I promised you I’d keep it 100% real 100% of the time, right? Well, as I sit by the pool at my hotel in Vegas on a very temperate evening (which is rare for Las Vegas), I have had time to sit and reflect on my last blog entry.

However, this isn’t easy because I have bronchitis. I should be inside networking. Alex Mandossian, James Malincak, Bart Baggett and other top speakers are inside at the Vic & Antohony’s. I was invited to come hang, but I can’t talk. Every time I raise my voice, I start coughing uncontrollably like I just came from Snoop Dogg’s trailer. Hence, I look like the antisocial computer nerd, sitting outside, cuddled up with my laptop.

For the record, I was wrong.

I mean, I still feel as though I could have done much better. There’s no question about that. However, I fell into the ego-centric view of my speaking performance that gets many of us in trouble. All of that could have been solved by asking myself one question–why. Why do I speak and what was my purpose that evening. If I had been in the right mindset, I wouldn’t have overlooked the people who were so emotionally moved by my message. Notice, I made that part a footnote and commenced to lambast my performance. If I am really concerned about helping people, my Jon-bashing shouldn’t have taken the magnititude that it did.

My goal was to deliver a message that helps people. That’s it. All the “extra” stuff is important as well, but at the end of the day, what’s more important is whether I reached your audience or not. While I’m always going to be my own biggest critic, I also need learn to give myself a pass, especially when people rave about how great the talk was. Whatever my previous plans were isn’t important. As long as I told the truth…my truth…to the best of my ability and people were being helped, it has to be all good.

Tags: alex mandossian, bart baggett, information marketing, james malinchak, jonathan sprnkles, motivational speaker, public speaking, snoop dogg