How to Use a Teleprompter Secrets from Reagan

You heard me mentioned at the beginning.

The reason to use a teleprompter is not to save time but to really make sure everything goes right.

You get the exact wording and phrasing the way you want it.

Now people think of Ronald Reagan as one of the great communicators of all time.

He was called The Great Communicator regardless of your politics.

Most fair minded people would say Ronald Reagan was a great speaker.

Now many assume that was because he was an actor and had a lot of experience in front of cameras.

That’s partially it but the real reason is he brought an actor’s discipline of rehearsal to the public speaking process.

So when Reagan had a major speech like the State of the Union address he would practice the speech out loud for three hours a night for a week.

Now he wasn’t doing that to memorize the speech he was using a teleprompter.

He was doing that to build a comfort with the words relationship with the words to get his brain and mouth and everything in sync used to having those words come out of his mouth in a set way.

After all that practice out loud he would still spend an entire day practicing on video with the teleprompter again not doing it to memorize but doing it so he could get the pauses just right.

The emphasis just right head movements just right.

So if Ronald Reagan could spend a whole day doing videotape rehearsal for his teleprompter speeches what’s your excuse for not spending at least an hour doing.

There’s always time for anything that’s important.

If there’s no time to practice your speech your teleprompter speech on video maybe you shouldn’t make time to give the speech at all.

So please please practice on video.

That’s the real secret of the master communicators.