Someone arranged for you to be there. Because you are one who knows. Because you can open their eyes. Because you can lead them to light.

Let's say you have technical know-how. Or industry-specific insights. Or a new idea, an approach, an insight, an attitude, a concept. Or a pastiche of all or any combination of above. A new wrinkle, a new approach that leads to breakthroughs. To ahas.

Or maybe you discovered a way of being, of doing that can lead this audience to having something they desire. Perhaps you can lead them to a deeper understanding of something they need to know.

Naomi Rhode calls it privilege of platform. And what a privilege you have as you stand there! Take a deep breath. You can influence, you can mold and shape a future yet unborn. Take another breath. Look at faces before you. This is your moment. This is moment you've worked so hard to be ready for.

When, in 1960, John F Kennedy spoke and said "We will send a man to moon and bring him safely back to earth-and we'll do it within 10 years!" he stirred his nation to believe it could be done.

When Abraham Lincoln spoke and delivered what we now commemorate as The Gettysburg Address, he awakened conscience of Western world.

In last century, like Harry Truman, a sure loser according to every poll, bravely facing up to and defeating powerful Thomas Dewey. Like Mahatma Gandhi, armed with only a loincloth and a relentless will, freeing Indian subcontinent from British rule. And let's not forget gallant Nelson Mandela who, battling from his bleak jail cell ultimately ended apartheid in South Africa, winning emancipation and equality for millions of his native people.

What about speaker? What about aspiring speaker...the lonely, aching one out in cold, with nose pressed up against store window, gazing wistfully at glowing success only a heartbeat away; what are this speaker's demons? What dragons, what Minatour, what swamps swarming with alligators, what precipices and crevasses wait to swallow up all wanna-be's hopes and dreams? What else blocks illusive path to success and abundance?

And, most important of all, how are all these monsters put to rest forever by speaker moving from struggle and lack to success and abundance. I've been there, dead broke, flat on my assets, and those only in my unswerving imagination, sustained only by vision. Perhaps this glimpse of my journey may yield hope:

1. It started with implacable will, iron determination, bulldog blood, an inner spirit that was not going to surrender to defeat as long as there was breath in my body.

2. It proceeded with awakening awareness that like all activities, speaking business had rules of play, rules I had to discover and master.