Area E5 Humorous Speech Contest - "A Second Chance"

Here is my Area Contest Winning Speech:

[opening – stay at back of the stage, have friendly eyes and smile – take a deep breath]

Have you ever try to impress a girl? And she thought … you’re a clown. [hand pointing myself]. That was me last week.

It was 6:00am in the morning; the sky [hand up] was still dark. I drove my car in to the parking garage and went up to the 7th floor. On my right hand side was piles of papers and in front my computer was a yellow post-it note… which says “Breakfast For Champions [2 hand up] – Cranberry Oatmeal [hand down]!!”

As usual, I made my cranberries oatmeal for breakfast. After finishing breakfast, I strolled to the kitchen sink to wash my cup. It was rather warm and I noticed the air conditioned was turned off. There is no one around.

Suddenly, I heard “Click”, “Clock” x3 [increase volume]. The footstep becomes louder and louder as it approaches me and it comes to a complete silence. I turned around (360’ turn) and I saw (paused),

“It was Jessica!!” Me and her and………….. no one else.

She looked at me (paused), and I looked at her (paused)… and our eyes met each other right in the middle [hand], like butterfly wings clapping against each other.

Jessica was my dream-girl in the office. I never had a chance to talk to her because she worked in the legal dept [small] and I worked in admin dept [big] accounting. I hold grudge on my mum for not sending me to the law school.

If Jessica is on yelp, I would rate her ....(paused) 10.5.

While I have many secret crushes on my female colleagues, she made it to my Top 5 “G-I-P” list………… “Girlfriend In Progress”

She walked closer to the kitchen sink, right next to me and joined me at the kitchen basin washing her plates.

I was washing my cup and she was washing her plates. I felt like were husband and wife playing with the dishes (paused)

Her elbow accidentally touches mine, and a thought came up [look at sky with hand up], "Is she trying to seduce me?" OR [I couldn’t believe (paused) how smooth…… it was. She activated my heart rate and my heart started [hand hit chest] pound…. louder and louder. I was afraid she could hear… my heartbeat.]

Suddenly a strong deep voice creeps [2 hands out 5] out of my brain, and says… “Kian!! (high volume & paused) You, ought to say something!”

I tilted my head to Jessica and I say (paused) “Do you need more soap?”

I was met with silence.

I meant....... ‘How’s your weekend?”

She looked at me like I’m strange.

She replied “Do you realize it already Thursday?”
She politely continued…. “You meant last week? I went jungle trekking.”

In my mind I thought, “Jungle trekking? If I truly wanted nature, I watched the animal planet”

But to impress her, I say…… “Jungle trekking!! I love jungle trekking” [body lean over]

I didn’t realize my body [stressed on the word – move body] was too excited for her (paused).

I invaded her privacy of her space.
She nodded her head, looks back and stormed away.

“OMG!! Jessica, left me…. She ended our 2 minute romantic experience. We were so close at one time…. And now, I missed my only chance, my only chance… to impress her.

I bombed it!!

I reassessed my life, there are many chances that were presented to me in my life but I totally blew it…. One after another.

As I recalled my memory, 8 years ago, I was working with a Top public accounting firm, with good prospect and career advancement. My boss loves me, like my love for “Jessica”, he cares for me, like good shepherd caring for a wounded lamb – I’m the lamb.

One day, I walked to my boss’s office and handed him a letter. He striped opened the letter and I was met with complete silence.

A minute later, he shouted, “Kian, you’re not leaving us! I won’t accept that!!” [action on holding back the letter]

I hold my resignation letter in my hand [head up]
and I think….. (paused) Is that legal? (tonality)

But my point is, my boss gave me (paused) A Second Chance but I did not take it.

So, yesterday, when I was walking home, reminiscing my old memories, a melodic tone vibrates on my right thigh…. [hand on thigh]

Volume burst out of my pocket.

I took out my phone and saw an unknown caller. I answered…..

Kian: “Hello”
Jess: “Hi, this is Jessica”
Kian: “huh!!….. Jessica”
Jess: “Who is this? Is this Kian?”
Kian: [eyes look at left audience] “No, No….. Can you hold?”

[jump up and dance]

Kian: “Yes? [deep tone] Ohhh…..… Jes-si-ca…, Dinner on Saturday at 7pm?”

Kian: “Hold on, let me check my schedule”
[brush my hair, eye brow, adjust my tie & look right to the floor and Elvis Presley style]

Kian: “How about… (paused) 7:15pm?”

Ladies and gentlemen, do you know what I fear [eye frowned], what will happen this Saturday? Will I make myself a clown again or will I kill it!!

I might walk into the restaurant with my heart pounding so loudly and met again with a deafening silence…… but if never try, I’ll never know.

While there is no second chance to make a first impression, there is always a second chance, if only we take, just a little more risk...… on that next step.

How To Craft A Winning Humorous Speech?

I spent my entire labor day to analyzing the Division Humorous Speeches, funny International Speeches and some World Champion Speeches.

I then re-look at some of the similarity and what are the differences and effectiveness in creating laughter from the audience. I also analyzed the structure of the speeches to see which are somewhat more effective despite lack of laughter presence.

Here are several techniques, I will use to craft my upcoming Area Humorous Speech Contest:

1) Opening - build suspense and must have a "Wow" factor (eg. Darren LaCroix speech titled "Ouch!" when he fall on his face and stay there)

2) Conclusion - tied in conclusion to the opening (it will be effective if we could end with body language with no words)

3) Structure of the speech - Use metaphorical structure (eg. Talk about hole in a pants while hiking the jungle - the meaning pants is what we use to cover up our self image, the hole is our weaknesses and the jungle is the environment around us). This will lead the audiences, laughter after laughter and eventually realized what are the final messages from the speaker.

4) Repeaters with a tagline. Use repeaters 3-4 times throughout the speech to make the audience remember your speech. (Eg. "It's okay, it's allright, let move on", "Ouch!!" etc)

5) A speech will be ideal to comprise laughter (indicating happiness) and sadness (evoke emotions). If we can change/switch the moods of the audiences in a short 5-7 minutes speech, the speech will be impactful.

6) Use humors. Here are couple of effective humor techniques that could be use in every speeches:
(a) acronym (eg. Honda CRV - cancer removing vehicle, NFL - no friend left)
(b) words (eg. will she accepts or will she gives me a slap (almost like a triad), that girl become my wife, that wife become my master (the word "wife"), i think too much, worry to much, ultimately, do nothing much (self depreciating), I'm using the "Ninja" style, I thot I was "Zorro" (character), yes i understood, in fact i stood like a deadwood (the word "wood"), "You're fired" (Donald Trump - character jokes)
(c) use animal (metaphorical jokes) - zebra female and male zebra become baby zebra, lion is like a car, if I upgrade my car, the lion became bigger

Once I crafted my Area Contest Humorous Speech (hopefully be this week), I will post it here the very next time.

Hope the above are helpful hints and definitely a good reminder for myself.

Regards,
Kian

7 Things You Need To Do When The Stock Market Crash (Must Read!!)

Hey there....

I recently received couple of e-mails from several newsletters that I had subscribed to and all of them are talking about the coming Stock Market Crash and potentially a bigger crash than in 2008!!

Here is a video from Tony Robbin alerting it's subscribers:

http://business.tonyrobbins.com/

Tony details 7 things that you can do to right now in his video clip (August 2010 archive)

No one knows if this is gonna be real but better be prepare than sorry.

Here is what I get from the Tony's video:
1) In Tony's message it talks about using ETF (Exchange Traded Funds) to profit from an expected market downfall. I believe Tony is talking about inverse ETF which increases in value when the market falls. It goes the sort of opposite direction of the market, but not a long term investment strategy to adopt.

2) It also talks about Sir John Templeton, which is a legendary investors who became billionaire by buying penny stocks, way before Warren Buffets or similar investors started to became well known. So, perhaps, it's worth checking out some penny stocks tips from different websites.

3) If market is expected to go down, options might be a good way to profit. But learning option trading is another huge topic by itself.

Unless, you knows or are willing to perform some research (ie. get educated) on buying/selling ETF, penny stocks or option, the safe bet is to redraw investment out of the market completely.

I'm not a professional investor and neither an I a frequent trader, the above is just my thoughts from Tony's message.

Cheers,
Kian
PS: Just for information only here are the 3 Signs of The Coming Stock Apocalypse

Connect, Communicate, Create

"It's not hard to like someone once you know their story." Mr. Rogers

Few weeks ago, I was down at Marina District in San Francisco attending a Marketing Event called "Story Telling" on how to craft your own story.

There are 5 questions we need to ask ourselves before we write our own story. These 5 questions are important because they cover all aspects from different perspectives.

Here you go...

1) What do you have to offer? (ie. what's so special about you and what's so different)

2) What do you do of value?

3) How do you do it? (ie. in what way could you add value, or it your plan had a "wow" factor)

4) Why is what you do important to your client?

5) What is memorable about you and your company?

If you combined all of the 5 answers, you'll get your own story with a compelling marketing message.

Come to think about it, I do have a speech about "Crafting Your Own Story". It's only 7 minutes and you could be entertain by this short speech.