Public Speaking: How To Make An Audience Love You In 90 Seconds

This is Charlie from Charisma on Command. And today I'm going to be giving you some presentation tips and tricks. Now, the guy that we are working off of today is actually the Toastmasters 2015, world champion of public speaking. This does, though, apply to a presentation that you would give in any setting, whether it's in work or elsewhere. Because when you stand in front of a group of people, whether you're talking about macroeconomics or the forecasted revenue or you're telling a story like this guy, you must captivate their attention first. And that's one of the things that we're going to focus on today. So let's get started.

What.

So this is so huge. How does he start off a speech? There are two big things going on here. One, he starts with a prop, and sometimes that can feel hokey. And you're like, well, how do I do that in a business setting? The truth is, anything that is a physical object that people do not understand why you're doing it, whether you're holding some sort of piece of fruit as a metaphor, I've seen people do that. Whatever it is, if you have a physical object that helps to capture people's attention, and you're going to see that this is the most critical thing at the start of a speech, he does it in multiple ways. Because when you get up there and start to speak in front of people, you have about 10 seconds to capture their attention and captivate them before they tune out completely. So you must do something interesting. Secondly, impeccable timing. This guy is so deliberate, so slow. He commands the stage. So that's just something to look out for for the rest of this video.

All you all think smoking kills.

So another quick thing, and I'm gonna play this back again just so you can see it all together. You need to get audience interaction absolutely. Within the first minute. You see a lot of speakers do this. It can feel hackneyed, but they ask people to, you know, show of hands. Who's seen this before? Show of hands. Who's heard of something? You must get the audience moving and speaking and responding to you if you want them to listen and to engage with what you are saying. He does it very cleverly by asking a provocative question. So I'm just going to go back and play that all over again so you can see it together.

What all you all think smoking kills.

So now they are interested and hooked, and he can begin his. He can begin to get into it.

Let me tell you something. Do you know that the amount of people dying from diabetes are three times as many people dying from smoking. Yet if I pulled a snicker bar, nobody would say anything.

Again, two more great examples. He's dedicating basically the first minute of his speech to engaging with the audience. And he does that a number of ways we've covered. But also humor. He makes sure that there are jokes in that first minute. So he's got another belly laugh here. And then that provocative question that he's asking. You think this. Well, guess what? And now he's going to reveal something else.

Do you know that the leading cause of lung cancer is not actually a cigarette?

Prop again, captivates attention.

It's your DNA. You could smoke for years and nothing will ever happen to you. This whole war against smoking is just to restrict the farming of tobacco. Mr. Kanto's chair, paratroop's masters and guests. I use these arguments, even though I just made them up. A simple.

So you see, this is kind of an abbreviated version of this talk, but right now we're gonna go to the body of the talk. So that's how you need to and must the first part of whatever your presentation you're giving has to captivate attention. You've got humor, you've got provocative questions, you've got props, lots of ways to do that. But the first minute, do not get right into what you're saying. Don't tell them what you're going to talk about. Capture their attention. So here now we're more in the body of his speech, in the body of his presentation. And one thing that you're going to want to have, no matter how dry the subject that you're talking about, is stories. Because people, the human brain did not evolve to digest and connect with statistics. Right? Right. You can talk about global warming or world hunger and how many millions and billions and hundreds of thousands, but the human brain is not persuaded by that. What is persuasive is individual anecdotes. And even though it's a logical fallacy, if you want to move people emotionally, you need to tell the stories of individuals. And this is what he does right here.

Choice of word can make a difference between someone accepting or denying your message. You can have a very beautiful thing to say, but say it in the wrong words and it's gone.

So here he makes his point, and now he's about to launch into a story. That's a great way bounce back and forth between general point, demonstrating story, or even start with demonstrating story. What's the point?

My friend Nasser, he loved his father Idealized his father. He would do anything to make him happy. But his father was the kind of person who's not easy to impress. And year after year, Nasser tried, and his father was like, meh. Fourth year in college, Nasser got straight A's, and he thought to himself, this is it. This what will finally make my dad proud. He picked up the phone.

So notice this. This is very critical. When you are telling stories again, even in dry environments, you have to realize that when you're in front of a group of people, you are performing. So you need to get out from behind the lectern. You need to move your body, but you also need to embody characters. If you can take people into the present tense of any story, any moment, that is going to be far more powerful than summarizing it. And if you can go beyond the present tense and act it out, make it vivid and real, play a character that is going to be something that people can connect with much more and will ultimately be moved to act upon. Because really, when you get in front of people, you. Your goal is not just to say some words. Your goal is for them to walk away having had something inside them change so that they behave differently. And this is just a great example of how you can do that. So see what he does here?

He called his dad Dad. I got straight A's. Are you proud? Please tell me you're proud, Father. Yeah, Alison. Son, I'll have to call you back. I'm busy.

So, you see, this is actually abbreviating it. I highly, highly recommend watching the whole thing. It's much to get. It's much better in its whole pieces, but I wanted to pull out some of the most fascinating pieces. So moving on now, towards the end of the speech, he sort of wraps it up, what you want to do when you get to the end of any presentation. In the middle, you'll have told your stories, your anecdotes. At the beginning, you'll have captured attention. It's the end when people are wide open from being sucked into your stories, from you hooking their attention, that you can drop whatever insight or nugget that you want them to take away. Because if you captivate people with stories, the truth is, they are wide open to you telling them the moral. And this is kind of what he does here.

Words have power. Words are power. Words could be your power. You can change a life, inspire a nation, and make this world a beautiful place. Isn't that what we all wanted? Isn't that what we are all? In this hall Your mouth can spit venom or it can mend a broken soul. Ladies and gentlemen, let that be our goal.

So you see there at the end, he goes back full circle with the prop. He pulls out the cigarette and crushes it at the end. I. This is something that is very, very, very popular. I personally find it a little bit cliche in this case, but what a lot of people like to do is come full circle or start with a metaphor and then come back to it at the end again. Very, very popular thing. You don't need to force it, as I felt is the case in this speech, but something that you can do. So if you want to see more videos like this, I actually have a full video of this, of the full speech, which is about. The speech itself is something like eight minutes long and I'm talking over it, so it gets to be much longer. But if you just click the link in the description or, you know, the box that I'll have pop up right now, you can get access to that for free. It's actually part of a membership site that we charge for. But these sections, there's like two hours of free videos that you can get access to right now for free. You'll never have to pay or anything like that. You can just by creating a membership. So go ahead and do that now if you're interested. If you want to see more on this channel, go ahead and subscribe. And of course, if there's anybody that you'd like to see me break down any topics that you would like to see me do, feel free to go ahead and put those in the comments. Hope that you've liked this and I will see you on the next video.