I do now, and I want to share their secret with you because this could effectively turn the table around and made you as good - if not better - than them.

Here goes.

Top speakers and leaders write daily.

Some of them write on their moleskin journal book which they carry with them everywhere they go. Some of them write into their PDAs or palm tops. Some of them scribble on napkins or the back of the receipt which they will transfer to their desktop at the end of the day. Bottomline is - they write, and they do that daily.

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Just got back from a homecoming party organized by the NUS Overseas College. As usual, there were a lot of presentations being made by the returning batches and I could not help but to evaluate them. Yes, it’s an occupational hazard… forgive me.

This was a 10 mins presentation where the speaker shares about what his department does. (I think it was NUS Entrepreneurship Centre) However, what has fishes, a robotic car and what I think are cells got to do with his department and the Q&A session?

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After 3 years of working with entrepreneurs and executives on their business presentations and being on the receiving end of nearly 10,000 speeches and presentations, it doesn’t really take a genius to spot the bad habits of speakers. However, I recently discover that if you spend time just working on overcoming your bad habits, you can get on the fast track and become an exceptional speaker in a very short period of time.

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Hear ye! Hear ye! Andrew and I have been invited again to the local radio station (938LIVE) for another live interview with Melanie Oliveiro. She is the anchor of F-CUBE: Food, Fun & Feel Good, a lifestyle oriented radio show that is highly popular with Singaporeans, young and old.

We have yet to get the questions from Melanie but I do know that the talk will be on The FAQ Book on Public Speaking and our after thoughts. So if you are in Singapore, come join us for a chill out session! Click here to listen live.

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Ok I lie. There isn’t one. Or at least no one has outwardly claim to have the formula, not even the past winners of the Toastmasters’ International Speech Contest.

However, many speakers have sought to find that elusive formula by reviewing the past speeches of the champions. As it turns out, it all boils down to how well your audience can relate to your message and your stories. Since the audience varies (so do the judges), it is really hard to put a finger to a winning formula… which brings us back to the question.

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Ever face with the insurmoutable task of delivering a speech off the cuff?

I just came across a four-step formula created by Richard C. Borden that will teach you how to craft a powerful speech on the fly. To speakers who suck at speaking off the cuff, you will find this post God-sent.

Here goes.

Borden recommends that you imagine your audience shouting the following words at you as you deliver your speech, in this order.

“Ho hum!” (or B-O-R-I-N-G!)
“Why bring that up?”
“For instance?”
“So what?”

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Yes, that’s me… my 10 seconds of fame on national TV.

Full news here: 42 amateur writers launch inspirational book in under 24 hours

On Friday, 11 January 2008, 5.15pm SG Time, 42 people embarked on an impossible task of producing an e-book for the first time. What took others months or years, they took a mere 24 hours to make it happen! Not only did they produce the book (Pick Me Up Book) within a day, they also managed to hit 100 pre-orders on the same day.

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If there is one topic that I am totally clueless about, it is politics. Yet when I was watching Barrack Obama’s victory speech after the Iowa caucuses, I swear I became smarter. The message is simple (”Yes, we can!”) yet powerful. The writing is direct yet poetic. The delivery is forceful yet friendly. Though we now know that the speech is scripted by some genius, Barrack made it his. I urge you to set aside ten minutes to watch the video because you will see one timeless technique at work here. It is the same technique that was cleverly harnessed by famous oratorical speakers like Martin Luther King (in “I have a dream” speech) and JFK (in Ich bin ein Berliner speech).

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As promised, here are the pictures taken on our BIG day! For those of you who came for our party, THANK YOU! For those of you who did not, THANK YOU TOO! If not for you, the book won’t be even be written… Enjoy!

To download the pictures, click here.

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It’s really late here in Singapore. About 2am. So let me get this post out real quick before I go to bed. It’s really important you read this. Tell you why later.

Seth Godin, the guy behind many top-notch marketing books recently made an observation…

Turns out that for the last twenty-seven years, every single movie that managed to win the Oscar for best picture was also nominated for best editing.

What does that tell you?

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