What happens when you give a presentation and the audience... leaves? One by one, until you're speaking to absolutely nobody?
In this episode, I share a presentation horror story - very October-themed! - that ends with me and a colleague presenting to an empty classroom, mid-sentence.
If you've ever had a presentation bomb or if you're scared to present because of the possibility, I hope this helps a bit.
IN THIS EPISODE
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The full story of a workshop that went from "the start of something big" to zero attendees
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Why even great speakers have classes that flop
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Hits and misses are part of the learning process - gotta keep going
KEY TAKEAWAY
If you speak or teach enough, some talks just won't land for reasons that may have nothing to do with you. It's part of the learning curve, and it happens to everyone eventually :)
RESOURCES & LINKS
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Sign up for Camille's practitioner newsletter (out every Thursday): https://www.camillefreeman.com
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Have feedback or a topic request? https://intheclinic.com
Thanks for listening.
I'd love to hear from you. Leave me a voicemail with feedback or submit a question (click the pink "Send Camille a Message" button on the side of the page) 💚
Camille's Helpful Links for Practitioners
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Hi there. Welcome to In the Clinic with Camille. My name is Camille Freeman.
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This podcast is for herbalists and nutritionists who are in clinical practice.
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Last week, I was talking with another practitioner about what happens when you
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give a presentation that does not go over well.
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And as we were having this conversation, I remembered about a story that happened
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to me around a presentation that was very, very challenging.
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And I thought it might be useful for the rest of you to hear this little story as well, because,
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no matter how great you are at speaking and no matter how well received your
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topics usually are, if you do enough,
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public speaking, enough presentations and so forth, there will be some,
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for reasons that may or may not have anything to do with you,
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there will be some times where it bombs.
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It just doesn't work for whatever reason and you've got to figure out how to
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navigate that pick up the pieces and move forward so let me tell you this story so that you can.
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You can feel not alone if this has ever happened to you and if it hasn't happened
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to you yet so that we can normalize the fact that this does happen these types
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of things are going to come up if you put yourself out there enough.
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Okay, so here's what happened. My friend and colleague and I,
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Bevan Claire, before the pandemic, we were both working at the university.
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And part of the requirements when you are full-time faculty is that you do have
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to go to a certain number of conferences and things like that.
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You're expected to present, you're expected to continue your growth as a scholar
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and as a teacher and so forth.
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And this is pre-pandemic, so all of these were generally in person.
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So you had to go and travel to them.
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And so we figured, since we have specialty in integrative health,
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we put out a proposal to present at a pedagogy conference, which is just about,
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the scholarship of teaching.
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About tending the teacher and how we can take care of ourselves as teachers,
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through what is often very challenging work.
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So we did this at multiple conferences. It was quite well received.
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People really appreciated it. We made it very interactive.
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And as a result of one of these presentations, somebody had asked us if we would
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come to their university and give a half-day workshop on the topic for faculty at their university.
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And we were like, this is amazing. Like maybe we could even travel around the
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country doing this workshop because they were going to pay us.
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And we thought, wow, this is like the start of something big.
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We were so excited about the whole thing. And we felt like it was such a valuable
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topic. And we brainstormed this. We had very small children at the time.
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So we had to arrange for childcare. Fortunately, it was somewhere we could drive.
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So it was really just like a very long day. But we arranged childcare and we
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spent hours and hours trying to plan out our timeline.
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And we contacted the people and we said, hey, you know, how many people are
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we thinking? And they said, well, you know, it's a professional development thing.
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I forget what range they said, but you know, they were like,
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I think it could be anywhere from 10 to 50 or something like that.
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And we were like, okay, great. And we had like purchased supplies,
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we had dark chocolate, we had notebooks, we had all these types of things.
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So we arrive at the university after all of this.
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And the person who organized the whole thing isn't there. And there's someone
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else there, which is a student volunteer.
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And the student volunteer is like, oh, well, they kind of forgot to publicize
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that this was happening.
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So we're not sure how many people are going to be here, but we're going to be
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here to check people in. And you all just go get set up.
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And we were like, oh, okay, well, that's fine. You know, we were getting paid
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one way or the other. So we were like, all right, you know, we'll just prepare
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for however many people attend.
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And it came time to start the presentation, and I think there were three,
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maybe four people, a smattering of people in the room, a very small smattering.
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The person who had arranged it eventually did show up, but they said,
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hey, I have to teach a class.
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An hour into this, so I'll be popping out partway through. And we were like,
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okay, no worries. People are busy. You know, we have schedules, all that kind of thing.
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So we, it's like a setup. This whole room is set up for at least 50 people.
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And there's four or five there, including the student volunteers,
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the person who arranged for us to be there, and then just a small handful of other people.
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And what happened is, first, the lady who organized it had to go teach her class.
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And then the other two or three people slowly, one by one, also had to go.
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And finally, we were in the middle of a sentence, probably no more than at the
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most halfway through the time we were supposed to be there.
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And the final, there was one single person left sitting there.
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And we were just in the middle of talking. And she just kind of like waved and
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got up and left the classroom. And we were talking to absolutely, literally zero people.
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Even the student volunteers had gone. And we were like, it was really one of
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the most surreal and awkward things that I've ever experienced in the professional context.
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And so we were like, well, you know, they did pay for us to be here.
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So we decided to stick around a little while longer, just in case somebody did
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pop in later, or anybody had questions or anything like that.
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But nobody ever did come.
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And so we finally just left a We had our child care arranged,
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so we went out and had a dinner, just the two of us, and went home.
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And we were like, wow, okay, that was really weird.
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And these are the types of things that are going to happen. So it was up to
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this other lady to share with the faculty that this was happening,
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and she had apparently forgotten to do that, or it didn't go out in the normal
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channels or whatever happened.
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And the people who were there obviously felt a little awkward about having to
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leave, but they did have to leave. even, you know, who, if you hadn't planned
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to come there for three or four hours or what have you, I don't know why you would.
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Anyway, there will be times that you are giving a presentation and the people
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there are not interested.
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They're made to be there because it's a requirement or there's some other pressure
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putting on them to be there.
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Or they thought you were going to talk about something else and that's not what
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you're talking about and it's a review for them or it's too hard for them and
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it's too, it's over their heads and they're confused and you're having an off
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day maybe and you're not doing a good job presenting.
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Whatever it is you're gonna have times where you're giving a class and it's
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just either not well received or the audience isn't a good fit for what you're doing or whatever else,
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and so I'm telling you this just because I want you to know that it happens
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and pretty much everybody I know,
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even people who are probably the best public speakers I've ever heard that are
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always do amazing classes have stories like this where you're like of course
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everybody loves that person's presentations. Who wouldn't?
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But there are people who don't, and there's times where the stars just don't align.
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And so part of what you have to understand when you are doing any kind of marketing,
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promotion, community activism, whatever else, part of what you have to understand
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is that you're just going to win some and lose some.
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You're going to have stories to tell, which, you know, five or ten years later,
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you're going to be laughing about, but are really awkward in the moment.
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And that's just part of doing this work, that sometimes you'll have people who
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aren't a good fit, or you're going to make mistakes, other people are going
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to make mistakes, and you have to just roll with it.
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This is the thing. If you're scared of this kind of thing happening,
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which I totally understand, especially if you're not much into public speaking
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in the first place, but if you're scared of it and you never do it,
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then you never get a chance to practice, you never get a chance to get better,
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and you just have to understand, like, every single time, you're not going to
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have an amazing talk, an amazing presentation, an amazing audience, whatever it is.
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There will be times that things are not going to work out and the more you show
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up the more you put yourself out there the more you do this stuff.
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The more you're going to be like, yeah, okay, I get it. There's like a price
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to pay. It's the same, you know, you go out to events in your town,
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you try to meet new friends, there's going to be things you go to that are awkward,
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but then there's going to be ones that are awesome. See, it's kind of the same thing.
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When we're trying to get out there and meet people and do things and show up
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in new ways, you're going to have some hits and you're going to have some misses, all right?
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So anyway, just normalizing that for all of you since I was talking about it just recently.
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I hope that was an entertaining story for you. If you're thinking about doing
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public speaking or classes or things like that, do not let this stop you.
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Like I said, if nothing else, you'll have a great story for later on once you've
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had a chance to process everything.
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And maybe there's a chance it'll be a really good fit and you'll get to do more
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and more presentations.
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Okay, I hope that was helpful. Have an amazing rest of your day.
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Thanks so much for doing the work that you're doing.
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If you are not already on my newsletter for practitioners, you can go to intheclinic.com
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or camillefreeman.com.
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Sign up for my practitioner notes. It goes out every Thursday.
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I'd love to send it to you. It covers different topics than what we talk about here on the podcast.
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I send out resources, recommendations, recipes, something I've read recently,
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anything that I think you might be interested in knowing about,
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stick it in there, try to send it out. So I'd love to send it to you on Thursday.
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Have a lovely rest of your day and I'll talk to you soon.
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