Your job is to leave your audience in a better place than where you found them. (Let that just sink in for a minute…)

Public speakers start big – they have a big opening and get people excited about things and then pull them down when they don’t follow this one rule.

One of my old-time favourite pieces of music is by a band called Two steps from hell, Enchantress. It builds up and up and you must stop what you’re doing and just listen to the music… And it’s just so powerful! Do you know what you don’t do after that? ADD AN EXTRA VERSE!

But then again…

That’s exactly what we as speakers do! We build up to some big ending, inspire our audience to do something amazing and then somebody comes up and does some ‘housekeeping’. It’s like binge-watching your favourite series and BOOM! Loading…

It’s fucking frustrating and at that moment my friend, you’ve just lost your audience! Zzzzzzzzz

Stop it! Just stop.

So what now?

1. Just move the housekeeping one step ahead and do it BEFORE the build-up. People will stay for the speaker but not for the housekeeping, especially online.
2. The next speaker carries on the peroration ( peroration is the part of the speech at the end where you build your audience up and you let your audience believe that this is where you are taking them… That, ladies and gentlemen, is what it’s all about. If you put these to play, you will take those away and be better!) Peroration is a very important part of a talk! You carry on the big punchy build. Summarise and end big. Then call it a day.

That’s it! Minor changes that will ensure your audience leaves where you want them to.

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