Knowing Your Audience

A number of years ago, my wife and I were invited by our personal wealth advisor to a national conference down in Pasadena, held at the Ritz-Carlton. The host was a respected advisory firm from Atlanta, now known as Blue Trust, an organization that served clients from all walks of life, including several professional athletes.

It was a faith-based gathering, the kind where the pace slows just enough for genuine conversations. Among the featured speakers was Joni Eareckson Tada—author, artist, radio host, and the heart behind Joni and Friends, a ministry reaching the disability community with remarkable compassion.

One afternoon, several of the speakers joined attendees at various lunch tables. My wife and I had the privilege of sitting at Mrs. Tada’s table, along with three other couples. It felt a little like being welcomed into someone’s living room—warm voices, thoughtful stories, and a sense that everyone had arrived with something meaningful to give.

Now, as fate or perhaps what I believe is of the Divine lineup-card writing would have it, one of the couples was a young pitcher by the name of Orel Hershiser and his wife. Another couple included a second major-league pitcher whose name escapes me now, though he was every bit as engaged in the conversation.

Picture the table as a perfect circle: Mrs. Tada, then Mrs. Hershiser, then my wife, then me… followed by Hershiser, the other pitcher’s wife, her husband, and back again to Mrs. Tada. A lineup any manager would have been happy to pencil in.

Once the introductions wrapped up, the conversation among the men drifted naturally toward baseball with stories from the clubhouse, glimpses into life on the mound, the rhythm of a long season. For me, sitting right beside Hershiser, it was the kind of moment you quietly savor.

But while my right ear was tuned into fastballs and pennant races, my left ear picked up the parallel conversation between my wife and the players’ wives. Now, God bless my wife—sports were never her chosen field. She couldn’t have named a baseball team then, and probably still couldn’t today. And that was perfectly fine; she has her own world of expertise and interests.

Completely unaware of who was seated around her, I heard her lean over and ask Hershiser’s wife, with all sincerity:

“So… what does your husband do for a living?”

A moment as pure as a perfectly placed bunt……..simple, honest, and beautifully human.

 It still makes me smile that my wife had no idea who Orel Hershiser was that day. Here we were, seated next to a World Series hero, and she was politely nodding along as if he were any other guest at the table. It wasn’t disrespectful, it was simply a moment where the significance meant nothing to her because she didn’t share the same frame of reference.

This happens in business more often than we admit. We walk into a sales meeting or step onto a stage assuming the audience knows our world, our terminology, our heroes, and our pressures. Many times, they don’t. And when we speak without understanding who’s across the table, our message falls flat—not because it lacks value, but because it lacks connection.

The best communicators meet people where they are. They adjust tone, simplify complexity, and speak in a language the audience recognizes. Whether you’re trying to win a client or share an idea with executives, the responsibility is the same: know who you’re talking to before you open your mouth.

Otherwise, you might be delivering your best material to someone who’s still wondering who “Orel Hershiser” is—and missing the point entirely.

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