Have you ever heard a speaker deliver an inside joke? Did you feel included? If not, did the joke make you feel left out? Now imagine yourself with the inside joke. You know it will be funny to a few people (or maybe just one), and you know it will be funny to you. Do you [...]
READ MORE »Posts tagged professional
Speaking Tips: Remembering the lessons
Have you found times as a speakers where you made a mistake, even though you already knew how to avoid that mistake? I recently gave a session to about 50 people, and three lessons I didn’t follow have made me realize that I need to make some adjustments before my next presentation. Last weekend I [...]
READ MORE »Deliberate Practice – Toastmasters Style
This week I’m reading Talent is Overrated (finally) by Geoff Colvin. In this book, he asserts that talent is a myth (or at least it’s attainable – not a birthright) and the best at any endeavor is the person who puts in the most practice. Not just “practice makes perfect” type of practice, but what he [...]
READ MORE »Going Pro? Try the third alternative
There are a lot of ways to do things as a professional consultant/speaker, and they can usually be summarized into two main categories – do it yourself or get a pro to do it for you. For instance, if you want a website you can do it yourself, or get a pro. If you want [...]
READ MORE »Toastmasters Convention – Golden Gavel Dinner
Carolyn. Kepcher. Delivered. What an amazing evening. Toastmasters International 2010 Golden Gavel recipient, Carolyn Kepcher gave a keynote speech to be remembered at our dinner on Friday evening. She started off with the story of how she began working for the Trump organization, and how she ended up on the TV Show The Apprentice. Her descriptions [...]
READ MORE »The Cost of Losing Business
What happens when you make things too automatic for your customers, and an annoying error occurs? Answer: You could lose the sale. In the last few months I’ve been reading some great blogs, and decided to try one of the products I saw. There was a product that was touted as something that would help me see [...]
READ MORE »PowerPoint failure
What do you do when PowerPoint fails? Here’s the good news: PowerPoint never fails. The bad news, only you (the presenter) can fail. That is, of course, from the audience’s point of view. That may sound a bit unfair (especially if you read it aloud), but it’s really not. Any aspect of your presentation can [...]
READ MORE »Colorful Language – Pro’s and Con’s
Is it appropriate to use colorful (i.e. foul) language in your communications, i.e. when quoting someone else? This question came to me recently from a friend who is probably a better speaker than I, but read my post on language use and decided to ask for a more specific opinion. First and foremost, a quote is [...]
READ MORE »The value of free content
Are you tired of “free content” that leaves you needing to buy something to really get the value? There seems to be a number of different marketing ideas out there, and there are two that I notice in effect that include free content. First, there is free content that is designed to just whet your [...]
READ MORE »Black Friday: The power of preparation
Did you wake up at 4am on Black Friday to get a jump on the holiday shopping? You may thing that only a crazy few of us were out there driving in the dark, but you’d be wrong. One CNN report estimates 134 million shoppers were out yesterday, although better stats are expected in the [...]
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