Creating a Speech Part 4

Howdy. Snowing here in Colorado. No one predicted it, but woke up to 8 inches on my car. No big deal, spring snows don't last long here.

So why am I talking about speaking anyway. Simple. Once you can do it, there is a huge market of places hungry for speakers and you get great, awesome publicity. It is one of the single most powerful ways to promote your business. And you can learn to speak! If I could learn, you can learn.

So, your material. Here are my suggestions, in no particular order. Take a stand. Be controversial. Use humor as much as you can. Involve the audience. Use live demos if you can. Use your agenda to keep yourself on track. If you are using PowerPoint or something similar, use it sparingly, the most boring presentations I have ever attended were all driven by PowerPoint. Use lots of emotion...be big and broad and not afraid to be loud. Some people won't like you, but most will and those are the ones that you care about. Finally, walk out into the audience...people will like you for it.

I am not spending lots of time on your material. You will need less of it than you imagine and by no means should you attempt to memorize a speech in its entirety. This is a complete waste of time. Create talking points, that you know lots about, put them on easel sheets in the front and back of the room and just look at the talking points and talk!

Bye for now...Jack