A recording of a speech
I’ve spoken this presentation to countless audiences at youth camps, teacher conventions, retail convention dinners, family church services, business conferences, both in Australia and the USA.
It is an adaptable story, always delivered in – I confess – my wacky narrative style – ridiculous in parts – generally inspiring faith and the enthusiastic pursuit of purpose in the hearers.
On this occasion, I’m speaking to one of my largest audiences; 7,500 members of the IDA group members at the Rod Laver Arena in Melbourne.
You can tell they loved it.
You should too.
I was having a great time.
A universal saga
You see, the presentation captures the fundamentals of human endeavour where people are involved. Many of us suffer from imposter syndrome. The man in this story did. He had no idea people would follow him at the start. Then he experienced sudden growth. Then he lost 90% of his audience/followers.
The answer’s not in the mega numbers
This chap, like many people (maybe you as well as me) often expect large numbers and a big following to bring us through to fame, riches and glory.
We hear of people with 15,000 Facebook or Twitter followers of 10,000 or 100,000 and think we will never come to anything unless we push hard for that kind of number ourselves.
- Maybe we should open a second store, or franchise our idea.
- Is it time to advertise to get hundreds of people to join our direct selling group?
- Should we take on more distributorships or product lines?
Maybe that’s the answer, but …
The story I tell illustrates that working with a select audience – a contained following – using a clear strategy, will give us a very satisfactory result.
Sure, you can cite Alexander the Great, Artaxerxes, Augustus Caesar, Christopher Columbus, Walter Raleigh, Henry Ford, the Rockerfellers, Bill Gates, Steve Jobs and other mass leaders and marketers who had (or have) millions of followers and customers.
They are there in your history books. I know.
For you and me, just being so good we get noticed is a magnificent achievement.
Consider this: there have been 108 billion of us since the year dot and only a few hundred have reached that mega status. A few hundred – maybe a few thousand – about a poofteenth of a percent if you pull out your calculator.
You might be the next one! but the facts and the mathematics show us that the other 107,999,998,021 of us, are, and will only be legends in our own life-times at best, and we need to work out how to get to that status at least.
So listen to hear how Divine help, a bit of faith, a manageable crew and a simple plan worked out for a very reluctant and not-so-smart run-of-the-mill farm boy – It will probably satisfy your expectation for life too.
