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Share the wealth!
Tell your colleagues about us!
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Grand Opening
Your opening typically is only about 15 percent of your speech, but unless you grab the audience at the beginning, they'll be sleeping through your most important information.
You must craft an opening that cannot be ignored. Great openings have three things in common:
- they grab the audience's attention away from whatever else they're thinking
- they maintain the audience's interest
- they are colorful, not black and white
So, you might be wondering how to create an opening that will do all those things. Let's look at my top three tips that will help you create your own grabber openings.
  "There was not one individual who did not improve their skills, no matter what level they started. One of the few courses where people at different skill levels can work and learn from each other."
#1. Make a startling statement.
There is nothing like a statement that startles, either because it is so counterintuitive or so amazing, that gets an audience to sit up and take notice. Here's one friend Harry Hoover used recently in a talk about how to think like Leonardo da Vinci. "95 percent of what we know about the brain we have learned in the past 10 years." That got my attention.
#2. Use a powerful quotation.
You can find quotes from famous and not-so-famous people that are applicable either to the speech topic itself, to the audience or best of all to both. For instance, if you were speaking at a Democratic event on the subject of achievement, you might pull out this one from Rose Kennedy. "Superior achievement, or making the most of one's capabilities, is to a very considerable degree a matter of habit."
#3. Use historic events.
Historic events provide much fodder for openings. For example, since the Zipline is being delivered April 16th, let's see what happened on this day in history for your talk on perseverance. What do the mimeograph machine and the airplane have in common? Their inventors, A.B. Dick and Wilbur Wright were both born on April 16th, and they both toiled for years before their inventions were perfected.
There you have my three top tips for helping you craft grand openings. Do you have a good grabber you've used recently? Drop us a note.
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Say What?
We've been receiving a lot of thoughtful responses from our Zipline readers in the past few weeks. Communication is a two-way street, after all, so we thought we'd share some of these responses with you. First, we asked readers about personal obstacles they have confronted and overcome. In other words, what's your zipline? Here's what some said.
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