I know I have mentioned that I am really bad at using up beauty products. The closer I get to the end of the container, the sloooower my consumption becomes. This weird tendency doesn’t just apply to beauty products, which is probably why, at 207 pages, it took me about four weeks to read what is undoubtedly the most exciting book I have read in years (btw, that is the author’s referral link, not mine). I raced through the first half and then savored the second, ever more slowly, until I had to take a plane to Chicago and decided I would use that time to close the deal.
Maybe you hate public speaking and think this topic has nothing to do with your life and that Toastmasters has finally sent me off the deep end (possible), but if you ever present information to groups of people — especially if any of them are strangers, and especially especially if you have ever sat through a horrendous presentation and wish not to be that speaker – you will benefit from this book. Even if you only buy it for the mini-chapters in the back (‘What to do if your talk sucks,’ ‘What to do when things go wrong,’ ‘You can’t do worse than this’), it will be $11-17 well-spent.
Or maybe you are already a Toastmaster or someone else who presents often, in which case you know how just a few speeches can make you think, ‘this stuff is easy,’ and you are always excited about your next speech and constantly thinking about what you’re going to do to make it terrific. If that’s you, this book will make you want to write five more speeches tout de suite, just so you can practice all of Berkun’s tips.
A word of warning to the people in the latter category, however: Berkun has a lengthy, ranked bibliography in the back, and you’re going to want at least a few of those titles. AND the rest of Berkun’s books. Might as well buy enough to get free shipping, right?
If you do read it, let me know what you think!
