Keynote Speaking Hints

By Bruce Firestone | Business Coaching

May 04

A friend of mine is giving his first ever keynote. Here are a few (hopefully helpful) hints I just sent him:

-about ½ hour before you go on stage, eat ½ a chocolate bar; your brain runs on sugar… my mother-in-law, who was head nurse at a local hospital with responsibility for 350 employees, told me this; I tried it and it worked so next time out I thought, Hmm, 1/2 a candy bar was great but imagine how much better I’d be if I ate a whole one? Hence, I did and my performance suffered because I was on edge from a sugar rush so, like the Greeks say, “Everything in moderation”

-in the am, get some exercise

-practice your speech; especially the 1st 2 mins

-start fast, end slow; most people start slow then have to hurry to finish on time #BigMistake

-breathe 

-smile from time to time

-pause for emphasis from time to time

-move around a bit and use your hands from time to time to emphasize a point but don’t over do it

-make “eye contact” with everyone in the room–each side, front of house, back of house…

-don’t shout at your audience

-don’t read your speech

-if you use a slidedeck, it’s got to be mostly pictures with only a few words here and there

-use a lapel mic not a handheld one because, if you use the latter, you will get tired of holding it close to your mouth and it’ll droop, meaning that you won’t notice but your audience sure will when they can’t hear you anymore

-make sure you have a clicker so you can control your own slides at the pace you want to proceed at

-also make sure you have a monitor in front so you don’t have to look over your shoulder to see what slide you are on

if you wants the money, you’ve gots to be funny… at least a bit funny

-jokes like “What did one flea say to the other? ‘Shall we walk or take the dog’,” are fine but nothing racier than this and only if it’s somehow relevant

-try to make your keynote about 1/2 to 3/4 about learning new stuff and the balance about inspiration (too many speakers have just one tired speech they give over and over again, and it’s mostly about inspiring people, which is fine except the audience doesn’t learn anything new and exciting that they can internalize and act on independently and take away with them)… tailor your speech for each audience and their interests not yours

-I always try to surprise attendees (whether in-person or on zoom or some combination of live and online audience) with a few free paperback copies that I give away by asking the audience some kind of skill testing question–the first to answer gets an autographed copy of one of my books

-I also offer free e-copies of one or two of my books to the organizer to send to all attendees afterwards

-it’s also often quite useful to the organizer to “volunteer” to do a breakout session for VIP guests and sponsors where they can ask you some further questions

-if you plan to have a Q+A after your speech, ask the organizer to “plant” a few questions among the audience to break the ice (I write the questions myself and give them to the organizer and s/he gets a few voluntolds to ask them…)

-ask the organizer to video your speech and then get a .mp4 copy so you can add it to your YouTube channel

-use a few great (relevant) quotes to spice up your talk

-use data to buttress your argument but only at a very high level

-great speeches tell a story; storytelling is an ancient and revered human art… personalize it if possible but don’t just dwell on your “heroic” life-story

-people remember case studies way more than they do any sort of theory

-tell at least one self-deprecating anecdote

-if you are somewhat nervous, that’s ok; I’ve done 100s of speeches and always have some butterflies… it’s natural/normal

-believe in yourself–you know way more about your subject matter than your audience does, recall that just before you start to give yourself a boost

-for at least 10-15 minutes before you go on, don’t talk to anyone, go somewhere where you can be alone and center yourself

-you should practice at least a couple of times the day before your speech, preferably with an audience (say, your life partner)

-time yourself but remember, when you actually give your speech, it will take longer, it just does…

-I often do a voiceover video recording of my speeches in advance–a) because I want to upload those to my YouTube channel (often unlisted but available if I want to share them with clients) and b) it’s good practice, and it will lead you to re-order your slides to improve your flow and make some edits too

-on the day, practice one more time but not ten more times–you can overdo it

-just before you go on, in your 15-mins of alone time, go over your first 2 or 3-minutes and the first one or two points you want to make

Then go get ‘em!

And end with some sort of a call to action… this should be a line that you’ve repeated once or twice already (for example, say you are giving a speech about why your company’s new phone is different and important; maybe you’ve used this punchline a couple of time already: “5-G MATTERS!” or you are head of elections in your state of province and you’ve said a few times with a strategic pause after each reiteration, “EVERY VOTE COUNTS!” or, if you are a business model expert like me, after showing how (for example) it was not the iPhone per se but the iPhone’s business model that propelled Apple to a $2 trillion valuation, you say, “BUSINESS MODELS MATTER”

But please: FINISH ON TIME!

Last point: your call to action can be one thing, maybe 2 or 3, but definitely not more; if you try to tell your audience 10 items, they won’t remember any of them so instead of leaving the meetup with the idea that “BUSINESS MODELS MATTER” and what a great guy Prof Bruce is and how they should hire him as their real estate investment or business coach, they leave mystified as to why they ever wasted their time on you…

Best regards, 

@ profbruce

FOR REAL ESTATE INVESTMENT AND BUSINESS COACHING THAT’LL HELP YOU PROVIDE FOR YOURSELF AND YOUR FAMILY FOR 3-GENERATIONS, PLEASE CONTACT:

Bruce M Firestone, B Eng (civil), M Eng-Sci, PhD
Real Estate Investment and Business coach
ROYAL LePAGE Performance Realty broker
Ottawa Senators founder
613-762-8884
bruce.firestone@century21.ca
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Image source: https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Stevejobs_Macworld2005.jpg

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About the Author

Bruce is an entrepreneur/real estate broker/developer/coach/urban guru/keynote speaker/Sens founder/novelist/columnist/peerless husband/dad.

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