Aren’t you curious about how to take the guesswork of public speaking?
Aren’t you dying to find out that ONE lesson top speakers learn that made all the difference?
Aren’t you intrigued by how some amateur speakers could wow the crowd by applying that one tip-bit?
I did.
And lucky for you, I took the liberty to find out.
Presenting to you a list of 60 public speaking tip-bits that kept the top speakers ahead of the speaking game. So can you… if you take the next five minutes or so to study the list.
1) The greatest enemy of speakers is same-ness. – Patricia Fripp
2) Stage time, stage time, stage time. – Darren La Croix
It is not about how good you are today, it is about stage time. If you get up in front of your audience today, you will get better tomorrow, as a result of that experience.
3) Here are three things that a persuasive speaker must be: authentic, passionate and have a gun (created over Humor College with Darren)
4) Comedians are people who get paid to complain – Dave Fitzgerald
5) Fact tells, stories sell.
6) Don’t memorize, internalize. – David Brooks
7) Be so good that the only question is “Who’s in second place?” – Otis Williams, 1993 winner of international speech contest
8) The two main arsenal of a speaker is his stories and analogies. The better his stories and analogies, the more he gets paid.
9) Remember that the one person considered by many to be the greatest communicator in history ONLY spoke in stories and parables. He was a leader of tens and hundreds, and ultimately millions, and he didn’t have the benefit of a speechwriter, or a large organization for support, or the leverage of the media for that matter. But he changed history more than any other man, in one solitary life. And Jesus did it all by speaking. With stories.
10) It’s not what you say that matters, it is what they (your audience) remember that matters (it’s about memorability and action)
11) KISS = Keep it simple, stupid!
12) Great speeches are not written, they are rewritten
13) Don’t forget the power of other people’s experiences.
14) Learning is directly proportional to the amount of fun you have. – Robert Pike
When they laugh the most, they learn the best.
15) To sell Jane Doe what Jane Doe wants to buy, you got to see the world in Jane Doe’s eyes. (Dale Carnegie)
16) Good communicators inspire people to reach for the stars; great communicators make people believe they can reach them. – Tom Hopkins
17) Never read your speech to the audience.
18) Stories are simulations that run on the mind. – Keith Oatley
19) There are three things to aim at in public speaking: first, to get into your subject, then to get your subject into yourself, and lastly, to get your subject into the heart of your audience. – Alexander Gregg
20) It’s (public speaking) quite simple. Say what you have to say and when you come to a sentence with a grammatical ending, sit down. – Winston Churchill
21) Always be shorter than anybody dared to hope. – Lord Reading
22) Grasp the subject, the words will follow. – Cato the Elder
23) If you can’t write your message in a sentence, you can’t say it in an hour. – Dianna Booher
24) Once you get people laughing, they’re listening and you can tell them almost anything. – Herbert Gardner
25) There are always three speeches, for every one you actually gave. The one you practiced, the one you gave, and the one you wish you gave. – Dale Carnegie
26) It usually takes me more than three weeks to prepare a good impromptu speech – Mark Twain
27) Be sincere; be brief; be seated. – Franklin D. Roosevelt
28) A speech is poetry: cadence, rhythm, imagery, sweep! A speech reminds us that words, like children, have the power to make dance the dullest beanbag of a heart. – Peggy Noonan
29) The eloquent man is he who is no beautiful speaker, but who is inwardly and desperately drunk with a certain belief. – Ralph Waldo Emerson
30) Nothing gives one person so much advantage over another as to remain always cool and unruffled under all circumstances – Thomas Jefferson
31) You are only an attitude away from success. – John Maxwell
32) The success of your presentation will be judged not by the knowledge you send but by what the listener receives. – Lilly Walters
33) If you don’t know what you want to achieve in your presentation your audience never will. – Harvey Diamond
34) Best way to conquer stage fright is to know what you’re talking about. – Michael H Mescon
35) Find out what’s keeping them up nights and offer hope. Your theme must be an answer to their fears. – Gerald C Myers
36) 90% of how well the talk will go is determined before the speaker steps on the platform. – Somers White
37) Say not always what you know, but always know what you say. – Claudius
38) Be who you are
And say what you feel,
Because those who mind
Don’t matter,
And those who matter
Don’t mind. – Dr. Seuss
39) Humour is also a way of saying something serious. – T.S. Eliot
40) Knowledge is the antidote to fear. – Ralph Waldo Emerson
41) You can speak well if your tongue can deliver the message of your heart. – John Ford
42) Speakers who talk about what life has taught them never fail to keep the attention of their listeners. – Dale Carnegie
43) Let thy speech be better than silence, or be silent. – Dionysius Of Halicarnassus
44) If we are not trusted, we have no business. – Larry Page, co-founder of Google
45) If you don’t have fun, you don’t have a show. – Bertolt Brecht
46) He who wants to persuade should put his trust not in the right argument, but in the right word. The power of sound has always been greater than the power of sense. – Joseph Conrad
47) Think like a wise man but communicate in the language of the people. – W.B. Yeats
48) To effectively communicate, we must realize that we are all different in the way we perceive the world and use this understanding as a guide to our communication with others. – Tony Robbins
49) It’s not how strongly you feel about your topic, it’s how strongly they feel about your topic after you speak. – Tim Salladay
50) Speak clearly, if you speak at all; carve every word before you let it fall. – Oliver Wendell Holmes
51) The most precious things in speech are the pauses. – Sir Ralph Richardson
52) Talk low, talk slow, and don’t talk too much. – John Wayne
53) They may forget what you said, but they will never forget how you made them feel. – Carl W. Buechner
54) The real art of conversation is not only to say the right thing at the right place but to leave unsaid the wrong thing at the tempting moment. – Dorothy Nevill
55) Well-timed silence hath more eloquence than speech. – Martin Fraquhar Tupper
56) Make sure you have finished speaking before your audience has finished listening. – Dorothy Sarnoff
57) Humor is the sunshine of the mind. – Edward G. Bulwer-Lytton
58) The art of communication is the language of leadership. – James Humes
59) All the great speakers were bad speakers at first. – Ralph Waldo Emerson
60) To be a person is to have a story to tell. – Isak Dinesen
