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This speech will blow them away!”

I foolishly thought these words as I stepped on stage, dreaming of a standing ovation,

This dream was shattered as I stared at a hundred blank faces, and my legs started to shake.

The seconds felt like minutes as sweat beaded on my brow and my voice struggled to ignite, like a car on a winter’s day.

“They’re angry,” I thought fearfully as I clutched my written speech with sweaty palms. The paper had a life of its own, it looked like a butterfly lost in a gale. The words had turned to alphabet soup.

I looked up..I realised that I had been standing there silently for what seemed like an eternity. I had to say something, anything. What was my speech about?

I shouted, to my surprise:

“HOMELESS PEOPLE WILL DIE!”

This created a small chuckle, which evolved into a wave of laughter, that was going to drown me in embarrassment. This wasn’t a humorous speech. It was meant to be serious. A speech with meaning, something inspirational.

I had been asked to deliver a speech, my first speech, to an audience that demanded entertainment.

I was told that I could do a simple reading, but no, not me. If I was going to speak publicly I wanted to do something special.

So, I took the bold decision to motivate my audience.

My aim was to reframe the Christmas experience: being with family; receiving and giving gifts; eating a banquet until too full to move: the happy times we take for granted, and show them a different but real Christmas: one of loneliness, hunger, and despair that the homeless people living in Britain suffer each year.

But, through a combination of fear and confusion I had shouted

“HOMELESS PEOPLE WILL DIE!”

Now my audience had a completely different idea of my intentions. They didn’t know that I had forgotten my introduction, or all of the stories that I had built up over the months of fretting and preparation, or the conclusion that I had diligently woven together through all of my solid arguments and carefully curated statistics.

Without another word, I’d had enough. I turned and walked back to my seat looking more monstrous than motivational.

“Did he just threaten to kill homeless people?!” the audience must have asked themselves as I slumped into my seat, wanting the world to swallow me.

That memory stays with me 20 years later every time I talk to the stage. I remember that sweaty, nervous monster that took control of me that day.

Write it; read it.

Many new speakers fall into the trap of write it; read it.

When asked to deliver a presentation or speech, instead of writing the speech, editing the content and then rehearsing over a long duration, they will go on social media, walk the dog, take on a new construction project…anything but practice the speech.

Procrastination is a speech killer.

Even if given months to prepare, many will wake up on the day that the speech is due and start to write it and read it but this will lead down only one route: shouting something like:

“HOMELESS PEOPLE WILL DIE” in front of an amused, but very confused audience.

If you want to avoid dying on stage don’t procrastinate, but practice.

Fake it until you make it.

It’s difficult to know how you will feel in front of your first real live audience. Most of us will feel some level of anxiety.

You need to learn the skill of speaking in front of others before you speak in front of others.

Don’t do as I did and feel sure you can just wing it. Your legs and nerves will not come along for the ride unless you practice.

When preparing a speech you should first rehearse out loud (not in your head) as you need to hear your projection and tonality, you need to hear how the words sound to the ear.

Next practice with an experienced coach to gather feedback. Initially you’ll need to fake it until you make it, by practicing in front of a fake audience.

Invite some friends and family over to be your test audience. There is no substitute for real-time reactions to the words you say and stories you tell, but be sure to encourage your friends and family to be honest with their feedback.

At Project Charisma we will be forthright with our feedback and support. You won’t get the answers you WANT to hear, you will get the answers you NEED to hear. Our mentoring programme is designed to help you overcome any of your speaking obstacles and be pitch perfect ready for the day when it arrives: whether that be for a motivational speech, a business pitch, a university presentation, or a corporate workshop.

Substance over style

The reason I failed on that stage all those days ago was because of my need to impress my audience through my style. I was a big Tony Robbins fan and I simply wanted to emulate him.

Don’t try to emulate anyone else or impress your audience with your style. The speaking game is mostly about substance to begin with. The style will come later.

Having a simple speech with one clear message can actually be more powerful than a complex story about Christmas and homelessness.

A simple speech can easily be learned which allows you to focus on your delivery. How you say it is more important than what you say. Once you know the content your focus can be on your body language, tonality, gestures, stage presence – all the key skills of top quality public speakers.

So for your first speech. Keep it small and simple, practice, practice, and practice some more in front of other people and give yourself plenty of build up time. Remember procrastination is a speech killer. So get to work!

Chris Delany is an author, speaker and coach. He is one of the head coaches with Project Charisma

Location, Lists & Listening...

In today’s digital age, networking is often thought of something that we do online: posting photos and clips of ourselves in fun situations in return for likes and comments.

This isn’t really networking though. Definitely not the successful kind of networking that gives real results.

While our social networks can be of great benefit to us as networkers, they should be a secondary tool to support us in the real world.

The true art of networking involves face to face communication with people who can help you to progress in your professional, social, and even romantic life.

Networking, essentially, is leveraging your life through others.

If you want to meet your next business buyer, a specific professional connection, or even a hot date: you need to step out of your home, and your comfort zone and find real opportunities to connect.

There are three main steps to confident networking success: location, lists & listening.

Location

Networking is like fishing. If you want to catch fish, you need to know the right spots.

To know where you want to fish, or network, you first need to know who you want to speak to.

Think first about who inspires you most: what profession are they in? Where do they network? What kinds of things do they enjoy?

When you start to understand where your target market is, you can find a way in.

Using sites like Meetup, or Eventbrite you can easily find similar events to the ones your career heroes go to, but you need to ensure that you’re going to networking events for the right reasons.

Lists

Figure out exactly who you want to meet and why before you head out. I don’t mean a specific person in general, that’s a tip for another day.

Have lists of your goals, outcomes, and perfect catches.

When you have them actually written down in lists, just keep them in your back pocket as a cheat sheet to remind you if necessary.

While you are networking, just start to chat about your goals, business problems, and the kinds of people you are interested in meeting.

It’s amazing, but when you start to write and talk about what you want, these things gravitate towards you.

Figure out what your perfect networking catch would be: a new client, for instance, and then subtly talk about your perfect networking matches.

If the person you are speaking to can help, they’ll gladly offer their services.

If they can’t help directly, they’ll often suggest a contact if you’ve taken the previous step and listened to them enough.

Be warned though, the majority of people want to talk about their own business problems and what they can offer to the world, and that’s why the next step is possibly the most important.

Listening

Listening is perhaps the most important skill in communication, and this is especially true when it comes to networking.

People love to talk about themselves, their goals, their dreams, their family, and even their problems.

If you will take the time to listen to people while networking, you can gain trust, build rapport, and discover deep insights into that person that they reveal not only through what they say, but the subtle sub-communications they give off through their stories and body language.

Opening up a conversation with anyone at a networking event is easy: just ask how they are finding the event and if they came for any particular reason.

People will respond well to a different question than “How are you?” or some throwaway comment about the weather.

Whenever I go to networking events I make sure to spend 20% of the time talking and 80% of the time listening.

People really appreciate this, and the best thing is that I am able to help them solve their own problems by just asking more and more open questions like:

“What have you tried so far?”

“How would doing that change your business?”

“Who could that affect if you changed that part of the business?”

The greatest thing is: when you listen for long enough people will realise and then give you ALL of their time. They’ll say something like:

“I’ve been talking for ages, tell me about you”.

And it’s at this point that you can start to make links between what you came for, and what they want to achieve.

You will have gained enough trust and rapport to ask for potential referrals or suggestions on their part.

In Summary

This can all happen in one day or night, but it all happens as part of a strategy.

Rather than being someone who bumbles from one networking event to the next just hoping to find someone interesting, or avoid someone boring, have a plan.

Go out into the world knowing exactly what you want, but with the willingness to give your time and patience to others and everything will come to you.

If you spend your time listening and helping others to solve their problems then they will repay that by giving you exactly what you need afterwards.

First, though, you have to fish in the right waters and know exactly what type of fish you need to catch.

If you want to develop the kind of confidence needed to own the room at any networking event then join our upcoming course.

All the best in your adventures.

Danny Riley

Project Charisma Coach

A corporate trainer, award-winning speaker, TEDx Speaker coach, and former President and Area Director of Toastmasters International, Danny designs and delivers Leadership Development Programmes as well as coaching professional speakers. He is a Chartered Manager, a member of the CIPD, and dedicates his life to developing people for personal effectiveness, and business success.

My First Speech