Every sailor runs aground sooner or later!

How do you know if a speaker really brings the experience they claim to?

I was sailing along through clear turquoise water over a pure white sand bottom. A jagged line of green Bahamas pine forests divided the blue sky from the dancing waves. Skimming along in my little sailboat with a fair breeze pushing me toward my next port, the experience couldn’t have been more sublime, inspiring, and perfect…

Then I felt a bump!

Moments later, my journey came to an abrupt halt.

I’d run aground…

And I had done so at full-moon high-tide. 

Now that’s not the only time I’ve run aground but what are the odds of getting stuck at the exact peak of one of the two highest tides of the month?

Every sailor runs aground sooner or later!

I waited through the night while the tide slowly went out. My boat leaned over like a stranded fish and I tried to get a few hours of uncomfortable sleep on a cushion wedged into the side of the cockpit while my poor vessel flopped and floundered on her side.

Six hours later, the tide started to come back in. I waited again while the waters rose and the boat slowly righted herself.

Finally, six hours after that, I was able to get unstuck with help from the sails and the motor and a lot of pulling on anchor lines, and resume my journey.

Years later, I was exchanging sea stories with a group of fellow sailors and some condescending little snot declared, “Well, I’ve never run aground!” As if that was something that only happened to amateurs.

But anyone who’s spent serious time sailing has had their run-ins with the sea bottom and had to endure being called “Captain Crunch” by their friends.

It’s no different with speakers. When I was first starting out, a wise mentor shared a tough reality.

“No matter how good
you are, sooner or later,
you’re going to bomb!”

“You might not know it but half the people in your audience may have just found out they’ll soon be out of a job.”

“If you’re the Sunday morning opening speaker, you could be addressing a whole room full of hung-over people who just aren’t in the mood to be motivated.”

My bomb eventually dropped and fortunately it happened in front of a small group of entrepreneurs. I know experienced, powerful speakers who’ve run aground in front of whole stadiums full of people!

Every sailor runs aground sooner or later!

It wasn’t fun but I saw it as a step on my speaker’s journey—as a rite of passage. And though I can’t be 100% certain why my boat hit the bottom—it could have been because I spoke at 8AM on a Monday morning after spending two hours on the highway. 

It might have been because my Gen Z audience found my paper flip charts to be old-fashioned. 

There’s a lesson to be learned from every failure so I created a set of beautiful slides and that talk’s been nothing but easy sailing ever since.

So here’s one more way to qualify a speaker:

Ask them to tell you about a time when they bombed!

If they assure you that’s never happened to them, place the success of your event in the hands of a more experienced keynoter.

Every sailor runs aground sooner or later! If they laugh, share a disaster story, and tell you what they learned from the experience, you’ll know you’re dealing with a professional who knows how to keep your event afloat.