Need Help Writing a Speech

Toggle sidebar Toggle sidebar
C

Caveman

Platinum Member
Nov 18, 1999
2,537
34
91
Looking for an attention getting intro for a speech:

In general, the point of the speech is to encourage the listener to figure out their "gift" in life and NOT waste it...

The set up would be a "human interest" story (or stories) that describe a person who has some genetic gift or inheritance that they wasted. The story could end that their life was left in ruin because they squandered what they had or that they figured it out when they were at the bottom and pulled it together at some point.

Preferably, a famous person would be ideal - perhaps a world leader, or an artist, or a scientist, etc... Would like to stay away from pop culture: rock stars etc... if possible.

Any ideas here for an intro story or another way to set up the topic?

Thanks in advance for any help.
 
C

Crono

Lifer
Aug 8, 2001
23,720
1,502
136
You need a modern take on the parable of talents. Wasting a talent is like burying money in the ground: it doesn't help you or anyone counting on you or who could benefit from what you have to share.
 
MagnusTheBrewer

MagnusTheBrewer

IN MEMORIAM
Jun 19, 2004
24,122
1,594
126
You need to get your audience thinking about talents in a different way. If you ask the average person to list five talents, every single one will be sports, media or, political in nature. Most people have never even examined what their talents are. The closest they've ever come was saying to themselves, "man, I wish I could sing, dance, make a jump shot., like..." Personally, I'd take an inspirational approach rather than "don't waste your talent." It's a tough subject because self examination isn't done much in Western society outside of religious teachings.
 
M

mrjminer

Platinum Member
Dec 2, 2005
2,739
16
76
MagnusTheBrewer said:
You need to get your audience thinking about talents in a different way. If you ask the average person to list five talents, every single one will be sports, media or, political in nature. Most people have never even examined what their talents are. The closest they've ever come was saying to themselves, "man, I wish I could sing, dance, make a jump shot., like..." Personally, I'd take an inspirational approach rather than "don't waste your talent." It's a tough subject because self examination isn't done much in Western society outside of religious teachings.
Click to expand...

This would be a decent area to delve into.

Find someone with an obscure talent, something that seems almost pointless that they've done well with. Could look at... circus performers, perhaps? Or people with similar abilities, like people that walk on their hands doing street performances, but who bank.

There is that potato peeler guy that sells potato peelers, and banks. I remember his pitch pretty well from just seeing some news video on him a few years back.. "why do you need 4 potato peelers? Because you've got four friends!" That would actually be a pretty good opener.

This is the guy: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NGOjFhKeLiU -- not the best video, you might be able to find the actual news story video with some effort I'm guessing. It shows a lot about him; lived on park avenue, put his grandchildren through school, boxes and boxes of potato peelers in his apartment. I don't know if this satisfies the requirement of having "wasted" his talent, but it does show a menial talent that could have been wasted, but that the guy turned something as simple as hawking potato peelers into his way of life.
 
Last edited:
You must log in or register to reply here.

TRENDING THREADS

COMPANY
RESOURCES
FOLLOW
Top Bottom