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Lesley Klein holds up her inspirational sign at the Atlanta auditions for the Great American Speak Off show.
Murphy – Competition shows like American Idol and America’s Got Talent are wildly popular. But what of the thousands of people who have talents outside of the 16-30 age bracket who can’t perform vocal riffs that inspire confetti showers?
Enter the Great American Speak Off. Pete Vargos and Grant Cardone, both big players in the inspirational public speaking genre, joined forces to create a new televised competition seeking “the world’s most powerful messages.”
Local resident Lesley Klein felt confident she had one of those messages.
“Since the Great Pause,” she said with a laugh, referring to COVID-19, “I was trying to decide what to do next. I learned that stepping out of my comfort zone is a place to grow from. If you are not growing, you are
dying.”
Klein said she saw the invitation to audition for the audition online.
“I thought it would be really cool,” she said. She was already a big fan of Vargos and his “signature talk” idea.
“My signature speech was about being sucked into a news cycle of fear and panic,” Klein said. “I knew what I focused on I would create in my life.”
She said she began exploring “how I choose to handle the challenge instead of automatically reacting. I looked for the opportunity in the crisis. I gave myself permission to thrive.”
The show held auditions in Phoenix and Atlanta. Klein, along with partner Kimmie Queen, signed up to audition in Atlanta.
“The auditions are free,” she said. However, for a cool $97, a participant can guarantee an audition spot. “They only audition from 8-4, so if too many people showed up, not everyone would get a spot.”
Out of the 7,000 registrants, Klein got a spot. Each speaker received 60 seconds to perform in front of a judge and up to 15 other contestants.
“We were in a small conference room in the Renaissance Hotel near the Atlanta airport,” she said. The
winners of round one earned a spot in round two, where their performance time doubled to two minutes.
Klein prepared for this audition by breaking some of the rules taught by her mentors, Vargos and Tony Robbins.
“You aren’t supposed to memorize your speech,” she said. “You are supposed to speak from bullet points, from the heart.”
But Klein didn’t want to leave anything to chance. So she memorized her speech about making a choice to not get sucked into news cycle and negative drama, but rather to put energy into her own life to grow and develop.
“You change the world by changing yourself,” Klein said. “It’s an inside-out job.”
Klein didn’t do so well in that first round.
“I ran out of time in first round,” she said. “I stumbled, but recovered.”
Apparently the judge thought more highly of her performance than she did. Her scores in delivery, content and quality of message were high enough to win a spot in round two. But in a room with a larger audience, Klein faltered.
“In the second round, I stumbled again and didn’t finish,” she said.
Winners of the second round earn a Golden Ticket to the semifinals in Hollywood, Fla., in December. Golden tickets were won by 100 people; among them was Queen. But Klein isn’t one to stand down in a challenge.
“They are holding virtual auditions, and I’m going to re-audition there,” she said. The semifinals will be filmed, and the three lucky winners will compete for the title of the “Greatest American Speaker.”
“There are 30-40,000 people in the audience,” Klein added. “And the audience gets to vote on the winner.”
Should Klein win, she will join Grant Cordone on stage during his Growth Conference in Las Vegas come February as her grand prize.
“Everybody has a story inside of them,” Klein said. “I didn’t see myself as a storyteller or speaker. I was looking for my signature story. That’s my discovery journey.”
For details about the Great American Speak Off, visit speakoff.com.