Lessons from Colin Powell

When it comes to speakers, you can learn not only from their books and speeches, but also how they act around others.? It’s one of the benefits of actually having speakers in-person. One such example is from former Secretary of State, Colin Powell.

As a college student, I showed up on time and I wasn’t flustered by celebrities, so I was often given jobs working events when speakers came to campus.? I was tasked with walking Apollo 13’s Jim Lovell across campus.? I was the student liaison for Shimon Peres’s security team, as he visited not long after Rabin’s assassination. And I was a gofer for Gen. Colin Powell during his visit.? This gave me the opportunity to see what he was like close-up.?

The first thing I noticed was that he bounced.? Like, going up the three or four steps from the audience to the stage, he bounded up.?

He had great posture, too, which wasn’t too surprising, being the military man that he was. From seeing him on TV, I thought he was probably 6’4, but in reality, he was just about eye level with me and my 5’11 stature.? His bearing and his energy made him seem larger than life.

But what really impressed me were his stories, especially about hustle and going the extra mile. When he was a teenager, he had a job mopping up gunk at a Pepsi bottling plant in New York.? Instead of being upset that he had a low-level job, he decided to make the most of the opportunity and be the best mopper and cleaner that he could. Chances are that he could have done the minimum, got his paycheck, and no one would have noticed him. But he put in the extra effort wherever he went, whether it was mopping up gunk or leading men and women in the Army and he was always noticed and promoted quickly.??

I took these things to heart.??

I still bounce when I go up a few steps.? I just sat up straight thinking about how he had great posture (and I bet you did, too!). ? Most importantly, he also helped me get noticed at my first ‘real’ job.? A couple of days after I graduated, I became an agent assistant at William Morris (now William Morris Endeavor).? Just like anyone, I had my ups and downs and I wasn’t really known outside of my department.? That changed one day when I took Colin Powell’s example to heart.

With it being the music industry in the 90s, we had a ton of CDs, which were stuffed haphazardly into a giant wooden cabinet.? One of my tasks as an assistant was to send CDs to promoters. It was nearly impossible to find the right CD quickly.? One day, I decided on my own to organize the dreaded CD cabinet.? I sorted them all out by artist and genre, labeled each area, and then made a print out of how many CDs there were for each artist and gave them to some of the other assistants.? By the end of the day, everyone knew who I was.? I didn’t realize it, but the CD closet was a huge pain point for a lot of people in the office, and my extra bit of work made a lot of pain go away.

When I saw The Intern and they had the “WHO CLEANED UP THAT DESK!?!!?!!” scene, I could totally identify with it: https://youtu.be/pGOOlJIejek?si=AIQN2_4biHFgD4KV- (thanks Shane Feldman for the clip!)

What I did had nothing to do with my main job of booking bands or doing contracts, but it was by far the most well-known thing I’d done at work until that point.? That was my version of mopping up the goo that no one else wanted to.?

One other thing that stood out from his speech was when he was asked about making decisions.? He said that if you have to, you need to be prepared to make quick decisions.? But if you have time to be thoughtful and to make good decisions, then you can do that.? As a few family members can attest, there have been a few times when others wanted to rush a decision, but I’ve become comfortable waiting until the right time.

I’ve always been a fan of his, and it’s been a pleasure whenever I was able to book him for an event.? I had a client with a virtual event, and he pre-recorded their presentation.? The day before their event took place, he passed away, so there’s a chance I was able to book the last or one of the last presentations of one of the first speakers I ever met, and someone who I really admired and learned from.??

I think it’s amazing that even after he passed away, he was able to keep influencing and inspiring people.

From 2002-2007, I wrote a weekly comic strip that appeared in about 40 small publications in the US, Canada, and Israel. If this is a newsletter, we might as well have a comic each week, too!

Brian Lord is the President of Premiere Speakers Bureau and the host of the Beyond Speaking Podcast. A 29-year speaking and entertainment industry veteran who started his first agency in his dorm room, Brian has done everything from running a non-profit and writing a comic strip to coaching youth softball and competing for TeamUSA in the Duathlon Age Group World Championships in Romania in 2022. He and his wife Krista enjoy raising their four kids outside of Nashville.