The quickest way to connect with your audience is to share your failures, flaws, frustrations, and firsts. Why? Because most people have failed, they have flaws, they’ve had frustrations, and they’ve attempted something for the first time. In other words, they can relate. Plus, your failure intrigues us because we want to see how you […]
Continue readingSpeaking involves a series of scenes that you create for your audience to experience. The better you establish these scenes, the better your audience connection will be. If you grasp the process in this lesson, your audience members will have no choice but to be wrapped up in your stories feeling like they were there […]
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Patricia Fripp once said to me, “Craig, people will not remember what you say as much as they will remember what they see when you say it.” In other words, we have to make our speeches very visual in order to have the deepest impact. Here are 3 ways to accomplish this: Tool # 1: […]
Continue readingWhat in the World is Projected Dialogue? Pretend you are walking down the hallway, you bump into me, and my drink spills all over the ground. You look up and see me staring at you with a huge snarl on my face. What do you think I’m thinking at that point? Let me guess your […]
Continue readingOver the years I’ve learned and taught quite a bit about storytelling, but there has been one secret I held close to the vest. Don’t get me wrong, I wanted to share it but I needed a story that would illustrate it. What I learned from Keith Harrell It all started when I […]
Continue readingThere are obvious mistakes some speakers make that destroy their stories. However, I’ve found that most speakers have pretty good stories that would be great if they eliminated some of the following little-known mistakes speakers make. After you listen to the following quick story, you’ll see 4 of those mistakes. Lancaster 1. They don’t milk the […]
Continue readingOne of the questions people ask me is, “Do our stories always have to be true?” If you’re delivering a story that happened to you or that you are representing as true, then it should definitely be true. However, it should contain what my friend and fellow speaker, Darren LaCroix, calls “The emotional truth.” The […]
Continue readingIf you want to thrive in speaking and continue to get opportunity after opportunity, that’s as easy as ABC. ABC stands for… Always Be Creating” Resting on your old material will eventually make your speeches go stale. Creating new, fresh material is a pathway to creating speeches people talk about for years and getting hire […]
Continue readingOne of the questions I get most is, “Craig, where do you come up with your stories?” I generally look in the following 10 places for clues as to which stories I should develop and share. 10 Places to Find Your Stories One: Go to that place in life where you don’t want to go. These […]
Continue readingThe most important skill in speaking is storytelling. However, many speakers make storytelling mistakes that damage their speeches. Below are 12 of the mistakes I see on a regular basis. Avoiding these mistakes will automatically help you make a greater connection and impact each time you speak. Suggestion: You might want to tack these points up somewhere where you […]
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