How to Become a More Entertaining Speaker

How to inform and entertain your audience...

The Business of Speaking for Profit, Pleasure, and Personal Growth

What public speaking can do for you to improve your personal and professional life.

How to Become a Successful Public Speaker?

Being a speaker is a challenging and rewarding profession. But speaker is not really a profession you go to college for and learn it from the ground up.

Everything You've Ever Learned about Public Speaking Is Wrong

Many myths about public speaking have been passed along from person to person over the years, and the one thing that is consistent about these myths is that the people who pass them along are still nervous about speaking. After facilitating over 200 public speaking classes and never having a single person fail to significantly reduce his/her fear of speaking, I had a dramatic realization. Just about everything I was taught about public speaking while I was in school and from well meaning peers and coworkers – WAS WRONG!

Public Speaking: Improvise Your Flipchart

Oops! I broke my own rules and did not follow a checklist on my last public speaking engagement. It was two minutes until start time and I realized there was no flipchart in the room. Oh oh!. Better think fast. I was not using an overhead projector either, so I could not simply write on a blank transparency. Now one and 1/2 minutes left . . .

Public Speaking: Dueling Flip Charts

Here is a very interesting way to use flip charts when public speaking. Put one on both sides of the stage and pop back and forth between them. You can have an audience member volunteer at each flip chart helping you record input from other audience members.

Public Speaking: Frequency Check

It is pretty common to have multiple wireless microphones going during the same public speaking engagement. The AV crew that sets everything up usually makes sure that they are all on different frequencies so that no cross over occurs. You should still double check it anyway. BUT WHAT ABOUT MICE?

Public Speaking: How to Make a Point with Humor

One of the old saws of public speaking says that you should 'Tell em what you're gonna tell 'em. Tell 'em. Then tell 'em what you told 'em.' When you want to make a point during your presentation, you can use a similar formula. You tell 'em the point, illustrate the point, then tell 'em the point again. This formula, however, can seem boring and redundant if you don't spice it up a little. One way to do it is to use humor. Here's the formula:

Public Speaking: Humor Delivery Tips

Don't signal your punch line. If the humor in your punch line depends upon the words ruptured camel, don't say the following: Did you hear the one about the ruptured camel?

Public Speaking: Old Humor is Good Humor

Public speaking humor is only old if your audience has heard it before and if they remember it. Most people don't remember the exact details of jokes, one-liners, and stories. This is not contradictory to the fact that one of the uses of humor is to make your points more memorable.

Public Speaking: Audience Gags

Audience gags are offbeat jokes that occur unexpectedly during a presentation. Dr. Joel Goodman, from the Humor Project, does one where a telephone rings during his presentation. He answers the phone that was hidden in the lectern and pretends to talk to his mother. The same joke would be called a running gag if the phone rang at several other times during the program.

Public Speaking: Food is Funny

Food is funny. I heard a comic many years ago say 'Life is a Twinkie.' When there is no other way to explain some office calamity I say, 'I guess life is just a Twinkie.' I laugh off the tension, then I seriously take care of the problem.

Public Speaking: Roast Humor and Insults

Being roasted is an honor, but you must be careful to honor people while you are roasting them during a public speaking engagement. Joke about things that are obviously untrue, then exaggerate them to make them more obvious. Or, you can outrageously exaggerate things that are true.

Public Speaking:Toasts

Toasting is not nearly as common as it once was. However, the polished public speaker should have a few short toasts ready to go if and when the occasion arises. Here are a few fun toasts and a few touching ones too: