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Passion in speaking about a non-work interest

Are you passionate about something other than work?  If so, when you speak about it in public, you can improve the skills you need to stand up in front of group and make a presentation at work.  Learning to hone your ability to answer questions and develop sound-bites can help you become an excellent speaker in all areas of your life.

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.

This entry was posted by Jean Palmer Heck in Media Relations, Professional sports, Sound-bites. Bookmark the permalink. Follow comments with the RSS feed for this post. Post a comment or leave a trackback.

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