TJ Walker shares how to prep a major speech in one to two hours. Skip the slides, pick five core messages, pair each with a story, write one bullet sheet, and rehearse by recording yourself.
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What do you do if you have to give a big speech tomorrow and you haven't even started? Okay, you've procrastinated, you've pushed it off, you've thought about it, you've had the best of intentions, but tomorrow's the big day, you have to give the presentation. You haven't even started. What do you do? You are panicking. Well, for starters, don't panic. Here's what I'd recommend and let's assume you really just have an hour or two and it could be 9pm to 11pm for starters, if you've waited to the last minute, Forget about the PowerPoint slides. They're not going to help you and in fact that will suck up all your remaining time in a way that is not productive at all. I'm not anti PowerPoint. Use them in the future. But if you only have a couple of hours or an hour or less, do not waste time with a PowerPoint telling you right now. Waste of time. Here's what I'd recommend you do. Get a clean notepad, sheet of paper or tablet or iPhone, whatever you like to write on. Brainstorm on the messages that you really want this audience to understand and know the facts. Messages brainstorm one sentence at a time. Don't worry about writing a whole speech. Don't worry about creating a PowerPoint, don't worry about graphics. Just get the ideas down, then put them in priority. What you want to do is narrow it down to literally your top five ideas, throw all the others in the trash can. Then what you need to do is come up with an example, a case study, a story for each message point. The story doesn't have to be funny, dramatic, overly emotional. It just has to involve a conversation you had with a colleague, a customer, a client, a co worker about something to do with this issue at hand, how it was resolved, how you felt, what the problem was, and really how you dealt with it to make the message come up. Remember, your number one problem when you're giving a presentation is not that you didn't cover all the facts and it's not that you couldn't answer a question. Your number one problem, your number one challenge in giving a presentation is getting anyone to give a you know what about what you're saying and get them to stop typing on their phone and reading their emails and to actually remember anything you said. So don't lose sight of that. Brainstorm on your messages, come up with the top five. Come up with an examples case study story for each one, then put it all down just in bullet points, very large font on half a sheet of paper. Then what? I want you. And you're not going to like this. You're probably not going to do it. But I have a responsibility to tell you you need to practice the speech out loud. Just talk to your cell phone, record yourself, look at it, watch it, figure out what you like, don't like, and try to do it one more time. Try to do more of what you like, less of what you don't like. If you do that, you've essentially practiced twice. You've watched it twice. The information, the ideas, the messages, the stories have essentially gone through your brain four times. So when you're giving that speech for real tomorrow, that will be the fifth time it's being processed through your brain. Well, you're now going to have a huge advantage on all the poor saps who've been writing and rewriting and rewriting and futzing with their PowerPoint slides for two months for this presentation. And yet they're actually standing up and delivering it for the first time in front of the audience. You're actually going to be better than they are. I don't want to give you a license to not prepare your speeches in advance for the future, but hey, we're talking about these rare circumstances where time just caught up with you. That speech is tomorrow. These are the steps you need to follow. Brainstorm on five messages. Isolate them. Story example for each one, put it on a single sheet of paper. Practice on video. Watch it. Practice again on video. Watch it. And you are good to go. I'm TJ Walker. Thanks for joining me for this truncated weekend edition of Speaking with TJ Walker. We're here for you seven days a week. If you have any questions about any aspect of public speaking, presentation training, media skills, crisis communication skills, you can send them to me on Twitter JWalker. You can also post them right here, whether you're watching this on Facebook, YouTube or any other platform. And you can also send me your questions directly infomediatrainingworldwide.com and if you haven't done so yet, please go ahead and sign up for our free online public speaking training course@mediatrainingworldwide.com right on the homepage. I'm TJ Walker. Hope you're having a great weekend. May all of your presentations in life be a successful.
