Today I has the honor of presenting the breakfast keynote at the International Associate of Venue Managers Region IV Conference in Boise, Idaho.

I juggled, balanced, and told my story of failure after failure. I didn’t let failure define me, however, and each time I failed I bounced back and learned from my mistakes.

I closed the presentation by making a live Guinness World Record attempt on stage. It’s always a bit risky to try a GWR live, but I decided to go for it after a few months of practice.

The record was for longest duration juggling whilst standing on a Swiss ball. I’ll admit, standing on the Swiss ball doesn’t make the juggling much harder. Juggling, however, makes balancing on a Swiss ball MUCH more difficult. I was shocked how difficult learning to balance on a Swiss ball was compared to the balance board or unicycle. The first time I tried getting on the Swiss ball I just about broke my toe falling off. Today, it took me 3 tries to even get on it.

The previous time to beat was 7-minutes 30 seconds. I made it 10 minutes 51 seconds before my feet got so sweaty they slipped off and the attempt was over.

For the first 7 and a half minutes, you could hear a pin drop. After I broke the record I opened it up for Q&A and was able to take my mind off the pain in my feet muscles by answering questions from the audience.