A speaker explains why preparation beats winging it: they rehearse jokes in mirrors and on video, test material across 25 to 50 live keynotes, and refine what lands. A joke about a child with a mustache flopped in their head but killed with an audience, proving you need real feedback to know what works.
What is your advice to become a better public speaker?
I would go through training for sure. Here's what not to do. Maybe this is a good tip. Some people will say to me, I'm really good off the cuff. I don't prepare. I just show up and go on stage. I've never seen someone good, let alone great, when they're not prepared. It's kind of ironic, but I also felt that way. It does feel most natural when you are just speaking off the cuff, but I find those presentations are often disjointed, confusing. You can see the speaker trying to figure out what the hell they're talking about as they're speaking, 'cause there is no response. There's this interesting dip we go through. My presentations, Profit First being my most popular, but any of them, Pumpkin Plan is actually gets the best engagement because it's a very funny presentation and chock-full of good tips, I believe. So I rehearse and prepare for those. The first time I present it to a live audience, I start gauging the energy and I'm like, oh, that didn't land. I had this joke that I thought was so dumb. I scratched it off. What it was is I was talking about boarding an airplane. You travel a lot or often enough that you've experienced this. When you get to an airport and the flight attendant says, we're going to be boarding in 10 minutes, please locate your luggage and sit comfortably. That's actually the call to stand up and run to the gates and you can't get through it. So then I explained the only way through is when they make the next announcement where they say anyone that needs additional time to board or is traveling with a child under the age of 2. So here was the joke part that I thought was so stupid. I said, and I'm in New Jersey and some woman brings her 2-year-old child on board who has a full-grown mustache. So you're laughing. I think that's stupid. And I'm like, you know, we're in Jersey, full-grown mustache, maybe he is 2. But I'm like, people manipulate the system. That's what I'm pointing at. But that mustache thing, that's just a throwaway stupid thing, but I'm going to try at once in the audience and they roared. I'm like, what? And I tried again and again. And for whatever reason, it's a funny bone. I would never expect that. My point is I write a speech, I rehearse it in front of the mirror, on video. Then when I present it, I'm starting to test things out. I would say the first 25 to 50 keynotes on Fix This Next or Pumpkin Plan or Get Different is a process of improving and finding what lands. It's around presentation 50 or more that then I'm starting to get in the flow.
