Entrepreneur and renowned motivational speaker, Josh Cote, shares Business Insider’s top tips for memorising a speech, to help fellow aspiring speakers become successful at the art of public speaking.
Speaking in front of an audience can be scary. In fact, research shows that fear of public speaking, glossophobia, is one of the most common phobias amongst people. Josh Cote, Managing Director of outsourced sales and marketing firm EA Worldwide Acquisitions, says it is all about confidence and reveals five tips on how to memorise a speech in just an hour. He explains that the best way to overcome the fear of public speaking is doing it: “Practice and preparation creates confidence and will help you keep the audience engaged.”
Josh Cote has been a renowned motivational speaker for a number of years. He is invited to speak at industry events on a regular basis to share tips and give advice on how he became a successful entrepreneur and business owner. As part of an expansion from their US operations, the firm opened their first international office in London in 2007, EA Worldwide Acquisitions. Josh Cote has shared Business Insider’s tips that he finds incredibly useful for preparing for a presentation:
1. Outline valuable points
“Giving a speech does not mean writing a whole script,” says Josh Cote of EA Worldwide Acquisitions. He insists that the beauty of every speech is the opportunity to be spontaneous. Rather than writing a speech word by word, he recommends to make a list of ten bullet points of the key messages the audience should take away, for example: Success in Q1, customer feedback, goals for 2016, expansion, achievement through ownership, time management etc.
2. Create mental images
Josh Cote says: “I personally find it easy to remember images and therefore create visual aids for myself for each of the bullet points. A quick look on the picture will help me pick up on what I want to talk about and is quicker than reading from a text.” For the first bullet point, successes of the first quarter, he would add an image of a dollar bill to talk about the profit and the Facebook logo to talk about positive customer feedback from social media channels.
3. Research
Collecting data is crucial to support the points to be discussed in the speech. “Take some time to get the numbers and information to prove your points. For example sales and revenue figures, feedback from employee surveys, customer reviews, reports and so on.” Josh Cote of EA Worldwide Acquisitions explains: “This will help you support your key messages and the audience will feel that you are well prepared and know what you are talking about.”
4. Put all pieces together
Josh Cote says: “After you have done all this, it is important to visualise the entire layout of the speech and put all the pieces together.” This means thinking about how to use the collected data, so it has a significant impact on the audience, thinking about what questions to ask to engage listeners and make them feel involved and ensuring the key message of the speech comes across.
5. Review and practice
The final step is to memorise the bullet points and images. “Practice, practice, practice,” says Josh Cote of EA Worldwide Acquisitions. “Go through the speech in your mind or if possible, say it out loud. If you don’t have a test audience, such as colleagues or family members, practice the speech in front of a mirror. Memorising bullet points and images is easy and will help you focus on keeping eye contact with the audience,” he adds.
Josh Cote is convinced that by following these five steps, anyone can become a great and confident public speaker in just an hour. EA Worldwide Acquisitions provides support and guidance to new entrepreneurs to help them in their personal development. Amongst many, public speaking is one of the areas the company gives professional advice on.
