T.J. Walker says practice your speech in front of real people or record yourself, then ask them to summarize what they remember. If they miss your main points, rewrite it. Praise doesn't matter. Retention does.
Chapters
Today's public speaking tip is a fairly advanced tip in the sense that very few people ever do it. It's somewhat rare to follow this advice, but it's also a beginner's tip in the sense that absolutely anyone could do this requires no great talent or skill or complexity. Here it is. Practice your speech in front of others before you give it. But you've heard that before. I want to tell you how to do it in a way that's effective. Ideally, if you're giving a speech to 30 clients or prospects on Thursday, find one or two colleagues. Tuesday, give them your presentation at lunchtime. Maybe you bribe them with a free sandwich. But here's the thing. When you're done, don't just say, well, how'd I do? What did you think? Because the tendency is for people who want to be positive and helpful and nice, and they'll say, oh, T.J. you know, great job. You seem really professional, really comfortable. Good job. I'm sure you'll do well on Thursday. Completely meaningless, useless feedback. It's all about how you ask people and what you ask them. So what you need to do is ask them, tell me, how would you summarize my speech to someone who just walked in the door and missed it and wanted to hear it? What did you take away? What do you remember? Now? What you're going to hear is really useful. Because if I practice on someone and afterwards they say, well, T.J. your speaking skills are fantastic. You just come across so poised, so wonderful, so charming and in command and authoritative. If that's what someone takes away, then I know my speech was a complete, utter failure. Because all they're doing is talking about my style. I'm trying to communicate substance. Audiences can lie to you and tell you they think you're wonderful, even if they think you were awful, shaky, boring, nervous. But they can't really lie to you and tell you your message as if they didn't remember them. So that's my challenge to you. Practice in front of people. Ask them, what do they remember? What stories do they remember? What slides do they remember? What ideas do they remember? Now, if you can't do this face to face, there's nothing preventing you from practicing your speech. As we talked about in an earlier episode on video, sending your best video, the one that you think represents you the absolute best, to a handful of colleagues, perhaps friends. Ask them to watch it and then call them up. Same thing. Ask them what they remember. The feedback is highly valuable. If they're not telling you exactly the messages you want to hear. The problem is not with your audience. The problem was with your speech. It's time to go back to the drawing board and redo it.
