In 2011, I was invited to speak to a group of bank managers in a hotel in Quezon City. I was given around two hours, but the speech I had prepared, Make It Happen, was only about forty-five minutes. I had delivered parts of the message before, including in Toastmasters, but this was the first time I was bringing it into a room like this.
I remember feeling hesitant. These were bankers, and I was not. I knew very little about their world. I could not teach them banking, finance, branch operations, or the problems they dealt with every day. At that time, I also believed strongly that every speech should be customized to the audience. If you were speaking to bankers, then surely you needed banking examples.
But I did not know enough about banking to pretend.
So I decided not to talk about banking.
I talked about life.
I talked about our dreams, our ambitions, the things we say we want, and our strange ability to make big plans while leaving many of them undone. That was something I understood. I had plans myself—five-year plans, three-year plans, annual plans, monthly plans, weekly plans. I believed in thinking big and, during that period of my life, I believed strongly in massive action.
The message of Make It Happen had three simple moves.
The first was an old expression: Hitch your wagon to a star. Have something worth pursuing. Choose a direction. Give yourself a purpose that can pull you forward.
The second was to dedicate that purpose to people you cared about. Your dream did not have to end with you. It could be connected to your family, your team, your community, or the people whose lives would become better because you succeeded.
And the third was straightforward: Take action. Dreams remain dreams until somebody moves.
That was the heart of the speech.
I delivered it, finished the session, and thought my work for the day was done.
Then two men approached me.
I did not know them. Until that point, I had been dealing mostly with the HR people who arranged the event, so the two men introduced themselves.
One was the chairman of the bank.
The other was its new president.
The president spoke first. He told me that the speech had inspired him and that the message resonated with what he wanted for the organization. As it turned out, Make It Happen was also very close to the direction he wanted people in the bank to embrace that year.
Then he said he wanted me to speak to his people.
He wanted everyone in the organization to hear the message.
Naturally, I said yes. And because I believed strongly in customizing speeches for every client, I immediately told him that I would customize the presentation for them.
He stopped me.
“No, Jef.”
Then he said something I did not expect.
“I want the same exact speech. That speech you delivered, that’s what I want them to hear.”
That moment changed something in the way I thought about speaking.
Until then, I had assumed that relevance always came from customization. I thought you had to know the industry, use the language of the audience, and build every example around their profession. I still believe that understanding the audience matters. I still customize when the situation calls for it.
But that president showed me something else.
A good speech can travel.
I did not have to be a banker to connect with bankers. Beneath our job titles, there are things we recognize in one another: dreams, longings, responsibilities, frustrations, fears, people we love, and things we desperately want to make happen.
That realization stayed with me.
The chairman invited me to eat with them after the event. If I remember correctly, about a week later, he invited me to his house because he was preparing to speak at a conference. He wanted me to help him deliver a speech that would move people. I found that fascinating. I had entered the hotel worrying because I did not understand banking, and now the chairman of the bank was asking me about something I did understand: how stories and ideas can move people.
He later told me the speech went well. After that, I had more opportunities to see him, talk with him, and answer questions. The bank also invited me back for other talks and training programs.
But it was during those succeeding runs of Make It Happen that the message began to change.
After I Speak, They Must Speak
I started asking myself a different question.
What if the participants did not only listen?
What if, after I spoke, they spoke too?
The thought became simple in my mind:
After I speak, they must speak.
I did not want them to spend the whole session listening to another motivational speaker, take a few notes, clap, and leave. I wanted them to make the message their own while we were still together.
The question was how to make that happen.
That was where the little card came from.
I created a simple activity based on the three moves in the speech. I asked participants to answer three questions.
What is your wagon?
Who are the people you want to enjoy it with, or whose lives will become better because you make it happen?
And what is the next move you are going to make?
Not ten moves. Not a long action plan. Just the next one.
At first, people were hesitant to share. Perhaps bankers were not used to standing in front of their colleagues and talking about themselves. But I was not asking them to talk about banking. I was asking about their lives.
Eventually, one person spoke.
Then another.
And after a few people shared, the room changed.
Stories began to come out. Some made people laugh. Some brought tears. People were talking about their families, their dreams, the things they had postponed, and the things they wanted to change.
At that point, I stopped trying to carry the room.
I let their stories carry it.
I became one of them. I listened, took notes, and learned.
One manager shared something that has stayed with me ever since.
She said she had always wanted to become a good mother. Yet she was busy all the time. Her work demanded much of her attention. Even Saturdays could disappear into obligations, meetings, club activities, social engagements, and all the things she had convinced herself were necessary.
She described herself, rather embarrassingly, as a social butterfly. She was everywhere.
But as she looked at her card and thought about what mattered, she saw something uncomfortable.
She was everywhere, but she was spending less time with the people she said mattered most.
Her family.
She began talking about the things she could let go. There were meetings she did not really have to attend. Social activities that could take less space in her life. She could spend more time with her daughter, perhaps go to the mall or salon together. She could sit with her son while he worked on school assignments. They could go to church together.
None of these were massive actions.
They were ordinary things.
But they mattered.
And as she spoke, I realized that her story was also speaking to me.
I Was Making Too Many Things Happen
At that time, I believed strongly in hustle and massive action. I was building my business. I wanted more clients and more opportunities. I believed that if I wanted something badly enough, I had to keep pushing and keep doing.
There was nothing wrong with action.
But the manager’s story forced me to look at the kind of action I was taking.
There were times I was too busy pursuing clients to spend enough time with my family. There were times I was too busy to go to church. There were many things I did because I believed they were necessary for success, but looking back, some of them were not nearly as important as I made them out to be.
That was uncomfortable because I was the speaker telling everyone to make things happen.
Yet I was beginning to understand something I had not understood when I created the speech:
Making things happen is not enough.
You can make many things happen and still neglect what matters.
You can fill your calendar, attend every meeting, chase every opportunity, answer every message, and stay incredibly productive while pushing the important things to the side.
That manager did not have an action problem. She was an achiever. She knew how to make things happen.
Her problem was that too many things were happening.
The real question was not, “Can you make it happen?”
The real question was, “What is worth making happen?”
The more people shared, the clearer that became.
Someone talked about going to church again. Someone talked about beginning to invest. I remember thinking there was something funny about hearing someone who worked in a bank admit that he had not really started investing for himself.
But every story had life in it.
And somewhere along the way, I noticed that the most inspiring stories in the room were no longer mine.
My speech had only started the conversation.
My story was the seed.
Then somebody shared something, and that story touched another person. Another participant remembered something from his own life and shared again. The message began moving from one person to another.
People stopped looking at the speaker.
They started looking at themselves.
That changed my understanding of what a motivational speech could do.
I no longer wanted people to leave thinking, “Jef gave a great speech.”
I wanted them to leave asking, “What matters to me? Who matters to me? What have I been neglecting? What is the next move I can make?”
After everyone shared, I looked at the notes I had been taking and gave another short presentation. Maybe three minutes. I do not remember every word, but I remember the heart of it.
You can make it happen.
Just do it one step at a time.
Looking back, I can see another part of my philosophy beginning to form there.
I did not ask people for a thousand steps.
I asked for one.
From Make It Happen to Make What Matters Happen
Over time, Make It Happen became Make What Matters Happen.
It was a small change in wording, but it was a big change in thinking.
The word what mattered.
Because the goal was not to become better at making more things happen. Most of us already know how to become busy. Many successful people are extremely good at filling their days.
The harder work is deciding what deserves our time.
Looking back, I could see that the original three moves were already pointing toward this.
Hitch your wagon to a star was really saying: Know what matters.
Choose something worth pursuing. Decide what deserves your attention, your effort, and your life.
Dedicate it to people you love was saying: Connect what matters to people.
Who benefits when this happens? Whose life becomes better because you do this work? Who are you doing this for?
And take action remained important, but I began to understand action differently.
It was no longer about doing as much as possible.
It was about making the next meaningful move.
That little card had already been teaching me this. I did not ask the participants to create twenty steps.
I asked for one.
One thing they could do.
One thing they could begin.
One thing they could make real.
What Happens After the Speech?
There was another lesson I had been carrying long before I started speaking to companies.
When I was in the seminary, I used to give retreats. I knew how powerful those experiences could be. Students would cry after a talk. They would make promises and commitments. They would say they were going to change.
And sometimes they did.
But we also knew the story that happened too often.
They went home.
Life returned.
The emotion faded.
The promises that felt so powerful during the retreat became harder to remember in ordinary life.
Later, I saw the same thing in training rooms. Participants would say they had learned something. They enjoyed the program. They understood the ideas.
But I came to believe that learning is not proven by what someone says at the end of a workshop.
If behavior does not change, learning has not fully happened.
That thinking eventually became part of my own approach to designing learning experiences. People must see something, understand something, shift their thinking, and then act. Something has to move from the room into daily practice.
The same is true of a motivational speech.
A speaker can lift a room for forty-five minutes.
People can laugh, cry, clap, and leave inspired.
The participants in those bank sessions certainly did. They left smiling. Their spirits seemed lighter. They looked eager to do something. I was later told that the evaluations were almost perfect. There were some complaints about the food, but apparently even inspiration has limits.
Still, an excellent evaluation is not the same thing as change.
The harder question is what happens tomorrow.
What happens when people return to the same workplace, the same boss, the same commute, the same family problems, the same responsibilities, and the same distractions?
What happens when they no longer remember my voice?
What happens when they forget the three points of the speech?
That question eventually brought me to the last part of the message.
Every Day Begins With Today
Make What Matters Happen was clearer than Make It Happen, but something was still missing.
What matters cannot live only in a five-year plan.
It cannot live only in a vision statement, an annual planning session, a retreat, or a keynote speech.
It has to enter ordinary life.
It has to enter Monday.
Tuesday.
Wednesday.
The days when we are tired. The days when things do not go according to plan. The days when nobody is applauding us.
That is why the message eventually became:
Make What Matters Happen Every Day.
But I also know that “every day” can sound like a very big promise.
So I prefer to bring it closer.
Today.
What matters today?
And what is one thing you can do today to move it forward?
Once that is done, you can ask again.
What is the next meaningful thing I can do today?
This is not hustle.
It is almost the opposite.
Hustle asks, “How much can I do?”
This question asks, “What deserves to be done?”
What matters will be different for every person.
A business owner may define it through revenue, employees, customers, or the products and services being created for the world.
A parent may define it through the kind of father or mother he or she wants to become.
A doctor will answer differently.
So will a priest.
A manager.
A teacher.
A student.
You have to define what matters for yourself.
But I think most of us recognize it when we are honest. It is something that gives meaning to our lives. Sometimes it makes our hearts jump with joy. Sometimes it is tiring and difficult, but we continue because we know why it deserves our effort.
Once you know what that is, you do not need to change your whole life today.
You need one meaningful move.
Then another.
And then, tomorrow, you ask again.
The Speech Is Only the Beginning
When I look back at those bank sessions in 2011, I see more than the beginning of a speaking engagement.
I see the beginning of an idea that kept changing as I changed.
The president taught me that a speech can travel.
The participants taught me that a speech can start a conversation bigger than the speaker.
The manager who wanted to spend more time with her children taught me that being busy is not the same as doing what matters.
And the little card taught me that people do not always need a bigger plan.
Sometimes they need one meaningful move.
I walked into that first hotel room thinking my job was to inspire people to make things happen.
Over time, I came to believe that the job is more demanding than that.
A good motivational speech should help people see something more clearly. It should help them recognize what matters. It should start a conversation that continues after the speaker leaves. And somewhere along the way, it should help a person decide what to do next.
That is the message I carry now:
Make What Matters Happen Every Day.
But every day begins somewhere.
It begins with today.
So perhaps the better question is not:
“What am I going to accomplish someday?”
Ask instead:
What matters to me now?
Who will be better because I make it happen?
And what is one meaningful thing I can do about it today?
Then do that.
And when it is done, ask again.