The How of Wow

Notes from The How of Wow by Tony Carlson

* According to Tony Carlson only 1 in 500 speeches is good enough to be remembered. To be among those remembered, Carlson says you need to give audiences insight, enlightenment, meaning, stimulation, wit, and entertainment.

* Emulate the greats and soon your own style will take over but with the power of the greats

* Few speakers ever rehearse enough. Every extra moment you have ought to go into rehearsing.

* Your opening line can be a shocker that lets the audience know you mean business. Don’t be afraid to say something that people already suspect, but noone will say except for you.

* Show your vulnerability early in the speech. I recall when Tom Peters said at an NSA convention. “It’s intimidating to think about speaking to a roomful of speakers.”

* Keynotes benefit by a strong start, a rising middle, that grows and grows until you feel a sense of catharsis, a climax of emotion that your audience enjoys.

Banishing "Um" "Ya know" "Like"

Patrica Kitchen, writing in Newsday reports Interview Stream.com monitors and exposes celebrities use of filler language such as "likes," "umms," "ya knows," "I means." The company
has announced an "Umm Like All-Star" list which includes Britney Spears, "who was caught uttering 73 "likes" and "ya knows" in a five-minute video interview on YouTube."

Neither Paris Hilton nor Nicole Richie made the list. The underlying concept "is to bring students' attention to the overuse of such 'verbal crutches' when they go on job interviews."

"Other offenders found at InterviewStream.com's companion site, UmmLike.com, include Eminem and Michelle Wie, "who used 15 'ya knows' and 'I means' in a one-minute interview. "

"A certain number of fillers are normal, but when speakers flip into overuse, they can come across as unfocused and unprepared," says Judy Cavallo, a speech-language pathologist and director of New York Speech Solutions, which evaluates and treats speech disorders, in Oyster Bay. Her first step is to heighten awareness among clients, who are "usually shocked" when she plays back tape recordings of them speaking.