Archive for June, 2006

Adventurer

Our distinguished guest has spent a great deal of time seeking adventure-not the adventures of a man who meets an old flame and has money to burn, but the kind of bold undertaking that brought Columbus to our shores and General Lindbergh to Le Bourget.

Our friend’s yen to learn about the unknown has led him to far away places, including the frozen reaches of the land of long shadows.

His “ice bound” experiences can stop a Texan in his tracks. He tells of a country so cold that you can’t blow out the frozen flame of a candle-and regions so frigid that talk comes out in icicles. They fry them to find out what the conversation is about. But before we get too warmed up about his chosen, frozen field, May I Present. . . .

Advertising men

The ad man is a mixture of business sense and creative art. His first job is to sell the seller on the fact that advertising pays. That requires business acumen. Then he must induce the public to buy what the seller has to offer. That demands creative ability. Blending the two makes for confusion in profusion!

We hate to spring that old mouse trap again that “it pays to advertise”, but how would you know that something is better built if nobody opened his trap about it? Even a lovelorn lady learned that it pays to advertise when she hung her mistletoe in the window. A theatre sign for “Adults Only” advertises the sin in cinema-and packs in the patrons. Doing business without advertising is like winking at a girl in the dark. You know what you’re doing-but does she?

We don’t buy a new car with each new model-most of us make the old one do. We weren’t born with a burning desire for colored TV or electrical appliances-but we’ve been “advertised” into thinking of them as essentials. Why do Americans have so many more material things? Because somebody trained us to expect them as our just due. Our ad men are responsible-in building up the demand they built up a business that grosses over 8 billion through papers and magazines, over the air waves, by outdoor signs, through mailing campaigns, and point-of-purchase promotion in store windows and on counter charts-so you can’t drag the kids by without stopping to buy.

Keywords: Public Speaking, Public Speakers, Public Speaking Tips, Public Seminar Speaking

Accountants and CPA’s

An accountant is looked upon primarily as a bookkeeper until he meets the legal requirements that designate him as a CPA. He then interprets the records the bookkeeper keeps. CPA’s came into their own just about the time vaudeville and its jugglers disappeared. Whether there was any relationship, we’ll never know, but we do know that no one can toss facts faster or make statistics sit up and do tricks better than these boys.

There is a truism to the effect that figures don’t lie, though they do push the truth around a bit, and accountants are adept at upholstering figures to satisfy Uncle Sam-as evidenced by fiscal artists who can convince the tax takers that “fun-in-the-sun safaris” are legitimate business expense. They employ statistics as a drunken man uses a lamp post for support rather than illumination.

Men in this profession must be able to see beyond the financial statement, and be capable of evaluating management; they must be students of economics and keep posted on the business outlook: which industries are forging forward, which ones are slipping, which companies are doing best within an industry-and why?

Even though statistics have taken to machines, there still are the personal touches that only a “pro” can handle a fact that assures us that old accountants never die-they only lose their balance.

Keywords: Public Speaking, Public Speakers, Public Speaking Tips, Public Seminar Speaking

Since the average after-dinner speaker is a man, he not only has a speaking “line,” he also has a line that makes his living. Whether it be a trade or a factory, occupation or profession, audiences are interested in the paths that led to his success. This chapter paces those pathways.

The following paragraphs are instances wherein a speaker’s livelihood provided his entire introduction:

Engineer

Our speaker is a rambling wreck and a hell of an engineer. Curiosity has run rampant in his makeup ever since he was a small boy who wanted to know, “Where was I when I wasn’t?” This goading spirit sends him deep into engine rooms of industry to see what makes them run. Our friend has further talents; after that visit to the engine room he is better posted on what makes the wheels go ’round than the average industrialist, and he can explain what he has seen so well that you yourself can visualize it. So I shall encroach no more on this talented man’s time.

Public speaking instructor

On other occasions these following remarks might weave the speaker’s line into the introduction: Our speaker teaches public speaking, and knows his business well. It is his opinion that our video habits are destroying the art of conversation-an art that should be re-cultivated. Nowadays a man is considered an intelligent conversationalist when he just nods his head in agreement while you talk-and there’s but little prospect for future improvement because about the only answer the small fry knows how to give, is “Yup!”

Our speaker seeks to turn that trend; yet much as we sympathize with those who want to bring back conversation, we wonder whether they’ve heard some of the stuff after it came back? Or listened to a ladies’ bridge group breaking up? At their rate of a hundred fifty words a minute with gusts up to one-eighty-a man wonders whether conversation really IS dead.
Now that we’ve put these barriers into his path, let’s let him put out his line about the merits of public speaking:
[From here on these thumb nail sketches dealing with "lines", may serve (with fitting alterations), as material for both the introduction and the speaker's personal references to his bread and butter line.]

Keywords: Public Speaking, Public Speakers, Public Speaking Tips, Public Seminar Speaking

Harbingers of hate

One breed of propagandist employs brazen methods aimed at tearing down program taboos with methodical speech outlines prepared to disseminate discord. Introductory remarks about hate being the ugliest weed in the garden of life can go far in abating the venom in their messages. Mention that the roots of hatred spread much as crabgrass does. Hate is a common sin, even those who take pride in having hoed it from their hearts keep a few names handy for the day they change their minds!

The indolent one

It’s been booted about that our speaker is a “lazy executive”-then he’s the type we’ll enjoy. Some of our greatest inventions are the result of lazy people seeking an easy way to do something difficult. The first man to ride a horse must have been too lazy to walk, and the one who dreamed up the wheel, probably wanted to take the load off his back. It was the burden of John Browning’s ammunition belt that prompted him to conceive the machine gun. Not until Thomas Edison tired of holding stereopticon slides did he invent moving pictures; and not ’til Henry Ford wearied of pedaling his racing bike did he put the world on four wheels.

Ole Evinrude rowed across the Kinnickinnic so often during his courting days that he became inspired to create the outboard motor. The chap who developed the spray gun was too impatient to paint and too proud to whitewash … so he schemed up a method of applying paint more slickly and quickly. Today’s harried executives frequently give the biggest production problem to the laziest man in the plant; he’ll figure out the easiest way to do the toughest job.
We benefit in like manner-for that very technique gives our speaker time for this visit.

Keywords: Public Speaking, Public Speakers, Public Speaking Tips, Public Seminar Speaking

13. Agitated over age
A speaker suffering from a fixation about age usually bemoans his advancing years, yet he has no suggestion for how to curtail them. He is unaware of the ways in which aging improves paintings, whiskey, and people. Of him and his kind we should ask at the start, why all the rage about age?

None of us can halt the advancing years-we’d all be dead if we did. We start to grow old on the day we’re born and keep it up ’til the day we die. Fighting Father Time is as futile as throwing away a boomerang. We’ve heard the bleached blonde on a bar stool who mourns her lost youth and cries over her spilled years. A femme of finer fettle pursues her own private techniques, putting up character lines and trying to cover baggy eyes. You’ve seen a “him” or two, too-with his swollen waist and receding hair-he picks a wink-side seat at a girlie show.

When we slow the tempo of our everyday lives, we capture joys we never knew before. Once the flaming years have turned to embers, nature banks the fires of our desires. Some of the gay blades who burned the candle at both ends are even satisfied with an old flame. Contentment is a blessing as silver threads replace the gold, for things we couldn’t have in our youth-we no longer crave when we’ve grown old.

14. Holy Joe
“A little to the right of Joshua” is the way Palmer Hoyt, Denver Post publisher, describes a self-righteous fellow who wallows in his own virtue. As a rule his theme revolves around a mealy-mouthed member of society who made good. The audience may be seasoned for “Joes” P^ea f sweetness, light and pious perfection if the merits of meekness are played up in the introduction: The meek shall inherit the earth-the Bible tells us so.

Take Jed. He was meek as a mouse. He inherited a thousand acres from his hard-drinking, hard-working, hard-fighting father, but was no more like his old man than a rabbit is like a timber wolf. He never so much as made a “B” grade beanbag team. He found country life too rugged and unrefined, so, after renting the ranch to a thieving tenant-he headed for the city. In time the land was sold for taxes and the tenant bought it up. There’s something pathetic about people like Jed; they’re too meek to say boo to a bunny. Maybe they do inherit the earth-but they sure don’t know how to keep it!

Keywords: Public Speaking, Public Speakers, Public Speaking Tips, Public Seminar Speaking

10. Vices
Envy, hate, animosity and belligerence are agitations high on the ulcer diet. They rate a poor press, and are emotional frailties shunned by punsters with an air of don’t-talk-about-the-felon-in-the-family.
These liabilities would only load up an introductory speaker with excess baggage.

11. The cussin’ kind
Profanity is popular in several callings; the salty sayings of seamen, the candor of cavalrymen, and the smutty slang of smelters. Outstanding in this achievement was Mike, the mighty metal man. He could turn the air blue when things went wrong, and he’d cuss to a foreman, “I’m too inter-damn-pendent to take such talk from any superin-damn-tendent!”

As Judge Gary of U.S. Steel told it: One day Mike and his crew really clicked. They were melting steel faster than ever and were heading for a production record. They’d have made it too, but for a freak accident. The roof of the No. 2 furnace cracked from strain. Bricks tumbled into the melt, ruining both the steel and Mike’s chances for that coveted record. For a full minute he stood staggered by the enormity of his tough luck. His men waited for the big explosion a magnificent outburst that would express his feelings and theirs. Mike’s face turned red and his thick neck swelled with rage as he rumbled and built up, ready to boil over. But finally with a gesture of utter despair he burst out with, “Boys … I just ain’t up to it!”

12. The long winded one
A speaker reputed to be a loquacious windjammer may be discouraged by being reminded of the determined deacon who plodded through his prayers at great length, asking divine guidance for all the known races, singly and united. He advised the Lord as to each one’s needs and how best to handle them. He mentioned the weather and suggested what would be most acceptable at that time. He thanked the Lord for being generous, and told Him how he appreciated the smile of His divine approval, and how the congregation would struggle to be worthy of His kindness and mercy, bounty and blessings.
When he finally breathed a fervent “Amen,” the winded prelate heard scuffling sounds as the congregation began putting on their shoes!

Keywords: Public Speaking, Public Speakers, Public Speaking Tips, Public Seminar Speaking

8. Westerners
The “Westerners” is an international organization of men who, by rearing or by reading, are aware of the way of our West and proud of our Western heritage. Television and movies have come far from the Horse Operas when actors hitched up their pants before they squatted around a campfire! Yet they still frequently leave considerable space between fact and fiction.

Six guns didn’t make square shooters of all those rugged hombres who turned a barren wilderness into fertile fields, and so some cashed in with their boots on. Their ranks were filled by the trail blazer, the tenderfoot, the nester who came by rail; the man with the pan in search of gold, the miner who curried the countryside for metal, and the mule skinner who could move his team up mountains with a jerkline and blacksnake. Among them moved the fancy vested gambler with his gold watch chain (dealing every game from the bottom); the grizzly old whacker who guided his oxen with only a bullwhip, and the notch-gunned rustler who could stand before a mirror and beat himself to the draw.

Of all these, the cowpoke . . . that corrugated character with parenthetical legs, is best remembered. After supper in the summertime he sat on a top rail telling passers “Howdy” .. . and if he wasn’t pickin’ his teeth with a knife, he was dribblin’ tobacco down his chin. Let’s not forget the nesters who followed all these; they fenced in the land and fathered farmers’ daughters for the dwindling herd of cowboys to marry and settle down. Our speaker, the product of just such a proud progeny, is eager to preserve the pristine purity of the West and to protect it from the “pap” put out by some script writers.

9. The worry wart
Our speaker has been affectionately dubbed a worry wart, and he’s come to tell us how to be the way he “ain’t.” Worrying is akin to swaying in a porch swing-it’s something to do but doesn’t get you anywhere. It’s the interest we pay on troubles we’re always looking for, and it leads us to see the worst side of everything.

That’s the moral in the story of a tiny tot who wandered from camp in the Kootenai Forest. Grizzly bears abide in that Idaho wilderness, and the child’s mother was worried because she’d sighted one close by. A posse set out in hot pursuit-looking not for the child, but hunting for the bear; hour after hour, they brought down bear after bear. Finally someone remembered to look for the little lass and found her less than a mile from camp; she’d only wandered away but a score of grizzlies had been wantonly waylaid. Our speaker wants to tell us that when we neglect to worry, worry will die of neglect.

Keywords: Public Speaking, Public Speakers, Public Speaking Tips, Public Seminar Speaking