Confessions of a Public Speaker

Chapter 7. Lessons from my 15 minutes of fame

It’s May of 2008, and I’m at CNBC studios dressed in black shoes, black pants, and a black turtleneck, staring into a camera surrounded by bright white lights. Looking into a wall of lights seems like heaven until you realize that you can’t see anything, your eyes hurt, and it’s fucking hot. With each passing second, it’s less clear whether the goal is to film me or to see how long it takes for me to melt like the witch from The Wizard of Oz. Perhaps it’s both. On the ground is a strip of masking tape that marks where my feet need to stay as the 10-person film crew surrounds me with various gear, cameras, light filters, and microphones, ensuring I look fantastic as I embarrass myself on national television. Despite how hard it is to stand still for so long, the real challenge is that I’m expected to do the worst kind of nothing—the kind of nothing where I have no distractions while everyone stares, prods, and pokes me—as I wait and wait for them to be ready for me to say my lines. To stop my mind from exploding due to the sheer helplessness of being trapped in permanent hurry-up-and-wait mode, I focus on the drama playing out every few minutes behind the crew, drama only I can see.

It goes like this: CNBC employees come into the café to get a bite to eat but stop mid-stride, surprised at the site of me in their fancy cafeteria, clad in ...