About LifeAfterPowerPoint
This blog is for people who believe that speeches have a great—and greatly untapped—potential.
Specifically, it’s for leaders: people who want to influence how an audience thinks and feels and acts. It’s for people who want to become leaders or to be thought of as leaders. And it’s for anyone else who wants to have their ideas taken more seriously.
I’m writing this blog for the same reason I wrote Real Leaders Don’t Do PowerPoint: How to Sell Yourself and Your Ideas. (1) I’ve been subjected to way too many sleep-inducing presentations. (2) I’ve experienced a few—entirely too few—stirring, thought-provoking, perception-changing speeches. (3) I’ve thought a lot about what makes a bad speech bad and a good speech good, and I’d like to share the insights I’ve come up with.
As a speech coach I’ve worked with thousands of people—mostly in business—over the past 15 years. And I’ve found that helping them give better speeches isn’t all that hard. What they respond to isn’t canned advice or dumbed-down do-this-don’t-do-that tips. What helps them is getting them to rethink from the ground up what a speech is all about.
About Chris Witt
I’m a speech consultant, coach, and writer based in San Diego. I work almost exclusively with leaders—CEOs, executives, business owners, association presidents, self-employed entrepreneurs, and the like—and with people who are being groomed (or who are grooming themselves) to become leaders. I also work with senior researchers, engineers, and programmers. (I work best with people who are smart and accomplished and who have already mastered the basics of giving a speech.)
I’ve been giving speeches—and getting paid for doing so—for more than 25 years. I’ve taught speech and communications at the graduate level. And I’ve written a book, Real Leaders Don’t Do PowerPoint: How to Sell Yourself and Your Ideas (Crown, February 2009).
