Who Cares Who Your Audience Is.

Being a professional speaker is kind of an odd job. I literally get paid to drop knowledge. I tell people that what I do is 33% inspirational/motivation speaking, 33% standup comedy, 33% storytelling, and 1% making a complete fool of myself. I haven’t been doing this long- only 3ish years- and I just transitioned into full time speaking 4 months ago. One of the first things I learned when I started this work was “know your audience”. I like to think that I am pretty good at reading my audience at this point. A keynote to a group who is attending a mandatory program at 9am on a Saturday hits way different than a weekday keynote at a leadership conference full of eager, excited students.

However, there is a difference between tailoring your approach to better suit the needs of your audience and completely changing who you are in order to win them over. To be authentic, relatable, and real is paramount when trying to connect with people. So what happens when you let your audience dictate who you are and define your worth? I’ve been thinking about this a lot recently…

I love to blog- even if no one reads what I write, it feels good to create, to put my thoughts down, and to challenge myself to feel ALL the feelings as the words find their way out. However, I stopped writing over the last year and a half. Every time I would sit down to write, I would be consumed with worry- what if people don’t like this, or what if no one reads it, or what if I sound stupid? I was so wrapped up in what other people would think that writing stopped being a release for my anxiety or depression or whatever feelings I was having that day.

I think there is a lesson to be learned here. In today’s social media obsessed culture where we put more value on follower count than authenticity, we have lost sight of who the most important consumer of our creativity is: ourselves. I know that may sound completely backwards, but think about this- what if we thought less about gaining the favor of others and focused on learning to love ourselves without the validation of others? Louise Hay put it this way: “You’ve been criticizing yourself for years and it hasn’t worked. Try approving of yourself and see what happens.”

Approving of yourself? Groundbreaking.