Ep 109 Delivering Your Verbal Resume April 18, 2016

So how do you talk about yourself? How do you go through your resume when you're starting a presentation and you don't want to bore people?

Speaking the show about effective speaking in public, to the media, at work and in Life. Speaking with T.J. walker.

Today's top questions and comments come from one of our regular viewers and listeners, Earl Rethke. He was commenting on one of my earlier shows about Toastmasters. I am for the most part very positive about Toastmasters. Encourage people who want to get better at speaking to join a Toastmasters. My one caveat is if you're going to take the time to go to Toastmasters, make sure you record every single presentation talk that you do. And Earl basically endorsed that. Here's an interesting point he brought up. He said, TJ I think preparing for a contest is the biggest benefit people have in joining Toastmasters. Since I've been a Toastmaster for a number of years and for me the contests are the biggest benefit. Preparing for a contest is, is intensive and leads to more rapid progress than simply giving club meeting speeches. I do think there is real value into competition. So many people, after they're no longer a kid, they're not playing sporting competitions, they lose that competitive zeal. And with almost anything, it's just human nature to want to win a competition. If I'm out on the tennis court and I'm just hitting back and forth, I'm simply not going to run after a ball that's a little bit out of my range as forcefully as when I'm in an actual match. Now, the match doesn't matter. I'm not in Wimbledon. I'm just playing with the same three guys every Sunday morning. But I push myself a lot more, I stretch more, I run harder when there's an actual competition. And even though I am not in public speaking competitions regularly, although I have in the past 40 some years ago, I do see the real value of it. So Earl, I appreciate you bringing that up. Those of you who think perhaps you're not going to benefit that much from Toastmasters, you may want to look at just the competition angle because it is taken very seriously. That could be the motivator to rehearse, to practice, to practice on video, to get feedback and to make tiny micro changes in your presentation to make it even better. Now, Earl wrote in as well, talking about some things that he didn't like from a recent presentation at Toastmasters. He says speakers were posed a question from the audience that had been written on a card and had to immediately speak for one to two minutes about it. This is where experience in table topics is very helpful. The speakers didn't do too badly, although the questions were less than random, focusing on issues relevant to their campaigns and were running for a leadership position in the organization. But what really stood out for me was the 10 minute speech given by the candidate challenging the incumbent for the endorsement. He started by giving us a two to three minute recap of his resume. Talk about boring. Exclamation point. Earl puts what he needed to do was to grab the audience by the throat in those first three seconds with an emotional appeal. I know he could have done it because of the material that came much later in his speech, but it was one of the weakest openings I'd ever scene. I want to talk about this in just a moment and give you tips on how to avoid that common problem.

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Your introduction to a speaking audience is critical. It doesn't matter if someone else is being is introducing you or if you're introducing yourself. The purpose of an introduction is to whet the audience's appetite to want to know why you're speaking, why you're qualified and relevant to speak, what about you that might be unique and what you're going to do that's interesting and relevant and helpful to them. That's what you should do for every introduction. So if you're being introduced by someone else, prepare a new introduction and keep it relatively brief. I mean, if you're only speaking for five minutes, the introduction shouldn't be more than 20 seconds. If you're speaking for an hour and a half, well then a one and a half minute introduction, a little lengthier is perfectly fine. So what you need to do in this particular case, I wasn't at the Toastmasters convention, but if I'm running for a Toastmasters leadership position, I'm only going to talk about the things in my background that are going to help the Toastmasters, help the meetings better, help the competitions better. I'm not going to talk about my high school diploma, where I went to college, my college degree, and these resume things. That's what people feel the need to do. They feel the need to sort of read down a resume. It's boring. You need to tailor your information. So for example, when I used to go regularly to National Speakers association meetings, they would typically have each member stand up and introduce themselves. And some of them were incredibly boring. And so often they start with hello My name is this, My title is this, My company is this. And I do a lot of the same things. Other corporate law firms. It's just boring. It's uninteresting. And you could see this at Chamber of Commerce meetings, quite other networking events where you're asked to sort of stand up and talk about yourself. Here's how I would introduce myself at networking events and things like the National Speakers Association. Imagine the New York Times calls you and wants to interview you about your business for 20 minutes, and you're going to get one quote in the story. Do you know what that one quote would be? Hi, I'm T.J. walker, and I teach people how to speak to the media effectively to get exactly what they want in stores. If you see me after the meeting and give me your business card, I. I'll give you, at no charge, a copy of my book, Media Training. A to Z. There, less than 30 seconds. That's how I introduce myself at a speakers meeting. Because I know all of those people want to get interviewed by the New York. They're all looking to promote themselves. So it was a message highly tailored to that audience. Also true, of course, but that's different from how I would introduce myself if I'm asked to give a high school speech on what to do with your career, because most people in high school are not looking to do interviews with the New York Times. By starting my presentation talking about you, imagine you are getting called by the New York Times to be interviewed. That's more interesting to people because. Because I'm asking them to imagine what happens to themselves. I'm not starting with my name. Nobody cares about my name. I'm not starting with my title, the name of my company. I start off my introduction by talking about people in the audience. Then I talk about how I'm going to benefit them. Then I talk about a reason for them to want to know more about me. Because when they do come up and give me their business card, which they invariably do, I send them a book. And that book has a huge lengthy bio on me if they want it. But if I don't give them a reason to remember anything or want to talk to me or exchange business cards, what have I really done? So that's my challenge to you, is to really think specifically about what you can do to make people want to hear more about you, to make them say, oh, this is exactly why we're listening to him or her today. That's what your introduction needs to do, whether someone else is doing it or you're doing it.

Do you have a speaking related question for number one USA Today best selling author TJ Walker? For more than 30 years, Walker has been a public speaking coach and media trainer to presidents of Countries, Prime Ministers, CEOs, Nobel Peace Prize winners, professional athletes and Ms. Universes. Send your questions to infoediatrainingworldwide.com or on Twitter J. Walker.

The secret to Good introductions Better editing. Eliminate anything that you think wouldn't be incredibly interesting and useful to your audience. Your mommy might really be pleased with the fact that you graduated summa cum laude. Most likely nobody in your audience cares, it just doesn't matter to them. Talk about accomplishments if you want to, but make sure they're going to say oh, that's incredibly interesting and useful. They don't care that you are a National Merit Scholar or anything like that. So get rid of it. Get rid of it. Get rid of it. Focus on what's most important. Now. Other Advanced tip and I try to practice this. I don't do it every time, but I do it most of the time. When someone else is introducing you, type up the introduction introduction. Bring it on a piece of paper and make the font really big, like half an inch big for each letter and keep it to one page. That's going to make it incredibly easy for someone introducing you. You'll come across better, they'll come across better, everyone wins and it's a great way to start your presentation. Earl, thanks so much for your comments and thanks to all the people in the Toastmasters community for being supportive of this show. And for anyone who's thinking about joining Toastmasters, give them a shot and think about entering the competitions. I'm TJ Walker. As always, may all of your presentations in life be a huge success.

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