It’s Not About the Money, It’s About the Message

If you’re familiar with the saying “it’s not about the money” then you may also know that, with the exception of those occasions when it really is ONLY about the money (the check out line, tax time, rent due kinds of times) it’s almost never really about the money.  Confused?  Good.  I was hoping that I could create a scenario for you that would replicate the way I felt after attending a speech last week at Milwaukee’s Wisconsin Club.  If there’s one thing that’ll get most business people charged up it’s the chance to hear a billionaire talk.  “Wow”, they’ll say, what an opportunity!  And, presumably, they’re right.  Anyone who’s become a billionaire, especially if they didn’t start life as such, probably has a leg or two up on the rest of us, either in smarts, instincts, relationships, confidence, vision or, dare I say, balls.  And any chance to glean a nugget or two of their gold for our own personal use is, to beat an overused saying to death, priceless.

Or so you might think.   But sometimes, like the night last week at the Wisconsin Club, a billionaire shows up ……. to talk ….. and talk ….. and, well, talk.  It would be one thing to hear a billionaire talk like there was an audience actually listening, but that wasn’t really the case that night.  The audience was there, of course, it’s just that it seemed we were being talked at, rather than talked to.   And that’s, I guess, the problem.  Whether you’re a billionaire or not, the key to an effective presentation is to know what your audience is looking for from you and deliver it.  You’re not a speaker so much as you are a messenger.  And a messenger needs to tie a story to a lesson like a nail secures a shingle on a roof.   Without that, it’s unlikely that your story, whether you’re a billionaire businessman or a Wal Mart greeter, will mean anything significant to your audience.

There’s a guy named Jeffrey Gitomer (www.gitomer.com) who’s a sales expert, and a fantastic speaker (but not a billionaire as far as I know) who’d describe the billionaire’s presentation as “showing up and throwing up.”  In other words, he came to say what he came to say, and didn’t appear to think too much (or care) about what we in the audience came to hear.  I’m pretty sure he didn’t do that on purpose.  But sometimes, (I’m told) people tend to treat billionaires like royalty and, like the story of the emperor with no clothes on, they can be a tad wary about pointing out that something is …. amiss, regardless of how revealingly. 

It may not be my place to make this point but … what the hell. Next time you talk to us (or any group) make us feel what you’ve accomplished, the people you’ve touched, the people who’ve touched you, your successes and your failures.  Let us know what we can learn from your experiences and how we might use that knowledge to produce bigger results in our own lives.  Don’t tell us the timeline of your life, lead us through your life’s experiences.  And (sorry, I can’t help myself) for god’s sake, make a point already!

If it’s not about the money, great!  The question is what is it about?