Writing a Speech: The Right Number of Ideas

00:01 What's the best number of messages to try to communicate when you're giving a speech or presentation? Before I answer that, I want you to think for a minute.

00:09 Think of the best speaker you've heard in your industry, where you were there in the same room. Think of the best speaker you've heard in the last year or the last five years.

00:19 Now, tell me how many messages you remember from that presentation. And I don't mean that you like the person style.

00:27 They were funny, or they walked around the room or engaged or what.

00:31 I don't mean any of that. I mean the actual content.

00:35 How many messages do you remember? Think about it. Now, I've asked that question of clients all over the world for years and years and years.

00:48 And quite often I ask people that, and they say, Gee, I don't remember anything.

00:52 I guess my memory isn't very good.

00:54 Well, their memories aren't worse than anyone else's.

00:57 Sometimes people will remember one idea, and this could be from the greatest speaker they saw yesterday.

01:04 Occasionally two ideas, sometimes three ideas.

01:09 Every few months, someone will remember four ideas.

01:13 And then once every six months, I'll actually have a client remember five ideas, literally a handful of ideas.

01:22 And for more than a decade when I've asked that people a question, I've never had anyone really remember more than about a minute's worth of content, a handful of ideas from the best speaker they've seen in the last year to five years.

01:39 So that's why I tell you, don't be greedy.

01:43 Don't go into a presentation trying to communicate 50, 60, 70 ideas and these PowerPoint slides with 39 bullet points on each one. It's simply not going to work.

01:57 I would recommend you try to communicate no more than five big ideas.

02:03 Maybe three.

02:05 Again, five would put you into the world-class category.

02:09 If you don't think you're the world's best speaker, then you may very well want to narrow it down to fewer, even three.

02:16 So keep this in mind.

02:17 So much of being a great speaker has nothing to do with your voice or your hand gestures or your eye contact.

02:26 So much of being a good speaker has to do with simply being a better editor and deciding in advance which message points are got to haves versus nice to haves.

02:39 If it's a nice to have, email it to people, give it as a handout, but don't try to cover it in your actual presentation.