Two good recent articles about opening a speech

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

  

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

There are two good, brief articles about opening a speech from earlier this year at the web site for the National Speakers Association. One is by Patricia Fripp on April 9, 2025 and titled Your First Thirty Seconds: Arouse Interest in Your Subject. She says:

 

“Transport the audience to a different time and place

 Stories are always a crowd pleaser

 Interesting statistics or little-known facts

 A powerful quotation

 A question”

 

Another is by Mark Sanborn on July 2, 2025 and titled Start Strong: How to Open a Speech the Right Way. He says to:

 

“ 1]  Promise a benefit

   2]  Pique interest

   3]  Relate a personal experience

   4]  Be a contrarian

   5]  Make a challenging statement

   6]  Use humor”

 

The cartoon was adapted from this one at OpenClipArt.

 

 

Excellent ways to hook your speech audience in thirty seconds

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

There is an article by Ryan Lynch at American Express on September 20, 2024 titled 12 ways to hook an audience in 30 seconds. They are:

 

Use a contrarian approach.

Ask a series of rhetorical questions.

Deliver a compelling sound bite.

Make a startling assertion.

Reference a historical event.

Use the word ‘imagine’.

Add a little show business.

Arouse curiosity.

Use quotations differently.

Quote a foreign proverb.

Walk through a ‘what if’ scenario.

Tell a story.

 

There is another article by Maurizio La Cava at MLC Design Agency titled Presentation Hooks: The 13 most successful presentation hook examples. He also has a Hooking Strategy Map with a six-column table. His examples are:

 

Storytelling

Questions and audience interaction

State a shocking fact

Use quotations to grab them

Break common belief and provoke the audience

Bring it to life

Make them laugh

Leverage historical events

Trigger the audience imagination

Straight to the problem

Set the expectations

Use a surprising metaphor

Combine more hooking techniques together

 

And there is a 2015 book by Brad Philips titled 101 Ways to Open a Speech: How to hook your audience from the start with an engaging and effective beginning. 

 

There also is a long article by Jennifer Herrity at Indeed on March 26, 2025 titled 26 Ways to Start a Speech and Capture People’s Attention. They all are:

 

Use a quote

Tell a joke

Find a commonality with your audience

Ask a survey question

Pose a problem

Offer a relatable statistic

Tell a fictional story

Describe a personal experience

Give a demonstration

Use visuals

Recognize your audience

Provide background information about the event

Predict objections

Challenge the audience

Give a detailed description

Incorporate shared narratives

Define your concept

Share your background

Start with an interactive activity

Pose a rhetorical question

Ask for audience volunteers

Refer to a relevant current event

Reflect on the theme of the event

Preview your call to action

State an expert’s opinion

Create a positive affirmation or tagline

 

The fish hook image came from Wikimedia Commons.

 

Ten blue-ribbon speech openings that will be remembered and repeated

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Yesterday at PR Newswire there was a press release titled Presentation experts Fripp, La Croix and Brown: Speech openings that are remembered and repeated. It lists the following ones, each of which is discussed further:

 

A story

Interesting statistics or little-known facts

A powerful quotation

A question, or a rhetorical question

A challenge

Tie to the headlines

Bold claim or big promise

Read a letter, email, or review

Compliment the audience

Relevant humor

 

(I have combined two of them – A Question and A Rhetorical Question because no one really wants to see a top list with eleven items).

 

That press release refers to a 2022 book by those three, titled Deliver Unforgettable Presentations: How to speak to be remembered and repeated in-person, online, and onstage. All three authors are well-known as speakers. Patricia Fripp was elected president of the National Speakers Association (NSA) in 1984. Darren LaCroix was the 2001 Toastmasters World Champion of Public Speaking, and Mark Brown was the 1995 Champion.

 

The prize blue ribbon came from Openclipart.

 

Getting my attention with a giant envelope

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

In the mail this morning, as shown above, there was a huge envelope from Fisher Investments. Inside there just was a two-page marketing letter on oversize (9-1/4” by 12-1/4”) paper rather than the standard 8-1/2” by 11.” It offered me a free guide with 99 Retirement Tips.

 

Their marketing ploy using unusual stationery succeeded in briefly getting my attention. Similarly, opening a speech by stating a Startling Statistic can wake up your audience.

 

I just shred most envelopes with personalized offers for life insurance without opening them. The only exception is AAA Life Insurance, which includes a useful page of self-adhesive return address labels.  

 

 

Don’t start an article with a tired old statistic and joke

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

At Training on March 7, 2022 there is a decent article by Sheryl Lindsell-Roberts titled From Stage Fright to Stage Might and subtitled 9 tips to keep in mind before your next foray into the presentation spotlight. Those tips are:

 

Know your audience

Use presentation aids sparingly

Engage your audience from the start

Practice, then practice some more

Bring notes

Use pauses to your advantage

Avoid distractions

Get in the zone

Look them in the eyes and “listen’

 

Under the third tip, to engage your audience from the start, she says to get your audience’s attention with something like a shocking statistic or headline. But the first two sentences of her article, don’t follow her advice. They are:

 

“Would you believe that speaking in public is the No. 1 human fear of people, while death is No. 7? So at a funeral, would you rather be lying in the casket than delivering the eulogy? – Jerry Seinfeld”

 

The survey and joke both are very old news, as shown above via a time line. That ranking comes from a survey almost five decades old. Back on October 27, 2009 I blogged about the 1973 Bruskin survey in a post titled The 14 Worst Human Fears in the 1977 Book of Lists: where did this data really come from? And the Seinfeld joke is from 1993, almost three decades ago. I blogged about it in an April 8, 2018 post titled Misquoting Jerry Seinfeld and inflating fear five times. What would be startling instead? On September 26, 2021 I blogged about how Fear of public speaking was only ranked #54 of 95 fears in the 2020/2021 Chapman Survey of American Fears.

  

 

 

A startling statistic about Idaho agriculture for opening a presentation

You might open a presentation by asking your audience: What Idaho agricultural product is most valuable? Some would say that’s a silly question - right on our license plates it says FAMOUS POTATOES.

But on October 11, 2019 the United States Department of Agriculture had a press release titled Value of Idaho’s 2018 Agricultural Production Totals $7.69 Billion, which listed the top five products (as are shown above in a bar chart). Potatoes ($1.03 billion) only were third, exceeded by both milk ($2.38 billion) and  cattle ($1.41 billion).

I saw that press release discussed in a newspaper article by Nicole Foy in the Idaho Statesman on January 4, 2020 titled These products top the list for driving Idaho’s ag economy. (Hint: it isn’t spuds). Where does all that milk go? Some goes into a million-square-foot Chobani facility in Twin Falls - the world’s largest yogurt plant.

An image of an Idaho license plate came from Wikimedia Commons.

A cartoon tip on how not to wow your audience

On September 27, 2019 Zack Weinersmith published a Saturday Morning Breakfast Cereal cartoon captioned Public Speaking Tip: Start off by wowing your audience with some big numbers. The text balloon says:

“First, I want you to imagine a cube sitting on the surface of the earth. The cube is 14,000 meters on each side. Nearly 3 trillion cubic meters. It’s not relevant to this talk on agricultural pest management, but wow, that’d be a really big cube.”  

Hook your audience with a creative opening

On August 18, 2019 there was an article at Forbes by Esther Choy titled What your audience wants most from your presentation. She described three methods for grabbing attention:

"Conflict is the clash of forces or needs going in opposite directions….

Contrast is the juxtaposition of opposite qualities like heavy and light, plentiful and meager or active and apathetic….

Contradiction goes against your audience’s expectations."

The image of goldfishing came from a 1914 Puck cartoon at the Library of Congress.

Don’t torpedo your credibility with the very first sentence!

I read an article titled Writers and public speaking from July 9, 2018 by Olivia Rana at the online magazine writing.ie which opened by claiming:

“In 2012 researchers at Nebraska University carried out a study, which found that public speaking was the most common fear amongst students, ranking higher than hundreds of other fears, including death!“

The only thing Olivia got right was that public speaking was reported as the most common fear. There really were 815 students, but only 14 fears. The article about that study was by Karen K. Dwyer and Martina M. Davidson of the University of Nebraska-Omaha. It was titled Is Public Speaking Really More Feared Than Death? You can read that article here. I blogged about it on May 17, 2012 in a post titled More university students in the U.S. fear public speaking than fear death, but death is their top fear.

On May 23, 2018 at writing.ie Olivia had another article titled Where do writers get their ideas from? For her July 9th article the answer is via superficial research.

The image of a torpedoed ship was adapted from this poster at the Library of Congress.

 

How to torpedo your credibility in the very first paragraph

At the CollegeInfoGeek web site on June 29, 2018 Roxine Kee had a blog post titled 5 Tips for Crafting Great Speeches and Presentations which opened with:

“If you’re like most people, you would probably rather die than present in front of a classroom. I’m not exaggerating: in this Gallup poll from 2001, the fear of public speaking is ranked #2, ahead of the fear of death (#6).”

But death is not mentioned at all in that poll. The #6 fear really is of Needles and Getting Shots. Oops!

The torpedoed ship image was adapted from this poster at the Library of Congress.

When you open with a phony statistic you torpedo your credibility

On January 4, 2017 Stefan Swanepoel posted an article at Business Insider titled I’ve given over 1,000 presentations in the past 30 years - here are my 5 best public speaking tips.

His second paragraph gave an excellent reason for listening to his advice:

“In the past three decades, I've given more than 1,200 presentations to upward of a million people. Many say the ability to speak before large crowds is innate, but I'm not sure that's true.” 

Then Stefan discussed his decent tips which were to:

1]  Map out the message.

2]  Speak from the heart.

3]  Use visuals.

4]  Be Prepared.

5]  Zone in.

But, his first paragraph already had torpedoed his credibility by claiming:

“Glossophobia - better known as a fear of public speaking - affects 74% of people, according to a National Institute of Mental Health survey. So it's no surprise the very thought of addressing large crowds causes so much stress, angst, and discomfort.”

First, Glossophobia is an almost useless pseudo-technical term.

Second, the link he provided for that 74% statistic points to a web page at Statistic Brain. It doesn’t link to a web page for a survey done by the National Institute of Mental Health (NIMH) - there is no such survey. Back in 2014 I blogged about how Statistic Brain is just a statistical medicine show, and that percentages from NIMH sponsored research are much smaller.

The torpedoed ship image was adapted from a poster at the Library of Congress.

Stumbling right at the start

If you are looking for a startling statistic about medicine, you might be tempted to look at   Dr. Joseph Mercola’s popular Mercola.com, which claims to be The World’s #1 Natural Health Website. I suggest that you don’t, based on the example of an article there titled Anxiety is 800% more prevalent than all cancers combined that appeared on June 11th. He stumbles right at the start, and doesn’t manage to find the most startling statistics. You can do better. 

The first three paragraphs say that:

“According to recent research (Ref. 1) anxiety (characterized by constant and overwhelming worry and fear) is becoming increasingly prevalent in the US, now eclipsing all forms of cancer by 800 percent. 

Nearly 13 million adults have struggled with anxiety in the past year, the study found; including 4.3 million people who were employed full time, and 5.9 million who were unemployed.
 
In all, nearly six percent of adults over the age of 18 report having anxiety. Fortunately, there are many treatment options available, and some of the most effective treatments are also among the safest and least expensive, and don’t involve drugs.”

Reference 1 is a CBHSQ Report web page at the Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration (SAMHSA), dated May 21, 2015. But it says nothing about anxiety becoming increasingly prevalent. It also says nothing about cancer. That comparison really came from Reference 3, a May 27th article by Lindsay Holmes at the Huffington Post titled This Mental Health Issue is more prevalent than all forms of cancer combined.

What about Mercola’s Reference 2? That’s a non-working link to another SAMSHA web page from Reference 1 (that also appeared in the Huffington Post article).

Reference 1 also has a link to a much more detailed 94-page report from October 2014 titled Past Year Mental Disorders among Adults in the United States: Results from the 2008-2012 Mental Health Surveillance Study. Table 3.1 on page 7 lists percentages for other categories of past year mental health disorders.

How do they compare with the 5.7% for anxiety? As shown above in a summary bar chart, three others are higher than anxiety - Substance Use (7.8%), Mood (7.4%), and Adjustment (6.9%). Page 14 compares their results with those obtained earlier in the National Comorbidity Survey Replication (NCS-R).

The earlier results for anxiety disorders from the NCS-R (shown above in another bar chart) were higher than those in the MHSS, which doesn’t support Mercola’s claim that anxiety is becoming increasingly prevalent. For example, 18.1% had anxiety versus the 5.7% in the MHSS. The 18.1% is what you will find when you look for Any Anxiety Disorder Among Adults at  the website for the National Institute of Mental Health.

How can you get even more startling statistics? Instead of just the past year, cite the larger estimates for lifetime prevalence, as are shown above in another summary bar chart. But, note that substance abuse (35.3%) is more prevalent than anxiety (31.2%).

A more detailed listing of the full spectrum for lifetime prevalences is shown above in another bar chart. Under social phobia I have also listed the prevalence for the subtype of public speaking/performance anxiety. 

Differences in how the two studies were done have been discussed in a March 19, 2015 report by the Congressional Research Service titled Prevalence of Mental Illness in the United States: Data Sources and Estimates.   

So, Mercola didn’t manage to find the most startling statistics. I suspect that he focused on that combination of anxiety and cancer just because those both were very popular topics. Joe has been called an overwrought professional alarmist (opa). There’s much more in his article, but I’m not going to bother with dissecting it.

Back in 2006 an article in Business Week by David E. Gumpert described Mercola’s use of Old-Time Sales Tricks on the Net. Another article about him in the February 2012 issue of Chicago magazine was titled Dr. Mercola: Visionary or Quack?

The image of a fallen hurdler was adapted from an old poster.

Stumbling at the start

Page 23 of the January 2014 issue of FeedFront, a magazine for affiliate marketers, had an article by Heather Diamani titled Successful Public Speaking Strategies which began:

“Did you know more people fear public speaking over death? An article published in ‘Psychology Today’ in November of 2012 reported that the number one fear over death was pubic speaking.”

Her first sentence should have asked us if we knew that people allegedly fear death more than they fear public speaking. Heather’s version instead had me thinking of the following illustration by William Blake for Robert Blair’s poem The Grave.

Her proofreading of that second sentence missed an ending with a notorious typo, pubic speaking.

Her second sentence implied there was an article in the November 2012 issue of Psychology Today magazine about fear of public speaking. But, she didn’t give either its title or author. Over at my public library I checked on the Academic Search Premier database, and found there was no November 2012 issue of Psychology Today magazine. The September-October one was Volume 45, Issue 5, and the December 2012 one was Volume 45, Issue 6.

Either a speech or blog post should have a strong opening. Stumbling is not good.

What she referred to turned out to be a blog post by Glenn Croston on November 28, 2012 titled The Thing We Fear More Than Death. It opened by claiming that:

“Surveys about our fears commonly show fear of public speaking at the top of the list.” 

I had commented on Glenn’s post, and asked him what surveys he was talking about, since on October 23, 2012 I’d blogged that Either Way You Look at It, Public Speaking Really is Not Our Greatest Fear. Glenn didn’t bother to reply to my comment.

Glenn’s column on the Psychology Today blog is titled The Real Story of Risk, which is also the title of his 2012 book. I got it from my public library, and found that on page 234 he wrote that:

“For a vast number of people, standing in front of a group to speak is the worst, most nerve-wracking thing they can imagine. The fear can be paralyzing, leading many to avoid doing or saying anything that could draw attention. Maybe this is another odd holdover from those thousands of generations when belonging to the social group was a life-or-death proposition, with people fearing that standing up and speaking may lead to rejection. Today, public speaking is consistently ranked as the greatest fear most people have - ranking higher than the fear of death itself. As Jerry Seinfeld once said, ‘This means to the average person, if you go to a funeral you’re better off in the casket than doing the eulogy.‘ “

There are no footnotes leading to surveys that back up his claim the public speaking is consistently ranked as the greatest fear, just the usual silly Seinfeld quote. That claim is  an ipse dixit - I’m an authority, so you simply must believe what I say. 
 
The image of stumbling was adapted from an old WPA poster I found at the Library of Congress. 

Avoid impending doom when opening your speech

On December 8th Doug Savage posted the fifth of his hilarious and thoughtful Savage Chickens cartoons about public speaking.

What should you do when opening your speech? Be prepared so you don't chicken out. If you’re nervous, then write out the first few sentences on a note card, so you don’t go blank.

What should you avoid when opening your speech? Don’t drink alcohol beforehand. Don’t imagine the audience naked. Don’t grip the lectern like you are driving a bus, or bang your fists on it (like Dwight did in The Office).

There is nothing wrong with your television set. Do not attempt to adjust the picture...

What were you doing on the evening of September 16, 1963? My siblings and I were sitting on the sofa in the family room. We were watching the premier episode of a new science fiction television show. The picture on our 1950 black and white set had lost horizontal and vertical hold, so as usual it needed to be very carefully adjusted back to normal. My younger brother Tom got up and began walking over to the TV. He froze when he heard an eerie, echoing, Control Voice solemnly intone:

“There is nothing wrong with your television set. Do not attempt to adjust the picture. We are controlling transmission. If we wish to make it louder, we will bring up the volume. If we wish to make it softer, we will tune it to a whisper. We will control the horizontal. We will control the vertical. We can roll the image, make it flutter. We can change the focus to a soft blur or sharpen it to crystal clarity.

For the next hour, sit quietly and we will control all that you see and hear. We repeat: there is nothing wrong with your television set. You are about to participate in a great adventure. You are about to experience the awe and mystery which reaches from the inner mind to... The Outer Limits.”

You can watch a YouTube video of that opening here.

I wonder how many other people whose TV sets really needed adjustment were petrified the first time they heard that eerie voice at the opening for The Outer Limits. 

What have you tried as a compelling opening for your speech?

A great improvised opening by a very nervous speaker

On April 11th Leon Hale, a columnist for the Houston Chronicle, blogged about a speech he gave fifty years ago. It was at a Chamber of Commerce banquet dinner in Eagle Lake, Texas. That’s about sixty miles west from downtown Houston, and back then would have been rather rural.

Leon will be ninety next month. He enjoys writing but strongly dislikes speaking. Leon claims that he’s never heard any sound come out of his mouth that he enjoyed.

But they had offered to pay him $100, and he needed the money, so he went. Then he apparently got so nervous he was seriously sick right before he was supposed to get up and speak. He wanted to just leave:  

“But it was too late, because somebody was already at the mike, introducing me. I heard him calling my name, and I felt that if I stood up, I would vomit into the arrangement of flowers on the head table. Or maybe I'd simply faint, which would be better.
 
What saved me was an opening remark that was not my own. It did come out of my mouth, but I didn't think it up. I don't know where it came from.  

The only explanation I can imagine is that an angel was hovering about and noticed that the food had run out and that part of the audience was hungry and in a bad humor. And the angel rescued me, the way heavenly spirits can perform miraculous deeds.

When I managed to stand, I grabbed a roll from my dinner plate and held it up and spoke into the mike the words that the angel gave me. They made up the strangest opening remark ever uttered at a Chamber of Commerce banquet:
 
‘I have here half of a beef sandwich I'd like to auction off at Table 3.’
 
In all my speech-making years, I never said anything that got a laugh as loud and as long. The response somehow gave me time to recover, at least enough to stumble on through.
 
Some Eagle Lake residents might recall that talk as the weakest and shortest they ever heard. Well, now they know why.
 
For me the cost of that experience was far greater than the hundred bucks. I wouldn't go through it again for 10 grand.”

Don’t shoot yourself in the foot

In a recent article on Rules for Public Speaking the President of the City Club of San Diego, George Mitrovich, started off by giving some excellent advice on what NOT to do at the beginning of a speech:

“Whenever a speaker begins his or her remarks by saying, ‘I'm not a public speaker’, my friend and I will, at that point, get up and leave. Why? If you think you're not a public speaker then why speak? Why trouble your audience? Why waste their time? There's already sufficient boredom in this life, why add to it?”

So, please don’t begin by shooting yourself in the foot! Also, don’t tell the audience that you’re really, really nervous about speaking. They usually can’t tell that, unless you blurt it out.

A great speech is like a Chicago hot dog

Most speeches are like a hot dog that could have come from any of a thousand food courts in as many malls. There is an opening and closing (two pieces of bun), and a body (the undistinguished meat in the middle). Perhaps there is a tiny bit added of color and flavor (the stripe of yellow mustard). Otherwise there is absolutely nothing to make it exceptional. You probably forgot about it just a few minutes afterwards.

A great speech has a lot more. The extra ingredients make it clear it could only come from one individual: YOU. A great speech is like a Chicago hot dog.

Unlike a plain hot dog, that sandwich has been “dragged through the garden.” It has a wonderful variety of tastes, textures, and colors. Typically the following ingredients are assembled:

Poppy-seed bun (steamed).

Kosher hot dog (typically Vienna beef brand, also steamed).

Stripe of yellow mustard.

Dollop of kryptonite green relish or piccalilli.

Spoonful of chopped onions (white, or maybe red).

Dill pickle wedge.

Pair of red, ripe tomato wedges.

Couple of sport peppers (I usually skip these).

Sprinkling of celery salt (the final magical touch).

Think about what you can add to make your speech individual and memorable.

Exactly what should be in a Chicago style dog has been discussed at some length: here, here, and even here on Wikipedia. (The image by John Fink of Oxford, Ohio shows a Chicago style hot dog meal as served at the Bunny Hutch in Lincolnwood, Illinois). The poppy seed bun is extra tasty, but you probably do need a toothpick afterwards to get those pesky little seeds from between your teeth. Ketchup is NOT ever put on a Chicago hot dog! It may be added to French fries by the customer.

I lived in Chicagoland once for a couple of years. Their hot dogs (particularly Superdawg) are a pleasant memory of the Windy City. By the way, they are not kidding about it being windy there, especially on the Lake Michigan shore.

Other cities have their own variations on hot dogs. If you’re reading this in Atlanta, then you might say a great speech is like a chili slaw dog from the Varsity. If you’re in Cincinnati, you might say a great speech is like a cheese Coney (also covered with onions and mustard, with the unique local chili - perhaps from Skyline or Gold Star).

This post was inspired by finding that my blog feed was on that for Talk of the Tower Chicago Toastmasters, and also linked from Willi Hsung’s Lessons Learned.

Get a running start

The Toastmasters article on 10 Biggest Public Speaking Mistakes lists “Starting with a whimper” as the very first one. They suggest that you: “give the audience a startling statistic, an interesting quote, a news headline – something powerful that will get their attention immediately.”

There is a large element of theater to picking an opening. Both storytellers and trial lawyers know the importance of a great opening. In his autobiography The Story of My Life the great lawyer Clarence Darrow stated that: ”… unless a speaker can interest his audience at once, his effort will be a failure.”

In his Story Theater blog Doug Stevenson discusses How to Open Your Speech with:
1. A provocative statement or question
2. A quote
3. A story
4. A rapport builder

In his Trial Theater blog lawyer Elliot Wilcox discusses How to Develop Powerful Case Themes. He points out that movies have taglines that make them memorable, like “With great power comes great responsibility” from Spiderman. Stating a tagline in the opening gives you a “hook” to grab the audience for the speech.

Wilcox also points out that an opening statement should be given in the present tense, so that It’s happening right now.