ROCK YOUR WALMART JEANS

You can’t control what happens in life. Control is a bit of an illusion. Of course you can and should try to control your future by shaping the odds in your favor. You do this by working harder than others, building positive relationships, and so on. However, life happens and you have to adjust.

As a professional speaker, I should know better than to take the risk of checking a bag at the airport. Unfortunately, I’m lazy and love not dragging one along. I’ve delivered over 1,000 professional talks at this point and I’ve never once lost a bag – until recently.

I was flying into Oklahoma City late at night after wrapping a gig in Los Angeles. I arrived on time just after midnight. My bag, however, did not. They assured me the bag would be in my hands by four in the afternoon the following day. The problem? I was scheduled to speak at 9AM and I was wearing shorts and flip-flops.

The kind lady behind the counter could see I was worried. She smiled. “Don’t worry,” she said, “We have a 24-hour Walmart so you can buy some new clothes. The airline will pay for it.”

Oh joy. I grabbed a cab and it was off to Walmart. Nothing could prepare me for this adventure. I’ll refrain from describing the people wandering around the store at 12:30AM when I arrived. It was downright scary.

I looked first for blue jeans (I always speak in jeans). I found a pair of $25 jeans that appeared to be a decent rip off of the expensive brands. Score. Next, I looked for a shirt and shoes. Both were massive failures. I bought the jeans and a few personal items and took the waiting cab to my hotel. I began trying to convince myself that presenting in flip-flops would be fine.

I decided to laugh at the situation. Literally. I forced myself to laugh. I was going to take a nice fee and deliver a keynote address to a bunch of CPAs while wearing flip-flops and “dad jeans” from Walmart. You have to laugh. They might be made fun of – so what! This was going to be epic.

As I was trying to convince myself this was going to be fun, I remembered something someone once told me. An old friend once reminded me that you can get away with almost anything as long as you act supremely confident. People will think all is well and that you are completely normal, as long as you’re confident. I got to the hotel just after one in the morning and emailed the client. I described the situation and told them it would not be an issue – I would still deliver and delight the audience.

The next day I arrived in my Walmart jeans. During my first few minutes I told them what happened and explained the flip-flops. They all giggled right along with me. Then I started speaking and everyone forgot about my footwear. Great group, great gig. It wasn’t just an example of turning lemons into lemonade. It was more like turning lemons into a nice whiskey sour. We had a blast. By the end of the speech I started thinking, “I wonder if I could have worn my shorts?”

The point of the story is two fold. First, life will throw you curves. You can laugh about it or cry about it. Your choice. Second, my old friend was right. If you’re really good at what you do and show strong confidence, it’s ridiculous what you can get away with.

My advice – spend the first third of your career moving around and experimenting (within your vocation or industry, or even beyond) so that you can maximize fit – defined as a solid alignment between your interests and skills and what your job requires of you. I am blessed to be a very high fit professional. When you have high fit, it won’t matter if the bag is lost, or the presentation won’t load, or whatever – you’ll comfortably roll with it and get the job done anyway – even if you’re wearing dad jeans from Walmart.