Put some Tuba in it (plum pie and diabetic husbands)

A while back, a friend of mine named Tuba was working on her public speaking skills at Toastmasters. I encouraged her to make sure that in all her speeches she “put some Tuba in it,” by which I meant to put some of her own personality into everything she said.

These personal details often come in where you enter the picture, which is typically at the tail end of the second leg of the three-leg Boy Meets Girl structure. The Boy Meets Girl structure is a quick way you can structure your presentation so you can pitch any idea on a moment’s notice. I’ll go into it in the coming weeks, remind me if I forget.

Anyway, back to the personal details. What do they have to do with plum pie and diabetic husbands?

When she was in her 80s, my grandma, may she rest in peace, was in a video where she showed people how to bake a plum pie. It was played in grocery stores, was posted on YouTube, etc.

In that video, she mentions, in an offhand way, some details about her personal life. Nothing major, just small stuff like she is using an artificial sweetener because her husband is diabetic.

Over the years some of my friends have watched the video, and the details like this are the things that stick out for them. I take these details for granted, because she was my grandma and I grew up with this information, but details like this are apparently what others consider significant enough to remember.

You might ask what any of this has to do with your presentations, and here it is: In business life, we worry so much about rounding off the edges, about eliminating every aspect of our own color from our speech. For some reason, we think it is more professional, but the actual, and unfortunate, effect is that it make us forgettable.

Watch that plum pie video. It’s all about making a plum pie. No one would ever say it’s about her diabetic husband. But sprinkling some of those miscellaneous personal details into her speech makes her more memorable, more human.

In your own presentations, sprinkle in a few details from your own personal life. They give your speech texture, something for your audience to hold onto. Doesn’t have to be much, a little goes a long way.

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