Speak with Confidence

Chapter 10The Power of Systems

Some of the best “Eureka!” moments occur at the collision of two seemingly unrelated concepts. That's exactly how the original eureka story took place. Ancient math–whiz Archimedes was contemplating a hard‐to‐prove theft while taking a bath when he came up with the idea of measuring volume via displacement.

My eureka moment about systems wasn't as historic as Archimedes', but it can significantly improve your ability to construct better speeches faster. Instead of his collision of a crime investigation and personal hygiene, mine brought together the concepts of speech writing and franchises.

When I first started as a public speaker, it took me up to twenty hours to write a speech. With each new speech, I essentially had to start from scratch, and it ate up huge chunks of my week. I was highly motivated to find a better way. Through trial and error (and practice), I was able to develop a personal method that cut that time down to four to six hours for a thirty‐minute speech—while increasing quality. Sound farfetched? Keep reading.

As my workload increased, I hired Jimmy to oversee one of the departments, and this responsibility included his having to give regular presentations. He was a hard worker and eager to learn, but I noticed that he frequently wasn't completing all of his week's duties or was staying at the office far too late. When I asked him about it, he said that he ran out of time because he was preparing for his presentations.

“How ...