Planners love booking me for the closing keynote. The 3:00 slot. The idea is that people should leave the conference with energy.
Apparently energy before 3:00 is optional.
I’m kidding. Mostly. But by the time I walk on, that room has usually been sitting for six hours. They’ve heard three speakers, eaten a heavy lunch and answered a pile of emails under the table.
What planners tell me backstage
I hear some version of the same thing at almost every event.
Some planners apologize in advance for how quiet the room has been. A guy in Dallas told me he was sure his crowd would love the speaker after lunch. All he got was crickets.
A few have even offered me an out: if it feels like I’m losing them, I can cut my 90 minutes down to 60.
I always thank them. And I always tell them I won’t need to.
That’s not bravado. I’m not planning to win a tired room over with a better speech. I’m planning to stop giving a speech.
Why a tired room doesn’t need a better talk
A fried audience isn’t a bad audience. They’re just done sitting still and listening. Another speaker asking them to sit still and listen, no matter how funny, is fighting the same battle the last three lost.
So I flip it. Within the first few minutes, the whole room is doing something. Not watching. Doing.
How I get 400 tired people on their feet
I call it Whole-Room Improv. It works in three steps, and the order matters.
Wade in the shallow end. Nobody is asked to share their biggest fear with a stranger. We start alone, in our seats, with low-risk activities. No talking required. The goal is for everyone to think, “Okay, I can do this.”
Build trust at the table. Once people feel safe, they turn to the folks at their own table, not strangers across the room. One person talks. One listens without interrupting, then reflects back what they heard.
Get the whole room moving. Now everyone stands up. Full-group games, nonverbal communication, the whole room coordinating at once. The same skills leaders need for complex team dynamics, just with a lot more laughing.
Nobody gets dragged on stage. Introverts aren’t ambushed. Everyone plays, and nobody has to perform.
Energy that lasts past the parking lot
Energy alone isn’t the point. A room can laugh for an hour and forget all of it by dinner.
The difference is that every activity teaches something people use the next day. How to listen to understand instead of to respond. How to calm a tense conversation. How to say “Yes, and” in a meeting instead of shutting an idea down.
So the closing slot does what planners hoped it would. People walk out with energy. They also walk out knowing what to do with it.
Or skip the 3:00 problem entirely
A closing keynote rescues the end of the day. But the room doesn’t have to run out of gas in the first place.
I also emcee full conferences. Instead of one 90-minute burst at the end, I keep the energy up all day: quick interactive moments between sessions, transitions that don’t feel like dead air, and a room that’s still with you when your last speaker walks on.
And if you want, that last speaker can be me.
Planning your next conference?
If you’ve got a late-afternoon slot and a room that will be running on fumes, that’s exactly the room I’m built for. If you’d rather keep the energy up from the first session to the last, see how I emcee events. Or take a look at my programs and reach out to tell me about your event.
