Four speeches in two-and-a-half weeks… then home for a few days and off again. Or I should say, “on” again. Because being “on” almost constantly for that length of time is what it took.

Many of you already know I’m an introvert. I do like people, so that helps, but introversion has been my dominant personality trait since Day One, my constant companion, and I’ve had to make an uneasy peace with it.

I’ve chosen a field that requires me to do the opposite, to be extroverted, sometimes for an extended period of time. Well, I always have liked a challenge. And challenging this was, almost from the beginning.

My efforts began back at the beginning of August when I began concerted prep. It was difficult to keep four talks in my head at the same time. Think about performing 4 plays… solo acts, to boot… simultaneously! While it’s true each speech had some overlap with the others, different audiences require different stories, different transitions, and different examples.

As I tell my clients, practice is the key to the kingdom and I take it seriously myself. Therefore, I had to calendar the practice in daily because it’s so boring and tedious to do it, even I would find excuses not to. Then I’d be screwed. And so would my audiences. Simply unacceptable. So there was that. And there are these…

Lesson #1: If you are an organizer and expect attendees to sit for a full day, get excellent speakers. Usually in this type of conference, there are one or two professional and engaging keynotes and the rest are boring. One organizer knew how to select speakers, so even though there were a lot of them, one after the other going nonstop from 9-5, they were exceptionally good.

Lesson #2: Audiences have personalities. The Chicago audience was very quiet. There was not a lot of audience feedback during my speech, so I had to really amp up my energy – and I’m a fairly energetic presenter! I could not depend on this audience to feed me energy, I had to feed them. The LA audience for the same organization was much more lively, so even though I still had to work hard, it was completely different. The Las Vegas audience was an industry I’ve spoken to before, but more conservative, so quieter. And it was the opening keynote.

Lesson #3: By the end of any given conference day, most audiences will be tired. So if you’re the last speaker, which I was for the first two speeches, you have to increase your delivery energy even when an audience has plenty of its own.

Lesson #4: Be easy to work with. Organizers have their hands full. Keep to deadlines and keep your promises. They will appreciate you and be more inclined to use you again and/or refer you to others. My Las Vegas organizer offered to refer me to a huge national association that he will be attending in a couple of weeks. He even invited me to join him so he could make the intro personally.

Lesson #5: Spend time with the attendees. Don’t just show up, deliver your speech, and leave. I always try to get in a little early and stay a little late. That enables me to insert what I learn into my speech and mention their names. Giving a speech should be more than a transaction. It should be the beginning of a relationship. For one event, my deal was I get to attend all the activities and it was in Sonoma, get my drift? Oh, and we spent a full day at George Lucas’s Skywalker Ranch. As in Luke Skywalker. Very cool. Even if you don’t have that much time, a little goes a long way.

Lesson #6: Grade yourself. When I got back, I graded myself on a scale of 1-10. First one rated a 7.5 or 8, second one, an 11 (!), third, a 8.5-9 and the final at solid 10. Then I dug into why I gave myself those grades. Great for improving.

Lesson #7: Reward yourself. Many conferences take place in beautiful locations that are great for tourism. After a speech, I make it a practice to go exploring, see some sights. I especially love nature. But think about museums, galleries, and theatre.

Lesson #8: Don’t spend too much time in Las Vegas. As part of one of my deals with organizers, I asked them to pay for my hotel for several nights because I had an engagement a few days later on the West coast. That was a mistake. I should have either gone home for 5 nights or gone to a friend’s in LA. Why? Las Vegas is hard to live in. They make it hard to eat well, hard to think with the constant music, and once you get off the elevator, everything smells of stale cigarette smoke. Yuck.

I’m sure there is more that will occur to me as I continue my journey and do more post-mortems. I’ll keep you posted!