I help edit SPEAKER Magazine for the National Speakers Association (NSA). Each month I curate the Relevant Resources column – a list of time-saving tools and technologies.

The January/February edition lists books recommended by NSA members as inspiration for the New Year.

Go Ahead and Laugh: A Serious Guide to Speaking with Humor, by Rich Hopkins

Having trouble finding your funny bone? Go Ahead and Laugh takes a unique approach to understanding how to add humor to any speech and enhance your message. Hopkins provides a step-by-step breakdown of 11 different speeches, along with a few bonuses, to get your audiences laughing. If you want to be funnier, implement techniques to make your speeches more effective, or just see great examples of humor in action, this book is perfect.

The Seven Basic Plots: Why We Tell Stories, by Christopher Booker

People spend a phenomenal amount of time listening to stories, and we respond strongly to well-told stories. This monumental 720-page book reveals the seven basic plots latent in the minds of any audience. Knowing these archetypes and how they operate, allows speakers to craft presentations that spur action.

World Wide Rave, by David Meerman Scott

Jam-packed with brilliant insights and practical ways to propel a brand world-wide. Check out this book if you’re looking for the latest approaches to help clients or audiences powerfully position or expand their branding presence in the marketplace. Scott shows you how to use new media/social media to build a “rave” following by applying his six dynamic “Rules of the Rave.”

The Millionaire Messenger, by Brendon Burchard

Want to uncover the strategies successful people use to position themselves as experts? Burchard’s advice is especially important to professional speakers, as he covers how to package your message, deliver value to your audience, and build a profitable business as an industry expert. His story resonates with new and veteran speakers, and he provides invaluable suggestions to help you get ahead in today’s competitive marketplace.

The Back of the Napkin: Solving Problems and Selling Ideas with Pictures, by Dan Roam

Can drawing on a humble napkin be just as powerful as or more powerful than using PowerPoint slides to communicate your ideas? This visual thinking is a great tool for working though complex business ideas and brainstorming to help you think outside the box. In his book, Roam demonstrates that everyone is born with a talent for visual thinking, even those who swear they can’t draw.

Resonate: Present Visual Stories that Transform Audiences, by Nancy Duarte

Nancy Duarte wrote Slide:ology and became the Queen of PowerPoint. In her latest book, Resonate, she explains how to understand audiences, create persuasive content and structure a talk before firing up PowerPoint. By leveraging techniques typically reserved for cinema and literature, you’ll learn how to transform an ordinary presentation into an engaging journey. Check out her unique analysis of presentations using ‘Sparklines’ and see how you measure up.

On Apology, by Aaron Lazare

Popes, politicians, powerful executives, professional speakers–we all need to be fluent in the most graceful and profound of all human exchanges; a genuine apology. Lazare analyzes apologies—both effective and ineffective—and explores how a sincere apology can heal and serve “not an end but a new beginning.” On Apology includes insightful stories from people around the world, current events, literature and history.

Get Rich Click! The Ultimate Guide to Making Money on the Internet, by Marc Ostrofsky

This book will change how people think about the role of the Internet in business and how to make a profit online. Ostrofsky introduces readers to the reality of online business and offers tools to succeed. Some action items are easy as double-checking how your website is structured; others involve big-picture strategy. Get Rich Click! covers everything from saving money to making money with your social media efforts, AdWords, SEO, affiliate marketing, mobile apps and Internet video.

You can subscribe to SPEAKER magazine on the NSA website.

I’ve just come across Alexei Kapterev’s 2007 slideshare presentation that has attracted over a million hits. Take a look:

Kapterev will be presenting on February 23, 2012 at the UK Speechwriters’ Guild London Spring Conference.

They say to never judge a book by its cover. One can only hope that Sam Leith’s book on rhetoric, You Talkin’ to Me, rises above the graphic design disaster of its open-mouthed, red-lipped cover. It richly deserves to.

Leith’s book is, in fact, a magnificently entertaining romp through the intricacies of classic rhetorical technique from Aristotle to Obama. He traces the art of persuasion from its ancient origins to the modern world. Rhetoric is all around us. And Leith cleverly explains how the nuts and bolts of rhetoric work in speeches from Cicero, to Elizabeth I to Richard Nixon and Obama.

Rhetoric is language at play; language plus. It is what persuades and cajoles, inspires and bamboozles, thrills and misdirects. It causes criminals to be convicted and then frees those criminals on appeal. It causes governments to rise and fall, best men to be ever after shunned by their friends’ brides and perfectly sensible adults to march with steady purpose towards machine guns.

He thoroughly examines the technical language of rhetoric, explaining terms such as auxesis (“a generalized term for cranking things up, the use of inflated language”), paralipsis (“discussing material in a speech while pretending you’re not going to talk about it”) and tmesis (“sticking a word or phrase into the middle of another word. Do people really do that? Abso-fackin’-lutely!”).

The book is structured around the classical subdivisions of rhetoric. First, the five aspects of rhetoric – invention, arrangement, style, memory and delivery. Then, the three branches of oratory: the deliberative or legislative (an appeal to action), the judicial (dealing with questions of justice) and the epideictic (speeches of praise and blame).

Unexpected comparisons

But the genius of the book, where it rises far above the abysmal cover art, is the irreverent and humorous range of examples he calls on to illustrate rhetoric in action. Sure, he trots out the usual cast of characters found in most of the books on speechwriting: Churchill, Martin Luther King, Cicero, and Lincoln. But I know of no other book on the subject which applies equal rigor to a rhetorical analysis of eight-year-old Eric Cartman’s song “Kyle’s Mom’s a Bitch” from South Park. Or compares the speaking abilities of Satan in Milton’s Paradise Lost with the Devil’s “rhetorical chops” in the Peter Cook and Dudley Moore movie Bedazzled.

Time and again he makes rhetoric come alive in our world. Consider ethos:

From the school playground to the battlefield, from the mean streets of South Central Los Angeles to the annual conference of the Confederation of British Industry, who you are is the first thing you need to establish if you intend to be heard.

Indeed, who would expect Jennifer Lopez’s appeal to ethos as “I’m still Jenny from the block” to be compared with the opening Adolf Hitler’s speech workers in Berlin “Once I stood amongst you”.

Or to have the ascending tricolon – a set of three terms, increasing in force – at the start of Mark Antony’s funeral speech in Julius Caesar (“Friends, Romans, countrymen … ”) compared with the opening chords of AC/DC’s 1980 single “Back in Black” (“a single stressed syllable, then a trochee, then a dactyl … DUM! DUH-Dum! DUH-duh-dum!”).

British rhetoric

American readers should be forewarned about the use of British idiom and references. You’ll get more out of the book if you not only know what a “fortnight ” is; but something about the reputation of the politician George Osborne, and Mandy Rice-Davies’s role in the Profumo scandal. You’ll also need to be aware of what being “saluted by a disgruntled van driver on the Hangar Lane Gyratory” implies (Americans might say “being given the finger on the New Jersey Turnpike”).

The Unknown Speechwriter

I especially enjoyed the chapter on political speechwriters. He acknowledges Judson Welliver, the first presidential speechwriter, who served in Warren Harding’s time. He reviews Ronnie Millar’s contribution to Margaret Thatcher’s speech on becoming the first woman prime minister – showing where the politician inserted edits into the writers’ original draft. Likewise, Peggy Noonan’s work with Ronald Reagan and her battles with the policy wonks in the administration who fought against what they saw as overly poetic drafts is reviewed.

Two lessons

Two lessons from the book stand out. The first is that rhetoric needs to be matched to the occasion. Martin Luther King’s “I Have a Dream” speech used biblical texts and call and response phrasing that resonated with the largely African-American audience.

The second big point is that it is vital, in speechwriting, to get as much said as quickly as possible. Lincoln’s Gettysburg address was a mere 250 words, delivered after the main speaker, Edward Everett, had droned on for hours.

Sam Leith’s book meets his goal of showing how rhetoric is not just a dry academic subject, but “gathers in the folds of its rope everything makes us human”. As for that cover … enough said.

20 members of the Northern California Chapter of the National Speakers Association met on Saturday to debrief on the #nsa11 National Convention held July 30 – August 2 in Anaheim and share their key take-aways. We have held these meetings for a number of years, with the understanding that since only 12% of people act on what they learn conferences, the more key take-aways we can capture, the more likely we are to implement what we heard. Here’s my notes on the discussion.

1. Ken Dychtwald began his presentation by peppering us with key questions to draw us in on a personal level. These rapid-fire questions were a brilliant way to open a speech.
2. Dychtwald’s break-out session on the last day shared valuable rules to grow your speaking business:
   1. Use world-class promotional materials.
   2. Know the value of adding products like books, DVDs and seminar systems to your offerings.
   3. Understand the value of good PR and media coverage. Being featured in a magazine is priceless. Testimonials from a high-level person are worth their weight in gold.
3. Dychtwald also shared his fees (he’s not an NSA member so I guess he could do this):
   1. $50k for a talk on the West Coast.
   2. $62K elsewhere in the USA.
   3. $90K out of the country.
   Want to know what you should charge? Talk to bureaus and meeting planners about other speakers in your area with the same level of expertise.
4. The conference gave me a chance to stop comparing myself to people with 25 years experience in the industry. I let myself off the hook and realized I am now beginning to build my career to a point where I can be as spectacular as they are.
5. Terry Sjodin listed the reasons why people buy: time, money, security, fun and ease-of-use. Build your presentation around those and they’ll buy from you.
6. Sjodin explained the importance of having a courtroom style presentation. Start with an opening argument that lists the 10 most persuasive arguments or reasons they should work with you. Then give proof as evidence for that in the form of statistics and stories. Close with a compelling argument that meets the needs of your client. Then use the same arguments to create your brochures and website that are part of your brand.
7. Julie Morgenstern encouraged us to own our niche by researching the books and articles others are writing on your topic, see what’s missing and then address that. Speak to what’s not being said, then develop a unique point of view. Become the expert.
8. Morgenstern recommended we go to physical watering holes to meet CEOs to drum up business.
9. Glenna Salsbury said “No one can get ahead of you, only you can be you. So let go of who you should be, to be who you are.”
10. After 27 years in NSA, this conference made me realize that the world has changed. So I went to the conference to embrace and learn and have a great time, which I did. The best part was seeing all my old friends grandchildren’s pictures on the iPhone! I learned from Glenna that “if someone else can give your presentation, then you are not telling your story.” On the other hand, to be a little contrarian, there are people who tell our stories … and we must sue them!
11. I learned that I need to go deep in my area and own it.
12. This was my first conference and it was a learning and discovery process. I have just realized that people get paid for public speaking, now I realize they also get paid for coaching and consulting. One valuable tip I heard from somebody in the corridor was to ask potential clients “what’s keeping you up at night?”. Listen for things that are in your area of expertise then tell them “I just happen to have the program that can solve those problems.”
13. Concepts from speeches I heard that encouraged me:
    1. Content is overrated.
    2. Give the audience an experience.
    3. What do I have to offer that they can’t get from everybody else?
    4. Think big, start small.
    5. Delivery doesn’t have to be perfect to work.
14. Lessons learned:
    1. Be brief, clear and concise when messaging in today’s market.
    2. Be persuasive, creative and authentic.
    3. Be there to help people navigate the path to successful and healthy longevity.
15. Suggestions I plan to implement:
    1. Use humor in my stories.
    2. Use social media especially YouTube.
16. Kyle Maynard taught me that it’s important to get people to feel and then hone your story so the message is heard on different levels.
17. When I saw the keynote speaker lose her way in the speech on the main stage it reminded me of the importance of being able to just keep talking. This speaker ran into trouble because she memorized the speech and her actions. It was an unfortunate example of somebody who might be able to coach, but she can’t speak. Even professional speakers can benefit from attending Toastmasters regularly which trains against this very thing.
18. Ford Saeks encouraged us to break down what we do into speaking, coaching, products and know what percentage of revenue is generated from each.
19. Ford Saeks: “Common sense is a superpower.”
20. Larry Winget encouraged us to take a stand to establish credibility and show our expertise and share our opinion and frame of reference. It seems that some speakers at NSA are jealous of Larry. Certainly working with a Speakers Bureau was one of the secrets to him moving from $7,500 speeches up to the $30,000 level.
21. The biggest take away was that I should own my position on the web and especially make use of YouTube videos for viral marketing. It’s the second largest search engine that is now owned by Google.
22. This was by far the best NSA meeting I attended. I am encouraged to make my keynote more personal for the audience and use the term “we” more often. This is a shift from me just telling a story to thinking of things from the audience’s point of view. It was reinforced by Larry Winget who said we should give audiences an experience.
23. This was my first NSA conference in 15 years, and people asked me what it changed. Back then during the breaks, instead of reaching for their smart phones, people used to rush for the payphones!
24. Authenticity from the platform was key. This was my first conference and I found people were for the most part authentic and welcoming.
25. Speakers need to be in tune with the younger generation and not live on speeches they’ve been giving for the last 10 years. If you do that, you’re finished. We have to give the younger generation context that shows we know what’s going on.
26. Follow Patricia Fripp on Twitter (@PFripp) for excellent tips. Example: “Public speaking: Your stories will be more memorable when you tell them using more dialogue.”
27. It resonated for me when Kyle spoke about how he experienced hate and that Larry Winget gets death threats. I wonder how many others are afraid of speaking on minds and do what is politically correct out of fear? It’s so easy to be influenced by a lone audience member who takes pride in “being offended”. I don’t think we should let that intimidate us. The conference gave me the strength to be myself.
28. When I saw those excellent speakers on the main stage I thought that “One day I wanna be like them.” Just like young musicians listen to top bands to fuel their dreams, listening to top speakers at the conference fueled my dream.
29. People’s perception of your presentation style, business cards, social media presence and website should all be congruent. Just because a certain perception works for one group doesn’t mean you can adopt it.
30. A million-dollar speakers’ secret: Get into large corporations; leverage yourself; never leave.
31. Jeffrey Gitomer said don’t just lead by example, set the standard. Go an inch wide and a mile deep. Push the envelope and set the standard and you are no longer derivative. That’s where the gold is. It doesn’t happen overnight, but now I’ve got something to shoot for.
32. Jeffrey Gitomer told us to write every day. He said writing is wealth. If you’re not a writer, you’re not a speaker.
33. Brian Tracy said we cannot achieve unless we “resolve to pay the price”. That resonated with me. It takes a lot of work and a lot of practice. So beware of NSA members who glom onto and prey on the new speaker. Anyone who promises to shorten the route to success should be treated with the utmost suspicion. I really would like national to do something to alert us to these people.
34. I enjoyed the fact that Randy Gage who was so controversial in his own keynote a few years ago was the chair of this conference. He put on a confrontational conference and it was the better for it.
35. The chapter leadership session was great with a good depth of knowledge being shared. People should know about http://nsachapterone.org which is a great resource. Likewise if you Google ‘softconference nsa’ you will find a link to the recordings of past conferences.
36. Speaking can be a lonely business and the value for the conference for me was the interesting conversations I held throughout. It’s the people you meet at the bar, in the lobby and at the health club who make these conferences worthwhile.
37. NSA members should not be dismissive of people who are newbies and might not have the initials CSP after their name. You never know who a new person at the conference is and what their background is.
38. The buddy program for VIPs was a real winner. I’ve never been embraced by an organization and the individuals in it to the extent I have at this NSA conference.
39. The humor session with Mark Mayfield helped me understand that adults remember very little of our talks and humor makes them more memorable.
40. Seeing Fripp’s computer die at the Cavett Institute was a valuable lesson in how to handle equipment failure. She’s a real pro and did not let the lack of PowerPoint phase her.
41. My blog was clogged before the conference but now I understand I can be a curator and an interpreter of information.
42. Simon Mainwaring from Australia spoke about social media and storytelling. He had three lessons:
    1. Get the right mindset.
    2. Be a chief celebrant and don’t try to be a celebrity. The former has enthusiasm and engagement around the topic.
    3. Get Fan Action versus fan acquisition.
    4. Always have “How-manship” vs. “Show-manship”. Always show how.
43. I loved the Monday night music jam session in the lobby. Sitting in and playing with strangers was great. Who knew that Max Dixon played such a great keyboard?
44. Karpowitz said “The audience pays you for what you’ve survived, all your experiences in life .”
45. Lisa Sasevich shared valuable information on how to go from a free-speech to monetizing it. She showed us how to sell from the platform without appearing to. Give a free speech but structure it in such a way that they buy into the transformation offered by your system. Give them a whole piece of your program and then reference the rest of it. She is a classic information marketer. Like Ford Saeks who also has a price point for everyone in the audience. She also handled a power outage with her projector very well.
46. Lisa Jimenez said that “boldness gets rewarded.”
47. Les Brown: “courage is the willingness to act in spite of fear”.
48. Lou Heckler: “always ask who is speaking before you.” In fact it’s best practice to arrive a day earlier to conference so that you can listen to presentations preceding yours and do callbacks to them. Meeting planners respect speakers who arrive early.
49. Lois Creamer spoke at the Consultants PEG and recommended setting up committees of people who can review and comment on your blog.
50. Brendan Burchard stimulated me to think differently about social media. I have already written 52 tweets to send out on a weekly basis for the next year.

Speechwriters are the coming thing. In fact, this is a profession that is more talked about, and more written about, than ever.

Want proof?

According to the Google Ngrams database of millions of terms from their vast collection of digitized books in American English, “speechwriter” is an increasingly common word. Here’s the results for the the period 1950 to 2008:

(Click here to enlarge.)

I’ve just spent four intense days attending my 7th National Speakers Association (NSA) convention, held July 30 – August 2nd in Anaheim, California. Over 1,500 attendees heard from some of the world’s top world’s professional speakers in an event themed Influence ’11. Fellow NSA Northern California member Susan RoAne wrote on Facebook: “In my 27 years as a member of NSA, I have never been so awestruck/enamored by any of our events like I am about Influence 11.”

I agree.

This conference featured the best of the best — professional speakers who communicate their message with authenticity and passion. As happens when watching a professional in any field, they made what they do seem sooo easy. Nothing could be further from the truth.

The one session that stood out for me was Nido Qubein‘s panel on Crafting a Killer Keynote. It featured four speakers who had presented earlier in the conference discussing “how the sausage was made” — masterful presenters sharing their secrets. We heard from:

• Ken Dychtwald — How The Age Wave is Transforming Our Lives, Our World and Our Profession
• Lou Heckler — How Do You Catch Success?
• Kyle Maynard — Passion for the Platform
• Glenna Salsbury — The Essence of Presence … How to Harness the Authentic You
  

Here’s what they shared:

Crafting a speech with impact

Nido Qubein stated that great speakers ask themselves how their talk makes an audience feel, recognizing it’s not just what they say, but how they say it. Style is an important as substance. Nido reminded us that a fine diamond tossed on the floor inside a crumpled McDonald’s bag would be ignored; a semi-precious stone gift-wrapped with a bow is appreciated.

For a speech to have impact, it must:

• Convey specific information that the audience finds useful
• Use metaphor to convey meaning
• Redefine reality and engender hope

Speak from the heart, not just the head

Glenna Salsbury’s 45 minute keynote speech included 25 stories, each making a point that the audience can apply in their own lives. She keeps a file of stories to consult when writing a new speech. Glenna also speaks from the heart and soul, not only the head. “Talking to the head of the audience won’t transform them. People don’t just want information.” A speaker needs to love each audience member individually, from the heart.

Communicate on multiple levels to involve an audience

Ken Dychtwald communicates on three levels:

• At the level of the content of the talk
• What the audience will think about the content
• What he wants to alter in them, forever

When preparing a speech, Dychtwald is crystal-clear about the point he’s making. He triangulates this after each speech by asking audience members in private what they thought the talk was about, refining his message for the future if there’s any discrepancy between his goals and their perceptions. He’s focused on the audience’s reception of his transmission—always looking for creative ways to “get inside the heads” of the audience and move their perception.

His presentation style makes masterful use of the pause. This is one way he “tunes” the audience to a pace and rhythm that makes people receptive to his message. If speakers deliver a talk at a uniform pace and rhythm they “become invisible”. He believes that the more involved the audience is, the better. His talk, unusually for NSA, made extensive use of multi-media PowerPoint and video. He invests in creative design help to structure images and colors for maximum impact.

He acknowledges the difficulty of effective storytelling and takes theater workshop classes to improve his ability. A speech without stories is “terrible”.

Great speechwriters leave space for serendipity

Lou Heckler (gotta love that name for a person in public speaking!) “plays a character called Lou Heckler when I’m up on stage”. He speaks as if talking to one person: his wife of 30+ years.

Incredibly, Lou spent seven months working on his 45 minute keynote. He first thought of the theme of the catcher in a baseball game in December. By January he had ordered an LA Angels baseball outfit with his name on the back to wear when he presented. He used Google to locate relevant baseball quotes and by mid-June had the speech outline almost completed. At this point he deliberately left some “air” in the speech for anything that might occur closer to the event.

Sure enough, the Angels threw a no hitter for the first time in many years a few days before the speech and the pitcher, Ervin Santana, “…credited defensive specialist catcher Bobby Wilson — he and Wilson were on the same page, Santana said — and added that he was hitting his spots and staying ahead in the count.” Heckler was able to incorporate this late-breaking news about the importance of the catcher into his speech.

Wrapping up

Multiple speakers acknowledged importance of the conclusion to a speech. Dychtwald claimed he gets more accomplished in the last 60 seconds of a speech than in the first 30 minutes. “The audience are with me, everything I say hits home.”

Nido had the last word: “What’s so interesting about this convention is that we’ve heard from so many types of speakers.”

Look for recordings of the keynote sessions and breakouts from the conference, including the Nido Qubein panel, the keynotes delivered by each of the panelists and the Ken Dychtwald workshop on Lessons from 35 Years on the Front Lines: Maximizing Your Success as a Professional Speaker (from which some of the content above was taken) to be available here in the near future.

An interview with playwright David Mamet in the Weekend FT has a useful discussion on the challenges of compelling writing:

I take the opportunity of having this master craftsman in front of me to ask about writing. He commences by defining where others go wrong. “Anyone can write five people trapped in a snowstorm. The question is how you get them into the snowstorm. It’s hard to write a good play because it’s hard to structure a plot. If you can think of it off the top of your head, so can the audience. To think of a plot that is, as Aristotle says, surprising and yet inevitable, is a lot, lot, lot of work.”

So what is the basis of drama? Mamet gazes at me blankly as if the question is naive, then elucidates in one long sentence. “The basis of drama is … is the struggle of the hero towards a specific goal at the end of which he realises that what kept him from it was, in the lesser drama, civilisation and, in the great drama, the discovery of something that he did not set out to discover but which can be seen retrospectively as inevitable. The example Aristotle uses, of course, is Oedipus.”

Indeed, there are certain truths which speechwriters can heed to maximize the dramatic impact of a talk:

• Good theater “shows” rather than “tells” an audience.
• The audience can envisage themselves within the story.
• A dramatic story is not just based on character and personality, but on plot. Aristotle defined this as the “arrangement of incidents” and the way these are presented to the audience is the structure of the play (or speech).
• The speech must have a beginning, middle and end: an inciting moment, climax and resolution.

There’s a lot more about the importance of plot applied to corporate presentations in Nancy Duarte’s book Resonate.

The Financial Times marks the 400th anniversary of the publication of the King James Bible, in May 1611, with a review of a wide range of books on the topic.

This King James Bible is clearly, to date, the most read book in the English language. It was translated from prior Latin, Greek and Hebrew versions by a committee of scholars meeting in London.

What I find remarkable is the impact of language of this version of the Bible on common English. Phrases which originated in the King James translation include:

• apple of his eye
• clear as crystal
• how are the mighty fallen
• fat of the land
• fell flat on his face
• fly in the ointment
• lick the dust
• man after his own heart
• rise and shine
• rod of iron
• signs of the times
• sour grapes
• sweat of his brow
• wheels within wheels

Public speakers from the 17th to mid-20th Century drew on people’s intimate familiarity with the King James Bible and similar sources (Shakespeare’s plays, hymns) to create a bond through commonly accepted touchstones that matched their assumptions with those of their audience. Modern speechwriters, lacking audiences who would respond to overt Biblical references, nevertheless might find some of the phrases listed resonate unconsciously as they echo down the centuries.

The National Speakers Association of Northern California March Meeting

Saturday’s meeting of the Northern California Chapter of the National Speakers Association was one of the most valuable and informative meetings I have attended in the last five years. There were three of my Cisco communications colleagues in the room, all furiously taking notes. If we collectively implement just 10% of the tips and tricks shared by the two speakers, executive communications at our company might never be the same again.

Sticky Content – How to use Extreme Platform, Interactive, and Visual Techniques to be Massively Memorable, with Brian Walter, CSP

Brian is a “corporate humorist” with a unique blend of communications expertise. Over a 25+ year career, he’s been an advertising director, marketing & sales director, radio & TV commercial producer, copywriter, communications manager, presentation coach, video producer, management trainer, consultant and professional speaker. He’s even a Guinness Book of World Records holder for producing the world’s shortest TV commercial. Brian has earned the elite Certified Speaking Professional (CSP) from the National Speakers Association, and is a member of Meeting Professionals International.

Brian’s business is called Extreme Meetings. He provides customized “infotainment” to make meetings memorable. Brian has presented to audiences ranging from 7 to 7,000. His clients have included Starbucks, Microsoft, Costco, Pepsico, AAA, Payless, Verizon Wireless, several banks that are no longer in existence, the Social Security Administration, a regional office of the IRS…and a dairy company best known for awesome chocolate milk.

Brian shared a humongous list of tips tricks and tested techniques for engaging audiences and taking your speech from ordinary to extraordinary.

E-Ticket Ride Moments

Back in the day, Disneyland famously offered top-priced E-ticket rides.

These were the Matterhorn, the Pirates of the Caribbean – the best in the Park, the ones you told your friends about the next day. They were the exciting rides, the ones where something happened. For your speech to have impact, it must either be perfect (difficult to achieve time in and time out), or it must have built-in production values which guarantee the audience will remember what you said. In other words, it must have a few E-Ticket moments (but not too many to be overwhelming). These are the moments when the presentation goes beyond the facts and figures, the basic information, the data that make up most corporate content. Instead look for interaction; movement; unique visuals; music; costumes; video; sound effects; SFX; risk; props; volume; placement; and spectacle.

Carefully craft those memorable moments that would be included in a movie trailer about your presentation. Ask yourself, would a trailer advertising your speech feature your talking head all the time (nah!), or would it feature the moments when things happen – when you bring the guy on stage; throw something into the audience; show a video or even risk wheeling in a pallet of dollar bills to illustrate a sales goal that has been achieved?

People want content, but they want sizzle too. Brian suggests there’s a false dichotomy between the two. He offers a blend he calls “contizzle”.

How to give your speech impact

Make it:

Gettable: Most presentations are larded with too much information. Give them the data but make sure they also get the point in a memorable way. You want that “Scooby Doo” moment, when the audience tilt their heads and think “Woo-Hoo”.

Emotional: Hook into their feelings. People’s decisions are based on emotion. Understand they are not looking for two more bullet points before they will be convinced about your argument. You need your idea to go “verbally viral”, to be an idea that can be shared. Imagine what they might say to their significant other when they return home from your meeting. They’re not going to mention the fifth bullet point on the fourth slide, are they, Mr. or Ms. Exec-Comms Manager? No, they’ll summarize it in one to two sentences, sentences about what hit them at an emotional level. So why not sweat the detail on that, with as much energy and attention as you do on making sure every speed and feed is included.

Actionable: offer them a realistic next step to take after the talk ends.

Bottom line: Brian offered two ways to make a talk stick. Firstly through engaging in extreme interaction with the audience; secondly by creating mini brands for the content (as he does with the following branded techniques).

Extreme Audience Interaction

In the richest and most expansive part of his presentation, Brian offered a range of ways in which you can ask for volunteers from a live audience to participate in your talk. All avoid the whining, begging, pleading tone, that some presenters are forced to adopt with a reluctant audience, as their credibility leaks from the soles of their shoes into the floor of the podium.

My one regret is that few of these techniques are applicable to the increasingly popular world of virtual meetings. It’s a shame that some companies have lost sight of the value of that aspect of the rich tapestry of human experience that allows for these opportunities for emotional connection between the presenter and the audience; tolerating meetings where every presenter is reduced to the two-dimensional window in the remote viewer’s computer screen. What price flesh and blood and human emotion in a virtual world?

Asking for Volunteers – the Brian Walter Way

The first rule is do not ever, ever, ever embarrass people. Protect their dignity. But this doesn’t mean being boringly politically correct. It’s interesting to your audience the extent you allow your volunteers to seem to be at risk.

So how do you put people in a risky situation in front of their peers, and have their permission to embarrass them in a way that will allow everyone else in the audience to feel that vicarious thrill that comes with watching a colleague twist in the wind, out on a limb, wondering if they will make it or fake it?

Here’s how.

• Bribe them. Offer $20 for someone to come up on stage (or $50 for senior management) and you’ve got instant permission to ask them to do or say anything that might make them look the fool, because they want you to show them the money. Believe Brian when he says that this works every time. Can’t afford the money if you want a lot of interaction? Simple. Offer Starbucks gift cards for a “mystery amount” (they won’t know they’re only worth $5 until long after you’ve left the auditorium).
• Set them up. Acknowledge that this will be an embarrassing situation on stage and ask for everyone’s permission to play along. Again, this works.
• Volunteer ball. Toss a small ball into the audience. Whoever catches it can either be the volunteer, or more likely gets to choose the person to their left or right. Brian spent time explaining how this simple act engages the whole audience on both sides of the aisle emotionally – from those who are immediately relieved the ball is not coming over to their side of the room; to those in the rows immediately before and behind the person who catches it and have that moment of anxiety that it might hit them; to the delight on the face of the guy or gal who gets to point the finger at their colleague who will now go up on stage.
• Choose the pointer. Whoever you point to in the audience to volunteer is given a reprieve. They get to choose the person who must step up. This is especially effective when you have chosen somebody who emphatically shakes their head that they will not volunteer. Congratulations! You now tell me who should come up on stage. Watch the emotion on their face change instantly.

Putting more action in interaction

Each one of these interaction techniques was worth the price of admission for the day. Each showcased Brian’s real expertise at creating extreme meetings. While he freely admits he does not own these techniques, and we can borrow them for our own events, it’s a rare presenter who would have the skill to successfully implement them the first time they were tried with an audience. But, hey, nothing ventured, nothing gained.

• Be a poser. Ask questions. So, what is this? Who said that? No matter what the response your answer is You are right. For example, rather than playing it the way the boring SME would, show the audience this graphic:

  

  and simply ask So what is that?

  Someone in the audience will probably venture that it’s Maslow’s hierarchy of needs, or perhaps Pavlov’s hierarchy of needs. No matter what, congratulate them, affirm that it is Maslow’s, and move on. You’ve just rewarded somebody in the audience emotionally, making them a partner in the transfer of information in a far more effective way than the typical engineering product manager would. Use the same technique to ask people to guess percentages or numbers. Encourage the audience to shout out numbers and correct them as they over- or under-shoot.

• Be a big poser. Don’t be afraid to ask hard or obscure questions. If you want someone to guess where Starbucks got its name from, begin by asking are there any English majors in the room? Someone might guess that the name comes from Moby Dick. If not, you can start giving hints until the audience realizes what you’re asking for.
• One-on-ones. Here’s an opportunity to move into the audience to create dramatic energy. Don’t just randomly wander into an audience like some are known to do. Be intentional. Approach someone to ask a question, elicit a response, engage them in a conversation. This breaks the rules most presenters adhere to. Make that one person your new BFF. They become the go-to person for the rest of your presentation. Everyone will be rooting for you as you shine the glow of attention on them in front of the audience.
• Shout outs. Have a group shout out responses to questions you pose. Don’t be afraid of a little chaos and more noise in the auditorium that most presenters tolerate. It’s all good emotional connection.
• Two truths and a lie. This was the golden nugget of the whole day. Rather than trying to explain the technique take a look at this YouTube video from last summer’s National Speakers Association convention where Brian used it on stage in front of an audience of 2000 to get extreme meeting interaction. It’s an 8 minute video, filmed on a Flip camera, but stay with it, it’s worth every moment:

• Fluffy, fluffy, deep. Here’s how to humanize a senior executive with three questions. The trick is to give the executive a long list of potential questions beforehand and have them choose the three they would like to answer (give them the chance to fill in the blank, none will). Two of the three questions will be “fluffy” (warm, fuzzy ones) and one will be “deep”. For example: What is your secret guilty pleasure? What actor would you like to play you in real life? What species is your family pet? These allow the audience to see the warm fuzzy side of the executive. Follow with a single deep question: What does it take for someone to get recognition and promotion in the company today? If you could change one sales goal this quarter, what would that be? Realize that it’s easier to segue into the profound emotion from the warm fuzzy feeling that it is to land on it cold.
• Speed Interviewing. Ask people to form groups of three and give them just 45 seconds to come up with the answer to a question or suggestion. It’s a ridiculously short amount of time in which to accomplish the task. Yet it creates instant energy as people rush to get the group to hear what they have to say. It will send the energy of the room through the roof.
• Instant Actors. Here’s your chance to bring people on stage from the audience for a cameo appearance. Print out dialogue for them to read in large font ahead of time on cards, highlighting the text for each person. You now have permission to use humor and go way over the top, since people are playing characters from their world, rather than speaking their own beliefs. If you don’t want to use real people, Brian has had success with sock puppets. I’m currently a big fan of creating cartoons that convey content which would otherwise be difficult for the audience to handle.
• Point-Counterpoint. A time-tested of speaking truth to power since the glory days of the 1970s:

  Get your corporate actors to man up to this and you’ll be surprised how far even the most conservative audience will let you go with your content. Memorable won’t even begin to describe what they’ll be talking about around the water cooler the next morning.

Mini Brands

The key to a memorable talk is, as Brian has demonstrated with the mini branded interaction techniques above, to have snappy titles for all of the key concepts in your talk. This boosts retention and connects with people emotionally. Name your key points with phrases like “verbal ping-pong” instead of “the elevator pitch”. Take the time to develop a logo or icon for each and your talk will be more memorable. Brian has had success with:

• Fact or crap. Senior leaders quickly pick up on the keyword and have no problem calling something crap during the rest of the meeting. Okay, so it’s politically incorrect, but a proven and more memorable brand name than “fact or fiction”. No one will be standing up on the podium saying something is fiction, fiction, fiction the way they will use the four letter alternative. This is the power of a memorable brand versus the inanely bland.
• Do you pass the smile test? Are people in your team more likely to smile when you are coming into the room or when you are going out of it?

Introduce mini brands like this in your talk and listen as other presenters and the audience latch onto them during the rest of the conference.

To net it out, the goal of a good presentation is not to end up with a bleedingly obvious “Bad Dragon” story. That’s where the executive, engineer or subject matter expert stands up and tells people what the problem is; how their solution will make it better and help slay the Dragon; and how the organization will live happily ever after. The unfortunate reality is, that describes the vast majority of what passes for corporate communications in the Fortune 500 these days.

Build in some of Brian’s “contizzle” tricks; tell a good story with real obstacles to overcome; make sure there’s at least four or five memorable moments, and the audience will remember your message the next day and perhaps even the day after that.

What I Learned From Winning 29 Emmys That Speakers Need to Know, with Bill Stainton

Planning an event isn’t rocket science. It’s harder. You have to be the master of 1,001 details—everything from negotiating the hotel room block to deciding on the typeface for the program. After so much planning and effort, the last thing you need is a speaker who makes your attendees yawn, shrug their shoulders, and think, “Hmmm—I guess it’s going to be another one of those meetings.” A speaker like that can kill your event before it even gets off the ground.

What if, instead, you could get the attendees to think, “This is fantastic! This is hilarious! I’m so glad I’m here!” That’s certainly the reaction from the NSA/NC crowd to Bill’s afternoon presentation. Bill is a true showman who lived up to the name of his company: Ovation Speaking.

Bill paid his show biz dues. He spent fifteen years in front of the cameras of the top-rated local comedy TV show in the country—Seattle’s legendary Almost Live!—so he knows how to entertain an audience.

Unlike Brian, there was not as much for me to capture for the extreme meeting report. It was as much the way he delivered his material as what he delivered. The most memorable part of the afternoon for me was when he showed a video of his onstage riff at a past NSA Convention satirizing the conference theme. Take a look, it’s priceless:

Bill advises that all talks should be treated as a “show” and in that sense you have to think through three separate approaches: the producer who deals with the structure of the presentation; the writer who creates the content; and the performer who delivers it.

How to produce an effective presentation

Producers are responsible for the event details. They are in charge of driving the bus, the audience are the passengers. You have to have, as Brian indicated, a series of E-ticket moments built into the talk to keep the audience’s attention. Bill called them “bathroom blockers” – the times in a movie when you really have to go pee, but the action on the screen is so compelling you can’t leave the theater. You’ve got to think of what you can bring to the game to make your next presentation so compelling that people are blocked from going to the bathroom.

Bill shared the classic magicians advice: start with your second-best trick, end with your best trick, and put the rest of the content in the middle. Jay Leno, who Bill has worked with, always chose his ending joke first. The reason? Audiences always remember the last thing you say.

Which is one very obvious reason why you should never, ever, end with Q&A.

Find ways to build in an element of predictable unpredictability. You want to keep the audience guessing when something strange will happen next, but don’t do it in a predictable way. Avoid predictability to make sure those lean forward moments catch them by surprise.

A keynote speech should open with a five-minute microcosm of what the entire presentation will cover. This gives the audience an idea of how things are going to be set up. Take the time to decide what elements, themes, and flavors you will include in your first five minutes.

Writing the speech

Speechwriters, according to Bill, need to keep these main intentions front and center:

• Clarity. Make sure there are no unintended questions left hanging in the air by statements that confuse or bewilder the listener. This includes the use of acronyms and industry terms that the audience might not fully understand. Control the audiences focus during the speech. Avoid the error of going from A to C without going through B.
• Use precise words and concise phrases. Jerry Seinfeld, who Bill has worked with, claimed that a good day’s work is taking an eight word phrase down to five words. Go through your speech and making sure that all of your words have energy. For example, Mark Twain liked to illustrate the right choice of words as being the difference between lightning and a lightning bug. As most speechwriters know, there is power in alliteration, rhyming, and cognitive dissonance. NSA member Max Dixon talks about the coaching relationship he has with clients as a ruthless sanctuary, which is a great example of cognitive dissonance.
• Sprinkle smartness in your speech. It’s really okay to have some things that might be ahead of the classic 8th Grade reading level of the average member of the American public. You need just enough smartness to grab their interest, but don’t overdo it. Remember the average American audience really does have an 8th Grade reading level.

When writing, follow the advice of James Thurber, “Don’t get it right, just get it written”. Then edit.

Delivering the speech

Once speakers are on the podium they need to be larger than life. Like the band in Spinal Tap you need to be a 10 in real life but an 11 on the stage. Understand:

• The art of the pause is knowing how to skip a beat and add an infinitesimal pause before the punchline, but then once you’ve delivered the zinger, silently count to three, or if that makes you uncomfortable take a sip of water from a glass on the lectern, and wait for the audience to react. Often it will be a couple of seconds after you deliver the line that the chuckles start. Likewise, when you have delivered an important point in your content, do the same pause. Think for a moment about how we often pause video recordings. Build the same pauses into your live delivery to allow the audience to realize what you’ve just said and to process how it applies to their situation. Subject matter experts and comedians alike succeed or fail by their mastery of the art of the pause.
• Commit to the bit. This is as straightforward as defining, in your own words, what the segment of the presentation means and giving it all your energy. Even for the necessarily rushed material that had to be created under deadline.
• Four quick specific techniques. These were masterful suggestions.
  1. Don’t move on the punchline.
  2. Things that happen in the past should be indicated to the audience’s left. Those that happened today center stage, and those that happen tomorrow to the right.
  3. Play to the cheap seats first which means address the back of the room and the balconies at the opening of your talk.
  4. When you start to bomb, slow down. This is the only way to rescue a disaster.
• The performer’s secret weapon: Rehearsal. Very few speakers do this right. It’s not just do a quick run through or repetition of your content. Deliberately practice and look for ways to improve. Review the speech for material you need to add or delete, for where you need to add pauses. Tip: Make an audio recording of a speech and send it to people of equivalent background to the audience to see if they get the message.

Bill concluded with the quote of the day:

Improve, to the extent that yesterday’s audience is cheated by today’s performance.

Thanks to the fascinating website Sociological Images for a pointer to this interactive map at The Chronicle of Higher Education website that presents data on the proportion of U.S. adults with a bachelor’s degree over time. In 1940, in the vast majority of counties no more than 10% of the population had graduated from college (the national average was 4.6%):

Now the national average is 27.5%:

By comparing the maps over time, you can easily track a number of changes: the increase in college degrees overall, of course, but also changes in education such as the dramatic gains women have made in earning college degrees in the past few decades — the gender gap in college degrees was over 7 percentage points in 1980 but only about 1.5 points today.

This is a wonderful example of the visual display of quantitative information that would be very effective in a presentation, similar to that used by statistician Hans Rosling.