The Day I Almost Quit Speaking

This is going to sound overdramatized to start, but this is something that happened recently. I've been thinking about how to handle this, but it was something that LITERALLY had me considering retiring from speaking @ colleges but after talking to my wife and family, at this point, I've just decided to never speak at a particular University in Indiana again. Students didn't provoke this decision. They were great. The staff did.

There was a planning committee that brought me in. It consisted of 4 people. 2 staff members, a grad assistant & a student. I believe it was a co-sponsored event with Greek Life/Multi-cultural affairs/Civic Engagement.

Upon arriving on campus I found out 2 of the staff members were speakers for different agencies. 1 of them actually told me that her colleague didn't want to pay me my fee because it was too high in her eyes. This was before I even got on stage.

Lock in: This will be the cliff note version but still a read nonetheless. I'll start off when telling you, I did 2 things wrong. 1 of the things I did wrong was DEFINITELY in my control, the other thing was too, but my feelings took over.

The two things:

Thing 1: I hired a videographer last minute to record my talk. I've been documenting more of my journey and decided last minute to have one. I apologized when I arrived for the absolute late notice, but was told it was ok, so I filmed but didn't release any film from the engagement.

Thing 2: My presentation was scheduled for an hour. The event started a little late, but I probably spoke/facilitated closer to 1 hr & a half, to 1 hr & 45 minutes. If someone put me on the stand and told me to promise it wasn't 2 hours, I wouldn't be able to do it, so don't quote me. FULL CONTEXT: It was an event for Greek Life students (Fraternities & Sororities) It was such a powerful experience. There were tons of laughs, thought-provoking questions, tears, high-fives etc. again... I have actual FOOTAGE of all of this, but I'll get to that. It was really cool overall and again, time literally got away from all of us and we continued the conversation without interruption. I didn't charge extra for that time and the students were not held captive.

After the event, again, while in person, I apologized for going over and there was no harm or foul because of how it was received. But again, I own all of it.

This is the part when things go south.

A few weeks later, there was a debrief call with my previous agent, the two staff members, the grad assistant, without the student.

I was asked if I received any feedback. I told them students hit me up on instagram and really enjoyed their experience. They said the students they talked to enjoyed their time as well but the staff had feedback for me.

Feedback: One of them told me the students talked too much. I was dumbfounded. They said they have no way to prove why they should have ever spent the funds on me because there were no clear takeaways or materials for them to follow essentially. I HAD SLIDES FOR THE ENTIRE PROGRAM. I told them that if a speaker comes in and doesn't allow their students an opportunity to participate, they are wasting their money. I let them know that speakers who do not allow their audience time to engage are either very new or afraid to lose control or step away from a canned experience. I let them know anyone can read slides because they implied they are use to a more academic approach as if I'm not bi-lingual and carry multiple degrees which were incorporated in my talk. BUT we'll get to that.

Feedback: (from a staff member who's also a speaker) You didn't tell us about the video guy and now I had to talk to my agent and get different clearances because I'm in video b-roll video that's out there when I shouldn't be. (She was lying. How do I know?) Because I told them I hadn't released any footage from the day at all and especially nothing with staff in it because I wanted to talk with them about the videographer before I made any of it available. When I told her that, she just looked at the screen. We were on Zoom.

HALF-TIME: This is the part where I tell you this event was for Greek organizations, multi-cultural groups and the campus community. The campus has IFC, NPC, MGC and NPHC organizations. Guess who had ZERO representation there. MGC & NPHC. In their defense, I was told the Alphas had a meeting during the time of the event and other NPHC groups were busy as well but it would have been great to see those faces. IFC and NPC groups looked to be just about at FULL representation or close to it but there was ZERO representation from others. Why does this matter?

Feedback: from the other staff member, If Black greeks were present they would have had something to say to me and it would have been a problem. (that was ACTUALLY said to me.) I was told I was disrespectful because people laughed when I said, tell me something about Tupac & someone in the front row said, He's dead. The audience laughed.... I said, well that is true but something else. (FULL DISCLOSURE) Moments before this, at two different times, 2 young ladies shared that they both lost their fathers and the anniversary to their death was literally the day before I was there. The first girl laughed, we talked through it, I thanked her for sharing and the 2nd girl said yea, I just wanted to say my dad is hella dead too and everyone laughed but I made sure to make sure they had room and were ok. It was a LITERAL moment. I even let them know if they wanted to connect with each other and talk about it, I would pay for their meal. (AGAIN, I have all of this filmed). I told the staff person, I never met Tupac, but I know your students and they are important to me. About Tupac: I shared that he started as a phenomenal poet, got a scholarship to the Baltimore School of Arts and poetry made his way until he (long story short) got more introduced to rap and different lifestyles. I also asked them what roles did he play in films. Typically, he played some kind of gangsta role and even died in a few of them if I'm correct. He begin to play a role and it's possible and even debatable that role became real and that very well may have cost him his life. I talked to them about the roles they're playing in their own lives. I let her know I'd been in front of all Black audiences recently and All Black Male summits as well. It's my job to challenge our thoughts and I enjoy being challenged to, so I'm not worried about them having something to say.

(In my defense of the previous Improvements, I believe the 3rd comment missed the event but heard I was pretty good. hahaha Nothing and no one is perfect and opinions are always received.)

She was there the whole time! She said in front of everyone else on the call that she was glad that no Black students came. To be clear there were Black students there who were members of IFC & NPC organizations but maybe they don't count to her. I could NOT believe she said that.

Then she accused me of cultural appropriation and had a problem and knew other students would have had an issue with it too. She brought up me salsa dancing and teaching someone else how to salsa dance and felt it was inappropriate. etc. I let her finish and told her (not sure how she didn't know) that my degree is in Latin American culture/literature, I'm fluent in Spanish, owned a latin dance studio, former semi-pro salsa dancer for the better part of almost 20 years. I often use the salsa piece to drive engage, understand rhythm and the appreciation of support while learning something new. I have an entire program dedicated to SALSA Therapy, so this also gives a snapshot into the full experience. She didn't apologize or move from her point. Everyone on the zoom just looked at me like I was crazy.

There was some awkward moments when I spoke up and was then told it was good but I should be open to that feedback.

(in my head FEEDBACK?!) You just wanted to trash me...

- They told me they didn't want to pay me what they did

- Said they were glad no Black students were there

- Accused me of Cultural Appropriation

- Said to be mindful of students time

- They certainly made it a point to say they knew a lot of people

When they received the official feedback from students, all they told my previous agent was.... "We wish we had this before and they just wanted me to be open to their feedback."

The agent said, I don't know why they went after you like that.

I'm SUPER Thankful for Arel Moodie and his resource TALKADOT! If you're a speaker, you should have it. I sent them the evaluation & they filled it out along with some students that attended it.

I've never been so disrespected or dismissed in my professional career.

What should I do?

How would you move forward with this?

Would you just leave it and decide not to work with them anymore?