How to Prepare for A Major Speech You Must give In the Next 24 Hours
This last week has been a whirlwind for us as we spent 4 days at the International Coaches Federation Conference as exhibitors. There were 1,600 coaches attending from 30 or more countries. We talked to lots of coaches who were interested in learning how to grow their business and income though speaking.
Here I am in front of our new banner. And it really worked. People actually stopped and read it and asked for more information.
Here are a few friends and clients that stopped by to say hello.
This is Otto Siegel
This is Lorenda Phillips
We left the ICF Conference and shot 15 speakers on Sunday at the Video Demo Showcase. Here’s a photo of Angie Milhous (not a very good photo) and you see her in front of the audience.
This weekend we are doing the Authors’ SpeakEasy Workshop and then it is my birthday. I am going to the Oaks in Ojai, CA for a well deserved rest.
Oh, I forgot to mention the Speakers’ Community membership site is up and running and our first teleclass in November 12, with 2 time author and speaker Chellie Campbell who will be talking about how to create a 6 figure income by sitting at home.
You can join us for the teleclass if you join the Speakers’ Community. It’s free for 60 days until the end of the year. Not only that you can post your listing in the Community Directory.
Here’s TJ Walker weighing in on How to Prepare for A Major Speech You Must give In the Next 24 Hours
On no! You have to give a big speech on major trends facing your business and industry to a large group of important people tomorrow! In less than 24 hours! And you haven’t started preparing yet.
What do you do?
Step one. Spend one hour with a colleague or two brainstorming major themes and ideas you’d like to discuss. Try to write down as many themes as you can in one sentence or less. Don’t debate these themes and don’t flesh them out. Don’t analyze or criticize. Just blurt out and write down as many interesting ideas you can think of that relate to your area of expertise and that would also be of interest to your audience.
Step two. After the first hour, stop brainstorming and start analyzing your themes. Scratch off ideas that are boring. Remove topics that have already received lots of news coverage. Eliminate glaringly obvious points. Strike off messages you have mixed feelings about. You may have started with 20 or even 30 message points. But don’t stop this process until you’ve narrowed your messages down to five. Limit yourself to 45 minutes here.
Step three. Write your five messages down in bullet points on a single sheet of paper. Next, say your messages out loud. How does it feel? Don’t worry about wording yet; you’re just looking for a broad architecture for you speech at this point.
Step four. Write down one concrete example for each message point and create a new outline with these examples.
Step five. Stand up and give your speech (preferably while being videotaped). At this point, your speech might be short (5 to 10 minutes), that’s OK. Don’t worry about length yet.
Step six. Either review the tape or get feedback from colleagues. Focus only on what you like at this point. What examples stood out that were interesting and memorable?
Step seven. Now, and only now, begin to think about time/length of your speech. Is your speech going to be 10 minutes long or 60 minutes long? Simply insert more and more examples for each message point until you have the right amount for your total time. (FYI, you can never have too many examples if they are interesting and relevant to your audience.)
Step eight. Make sure you have a simple, clean and easy-to-read outline that is entirely on one page of paper. Make the font so large that you can read it without having to pick up the paper and hold it close to your eyes.
Step nine. Rehearse the speech one more time. You are now ready for the speech.
Step ten. Get a good night’s sleep.
This entire process (minus sleep) should only take about 4-5 hours.
Additional Tips:
- Resist the urge to add more message points.
- Resist the urge to add more numbers and facts.
- Resist the urge to revise, add, and edit PowerPoint slides.
- Resist the urge to write out your speech word-for word.
