One of those unwritten laws in the speaking business is that sooner or later things are going to go wrong. Lights will go out, microphones will go mute or audiovisual equipment will fail. I used to think…well, this is just Murphy's Law. I now believe in O'Toole's Law: "Murphy was an optimist." And if you've spent as many hours as I have on a platform, trust me… things will go wrong.

Take the time that I was speaking in Orlando, Florida at the huge Orlando Convention Center on International Drive in the mid-eighties. I was on the platform that day with Ed Foreman, CSP, CPAE Speaker Hall of Fame and Art Linkletter, CPAE Speaker Hall of Fame. Both these guys wowed the audience before I took the stage to close out the huge rally.

I was the cleanup hitter before the National Association of REALTORS. Right before I went on, Art walked off the stage and punched me in the arm and said affectionately "Break a leg!"

Well sports fans…. that's exactly what I did. At the conclusion of my presentation an hour later, I walked off the stage into a darkened section of the platform and fell ten feet and broke my right leg.

And then there was the time I spoke in Denver, Colorado to a group of psychiatrists. As I'm addressing the group, a bird was flying around in the convention center. The surprising thing was that I was the only fool out of 5,000 people who would actually look up and acknowledge that there was a bird in the convention center.

I was addressing a Positive Thinking Rally in New Orleans at the Super Dome in the late eighties right after I had won the World Championship of Public Speaking for Toastmasters. There were some 40,000 people present that day, undoubtedly the largest audience I have ever addressed in my brief career on the platform.

Right in the middle of my speech a streaker decided to walk very casually across the stage in front of me. The camera man, initially thinking this guy was part of my act, focused right in on him. Realizing the imposter was appearing very scantily in only what God provided him when he arrived in this world, the camera man pulled back from the nude intruder and zoomed back in on me.

Here I am with this astonished look on my face in front of 40,000 people in the Super Dome, not knowing what to do or say next. I watched as the charlatan casually walked off the stage and said simply, "Now I don't feel so bad myself."

I was speaking to the Million Dollar Round Table in Toronto in 1989 with retired Pittsburgh quarterback now Fox broadcaster Terry Bradshaw, motivational guru Brian Tracy, CPAE Speaker Hall of Fame and inspirational presenter W. Mitchell, CSP, CPAE Speaker Hall of Fame. Mitchell, whose claim to fame was that he was totally burned up in a motorcycle accident, was right in the middle of his speech when the fire alarms went off. Go figure. This guy can't get away from fire no matter where he goes.

I was addressing the Sales and Marketing Executives in Atlanta in the early nineties when I ventured into a part of the stage that was not stable. The entire stage collapsed and folded up around me as I totally disappeared in front of several thousand people.

On another occasion, I was giving a presentation in Orlando at the now suspect Orlando Convention Center when all of the lights in the facility went out. Interestingly, I did not lose my PowerPoint not did I lose my audio, but I'm speaking in a totally blacked-out chamber. It happened that I was carrying a flashlight that I used at the time as a prop. I used to go in and wake my three sons in the morning with this flashlight and a train horn. I would sneak into their room, flash the light in their eyes and scream "TRAIN!" I know… I'm going to hell for the things I used to do to my kids, but what's a father for?

Anyway, I have the flashlight as one of my props, so I simply turned the light on and focused it on my face and completed the entire presentation without a light in the room.

Trust me… if you spend enough time on a platform, stuff is going to go wrong.