A Presentation Lesson from Dr. Wayne Dyer

by Darren LaCroix

As a presenter, have you ever walked into a packed room with lots of energy and couldn’t wait for your chance to take the stage? It is exciting! On the flip side, have you ever walked into a room with only 25% of the seats filled and no energy? How do you feel? Does it affect your presentation? It used to hurt mine terribly.

First, do you know who Dr. Wayne Dyer is? If not, he is a very spiritually based motivational author and speaker. Some of his favorite quotes are: “You’ll see it when you believe it” and “Stay focused on what you are for rather than what you are against.” When I was first introduced to the world of motivation, I loved listening to Zig, Tony, Brian, and Dr. Dyer.

I was at a church last week watching his new film: Ambition to Meaning. The quote at the top of this article comes from that movie. It took me a while to understand what he meant by that. As we grow in life (or as a presenter) we must realize that some of the things we believed and lived by are not true anymore. We must let go. As Craig Valentine would say, “What got you here, won’t get you there.

As I was watching the film, he reminded me of a lesson I learned from him at one of his live presentations. A lesson I still need to be reminded of on occasion.

Dr. Dyer came to Worcester, MA early in my career. I had read his book, Real Magic, and could not wait to see him live. As a new speaker, as I entered the room I was getting excited. This is what I want to do for a living; here is a celebrity in the business. Cool. The seats were set for a thousand people. One of the local insurance companies had brought him in to speak to their company and decided to open it up to the public to help cover the cost of bringing him in.

Seven minutes before show time, I looked around and saw that only about twenty-five percent of the seats were filled. Oh my! What a difficult setting. How uncomfortable for the speaker. I was embarrassed for him, that there were so few people there. It was weird, I felt bad for him and I had nothing to do with the promotion of the event.

As Dr. Dyer took the stage, he had a certain calmness about him. He carefully looked around and noticed the turn out. Someone must have said something to him, or apologized to him for the low turn out. The first thing he said to the audience was “It is OK”. He said, “The people who are supposed to be here are. That’s all we need.” Wow. It took me a while to absorb what he said.

At that point in my career I would have freaked out. I would have been upset with someone. Bottom line, to him, it did not matter. He was OK with it. He did not let it affect him. In fact, he was excited to help whoever was there, even though the “setting” was not perfect. We all need to remember that, yes, we want to have a full room with lots of energy. But, sometimes it won’t be. Once we optimize the setting for our presentation, our goal as a speaker is to help the people in front of us the best we can, no matter what the setting, or how many people are there. As much fun as a full room can be, we are there to change the lives and inspire the ones that are present. Don’t let your own ego get in the way of your connection with your audience like I used to.

Dr. Dyer, thanks for helping me to “grow up” as a speaker. Thanks for helping me to see that confidence on stage is good, ego is not. How will you look at the next presentation when there is a low turn out?

by Darren LaCroix

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