The Importance of Note Cards for an Impromptu Speech

Video Transcript

"When you have to make an impromptu speech, these are the two most important parts of your preparation; you need to have something to write some notes down on and something to write some notes down with. And I want to tell you, just writing down notes takes so much fear out of making a speech. You think well, I want to be able to make it without notes. Well, if you have all the time in the world to memorize a speech, great, but if you're called on a very short period of time to make a speech, the best thing is to have notes. All the greatest speech makers in the world have notes. Our president has a teleprompter. Some of the great ministers have notes. There's nothing wrong with notes, but the one thing I would suggest is that you keep your notes small. When you have a large eight and a half sheet of paper and you're in a gathering, these can be cumbersome. The neat thing about notes is that you can put them on top of a book or something like that or hold them in your hand and they're not overwhelming. But you want to get your notes and you want to write down kind of, in your introduction, just one or two things you want to say. Maybe it's an anecdote you want to say and then here's the two or three points you want to make. It might be we're looking at the past and say something about the present and say something about the future. For instance, what if you're called on and you've just won a great victory, your team has just won a great victory and the press is looking at you and you have to make a speech, it might be, you may want to say something about the team and how hard they worked, something about your opponent and how much you respect them, and how much you appreciate the fans for supporting you. See, there's three things and they came off, intellectually, logically, you could say things very clearly. But make sure you just have notes. You don't necessarily have to have your notes where they're right in your face but if you have notes, this takes all the fear away. I don't have to worry about what to remember, they're right in front of me. Many times I have notes up there, I never look at them but it's just nice to know that if I did get a little confused where I'm going, they're right there, easy to see. And the more you can put them on just two or three pages, the better so you can just kind of flip through them. I'll tell you what, notes will save your bacon when you have to make an impromptu speech."