Quickest Way to Connect to Your Audience?

Quickest Way to Connect to Your Audience?
by Craig Valentine

The quickest way to connect with your audience is to share your failures and flaws. Sometimes sharing your frustrations and firsts also helps.

Share Your Failures/Flaws/Frustrations/Firsts

Lots of people don’t care for motivational speakers because they’re used to hearing the kind that thinks a motivational speech should consist of bragging about their successes and then telling their audience members, “You can do it too!” Well guess what? If you just speak on your successes and not about your failures, your audience members will not believe they too can do it. They’ll simply believe you can do it.

Come across as Similar, Not Special

The absolute last thing you ever want an audience to think is that you are special. The very first thing you want them to think is that you are similar; similar to them. When they think you are similar, they will automatically realize you must have a special process that helped you succeed. As a result, they will want that same special process and that’s why you will be able to influence them to take the next step towards getting it.  What I am saying is this:

When you lift yourself up, you let your audience down

Those who are driven by their egos when speaking will end up on a dead-end road with little or no audience connection.

Fail First, then share the Process that helped you Succeed

Since I began to understand that there is power in pain, I started opening my speeches with a story about my own failure. This works well because it’s unexpected to my audience and lets them think, “Hey, I can relate to that.” But here’s what else it does. When I finally share one of my success stories (which you should definitely eventually share in your speech), my audience actually cares! That’s right, when they know you’ve failed, they care when you’ve won. That’s the beauty behind sharing a failure story early in your speech.