Kids Top Five

Once you’ve decided exactly what the topic is and what your goal is for this presentation I need you to really focus on what do you think is going to motivate your audience to follow up on the goals to do what you want them to do so you accomplish your goal.

Now if it’s in the classroom you may simply want the other students in your room and the teacher to know that you know all the basic fundamental important things about this person’s life and to put a spotlight on a handful of important moments.

If you are asking your parents to go in a particular type of vacation say to Disneyland then you’ve got to ask yourself what are the specific reasons that are most likely to motivate your parents to take you to Disneyland.

So you’ve got to focus you can’t just put forth every single fact every single data.

You can’t say well Disneyland is open from 8 a.m. to ten point three hundred sixty.

That’s a fact about Disneyland.

It’s unlikely to motivate your parents to do what you want.

So you can’t look at all the facts of a person’s life.

If you’re giving a book report on their life because if it’s just the person was born on this day in this month and this year in 1872 who cares.

Why should anyone really care about that.

Unless you explain it in proper context so the biggest problem for most people speaking whether they’re students whether they’re adults whether they’re teachers is they just throw out so much stuff that frankly is an interesting it’s boring it’s just way too much stuff.

So part of what you need to learn how to do right now is before you say something talk a book report a presentation or request to your family.

Ask yourself is what I’m saying truly going to be interesting to the people in the room I’m speaking to.

Is it really going to be interesting and important to them.

Or is it just going to seem really boring and they’re going to think oh let me just ignore what this kid is saying and let me check my email.

So that’s my big challenge to you always think about what’s truly important.

If you’re giving a five minute book report in class you can’t go through every single fact about someone’s life.

You may have to read an entire book maybe three books on the person’s life if you were to say everything in those books.

You’d have to stand up and talk for 20 hours.

You’re not going to give a 20 hour speech in class and nobody wants to listen to that.

So you’ve really got to ask yourself what is truly most important here.

So much of being a good public speaker doesn’t have anything to do with how tall you are or whether your voice becomes deep.

Complete nonsense.

So much of being a good public speaker is about simply using judgment of what’s interesting and what isn’t.

You already have judgment.

You’ve been deciding your whole life.

What TV shows are interesting.

What’s more.

What video games are interesting.

What’s boring.

What teachers are interesting.

What’s boring.

So you already know what’s boring and what’s not.

So you need to apply that same rule to the stuff you’re talking about.

Focus on what’s interesting so I need you to come up with a handful of messages that are going to make the case.

Again it doesn’t matter if you’re making a presentation to your parents and where to go for vacation.

If you are giving a book report a biography on someone.

Focus on what’s really most important.

The top five ideas.

Now if you’re giving a 20 minute presentation on an entire term paper that you’ve worked on for months I understand you’ll have to go beyond five points.

But for starters let’s really make sure we know what’s most important we can always add more.

So that’s your homework.

Now come up with a list of the five most important points you’re trying to convey in this presentation to your classmates friends family or teachers.