Guess What Happened Today?: Sweat Equity

I enjoy public speaking. Lots of people don’t, but it’s something I’ve always liked to do. I’m sure there are lots of opinions as to how well I do it, but the fact remains, it’s something I really like. I’m lucky to have a job that allows and even requires me to do it. I sometimes speak at conferences, I often get to introduce other speakers, and I regularly make sales presentations.

Something tells me that this guy likes public speaking too.

During the recent US Presidential debates I heard that they kept the debate room at somewhere around 65 degrees. That immediately set me to wondering exactly why they’d want to do that. I can’t imagine that they’d want to keep it chilly to keep people from falling asleep, or to ensure that people were paying attention…it’s the President of the United States, after all. Then Wolf Blitzer cleared it all up for me, as he often does…it’s to keep them from sweating. Sweating is unpleasant. Especially when you’re in front of a bunch of people. Ask Richard Nixon. Apparently he lost the very first televised debate to Kennedy as a result of sweat.

Tricky Dicky had to wipe sweat off his upper lip. They say it cost him the debate.

A few years ago, I went Vancouver for a finalist presentation. We were a team of four, and when we arrived, they led us to a room that was built to hold about ten people. There were already 16 people in this room, and we just made it worse. The ceiling was low, and the temperature was already hot enough to melt chocolate. As I stood up to speak, in a room so crowded I couldn’t even move six inches to my right or left, I put my head right into a pot light. I wore that light like a hat. My head felt like it was on fire. I could immediately feel the sweat beading up on my forehead, and worse, I could feel it start to run down my cheek and down the bridge of my nose.

This is how I felt. Except way, way less cool.

Just when I thought things couldn’t get any worse, I noticed that one of our guys had put his head back in his chair, and he was sound asleep. Just as a drop of sweat fell from the tip of my nose and splatted on the table like a rock splats into a calm lake, Rip Van Winkle woke up with such a jolt that the entire room turned to see him emerge from slumberland. Needless to say, we didn’t win the business.


When your sweat hits the table like a pebble hits a pond, it's a good sign that you're not going to win.

I was in Vancouver again recently to introduce a new product. We were going in to visit a customer who had brought about 20 people together to hear our presentation. The room was again extremely toasty, and from the moment I stood up, I started to melt. The more I talked, the worse it got. At one point, the customer, thinking that I was half way to a heart attack, stopped the presentation and dispatched someone for water. As I was dealing with the embarrassment of that, I took three steps to the right and the temperature dropped about 20 degrees. Turns out I had been standing in the exact direct line of the heat exhaust from the projector that was mounted about one foot directly over my head. I spent the rest of the presentation moving around, away from the heat, and we ended the presentation without the need for an ambulance, or a defibrillator.

I brought my laptop and my projector. I did not bring my defibrillator.

Finally, again in Vancouver (I’m thinking there’s something about Vancouver), I was asked to introduce a conference speaker. It was Alan Fine, and he’s an excellent speaker with a really cool message. The conference provided me with his bio, and I spoke to him in advance to get a better sense of how to introduce him. As I walked into the room, not only did I discover that they were recording the whole thing, but that they had they brought in a huge number of extra lights. It felt like a movie set. As I stood there in front of the room, under these crazy hot lights, you guessed it, I started to melt. I felt like a freaking Big Mac sitting under the heat lamp. It was horrible. I was so fixated on the sweating, I lost complete control of my ability to form sentences. It felt like an eternity up there, and to his credit, Alan Fine just sat there, smiling, as I massacred his introduction.