Jeff Saturday, future NFL Hall of Fame center, of the Indianapolis Colts, is passionate about football.  He is also very adamant about about eliminating the commercial sex trade. And he speaks publicly about what he is doing.

I was recently invited to Jeff’s Celebrate the City Super Bowl party. Jeff talked to me about his fund raising efforts to prevent the exploitation of children in the sex trade industry throughout the world. Jeff and his wife are co-chairing an event on March 2 at the Indiana Football Center (Colts complex), hoping to raise $100,000 to build a children’s home in Cambodia to keep kids safe from human trafficking.

Additionally, Jeff joined the Indiana Attorney General in signing a pledge to put an end to  public tolerance for human trafficking. This was part of our conversation.

Lessons about public speaking from this Jeff Saturday conversation:

• Be ready for a quick response when someone asks you about your involvement in a cause. Jeff did not hesitate at all, despite the fact that there was a party taking place all around us.

• Don’t drone on and on about your topic. Jeff gave me a succinct 36 second answer, which is the perfect length.  30 second answers tend to be more conversational than longer ones.  Long answers make the person who asked the question wonder when you will stop talking.

• Have a great 10 – 15 second sound-bite.  Here was Jeff’s:

“This should be everybody’s human nature to understand this is sick and it needs to stop. It needs to be changed. American men are the ones supplying the money. We need to fix the problem here and end human trafficking.”

Thanks, Jeff, for all you do in Indianapolis and abroad.

“Encouraging innovation needs to be the purpose of U.S. health care reform – not its victim.”

In one sentence, he summed up what his concern is about President Obama’s health care reform principles. The words “innovation,” “purpose,” and “victim” are particularly powerful. 

He explained the result of innovation in simple to understand statistics: that  innovation has helped boost the average American’s life expectancy from 47 to 78 years, a rise of 66 percent over the past century.  He called that “unprecedented in human history.”

HINT:  When you give a speech, make sure you create sound-bites that are repeatable.  Can your audiences retell your main point?  Give them a sound-bite and they’ll be able to propagate your message.

Need help crafting your sound-bites?  Drop me an email:  Jean@Real-Impact.com.