I think one of the most important ways of being engaging when you're a speaker is to start well. And if you're somebody that feels nervous about speaking, knowing that you have a good start is a big help in feeling more confident about it. I often teach a theory called intro, which is an acronym that stands for impact needs, timing, responses, and objective that the handout on there because it can get a little complicated. On this video, I just wanted to unpack the first letter of intro impact. How can you make a really impactful start? So that one, you settle down and feel more confident and to the audience is engaged so that when you start your main content, they're ready to listen to you?

Here's an idea. Why don't you start with a statement, a story or a question? What do I mean by that? Well, statement can be anything you like. It could be a fact statistic. And often it's something that you already have in your presentation.

When I coach people, when they bring me a speech to look at, I very often find something about three quarters of the way down. That's a real gem. And all we do is we lift that out, we put it up at the beginning. A great example of someone who did this was Bono at a charity concert, where he came out. And he did a very, very dramatic start, he went like this. Every time I clap my hands, a child in Africa dies.

So you can see how that's an incredibly powerful statement, and then we want to hear what's going to come next. Unfortunately, for Bhanu, he was undone by possibly the best tackle in the world, which was someone on the third grade who piped up and said You better stop clapping then I love that story. It's probably apocryphal, but I tell that as a good example, because you can choose something that's real or not real as your statement, I don't mind. But you see how dramatic it can be when it's done well. So next, you could use a story. This is obvious you know what a story is.

But a story needs to be well told you have to commit to the story and tell it properly. And my advice would be to just jump straight into the story, not do lots of clearing your throat. So what we don't want you to start with this. Hello, my name is my job title is like, this is how long I've worked here. This is what I'm going to talk about. This is very, very dull.

Don't do it. Just jump into a story. I tell a story about pushing a woman on a tube when I'm doing my keynote. And I just jump into it. I just say, when I first moved to London, I got a job and this meant that I had to travel on the tube. And then I go on like that for about five minutes.

And I finished the story at the end. And everyone loves it. People don't know where it's going to go. I love the feeling of a story. Thirdly, you could ask a question. This can be a question that the audience does answer or one that they don't answer.

It doesn't matter. Really. It just makes them use their brains in thinking of what the answer might be. Try to have your question relating to your topic. So what I often use is I will say, who's using speaking to promote their business and I'll get people to put their hands up that's used a lot, I know. But it's fine if you just sprinkle it in here and there.

And then I'll say, who's not speaking? And then I might use a third one who never puts their hand up when they're asked a question from stage. You can do whatever you like. But the idea of the question is nice if you can to get a yes set. And that means that everyone in the room has said yes to you in some way. This helps for them to engage and it also teaches them the rules of the game that play Ron, if you ask them a question like, for example, would they like to take the next step with you, then they're more likely to say yes, because they feel like they're in a dialogue with you already.

Experiment with different types of questions. It doesn't have to be a raise your hands, it can be a yes or no, it could be give me a chair, if you I would just advise, try not to go for ones whether it be long answers, because you'll have already lost control from the stage. And what you want to do is keep this first bit really tight, and just get people engaged that you can get on with your main content. Take a look at the handout to have a look at the other parts of that acronym because they're also really nice and slick. And then you'll find that within under five minutes, you can have a really tight start that you can repeat for other talks as well if you want to, and it should make you feel a lot more confident about those difficult first few minutes on stage.