BEHIND THE MIKE

IPart 3 of 4

n the first two parts of this series on the tricks of the speaking trade, I shared how important that it was to have humor in your speaker’s tool box and that you have to be different, diverse and dissimilar.

Early on in my career I introduced something I coined as “Visual Extravaganza” as part of a grand finale in my presentations. I would take 35 mm slide photos of my audience members, develop them instantly and use them in my closing.

I have taught over 200 speakers over the years about Visual Extravaganza and none to my knowledge ever used it. It is a lot of work, but it has made me a zillion dollars over my career.

,Since Visual Extravaganza was so successful, I decided to expand into other areas. The first was Visual Roast. I would professionally develop a segment where audience members could roast the outgoing President or the CEO.

Like Visual Extravaganza, two good things happened. First, the audience is the star of the show and secondly, it could actually join in on the fun and be part of the presentation as we honored one of their own.

When Microsoft Publisher came out in the eighties, the natural progression was into Visual Newspaper. I would hang with the meeting participants all day, take photos and develop an overnight newsletter that was slipped under their door as they slept.

None of these tools took the place of a presentation; they enhanced the presentation. In studying other speakers, I would note what worked for them and would try to adapt.

I was speaking at the Million Dollar Round Table one year and noticed another colleague, Dennis Waitley, used a poem to open his presentation. I’ll never forget the closing line… “And there’s no other place I’d rather be than right here with you at MDRT.”

I did not want to rip off his poem idea; that would not be ethical. I did adapt the concept. I went to another colleague, Al McCree, who has written some music that I use in my speeches. I asked him to write me an opening song that I could actually sing.

The song had to be a tune from the Eminent Domain, meaning it would not have to be licensed by the group hiring me. I wanted the tune to be something everyone would instantly recognize. I needed the content to be generic enough that it could be used in front of any audience in any city in the world.

Al selected “I’ve Been Working on the Railroad,” which everyone knows. He wrote the following lyrics for me:

“I would like to give a welcome, here to all of you

In beautiful ______ (fill in city) where the skies are always blue.

Here ______ (group name) is assembled to meet and to network.

Hoping that the _______ (opening/closing) speaker

Won’t sound like a jerk!”

It is not ethical or right to take other people’s material, but it is clever and acceptable to adapt concepts that work. That is why I believe in a theory of my good friend Joel Weldon, “Find out what everybody else is doing… then don’t do it.”

I took the concept one step further. I created a Kazoo Review where I would select multiple “volunteers” from the audience to come on stage and play the background music for my opening song. Most have never even played a kazoo and that’s exactly what made the exercise so fun and clever.

I would give the kazoo to the participants as a take-away gift but often would call the Kazoo Review back up to do background music for other tunes. I tell a series of stories about my role as my son’s Cub Scoutmaster.

An often sung Cub Scout song, titled “God Bless My Underwear,” is sung to the tune of God Bless America. The entire process is hilarious and allows me to make points in the presentation while incorporating personalized humor.

(Next week: Part 4 of The Tricks of the Speaking Trade)

Michael Aun, CSP®, CPAE Speaker Hall of Fame® is the author of “The Official Toastmasters International Guide to Professional Speaking” (Dearborn Publishing)