THE FIRST RULE:

Think Before
You Speak

To quote Woody Allen, “Having money is better than poverty, if only for financial reasons.” Indeed, the bottom line in business is money. Whether you’re talking about spending money for new furniture, new cars or new widgets—it all boils down to cost effectiveness. So too, with public presentations. You can and must put a price tag on public speaking because it will cost you, as a manager and the public speaker, and your company, as the sponsor, money to present your speech to an audience.

However, rarely do businesses give the same attention to decision making for speeches that is given to purchasing a piece of equipment of far less expense. Why? Possibly because there are so many hidden “time costs.” There’s research time, speechwriter time (if you’re so lucky), personal time—at home thinking about the speech—travel expenses, time away from the job, downtime at airports, in taxis, on trains, planes and boats! The list goes on and on. When you tally it all up—which is rarely done—it’s a chunk of time and money. And time is the one thing that managers have the least of; thus, it is the most valued—time truly is money.