“I loved your speech!”

“Great message!”

“You had me captivated all the way to the end!”

“And then you ruined it!”

That's what a friend in the audience told me.

What did I do to wreck my presentation?

Knowing there was a speaker right after me, I folded up the laptop I'd been running my slides on and I moved it—and the stool it had been sitting on—off the stage.

Sounds like a courteous and professional thing to do, right?

But in my audience's eyes, I'd been a rockstar speaker…

Right up to the moment I became a roadie

The final note of your speech—your last words—are supposed to be powerful, inspiring, and impactful.

Let those words ring.

If you stop speaking and immediately start managing the stage, you'll kill the energy.

It's not like you left a horrible mess to clean up.

Let someone else be your roadie so you can be the rock star!