. Meanwhile, we have a window of opportunity to prepare families and businesses for impact.

It’s worth downloading Bob’s handout and presentation and buying the audio of his talk. Read about the 1918 pandemic as reported by survivors here and here.

Investigate ways to safeguard your income from sources that don’t require an audience:

Think about opportunities outside the speaking industry:

Think about financial opportunities and challenges:

On the audio listen out for the comments from audience member Maurice Ramirez, MD. His realm of specialization includes knowledge of classified CDC documents on the contingency plans to deal with the disposal of the millions of dead. If your family members are among them, don’t expect Forest Lawn style services and a dignified end.

Expect this:

Other resources:

Checklists at www.pandemicflu.gov and Emergency Supplies.

Of course, I realize not everyone shares the opinion that Avian Flu is a threat. Heck, there are even those who doubt Global Warming is a threat either (although the entire population of Northern California was getting an object lesson in climate change while we sported in Orlando). So, the next break out session I attended was tailor made for communicating to Doubting Thomas’s.

Shelle Rose Charvet

The author of the excellent Words that Change Minds shared her insights on Presenting Ideas to Skeptical People.

She impressed on us the ways to present ideas to audiences who don’t share the same priorities. The golden rule is to start by meeting them at the place they are and take them on a journey to where you want them to be. Identify and honor their objections. Identify common experiences. Do NOT answer their objections or attempt to argue them out of their point of view. Make a credible case and use the language of suggestion.

And so, despite the best of intentions, I ended my day at the Cigar PEG where the party animals listened to the uncensored Dale Irvin and mixed it up on the dance floor until the small hours. I won’t blog on that. As the man says: What happens in Orlando, stays in Orlando.

Ooops, no sooner had I published my last post claiming Bert Decker and I were the only two of the 1,700 attendees at the NSA Convention writing a blog on the event than a quick Google search on NSA Orlando Convention revealed a third blog.

Michael Benidt and Sheryl Kay from Colorado were first time attendees who do an admirable job of reporting on their experiences. More amazingly, these two internet professionals created a blog specifically to report on their experiences in Orlando:

Sheryl and I have created this blog specifically for the National Speakers Association 2006 Convention in Orlando, Florida.

The blog has two purposes. The first is to report back about the convention to our fellow Fast Track speakers (and other CSA members) who could not attend the convention.

We won’t be “reportingâ€? on the convention in the sense of trying to cover it all, but we’ll try to give you the look and feel of the convention (and leave out the heat and humidity). You’ll find a couple of links to this part of the blog on the upper right portion of the blog site – look for “Pagesâ€? or “Featuresâ€? (we didn’t want you to miss it!). It’s called “Day-by-Day Convention Blog.â€? (One blog-type note – you won’t be able to write comments on the Day-by-Day blog, but you can opine away about any of the articles on the main page of the blog).

How cool is that!

I wish I had found this out yesterday and had chance to introduce myself to them. Oh well, here’s a big virtual Hi to the two of you!

Memo to self: do research BEFORE hitting the publish button next time.

I’m home from Orlando trying to catch up with both my sleep and blog reports. I had the best of intentions to “live blog” from the Convention floor — writing reports during sessions and posting a chronological summary of the event daily. It proved to be an impossible goal.

There’s as much to gained from the hallway conversations and spending time with people over dinner and drinks as there is from the scheduled presentations. I would have been foolish to sequester myself in my hotel room keeping my blog updated instead of taking the opportunity to mix and mingle.

I promise to post all the Convention details before this weekend. My feet are being held to the fire over this by none other than Bert Decker.

We met in a break-out session on Blogging for Speakers being given by Kim Snider. It seems that we’re the only two of the 1,700 attendees writing a blog about the event. That’ll change, especially since Kim made it clear to the 100 folks who attended her session how invaluable a blog can be to someone in the speaking business. I predict that before next years Convention in San Diego there will a Blogging PEG (Professional Experts Group) in NSA and Bert and I won’t be the only source of information, opinion and session summaries.

Blog on!

A hall of mirrors concept kept me awake last night. I’m attending a Convention where Professional Speakers are speaking about speaking – they give presentations on ways to present.

This reminded me of my days as a rebellious sociology student in the early 1970’s when, with a sense of wicked delight, I discovered there was a branch of sociology (the scientific study of human societies) that studied other sociologists – it was, naturally, called the sociology of sociology, or reflexive sociology. Amazing! I could torment my professors by analyzing them with the same tools they were teaching me. The bible of this movement in 1972 was Sociology as a Skin Trade which I bought on the strength of the title alone and read with delight. Reflexive sociologists claimed that

sociologists are like goldfish swimming in a bowl, confidently analyzing other goldfish, without having ever stopped to recognize the bowl and the water they have in common with the fish they study

I never attended a convention of reflexive sociologists, but the meeting rooms at the NSA Orlando Convention are filled with many fish who swim in the same waters as the presenters on stage before them.

Perhaps there are other meetings where I could experience this sense of infinite reflection? Where there are moments of expertise in a profession being used to assist the development of members of that profession:

• When the call goes out for a doctor in the house to administer to the presenter who just suffered a heart attack during his talk on myocardial infarctions at the annual meeting of the American College of Cardiology
• When Hotel Maintenance closes the mens room to unblock the drains at the American Society of Plumbing Engineers Convention.
• When the towtruck arrives to jumpstart the car of the guy who accidentally left his lights on all night in the parking lot of the Society of Automotive Engineers Meeting.
• And what sort of pressure does the hotel kitchen staff feel when they prepare conference lunches at the National Association for Catering and Events?

Who polices the policemen and spies on the spies? Who stares at the ceiling at 3am considering these questions but a speechwriter at the NSA Orlando Convention?

I know the voices dying with a dying fall
Beneath the music from a farther room.
So how should I presume?

Saturday night and Sunday morning the NSA 2006 Convention kicked off in style. Main tent sessions on Saturday featured professional magicians and illusionists who messed with my eyes. Sunday morning’s five hour marathon Rally showcased six speakers delivering motivational keynotes that messed with my emotions. In different ways, both events cleansed my doors of perception.

Opening General Session

This was the Big Tent kick-off that sets the Rah-Rah tone for the NSA National Convention. All 1,600 thousand-watt light bulbs gathered in one room. Presenting to an audience of pro speakers must be one of the more paradoxical challenges for anyone on a podium. Like a hooker at a swingers party, the presenter is being paid to engage in acts the audience openly embraces. There’s precious few novices to dazzle with amateur moves. They expect the Full Monty. They appreciate a fellow-professional, but are probably dissecting your technique before the applause ends. Where was I? Oh, right, the NSA General Session. Standing ovations at the drop of a hat. What’s not to like?

Amos Levkovitch

Amos worked the conjurer’s art with a half-dozen tame doves that disappeared into thin air to emerge in a puff of smoke. They circled him and landed. Landed and circled. One escaped to the rafters only to return to land on an unsuspecting audience member (or was she?) in the middle of the closing act. Who was performer and who audience?

Dan Menendez

Dan juggles tennis balls and drops them onto a keyboard to create classical music tunes. Simply amazing. He cracked the first testicle joke of the Convention (at last, Beethoven with balls).

Craig Karges

Was the hit of the evening. His act, The Magic of the Mind—Experience the Extraordinary and Ignite Your Intuition, combines the art of magic with the science of psychology and the power of intuition. With his eyes duct-taped shut he correctly identified the serial numbers on currency, guessed phone numbers and the contents of sealed envelopes. Trickery or not, the audience was amazed. Even more amazing was the result of 1,600 people using pendulums he left on the seat to divine the symbol on cards.

By the time he levitated a table four feet into the air we doubted both the evidence before us and our grasp on reality.

Thanks to Craig for re-introducing us to our inherent feeling of Ignorance and the realization that we truly don’t what anything is.

NSA Rally

At what seemed like a ridiculously early hour we re-convened in the main hall.

It fell to a Canadian to wake us all up.

Michael Kerr

Used a hilarious opening video to set the Kerouac-on-speed pace of his fabulously funny forty minutes. He wrapped the serious message that we need to bring humor into our working lives in the cloak of jokes.

He used pro-speaker in-jokes to turn the tables on us, sympathizing that “the pressure of being an audience at this convention must be tremendous – sitting there looking engaged, nodding at appropriate times. I’m not gonna offer you feedback and at no time will I think ‘that could be me out there’.”

He recommended five R’s for a successful career and life:

I think he skipped Reward and Reframe, his final two R’s that were promised in the program.

Howard Putnam

Ex-Southwest Airline CEO and current NSA big wheel Howard Putnam used more traditional presentation techniques – and the first PowerPoint slides of the event – to review his survey findings of the top echelon of NSA members (the CSPs or Certified Speaking Professionals). Most work alone from home offices and outsource anything that’s not a core competency. To this extent, they employ the same business model as the big technology companies like my ex-employer Sun Microsystems. They focus on profitability and tracking their net fees after taxes and expenses. Finally, they strive to achieve balance between work, family, church and community.

Bonnie St. John

Amazingly inspiring. An Olympic Silver medalist in downhill skiing, despite the amputation of one leg at age five, Bonnie encouraged us to reach out to help others who look different from us, even those who we might be scared of. She won Silver not because she had the second-fastest time but, since all the one-legged skiers in the race that day hit the same ice patch and had to climb back up to finish the race, because there was only one other racer who was faster at getting up after the fall. Invest in helping others and they’ll be there to assist when you fall.

Robin Sieger

Robin was introduced with the second testicle joke of the Convention. An accidental record holder who played a round of golf in the coldest conditions ever when he completed a game at minus 26 in Fairbanks, Alaska. It was so cold his balls shattered ba-doom, ba-ding!

He confessed to a number of mistakes in life. Running the New York City Marathon in a kilt with no underwear was one that caused as loud hiss from the audience as all the men collectively inhaled through clenched teeth at the thought. This testicle reference was no laughing matter.

He’d also made the same mistakes we all make when learning to walk. Most infants fall 240 times before they succeed. None accept their failure and continued to lie on the floor and ask Mum to just bring a can of lager and the TV remote to equip them for life. As adults we give up too early.

Recovering from mistakes is one key to success. Recognizing opportunities is another. Immigrants are four-times more likely to become millionaires that the native born in a country (maybe that’s why the Alamo Alliance wants to keep ’em out – envy?).

The real secret of success? Good old John D. Rockefeller said it best:

Get up early
Work hard
Strike oil.

Bob Bly

Bob is a writer. He presented content as many writers do – in written form on PowerPoint slides and lots of ’em. More information that he had time to cover. Much more. In a font size that many of us at the back of the room had a hard time reading. Bob is a writer.

His tips included:

Martha Williamson

To conclude the morning the executive producer of the TV hit show Touched by an Angel departed from her prepared notes to deliver an emotional plea for all speakers to find their true selves and speak with real passion. A slender and attractive 51-year old, she made frequent references to her Muumuu wearing 250lb former self and her struggles to make the show a success on TV. I was left wondering about three things. How can anyone lose that much weight and look that good? How did that make the 250lb people in the audience feel? And did she really depart from her prepared script?

In conclusion

There were illusions aplenty at the NSA last night and this morning.

We related spontaneously to speakers who inspired us; to speakers who overcame our feelings of separateness, emptiness and the sad litanies of limitation we all feel – of being small, threatened and inadequate beings. But weren’t these feelings of relatedness and attention from the speakers themselves an illusion? How could 1,600 really know the Sun was in his pocket and that all the uplifting stories were authentic? We left the room alone, each to ponder by the pool.

The value of the National Speakers Association (NSA) Conventions is found in small group workshops and one-on-one meetings as much as in the main sessions.

The day began for me with a late breakfast meeting with my mentor from last year’s convention in Atlanta. Thea Lobell has earned her Ph.D. in counseling since we met last. She spent a month traveling in Japan to celebrate and is now ready to launch her new career outside academia. We discussed cultural differences that were apparent to her traveling in Japan (where a single woman is treated with cautious respect and is overwhelmed by random acts of kindness from strangers) and the street-smarts needed to survive in New Orleans and Baton Rouge.

Then it was on to my first group meeting.

The Diversity and International PEG

The NSA has a number of Professional Expert Groups (PEGs). Diversity and International is for folks with a passion for speaking internationally and an interest in seeing the world beyond the myopic perspective of their own culture.

Mary Francis Winters

A simple role play – a mimed interaction between a man and a woman with her head bowed – challenged us to examine cultural stereotypes. What did we see? Subservience? Looking through a different cultural lens might show us a world where a person only makes eye contact with a stranger when they want to steal a look into a soul. How would that data point influence your evaluation of the next Asian job candidate? What did we really see?

Mary Francis shared five cultural axioms.

1. Shed US-centric thinking

While the world is flat, it’s not a melting pot. 95% of the world’s population lives outside the USA.

2. Understand the impact of worldwide workforce trends

Mandarin in the world’s most common language. 73% of the working population of the world comes from outside North America, which supplies a mere 3%. Do all multinational company HR departments acknowledge this in their communication?

3. Cross-cultural competency is a requirement

Recommended: take Milton Bennett’s Intercultural Development Inventory as a valid measure of intercultural sensitivity. Ethnocentric people see the world from their own perspective (My country right or wrong). Ethno-relative people know they cannot fully comprehend those from other cultures and are open to learning more. Most of us have achieved the mid-point state of minimizing cultural differences. The hallmark of the truly culturally competent is to look beyond the superficial comfort of seeing similarities in all people (All God’s children…) to value real differences between people.

4. Adopt a new language to honor cultural differences

Discussions about diversity in the USA revolve around representation. This is not always effective for corporations with global operations. Other countries are baffled by the U.S. preoccupation with creating inclusive workplaces. Values are different across the world. Honor that.

5. Understand issues from a global perspective

Mergers and acquisitions, back office workers in Bangalore and contract manufacturers in China — the modern corporation requires culturally aware global managers. Seeing Bangalore as an extension of Bemiji won’t cut it.

Recommended reading:

Riding the Waves of Culture: Understanding Diversity in Global Business, Charles Hampden-Turner.

Frank Furness

Frank travels the world and is proud of it.

Frank is a powerhouse on the International speaking scene. A native South African now resident in near the M1 Watford Gap Services, he’s fully integrated into cultures as diverse as Dublin, Dubai and Denpasar. Here’s a man who never met a five-star hotel he didn’t like. His infectious enthusiasm is at a level befitting a sales and motivational speaker.

Frank assures us that we can conquer the world as professional speakers. Just don’t show them the sole of your shoe in Arabia, or ask the Brits to make fools of themselves with sales training techniques that wow them in Wyoming.

After a brief hallway meeting with NSA/NC’s Scott Q. Marcus and Michael Holland it was on to the next small group workshop.

The Chapter Leadership Session

A classic brainstorming session led by Marsha Reynolds.

Teams considered a variety of topics that help manage and grow the different chapters around the country. Some of the keepers I noted:

• Record audio of visiting speakers and podcast via subscription on the web
• Use back-end software such as Constant Contact and Vision Gate Portal to manage newsletters and mailings
• Show videos from the Convention at local meetings for those who were not able to attend
• Include a summary of the best of each meeting under a “Here’s what you missed” banner — or, perhaps, a link to someone crazy enough the blog each and every meeting 🙂