Brendon Burchard – Worlds Greatest Speaker Training

What makes a great speech:

First, let’s talk about what makes a great speech. I think there are just a few very important elements that you need to know that make a great speech, and then you can prepare for it.

#1: Life Truths in Your Speech

A great speech is indicated by the number of life truths in the speech.

You can have all the data, all the numbers, be super smart, super funny, really entertaining or even empowering. But at the end of the day, you have to ask: Are the life truths that you’re sharing POWERFUL?

It is if the wisdom resonates in people’s hearts and minds help them think about their day differently, their Monday differently, their family differently, their health differently, and their mission differently.

I always say: you only need five life truths that make people realize just how true they are.

I shared an example on stage. I was talking about productivity today. I was talking to 4,000 very advanced marketers and I explained to them that the issue isn’t always just getting more done, which most people think it is. Sometimes there’s a big difference—and you know it in your heart—between busy work and your life’s work. And don’t think that you’re ever going to reach the next level just doing more busy work. That transition, that real fulfillment, starts to come into your career and your life when you understand what your life’s work is and you start making sure that 60% of your work week is going towards that, because that is what matters the most. It’s not that complex, but it’s a life truth.

People say there is a difference between their busy work and their life’s work.

Create phrases that are memorable around life truths. If you ever see me speak, I probably have 30 or 40 of those life truths in a 90-minute presentation that are very resonant and speak to people’s hearts and minds.

#2. Enthusiasm!

I’d say number two is enthusiasm. Look at the video of me coming out on stage. Watch me interact with the audience. Watch me on any of my YouTube videos, listen to my podcasts (like HPX Podcast). It’s everything that I believe about HPX, which stands for the High Performance Experience. It’s about the enthusiasm and zest we must have for life or that we must generate and create.

I’m just enthusiastic when I’m onstage, even if I’m scared, even if I’m worried, even if I’m concerned.

Certainly walking out in front of thousands of people wasn’t my original jam. I was that person who was not good at that, did not have skill in that, and did not want to do that.

But the reason that I became a good communicator and challenged myself to become one was because I realized if I couldn’t communicate well, I couldn’t make a powerful difference.

If you don’t teach yourself, train yourself, or put yourself in situations where you become a better speaker, communicator, and leader, then how are you ever going to change the world? How are you ever going to do something that you feel is significant and important?

So, I trained myself to do that and I make sure I’m enthusiastic for my topic, mission and purpose when I go out on the stage—even if on the inside, I feel anxiety and don’t know if I’m going to do a good job.

When your fear becomes secondary to your enthusiasm for your purpose, that’s when everything changes. That is a life truth.

#3: Explain Your Struggles Before Sharing Your Successes

You must explain your struggles well before you share your successes. A lot of people get up onstage and focus on what they’ve achieved and done. They share stats, numbers, or show a check as an example. However, you want to resonate with an audience.

Remember: your audience does not believe your successes if they don’t feel your struggles.

If you get up there and only talk about your successes, your audience won’t connect with you. While you’re on stage, if you share the challenges, struggles and hurdles you’ve gone through to do what you get to do and serve your mission, the audience understands you. They know where you’re coming from, and that’s why it’s really important to share those things.

I share the story of how I grew up, of how I went broke, and how I had to rely on other people. I share how I dedicated myself to so much personal development, psychology, self-mastery and all the struggles that went along with it from starting my business and failing to succeeding. But notice, it is about succeeding later on. I don’t start with the successes, I build towards successes.

#4: Create Unique Interactions with your Audience

It’s everything. And I don’t just mean YOUR interactions with them. You could do that, too, by creating callbacks and things like that.

You could do that by creating callbacks, such as shouting a phrase and getting your audience to shout back.

Getting people to respond is important and you should do that, but you should also have them interact with each other. Have them turn to each other and share a high five, a hug, or encouraging words. It’s important when they interact with each other.

If you’ve ever been in one of my longer seminars, we get people standing up in groups of five and talking to each other for 20 minutes to an hour. They share their stories, struggles, challenges, and breakthroughs. It’s in those small, intimate groups or in those conversations that the audience has with each other that creates just as much magic as you yapping at them the whole time.

#5. Physical Health and Conditioning 

The last piece is all about the physical conditioning and the preparation of your mind and your body to hit that stage. As you know, I am just a complete zealot about high performance. I am always saying that the power plant doesn’t have energy, it generates energy.

We have to learn to generate the energy in which we want to serve.

I spoke to 4,000 people today, and in 48 hours I am going to speak to another 7,000, and then another 700, and then I get a break.

Then, we have all our seminars this year. I do eight live seminars, all of them four or five days long. There are very few people on this planet, except myself and maybe Tony Robbins, who put this number of hours on a stage at our own events with curriculum-based training.

There are not a lot of people doing this at this level, because they hire multiple speakers at their events. It’s usually just me at my own events. I need to condition and train myself. It’s so hard, especially on the road, because I just want to get a pizza right now after finishing my big speech, but I’m not going to do that. I’ll probably have kale.

It’s about taking care of your own health.

I said to the audience today, very few people would go to the house next door and vandalize it, break the windows, and throw a bunch of garbage into it. And yet, so many people every single day spoil, vandalize, and throw garbage into the temple that God has given them.

If you feel like you’ve had a dream or a mission sewn into your heart, part of your mission and purpose has to be taking care of your heart and body.