Jan 11

GetEntrepreneurial – Network Expert

I recently became an approved Network Expert on the website Get Entrepreneurial. I was very pleased when this happened because it helps to clarify my expert credibility to the world at large and adds another piece to the puzzle as I move my business forward.

It’s a very useful website as there are experts in various areas that have articles published which give advice on different areas that are useful to the entreprenuer such as business ideas, starting up and communication skills (which is my area of expertise).

I myself will be popping over there from time-to-time looking for inspiration and guidance on areas that I need assistance with, as well as providing any help that I can with speaking and the use of humour.

So if you’re looking to start up your own business this is the place to start your research. Do go forth and check it out as you’ll find it extremely useful I’m sure.  Here’s the full web address: www.getentrepreneurial.com

Jan 10

After Dinner Speaking – part 1

A few weeks ago I was asked to do a speech at my local Toastmasters club’s Christmas Dinner. I had lots of humorous ideas and access to a plethora of street jokes, but I wasn’t quite clear on what an after dinner speech was.

I googled the term and found the seven golden rules as written by Gyles Brandreth the British author and M.P. who holds the record for the longest after dinner speech.

I already knew a lot of these tips so it was nice to have them re-established for me. The website Wise Geek defines an after dinner speaker as follows:

“After dinner speaking can be seen as an art in itself. The speaker must have the ability to entertain their audience in a captivating manner. Part comedian, part lecturer, the after dinner speaker should have a certain “wow” factor“.

That gave me a lot more to go on. Unfortunately, I didn’t really have a lot of time to create material from scratch and fully react to it like the Killer Stand-up System recommends.

So what I did was come up with a topic that I was interested in and that I thought I also might be able to promote to speaking agencies in the future.

Then I sourced some relevant street jokes and I came up with a structure that would allow them to flow together in a logical order.

From there I incorporated humorous lines that either I had written and used in my old stand-up act, or witty reactions that I’d made a note of from conversations that I’d had. That just meant I went through my ideas notebooks to find those lines and incorporate those too. You do write down your ideas in a notebook, don’t you?

After lots of rehearsal I delivered my speech to my fellow Toastmasters. I nearly “killed them”, but not quite. How do I know that I nearly killed them? Because I recorded my speech onto my dictaphone and then played it, whilst I ran it past the Comedy Evaluator Pro software from the Killer Stand-up System.

Okay, here’s the skinny on this great piece of software. When a performer, whether a speaker or comedian, is in front of an audience there are two things that could be happening:

1) the performer is speaking

2) the audience is responding. the audience response (laughter, cheering, applauding) is referred to as a Positive Audience Responce or PAR.

For comedians the following is often true: headliners are getting 4-6 laughs or more per minute. Therefore their PAR score is in the 30s, 40s or even 50s. An open mike comic often gets a PAR score under 5. So you get the idea.

On the other hand a speaker or presenter who uses comedy aims for a PAR score of 15. So I was very pleased when my speech came in at a respectable 11 PAR.

I’m estimating that it will take me another one or two performances of this speech to get it up to a 15 PAR. That said I do, however, want to reduce the amount of street jokes I use and replace them more and more with my own humorous reactions. So it may take a little longer.

Jan 05

70 Public Speaking Blogs: The Public Speaking Blogosphere

I discovered that one of my posts has been linked to on a blog with the above subject line. Here’s a brief extract:

“The public speaking blogosphere: a large and varied space with fuzzy edges spanning many disciplines. There are public speaking blogs which focus on speech delivery, visual presentation design, speechwriting, humor, personal development, and interpersonal communication“. Read the rest of the post here Six Minutes.

This blog, Pro Humorist, has been listed in the Speech Humor Blogs section alongside speakers such as John Kinde, Brad Montgomery and George Gilbert. Very groovy. It’s nice to know that I’m gradually dipping my toe into the “fuzzy” waters of the public speaking blogosphere.

The are many names and blogs that I’m already familiar with over on that post. But there are also plenty that are completely new to me. So I need to make time to have a look at some of the other things that are going on and introduce myself.

The other cool thing is Andrew Dlugan, the author of the Six Minutes blog, has provided a way for his readers to automatically subscribe to all the the listed blogs RSS Feeds at the bottom of the post.

Thanks for that Andrew.

Jan 02

The Killer Stand-up Comedy System

Edit: 08/21/2015

What is so pleasing to me is the fact that this product actually addresses all of the issues I have had with many other books on stand-up comedy and comedy writing I read prior to buying the Killer Stand-up System. If you wanna know what I found, and learn some stand stand-up comedy secrets to for you comedy act, or to apply to your presentations, then keep reading. Continue reading

Dec 29

Amazing Public Speaking Skill – The Hancock Manoeuvre

I re-read a great book on public speaking recently and I was reminded of a technique which was the first one I ever used! I’ll give you a brief background on the book and the technique itself before I tell you about my experience with it.

The book I had read was called “Just Say Few Words” and it was by the late British Comedian and After Dinner Speaker Bob Monkhouse. Bob was a great comedian whose style were one-line jokes similar in style to his hero, Bob Hope. According to the book, Monkhouse was at an after dinner event in the 1960s alongside fellow British comedian Tony Hancock.
Continue reading