TJ Walker breaks down how to write a solid speech in 30 minutes. Brainstorm messages, pick your top five, attach a short story to each one, jot down ten bullet points, skip the slides, then practice out loud while recording yourself. Review and repeat.
You want to give a great speech, great preparation, but you don't have much time. I want to tell you the least time consuming way of preparing a speech and still doing a great job. For starters, get a blank sheet of paper. Brainstorm on every message you could convey in this speech to this audience. Quickly narrow it down to your top five. Now brainstorm on a story involving a real conversation with a real customer, client prospect for each point and come up with the best one. Write that down. If there's any other facts, numbers you really need, put it all down on a single sheet of paper. You don't have a lot of time. Let's forget the PowerPoint. So you should have five main bullet points, and then underneath each one, a couple of words to tell you what the story is. Now you got a single sheet of paper. There's basically 10 bullet points on it. Say it out loud, video record it, watch it, figure out what you like, what you don't like. Now say it out loud again, record it, watch it, and really get comfortable with how you're coming across and what you like, and you're good to go. If it's a relatively short speech, you should be able to do all of that in a half an hour. Good luck.
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