TJ Walker breaks down his public speaking template: pick one action you want from your audience, narrow five core messages, create a story for each, and use image-only slides. Put all text and data in the notes section instead. Test everything on video and with real people until they remember what you intended.
Chapters
So what is the ultimate public speaking template? I've been teaching public speaking to executives, politicians, CEOs, since 1984. And I have a simple, refined system that I want to share with you that I think will eliminate most of your problems, save time, and help you become not a good, but a great speaker every single time. For starters, you got to ask yourself, what is it I really want this audience to do? What is my ultimate goal? Next, you brainstorm on every message that could possibly motivate your audience to do what you want. Narrow it down to just the top five messages. Next, you've got to come up with a story to amplify each message to illustrate every message point. Not one story for the whole speech, not one story for the opening, but one separate story for every single one of your messages. Now, if you're using PowerPoint, come up with a slide for each message. A slide that has an image. Not a single word of text. That's right, you heard me. Don't use a single word of text for the slides you are projecting. So you're going to need at least five slides that you project. Now, when you're creating the PowerPoint, use the notes section of your PowerPoint and put in all the text, all the data, all the normal bullet points and stuff. The data dump that most people project. You're not going to project that, but you will email it to people in advance. You'll hand it out after your presentation. You'll make it available to people on your website afterwards. The next step is you practice your speech on video. Watch it, figure out what you like, what you don't like. Keep redoing it again and again and again until you love every aspect of your style and substance. The next step is you find a couple of people who represent your audience, who are similar in mindset and knowledge. You practice your speech on them. When you're done, you ask them what they remember. If they remember your messages and remember your images, then you're great. You're ready to go. Any message point they don't remember, any image they don't remember. Throw away the image, throw away that slide. Any message they don't remember, you have got to go back and retool that message, come up with a better story, a better example, a better image, until they get it. Once you pass the test from your couple of people sampling it now, you're ready to give a great speech. That's the template.
