What Happened in Vegas is Going All Over the World - Merit Educational Consultants

What Happened in Vegas is Going All Over the World

Giving speeches has never been my thing.  The students at Merit Academy have delivered beautiful speeches and the audiences have loved to hear them speak, so I have always handed over the microphone to them. 

One time, I was asked to simply announce a dance group before a friendly audience but I couldn’t do it because my hands were trembling so hard I couldn’t read my speech!  What a disaster!

So after my hilariously exasperating experience of just getting to the hotel in Las Vegas last week, I figured my speech to a room full of agents representing international students was going to be the icing atop the worst day of my life.

Seriously, how much worse could it get? I didn’t get to freshen up, I was thirsty and starving, and I didn’t know a single soul in the conference room.  Expecting the worst, I just prepared for my slideshow and videos to not cooperate.

Then, as I looked out at the sea of guests, I noticed that half of them were nodding off or checking their phones. They were bored, hungry, and probably really jetlagged from flying in from Libya, Nigeria, India, China, Canada, Australia, and countries I had never even heard of before. I felt doomed. DOOMED! 

That’s when I remembered my good friend Steve Mandel’s book, Effective Presentation Skills. He coached my daughters Nicole and Jaclyn before they gave speeches before the House of Representatives in Washington DC and at the Walt Disney Concert Hall, respectively.  Those are some serious audiences, and I remembered a lot of what he told my daughters.

Throwing caution to the wind (and to wake up the audience), I decided to toss my notecards and just try to speak naturally about what I’m passionate about.  After all, what did I have to lose?  

What happened next blew me away.

I know my subject: Merit Academy, the school I founded in 1994 and continue to nurture into an amazing and successful school that offers one-on-one classes.  All Merit Academy students, including my own daughters, became confident leaders both in college and in their chosen careers.  To connect with the audience in front me, I just needed to address the problem I was there to talk about: helping international students become successful in high school and prepare them for success in American colleges.

So I walked up to the podium, put my notecards down and then walked straight into the audience (Internal dialogue: Nobody trip me, please!). One of the things Steve said was to not hide behind the podium or read what’s written on the slides.  Instead, I talked about how the concept of American classrooms filled with teenagers is one of the most frightening learning environments for a foreign student. The foreign student is an outsider in a foreign country, and the instinct in that situation is to hide and avoid engaging.

This is not a good way to get a solid education.  The audience perked up and actually listened, because I wasn’t just reading a slide, I was speaking about something they could relate to, and that the families they represented actually worried about.

I was fired up by the opportunity to talk about my solution to the learning problem (you can’t hide when you’re the only student in the class!), and this gave ME energy AND gave the jetlagged audience something to listen to.  They were wide awake, they were alive and they were smiling.  Even my competitors from other schools were nodding and agreeing with me. I looked at everyone and I kept their attention throughout my entire ad-libbed presentation. 

I nailed it! Yes, the one who used to shake like a leaf and couldn’t even read her own speech. Thank you Steve Mandel for your words of wisdom. 

This experience has humbled and transformed me.