Speak the Movie at Cherry Creek

Ed Tate & Rich Hopkins answer Questions at Cherry Creek Toastmaster's Speak Event

Last night, Cherry Creek Toastmasters hosted a local showing of Speak the Movie.

Cherry Creek member and 2000 World Champion of Public Speaking Ed Tate was in attendance, and in addition to offering a few introductory words, participated with me in the Q&A afterward.

The response to the film was as positive as ever, and evoked a number of questions, including:

- Is the contest fair? Are we really honoring our speakers with only one winner?
- What was it like being followed by cameras?
- How do you come up with speech material each year for contests?
- What do your kids think of your journey in the contests and speaking?
- And the obligatory 'why did you almost pass out in the hallway?' :)

This was the first Q&A I've done in tandem with another speaker, much less a World Champion, and it went extremely well. We both answered most questions, which offered the audience two disparate perspectives. Ed only competed once on his way to victory in 2000, while I've competed nine times, reaching the Big Stage twice, winning third in 2006. In the movie Speak, the result was, well - watch the movie and find out. Let's just say Ed and I have different experiences to share, in a very good way for each of us!

Haven't seen Speak yet? Buy a copy from the producers. You can also read my review.

Want to screen a showing of Speak? Want to offer a Q&A? I'm available, as are many of the other featured contestants, and free if you get me out there, put me up, and feed me, like the good folks in Hawaii will be doing next week for the Honolulu showing on 4/29/13.

Thank you to Cherry Creek VP of PR Cindy Price for putting this on and letting me come out to speak, and to Ed for coming out and making a special appearance.

For more pictures from the event, head to my Facebook Album.

Until next time, remember to always Speak....and Deliver!

4 Lessons in Self-Deprecating Humor from a 14-year-old

Jack Carroll in Britain's Got Talent shows a wonderful sense of humor, and an understanding in how to connect with the audience.

- Are you addressing any elephants in the room when you speak?

- Do you use his method of using 'The Voice of the Audience', as he does when he starts with 'I know what you're thinking....'

- Do you construct humor in your speech in the form of a story with an unexpected twist at the end, as in his closing joke?

- And finally, are you confident enough in yourself to totally sell out - that is, go ALL IN with your speech?

When you are, you'll be a lot closer to learning how to Speak....& Deliver.

Speaking of Boston

What do you say after a tragedy?

Letterman and Leno wouldn't even do monologues after 9/11. The bombings in the Boston Marathon don't quite compare in scope, but the events are tragic, frightening, and sad nonetheless.

Stephen Colbert offered his own take to open his show this week. It is a wonderful example of respectful humor and satire designed to honor the situation, motivate the city, and provide the much-needed release of laughter. Note his complete avoidance of political posturing, racial profiling, or even commentary about what to do next. Plenty of time for that....later.

The Colbert Report
Get More: Colbert Report Full Episodes,Indecision Political Humor,Video Archive

SAY It This Way - No, Wait, Say It This WAY

Whether you memorize your speech or not, there is one aspect of your speaking you do tend to commit to memory - the Way You SAY It.

Once speakers find a line they can remember, it gets anchored into a certain style, and they will end up speaking it the same why time after time. Unfortunately, this doesn't always serve them well. It can be easy to simply be happy you are remembering what you want to say, instead of also focusing on HOW You Want To Say It.

If you aren't examining where you're putting the EMphasis in your EmPHAsis, you are likely robbing yourself and your audience of some of the power of your message.

How do you police yourself? It's easier than you think, and can actually be a lot of fun!

Use....VOICES. 

First, record your speech, and listen to it - just LISTEN - and hear where you are losing power. Ask a coach or friend for input on this as well.

Second, record yourself again, using different voices - cartoon voices, voices with accents, loud voices, quiet voices - go crazy. Give it in monotone, give it as the guy who narrates movie trailers, give it as Lily Tomlin. Go slow. Go FAST - CRAZY fast.

You can do this for the whole speech, or vary within a single practice or two.

This helps you in two ways - A. It stretches your mind and voice, allowing you to be freer as a speaker, and B. It can point out places saying a word or phrase with a different emphasis, speed, cadence, or amplitude will help bring it's full power to the audience.

After you get loosened up by making a fool of yourself a few times, go in to your script and pick out what you think are your power phrases, those words you want the audience to hang on to, and focus this method on them, until you find EXACTLY the way you want to SAY it for maximum effect.

Ironically, it is in our process of memorization that we create bad habits in the way we SPEAK our speech, and it is in THIS process of recalibrating how we say it that we can re-anchor our words and BETTER memorize it than ever before.

Have fun with yourself - be willing to sound idiotic in the privacy of your own house, car or shower. In the long run you, and your audience, will be glad you worked just a little bit harder to SPEAK...and Deliver.

Head to Mouth Disconnect

It sounded SO profound in my HEAD!

It looked SO funny on PAPER!

But...But...it FLOPPED!

Yeah, that'll happen. Head to mouth disconnect. In fact, it happens a lot. When we think or write about what we're going to say, we hear it perfectly in our heads, and the audience reacts exactly as we think they should. Unfortunately, two big things can go wrong:

1. We don't deliver it the way we told ourselves we were going to deliver it. Lack of practice, change in mood, sudden onset of self-consciousness when we see who has actually shown up in the room...plenty of reasons can get in our way if we aren't 100% certain of the quality of our material.

2. The audience hears with their OWN minds, no OURS. Darn them anyway. Don't they know that was funny, profound, sad? Idiots. Even if we ARE 100% certain of the quality of our material, those percentages can drop quickly once the spoken word hits the live audience.

The two areas of your speech most at risk for Head to Mouth Disconnect? Your conclusion, and your humor. What sounds funny isn't always, particularly if you don't know your audience well enough. You conclusion is at risk mostly because it's the last thing you write, instead of the first. If the conclusion isn't fully supported by your speech, no matter how profound, it won't stand up in the end.

Hidden in between - your stories. Those anecdotes that you believe are simply perfect, but aren't. You just can't see it from the trenches. Stories that you have force - the square peg in the round hole - simply because it moves you, so you HAVE to share it.

While Head to Mouth Disconnect is not completely preventable, there are precautions you can take, and prescriptions after it happens.

A. Practice. A lot. At home in your living room is good. Finding a Toastmasters group, hiring a coach, speaking at service clubs, is better. Take your material out for a test-drive where the audience is supportive and/or the consequences are minimized. If you don't practice, what can I say? You get what you deserve.And if you don't practice and everybody loves you anyway, you're probably a celebrity - or their boss.

B. Be Mindful of Your Mindset. You've had a crappy day. You fought with your spouse before you walked out the door. You got a speeding ticket. And sometimes, life is really going wrong - your father died, your daughter has been diagnosed with a tumor, or there's a layoff at work. And here you are, supposed to go deliver a message with humor and hope.

That will throw off anyone's delivery. If you can't or don't want to get out of the speech, you've got to do a different kind of disconnect - your head from your life - just for that event. Focus on the audience and the outcome. Leave everything else out of your head, and go pick it up later. Easier said than done - this I know from personal experience. But if you are aware, you're more likely to deliver the speech you need, and want, to give.

C. Film & Watch yourself. Filming is relatively easy. Watching not so much. In fact, my clients usually refer to it as torture. Still, its essential - watch with the mindset of the audience, feel their response if you have a copy of a public speech, and take notes on what works and what doesn't. If you simply cannot film, at least get an audio recording app on your phone so you can LISTEN to it afterward. No excuses.

D. Be a Merciless Editor. I know it's your favorite story. Your funniest line. Your cleverest of clever wordplay. But if it doesn't work, it doesn't work. Go in with a strike-through state of mind in your word processor. Then read it without those lines. The universe hates a vacuum, right? Trust in yourself that you'll find something better.

E. Be a Quick Healer. That means both self-healing, such as your ego, and being a healer, by rewriting your speech. Usually your flops are only flesh wounds, and they look worse than they are. They still need attention, but they won't kill us. The more dangerous cuts come when our flops interfere with our message by deadening the audience response, inadvertently contradict our intent or ideas, or tear down our credibility.

Head to Mouth Disconnect. It's only terminal if you ignore it.

What's the worst case you've ever experienced? Share below, even if it just happened to 'a friend'.

Meanwhile - go out and Speak....& Deliver!

Your Real Message is in the Gooey Center

Tootsie Roll Pops. Oreos. Twinkies, may they rest in peace. 

They hold inside of them the secret of your best speech. The gooey center in each completes the experience. Sure, the candy shell, crunchy cookie, and spongecake is good, and some even say it's the favorite, but for most, the chocolate, white frosting, and whipped cream filling are the payoff. And for the sake of today's post, I'm not going to split cookies - or hairs.

Lets face it - some speakers never get past the wrappers. They'll tell you something without any style, dialogue, or humor. They preach, teach, and train you until you decide whatever's inside isn't even worth getting to any more.

Good speakers, use stories, dialogue, humor, changes in pitch, volume & meter, and occasionally even a little acting to keep you involved, and stay memorable. We enjoy listening to them - but if they stop there, it's like biting into a filling-challenged Twinkie - empty and disappointing.

What's the Gooey Center, then?

It's the part of the speech that actually MEANS something. The part of your message that transforms and moves your audience. At first glance, you probably won't even see it. Remember your first Tootsie Roll Pop, before you knew it had a Tootsie Roll in the middle of it? You can't even tell it's there at first glance.

Your message is just as easily missed, by YOU. You're writing that story about fear, and boy, it's funny. You scream and run on the stage and everything.  Your audience howls and loves it. That seems good enough. It Isn't.

You have to break through the surface.

Why are you afraid? Because you might die? Fair enough. Then what? Kids have no father? Then what? You didn't prepare them financially? Then what? You didn't say what you always wanted to say? Go deeper. You don't know if your kids know you love them? That might be it. You never taught them to love themselves? Oooh. You might be there. Or it may lie even deeper. Ask Shrek said - Ogres have layers. Speakers better have them too.

You can't always find your Gooey Center alone. Even the average round of feedback isn't usually enough. Find a coach who's willing to ask you the hard questions, and be willing to answer them. My best speeches all came because I had my coach, Tom Cantrell, and several World Champions of Public Speaking, including Randy Harvey, David Brooks, Jim Key and Darren LaCroix asking me questions at various times.

Now that I'm spending most of my time coaching - I'm the one asking the hard questions, helping my clients find their Gooey Centers, so their audience gets the complete experience of the treats they are sharing. It's not easy. Sometimes it means dealing with issues you don't want to deal with, or sharing stories and ideas you'd forgotten about. Being a speaking coach is the next best thing to being a bartender, or occasionally a psychotherapist. Just ask my coachees :)

Don't stop at the wrapper, or even the crunchy or spongy exterior. Dig deep. Take a big bite. 1 - 2 - 3 - CRUNCH. When you taste the Gooey Center, you're ready to Speak & Deliver!

How Paul Harvey Can Help You Find Your Speaking Niche

Guess who's cool again? Or, perhaps for much of today's generation, cool for the first time, at least for a day or so? Yes, none other than the venerable orator/preacher/radio personality Paul Harvey.

Growing up in Iowa, Paul Harvey was on the radio twice a day, once in the morning, once at night, always speaking in his authoritative yet soothing, reassuring bass tones, first about general news of the day, then launching into one inspiring or ironic anecdote or another. Twists were his trademark, as he would tease us in the beginning, then hawk a product or two before telling us "...the rest of the story".

Today he's in the news thanks to the Dodge Ram Truck commercial during the Super Bowl. It was certainly in the Top 3 of 'Best Commercials of the Day' - and was my personal favorite. Watch it below:

Was Paul Harvey a great speaker? Or did he simply speak extremely well? Does it matter? I think it does, both for speakers coming up in the business, and those who will hire them.

Yes, he was amazing, and I loved listening to him. But he was less a professional speaker than an entertainer, a newscaster, and, ultimately, a straight up raconteur. He told stories without making a hard, obvious point - using his style to infer what he was telling us, but leaving it up to us to decide what his instruction was. Whereas today's keynoters combine telling great stories with giving clear directives, the style of Mr. Harvey was to let his audience decide for themselves what he was really saying.

This is not to downplay Paul Harvey in any way. His style was his greatness, and likely a product of his generation and upbringing.

It is also a tremendous illustration of the wide variety of opportunity public speaking offers to those who pursue it, and clarify the difference for people looking to bring public speakers in to their event.

Do you want an entertainer? A comedian? An invocator for a short minute or two (as Paul Harvey did so well)? Do you want pure inspiration, without a call to action? Do you want a spokesperson? Do you want an actor doing a monologue, even an actor coming in as, say, a dead president? If you bring a celebrity, do you care what they say beyond them telling their own story? The pendulum can swing the other way as well - perhaps what you really want is a trainer or instructor.

As a speaker, knowing what you want to be will help you find your audience, and your success that much faster. As a meeting planner, understanding precisely what type of speaker you need will increase your chances of a successful event.

Paul Harvey was a speaking treasure, and a wonderful part of the fabric of American broadcasting for decades. And it's not like he couldn't give a decent keynote with a strong call to action. Take a look at this copy of his commencement address for Wheaton College in 1961. It's just not what he's famous for - not the niche he found for himself, and his speaking talents.

How will you choose to use your voice to Speak & Deliver? You don't have to be a keynoter. You don't have to give 4 day seminar trainings. Sometimes it's enough to simply be profound for 2-5 minutes - and your audience will find you. And treasure you forever.

Below is a full example of his 'Rest of the Story' style...