At thirteen, the music writer Ted Gioia was made to enter a public speaking contest so his parents would buy him a record player; that bargain led to scholarships and boardrooms, and now to ten rules.
Ted Gioia wanted a record player, and his parents' condition was that he enter a public speaking contest for high schoolers. He won, got the turntable, and after that life kept pushing him onto stages.
He later told jokes to an audience more than twice his age, and in the next twenty-four hours people kept asking for a copy of his speech. There was no copy; he had stopped using a prepared text.
The line that stuck with me is that the audience really wants you to succeed.
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