Engage Your Audience from the Start

Do you struggle with fear, doubt, and worry in your public speaking? Do you find it difficult to connect with your audience and deliver presentations that leave a lasting, positive, unforgettable impact? If yes, then let's dive in the world of public speaking and presentation skills with your host, Eric Edmeads. Welcome to the Unforgettable podcast.

Engage your audience from the start. Look, you only get one chance to get their attention, and then you have to keep it. But to get the audience's attention, you gotta do something right at the beginning. At Speaker Nation, we talk about something called the F15. The F15 is a metaphor, but it kind of speaks for the first 15 seconds, 15 minutes, 15% of your presentation. And it's a metaphor of an F15 fighter plane. And this is where the metaphor comes from. An F15 fighter plane going on a short sortie. A short flight will use half of its jet fuel to get in the air. That's what uses all the fuel. Just to get it up there, to stay up there is a whole different thing. And what I want to suggest to you is that if you put a huge amount of your design and your process and your energy into launching your talk, then it's going to be really easy to maintain people's attention. And so we use the F15. Here are some of the key features in F15. One of the key features is an icebreaker. An icebreaker is something cute or funny or irreverent that you might include in the early part of your talk. Maybe it's a little funny joke. Maybe if you're in a city that is currently doing well at a particular sports area and their team is winning the championship, it's an acknowledgement of that team. There's any number of ways that you can break the ice with the audience. Let them know that you're going to be fun and let them know that they can relax and that they can have fun. It's also really important to give them something that we call the big fat claim. The big fat claim is designed to put them at ease. It's designed to let them know what's coming so that they can relax and they can know you know what's really crazy. So many people are nervous of public speaking. Even I can tell you right now, some of my friends are some of the most famous speakers in the world. And I'm not going to out them, but many of them are still afraid to walk onto a stage. It blows me away. But you know what's really funny about people who are nervous about walking on the stage, they've got it backwards. You know who should really be nervous? The audience. I mean, if you're about to walk on stage and deliver an hour and a half presentation, you're about to steal an hour and a half of their life. And you know what, if they're not sitting on one of the edges or if they're not sitting in the back row, they are trapped. They're the ones that should be nervous. And so you give them a great icebreaker and you give them a big fat claim. You tell them what it is that they're due to expect today. I'm going to give you a talk that I think is going to get you thinking and talking for weeks to come. I or I'm going to share strategies with you. They're going to help you to sleep better or raise your children in a much better environment. You give them a little teaser as to what's coming, a little bit of intrigue that will keep and hold their attention. And one more thing, what you want to do is recognize the speed that your audience is already at. If you're speaking at a, at a big personal development conference and people are already high energy, then you got to walk on the stage in high energy. But if you're speaking at a more sedate conference, then you walk on and meet them where they are. But then you can warm things up and improve their energy. So your icebreaker, your start, is going to be one of the most important things you put time and effort into. So launch your talks with energy, break the ice in a nice, irreverent, funny way, give them a big fat claim, and then take them on an incredible journey.

So that's it for today's episode of Unforgettable. Head on over to itunes or wherever you listen and subscribe to the show. One lucky listener every single week who posts a review on itunes will win a chance in the grand prize drawing to win a private $25,000 VIP day with Eric Edmeads himself. Be sure to head on over to unforgettable show and pick up a free copy of Eric's gift and join us on the next episod.