The purpose of this book is to help newer speakers speak better ... faster. This is achieved with its focus on the three essentials: a clear message, a close audience connection, and helping your audience remember. An important contribution the book also makes is an explanation why audiences' minds wander and how you can hold their attention. The book comprises two parts: a set of 47 tools to build better speeches; followed by 11 world-class speeches, examples of speaking excellence illustrating many of the tools described. The book has a clear, easy-to-understand style, free of technical rhetorical terms. Each helpful tool covers two pages: a half-page description, followed by copious examples allowing the reader to clearly understand the tool's use in different situations. In addition to triggering new speech ideas, readers can adapt the examples given to dovetail into their own speeches. Besides including some of the better-known speech tools such as Alliteration, Repetition, and Triples, it introduces the reader to some of the newer tools such as Twists, the Senses, and Visual Words. It is a toolbox of fresh, helpful ideas that every speaker will keep nearby.
About the Author: Brian Woolf is a speechaholic. He loves listening to speeches, thinking about them, and giving them; and he loves reading and studying them- their makeup, their message, their "music"-to discover their magic. It wasn't always so. In High School he avoided entering the annual speech contests. At 22, in his first job, he knew he needed speaking help. Toastmasters was just being introduced to his native New Zealand. He joined. He learned. He gained speaking confidence ... enough to subsequently use the skills learned to graduate with Distinction from the Harvard Business School with its two-year program focused on dialog-based case studies. In later years, he has spoken extensively, including at conference on five continents. Toastmasters continues to play a key part in his life. Brian has been an active club member in New Zealand, Ireland, and the USA. He has won six District (State) Speech Contests-and lost many more (which is when intensive learning occurs!) In 2003, he was one of the nine finalists in Toastmasters World Championship of Public Speaking. Mastering communication skills helped him not just in Toastmasters but also in the business world and as an author, where the art of simple, clear communication guided his writing of three marketing books. This book shares many lessons Brian wished he had learned decades ago with the goal of speeding up your speaking journey.