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I still vividly remember walking onto the stage that day. I was wearing a pink-and-white-striped button-down shirt and jeans, with brown boots. There were over a thousand people in the audience, and it was the keynote stage at a high-profile event.
Now, I’ve given many speeches over my speaking career. Not all have finished with roaring applause and earned me stageside leads. Some were received with a resounding “meh.” But this wasn’t one of those.
This time, I completely bombed. And when I say bombed, I mean people were walking out of the room mid-speech. And if that wasn’t bad enough, the week after the event, the meeting planner called and asked for a partial refund.
It was a horrible experience—one of the worst experiences in my life. For a long time, I felt a lot of shame around it, but looking back, I can tell you this: bombing that speech changed the quality of my work and the trajectory of my speaking career. Come to think of it, it actually changed the course of my entire career.
The Four Types of Speakers
I’ll let you in on a simple truth about speakers. There are four types of speakers in this industry:
There are speakers who have bombed.
There are speakers who haven’t yet bombed—but will.
There are speakers who have bombed—but lie about it.
And, finally, speakers who have bombed—but have no idea (that actually might be the worst).
When it comes to performing, it’s far better to be bad than to be boring. And when I say “bad,” I mean you’re making bold choices, trying new things, and experimenting—even if those choices don’t quite work out.
It’s the kind of “bad” that comes from taking risks—pushing boundaries and exploring performance options. The choices you make may or may not land, but through trial and error, you’ll keep improving.
If you’re boring, it’s likely because you’ve grown complacent in your craft or are shying away from taking risks and making bold, creative choices. Without trying new things, it’s hard to make a meaningful impact—either on stage or in the lives of your audience.
And let’s be honest, winging your speech is the quickest route to boredom. You might think you’re being spontaneous, but spontaneity without preparation often falls flat. I have a friend who is the queen of spontaneity. But when she jumps in without a plan, let’s just say the results are more “meh” than magic.
Long story short, everyone bombs. So if it happens to everyone eventually, you might as well get it out of the way sooner rather than later.
Afraid to bomb? Maybe you shouldn’t be.
Perhaps you’re thinking: Wouldn’t it be better to talk about how to avoid bombing at all in the first place? Wouldn’t that be better for your speaking career?
You could play it safe and do everything in your power to avoid bombing. But if you avoid taking any risks and doing anything that’s unique or out of the ordinary, you might never truly impact your audience. Staying in your comfort zone usually doesn’t produce extraordinary results.
To truly make a difference, to propel your career to new heights, and to earn those stageside leads that fuel a sustainable speaking business, you often need to take risks and make creative choices.
These choices could work spectacularly. Or they could bomb completely.
Rehearsal isn’t the problem, it’s the solution.
That’s what happened to me. In 2008, when my book, Think Big Manifesto hit the New York Times bestseller list, it brought a wave of interest and attention along with it. So when the National Association of Productivity and Organizing Professionals (NAPO) asked me to give my first keynote speech about the book, I wanted to do something different—something special.
My big idea for delivering the speech in a unique and unusual way didn’t go as planned. You see, I tried it, but I tried it without putting enough rehearsal into it. I spent two months working on my slide deck, but I put off the actual writing of the speech for so long that I only had time for just one run-through before the fateful day.
If I hadn’t had a background in performance and didn’t know the value of rehearsing, I might have jumped to the conclusion that the reason I bombed was because I rehearsed. But I knew better; I knew it was because I didn’t rehearse enough.
To produce a truly transformational speech, you’ve got to put in hours and hours of rehearsal. Once you rehearse your speech to the point where you don't have to think about what you're gonna do next, when you deliver it for real, you can be fully present in the moment. Your speech will feel so organic, it will feel like it's never happened before.
Here’s a secret: the best place to bomb as a professional speaker is during rehearsal.
That’s the place to make and test creative decisions and performance techniques that may or may not fit with your speech. And as you realize what doesn’t work during rehearsal, you’ll be able to craft a speech that works—for you and for your audience—every time you deliver it.
On the other hand, if you only make time for one or two rehearsal sessions, it’s very likely that when the big day comes, you’ll feel robotic, stiff, uncomfortable—perhaps you’ll even think you’re “over-rehearsed.” But it’s not because you rehearsed, it’s because you didn’t rehearse enough.
You see, one of the main reasons why giving keynotes at a high level scares so many people is because they are simply not prepared. If you’re not prepared, it’s very difficult to achieve your goals as a speaker and positively influence your audience on stage. It’s much more likely you’re going to bomb.
Even if you don’t totally bomb, you’ll likely be worried you will the entire time you’re on stage. For the vast majority of the human race, preparation is key for decreasing performance anxiety. When you rehearse your speech, you can know you’re going to kill it on stage and that your audience will benefit tremendously from what you have to say.
This changed everything.
After I bombed on that keynote stage, I turned down every single inquiry for speeches based on The Think Big Manifesto—for five whole years. As a former professional actor, I knew how to rehearse, and I knew how to perform, but that day I thought I could rely only on talent and subject-matter knowledge. Boy was I wrong.
Fortunately, this story doesn’t end there. Some of the greatest feats human beings have accomplished throughout history have resulted due to their ability to turn big mistakes and unfortunate events into something positive. I certainly haven’t done that with all my mistakes, but with this one, I did.
And that’s why bombing on stage ended up being one of the best things that ever happened to me.
I got a call from FILEX, the largest association for fitness professionals in Australia—and they wanted a speech on thinking bigger. The word “yes” snuck out of my mouth, but as soon as I hung up, the anxiety rushed in.
I’ll admit, I thought up more than one excuse to tell the event planner. I wanted to back out, but I knew I couldn’t. I had to do the speech, and this time, I had to do it right. So after I signed the contract, I planned a six-month production schedule for a speech called The Think Big Revolution.
I reapproached how I wrote, developed, and rehearsed my speech. I incorporated the craft of acting and I started to make choices that were really unique—ones that helped me stand out. And the beautiful part was that I fell in love with it in a way I hadn’t in a long time—and my burnout turned into creativity and authenticity.
When all was said and done, I had devoted more than five hundred hours to script development and rehearsing. I was ready, and I felt it. I knew that on stage, I would be in total control of every moment of the speech.
Sometimes, when people learn how much time I invest in developing a speech, they’re surprised—which always surprises me. It’s kind of simple to me. If I’m being paid $40,000 for a speech, it only makes sense to prepare with that level of commitment. And, for my mental health, I never again want to feel the shame and humiliation of bombing a speech.
Look, many people—including you—might have stories of successfully winging a speech. But in my experience, I’ve rarely seen it work on a big stage with high stakes. It’s easy to think you’ve nailed it when in reality, you might be falling into the category of the fourth type of speaker—those who’ve bombed but don’t know it. That’s why encouraging someone to skip preparation feels like a complete dereliction of duty.
Summoning the courage to try again
When you overcome the fear and discomfort that stops you from trying again, you will learn an enormous amount about yourself and about your craft. You’ll make much faster progress, and perhaps even revolutionize your speaking business. You’ll stop playing it safe, and start taking risks—ones that produce extraordinary results.
It’s only normal to want to avoid those uncomfortable and challenging situations. But if you do, you’ll expose yourself to a different kind of long-term distress: the disappointment and pain of not achieving all that you could have.
When you think about what you're trying to achieve long-term as a professional speaker, you might be willing to try some things that may or may not work out right now. But the very act of creative decision making and trying new things will fuel your career and spark innovation for years to come (and it’s almost guaranteed you’ll never be “boring” on stage).
The speech I bombed and the speech I gave in Australia that day weren’t two completely different speeches. But the speaker who gave them was a completely different speaker.
I also remember very vividly that speech that day—waking onto the stage of the biggest convention center in Australia, wearing black, head to toe, and delivering a performance that stole the show.
When I finished my speech in Australia, the audience leapt to their feet and offered a rousing standing ovation. Feelings of accomplishment, bliss, and gratitude flooded over me. It took five years for me to overcome the painful experience of bombing on stage, but after putting in the work and learning from my mistakes, the results were absolutely worth the wait.
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