So you've narrowed your key messages down to just five.
That's great.
But we can't just tell people, here are my five messages, gotta go after 30 seconds.
It doesn't work like that.
You've got to do everything you can, in the time you have with your speech or
your presentation, to make those messages not only understood, but remembered.
Now, let me tell you a little secret here.
Now I say it's a secret, every book on public speaking says this and
yet nobody ever does it.
So somehow, it's a basic concept that doesn't sink through.
You need to have a story for every one of your message points.
The biggest difference between great speakers and
awful ones and average ones is that great speakers have a story
to flesh out every single message point they have.
It's not a luxury, it's not just to open the speech, it's not the close,
it's not to be funny.
It's to illustrate the point so the audience can remember it.
Now, here's the other big fact of life.
Every, and I mean every single client I have, who's awful, who's boring,
who just does a data dump, or who's just average, they never use stories.
They just go in a straightforward way, here's a fact,
here's a bullet point, here's a number.
It's straightforward, factual stuff, and it's awful, nobody remembers it.
And it's not interesting.
Now, there's a lot of confusion about stories.
People tell me all the time, well TJ, I love stories but
I'm not a natural storyteller.
Or I'm in finance and I'm just giving the numbers, or
I'm giving a purely technical speech.
Well, let me disabuse you of those notions right now.
There is no such thing as a financial speech or a technical speech or
a PowerPoint speech,
those are all just silly concepts we have in our head when we're giving speeches.
There's only two types of speeches in the entire world.
You know what they are?
That's right, it's either good or it's bad, from the standpoint of the audience.
When you are in the audience, you're not thinking, wow,
I sure am glad this person is giving me a formal presentation, or
this sure is a good financial presentation.
No, that's not what you're thinking of.
The only thing you're thinking of when you're in the audience is, this is good,
it's interesting, it's useful, I'm going to pay attention.
Or this guy is awful, it's boring, it's tedious,
I'll look at the PowerPoint later.
Meanwhile, let me check up on email from the office.
That's the only thing going on in the minds of your audience.
So great speakers adapt to the mindset of their audience.
Now that's what you've gotta do.
So you've gotta figure out what are the ideas you're trying to communicate?
And now, how can you use every tool to make it come alive?
And the number one tool that you have at your disposal is a story.
Now, a story doesn't have to be funny.
It doesn't have to be overly emotional.
The only thing is story is is you recounting a real conversation
you had with a real person about a real problem in a real place.
What was said, what that person said to you, what you said back,
how it was resolved, and how you felt about it.
That's it, that's all there is to it.
All of us tell stories all the time.
You're stopping off on the way home and you fill up with gas and
someone cuts you off and curses at you.
You don't then go home and tell your spouse, at 5:22 I left the office,
at 5:32 I pulled into a gas station, at 5:33, there was a minor altercation and
unpleasantries were exchanged, at 5:44, I left.
I mean, that's kind of how most people give speeches.
Boring, straightforward, fact, fact.
You're going to say to your spouse, I can't believe what happened to me today.
I was pulling into the Exxon, and this guy comes in honking, honking.
I'm looking around, he's like, get out of my way, buddy.
And he proceeded to take the gas pump and put it in as if he owned the place.
I mean, that's how human beings talk.
You might not drive a car, but I think you get my point.
All human beings tell stories all day long.
Now, what's different about a speech is people tell themselves,
I'm now giving a formal presentation.
Let me push away all the stories and just stick to the facts and be concise.
Let me tell you right now, your goal in giving a speech is never,
and I mean never to be concise.
Your goal is to communicate.
You can be concise, stand up, sit down after 30 seconds,
nobody remembered anything you said, you've accomplished absolutely nothing.
But maybe you speak for 20 minutes, 30, maybe 3 hours,
if you're giving people good value, if you're really helping them.
If you're doing something to make their lives better, their jobs better,
their bottom line better, they'll listen to you for a long time.
Now, I'm not saying just go on and on for three hours.
But your focus should be on making your ideas remembered and
making sure you have useful ideas.
Not simply being concise, that is a false goal that many, many speakers have.