I attended a talk by a leading figure in Malaysia’s personal finance industry recently. Before registering for the talk, I had personally been reading some of his books. He published many best-sellers and his books are available in major bookstores. Since this would be the first time I will be hearing this man on stage, I would naturally had some expectations of what he has got to say that afternoon.

He started off pretty well in the first 15-20 minutes, introducing the subjects he knows best. Then, his speech started to become disorganized and was getting in and out of the topic from time to time. At times, he seemed very desperate to fill up the time slot given to him with jokes that came out of nowhere, and of course, didn’t add to the value of the speech. Some of the topics was clearly not his areas of expertise, and the way he delivered it shows. Maybe the Organiser somehow forced him into adding those topics in, but it clearly made him look bad when it didn’t click at all with most of the audience.

He also kept emphasizing that he will elaborate certain slides later on in his speech, which didn’t happen. E.g., “I will explain these later on in the next few slides…”

Well, maybe he wasn’t given enough time to prepare, as the next few ideas he shared with us was nothing revealing. I was hoping to learn something that he hasn’t already wrote in his books. It is also quite evident that his content is somewhat loosely tied, hence the discontinuity lessens the impact of his intended message.

And one more thing I realized from most talks, you lose your credibility the moment you tried to sell something on stage. Yes, you can sell things, but please do it after the talk. Speakers who goes,” You can get my books/products to know more about what I am talking about outside the hall, at 20% discount and it’s only valid for today!” really puts you off and automatically raises your defense against what they have to say later on. Please, if you are ever going to speak publicly, please do not SELL something on stage. You can sell your ideas, your philosophies and your perspective on certain issues, but please do not sell something which we are not interested in hearing about during the speech.

Well, all in all, it was a let-down. This dude just went a few points down in my book. If only he’d just stick to writing, or probably polish up his public speaking skills.

Of course, I am in no way a qualified public speaker myself, but I guess as part of the audience (about 700 people), I have to give some feedback to the 3 hours I spent that afternoon.

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