Pro Speak & Lead Presents
Uncle Bob’s Adventures
Seven Adventures about the difference between giving speeches and building a signature presentation you can own, refine and master.
Season One · The Signature Presentation
The Prequel
Another Event. Another Speech.
Years of speaking experience. Dozens of presentations. Almost nothing built to use again.
Meet Uncle Bob.
Uncle Bob has been speaking for years. Club speeches, conference talks, leadership sessions, webinars and workshops. Put him behind a lectern, hand him a microphone and give him an audience, and Uncle Bob is quite at home.
There is only one small problem. Every time someone asks him to speak, Uncle Bob starts again.
A new event means a new topic. A new topic means another story to find, another opening to construct, another conclusion to write, another set of slides to build and another speech to rehearse.
Uncle Bob has been through this cycle so many times that he has become exceptionally good at it. He has become exceptionally good at starting over.
The Cost of Starting Again
Uncle Bob is not inexperienced. He is not short of ideas. He is not afraid of an audience. He may have spent hundreds, perhaps thousands, of hours on stage over the years. Yet every new invitation sends him back to a blank page.
That is not a flaw in Uncle Bob. It is largely what he was trained to do. Much of the way speakers are trained is built around creating the next speech for the next occasion, and Uncle Bob did exactly that, for years. Another event. Another speech. If that rhythm sounds familiar, you are in good company.
Every new speech also requires tremendous effort. He has to find a new subject, develop the idea or do the research, turn it into a coherent message, work out how to deliver it effectively and then practice until it is ready for the audience.
Every new invitation sends him back to a blank page.
The Problem With Starting Over
The cost goes beyond the hours spent creating another speech.
When you continually move from one presentation to the next, much of your effort goes into finding new material, developing new ideas and doing new research, rather than becoming masterful at communicating an idea you know deeply.
You gain experience speaking, certainly, but experience and mastery are not the same thing. And that is where many presenters stall. They keep looking for new things to speak about because they were taught that becoming a better speaker requires creating more speeches.
That is the fallacy.
Is there a different way forward?
Over the next few Adventures, I am going to follow Uncle Bob through a question that most experienced communicators have never been asked to examine.
We become more skilled at speaking, yet we continue producing presentations as though each one must begin from nothing.
Somewhere along the way, Uncle Bob is going to discover that the real opportunity is not simply to become better at giving speeches. It is to become better at building something worth keeping.
In the next Adventure, we ask Uncle Bob one uncomfortable question: after all these years at the lectern, what does he actually own?
Watch for it.
Take Charge
Brahm Memone
Leadership Architect · Pro Speak & Lead
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Uncle Bob Will Return.