Speechwriting

One of the most common mistakes public speakers make happens more times than I can count. Speakers make assumptions. A speaker assumes everyone in the audience is familiar with a particular news item, movie, song, play, sports hero, sports team — fill in the blank — and makes a very specific reference in the speech […]

When you deliver a speech or presentation, everyone knows the first thing you say matters. But do you want to know the truth? The last thing you say matters even more.   Think about how you ended a recent speech.  Did you leave the audience feeling satisfied? Attracted to your Big Idea? Ready to act […]

When you’re preparing an important speech or keynote presentation, do you tend to default to one of these four opening lines? You begin with a long line of thank-you’s to people we may or may not know. You tell a joke you found online the night before. You share the process you used to prepare […]

Worried whether your speech has the power to connect with listeners from very different backgrounds and levels of experience? Jump-start your thinking with these seven steps based on a Cicero Speechwriting Award-winning keynote that resonated with 250 men and women from age 18 to 80.   When Barbara Hayde — former president of The Entrepreneurs […]

Your audience will thank you if you skirt the predictable – and instead give them something to think about or act upon after the evening is over. For many executives, receiving an award is a good news, bad news thing. First, the good news: “Congratulations! You’ve won an award for your outstanding achievements!” (And now […]

Think about the last time you delivered a Big Hairy Audacious Presentation to your management team, customers, prospects or peers. How did your prep go? Were you awash in so much awesome material – that you had to clamor like crazy for focus? What did you leave in? (But more important: What did you leave […]

There we were – stuck in the boardroom on a Tuesday afternoon, three drafts in on a keynote speech – and I’d pretty much wrung all the best stuff out of my executive’s head. He was done. But his speech was not. The holes toward the end were gaping. Meanwhile, the clock was ticking. Just […]

Will your next speech be somewhere far away from home? If so, challenge yourself to find a link to the local region – and mention it early in your remarks to create immediate goodwill with your audience. Here’s how we did it for a European speaker traveling to Atlanta, Ga., for a keynote address to […]

I was interviewing a client for a speech on leadership when he interrupted my latest question and asked, “So what about you? Are you a risk-taker?”  I stopped typing, not often on the end of someone else’s line of questioning. “I guess I haven’t thought about it before. Why do you ask?” “You just set […]

No doubt the most captive audience Pulitzer Prize-winning author David McCullough will ever have during his book tour touting “The Wright Brothers” is the one that flocked to a middle school in Dayton, Ohio, last night to hear him speak about The Bishop’s Boys. After all, Wilbur and Orville were Daytonians through and through. McCullough’s […]