About John Bell

Do you need a motivating speech by a top business meeting speaker with over 25 years experience?

John Bell is an expert at public speaking. He works full-time as business speaker specialising in giving educational, fun talks that are carefully designed to inspire and motivate.

Let John know your line of business, or professional focus and he tailors his humorous, motivating speeches to ensure examples are given that truly connect with your audience's day to day reality and get right to the heart of your key issues and messages.

Each motivating speech by business speaker John Bell will be delivered with optimum value and practical application designed to be an educational, fun talk that is also motivational and inspiring.

As a professional conference speaker, his commitment to each separate audience and his ability to deliver audience specific content comes from years of specialising in public speaking and a masterful understanding of the motivation and development of adults.

As you can see when you check out his biography, John is able to draw upon best practice case studies and real life examples he has collated from thousands of experienced professionals.

John has also had direct involvement in high-level research into human behaviour - providing him with a sound understanding of why people so often behave the way they do.

John Bell builds an inspiring, motivating speech that is just right for your delegates and ensures your event's focus hits the mark and achieves your desired outcome.

As a vastly experienced public speaker and former stand-up comedian, he also has the ability to entertain your delegates with great after dinner speeches that will have them crying with laughter.

For those of you not experienced in public speaking who have been asked to provide an entertaining, educational speech, here are some suggestions from John on how to give a humorous talk at a business meeting.

Many people believe that a business speaker who gives a humorous an educational, fun talk at a conferences, business meeting or the like is born funny. Nothing is further from the truth.

Some develop the skill as children as a method of dealing with school bullies, and the everyday anguish growing-up causes so many of us. Other involved in public speaking, began studying the subject after realising how powerful a tool it is in entertaining, inspiring and delighting a business meeting audience. Here are ten top tips:

1. Provide a humorous, motivating speech that will help solve other people's problems, and you build an instant rapport with them. For those involved in public speaking, here lies the basis on which giving educational, fun talks initially germinates, and then grow.

There is little difference in people. If, as a business meeting speaker you give a humorous, motivating speech where you make light of your own problems, an audience will empathise with you, mainly because they have very similar problems to yourself.

A business speaker that provides a humorous, motivating speech that helps delegates to come to terms with their own problems helps the audience in dealing with, what can be for them, a difficult dilemma they would, under normal circumstances, prefer not to think about.

That is the power granted to you when public speaking with educational, fun talks that inspire and energize others.

2. For those doing the laughing, and for that matter the business meeting speaker too, humour is a great escape from reality. The business speaker befriends an audience through his or her motivating speech, much as a circus clown does with children. Here lies another clue as to what humour is - not is not so much to do with the words used but with vocal expression, character exaggeration, comic timing, and pregnant pauses so full of meaning.

3. The next time you listen to a favourite humorous business meeting speaker giving a motivating speech note how they are not afraid to laugh at themselves. This is because humour is a universal human activity that allows the business speaker to become a philosophical spectator of his or her own life in relation to those they have around them. Also take note that the most popular topics often revolve around friends (including newly formed quasi friends found in the audience), and family.

4. The props used by the circus clown to humour children are not so effective with adults at a business meeting. They don't see the clown as being funny. Scene setting, such as a public bar, is tolerated but it is the business meeting speaker's 'unique' personality that must shine through when providing an inspiring educational, fun talk. Have you ever thought about how many top comedians have similar acts? Non. Success in providing an educational, fun talk as a business meeting speaker is about being unique!

5. Public speaking at a business meeting is seriously hard work. Many that fail at giving an educational, fun talk do so because they don't work hard enough at it. Giving a humorous, motivating speech as a business meeting speaker is no different to any other skill.   The 'fortunate few funny folk' having all the lucky breaks is nonsense. Luck plays little part in whether or not you are likely to succeed as a business speaker giving a motivating speech or presentation. It was Gary Player who said, "The more I practise the luckier I get" . This is as true for a business speaker as it is for a golfer.

6. Educational, fun talks that motivate never stop growing. It is a baby conceived in the mind of the business meeting speaker, that is nurtured to adulthood, and often only dies with the demise of the creator.

The best humorous, business meeting speakers are constantly reworking their best material. They may be at the top of their profession but they never stop asking the question "How can I make this mediocre story better?" Theirs is a quest for perfection that never comes.

Writing material for educational, fun talks sometimes requires an ability to let go of 'the baby'. Those less experienced in public speaking often fear culling their best stories. Professional speakers know that an effective and humorous, motivating speech required an ability to prune content to facilitate the promotion of new growth.

Those experienced in public speaking strive to be ever more professional in their talks. It is a lifelong apprenticeship that few have the resolve to complete.

7. What is, and what is not funny, fluctuates with the years, and is generally accepted by those involved in public speaking as being a subjective test.

Quick-witted 'one-liners' are still in fashion, whereas jokes are not. The "These three men went into a pub..." type stories are currently out of vogue and will create a chorus of cringes, as many would-be professional business speakers have found, unfortunately, too late to save their delicate feelings.

8. Producing material for a humorous talk at a business meeting takes practise and is primarily a personal preference thereby creating the uniqueness I described earlier. Here are a few suggestions as to how you can go about creating your own unique and inspiring educational, fun talks.

I work on a simplistic definition of the psychology of humour as being 'the study of the human mind and prediction of behaviour'.

To make a situation humorous in a motivating speech or presentation the audience must first predict some outcome and then be humoured with a punch line that nudges them off the expected route and makes the situation funny.

The next time you watch or listen to a favourite speaker at a business meeting be much more analytical about what it is they are saying and try to work out why their presentation or humorous, motivating speech is so funny. Let's take a favourite comedian of mine, Woody Allen. Here is a short extract from one of his routines and I would like you to analyse the construction of his story:

" When I was little boy, I wanted a dog desperately, and we had no money. I was a tiny kid, and my parents couldn't get me a dog, 'cause we just didn't have the money, so they got me, instead of a dog - they told me it was a dog - they got me an ant. And I didn't know any better, y'know, I thought it was a dog, I was a dumb kid. Called it 'Spot'. I trained it, y'know. Coming home late one night, Sheldon Finklestein tried to bully me. Spot was with me. And I said "Kill!", and Sheldon stepped on my dog."

Think about some of the tips I have already provided. Take the full stops is Woody's story as being the pauses I described. Does he build empathy by describing a situation that was similar to a problem you may once have had?

Is he making fun of his own problems?

Does he appear to be laughing at himself?

Is he a philosophical spectator of his own life in relation to those around him?

What relationship is he to the other characters in the story?

True comedy found in educational, fun talks delivered at a business meetings is the practically enacted theory of the absurdities so often found in human relationships and is usually related to a 'twist' in the story. This is what funny is.

9. The 'twist' takes the story away from the norm (the predicted path), and makes it humorous. Woody's dog becomes an ant. As the story unfolds Woody creates a movie in your mind. You are there with him as Finklestein tries to bully him and Spot is instructed to Kill!

The best motivating and humorous, business speakers have the ability to have 'fun' with literal meanings. It is said they see the funny side of everything. I agree they do, but only when they set the mind to the task.

Professional entertaining, business speakers are performers during their presentation or talk. Meet them whilst doing the shopping with their spouse and kids and you will find they appear and sound no different to anyone else.

Yet something in that shopping centre may germinate the seed of an idea in the business speaker's mind that they will propagate for weeks to come and may eventually grow to maturity and bear fruit in a presentation. For those involved in providing motivating, educational, fun talks, life is full of 'waiting to be discovered' humour that will later entertain and inspire the audience at a business meeting.

Take any situation and think of alternative meanings to make it humorous. Here's an example. "I was on my way to the shops and your dog went for me!" Think of alternate meaning to 'your dog went for me' i.e. the dog attempted to bite him, and reply "that's impressive; it never went to the shops for me before!" The listener at the business meeting is nudged from the predicted path making the story humorous.

10. My final top tip, for those involved in public speaking wishing to give an inspiring, humorous talk or presentation, is related to having the confidence to be funny.

Confidence is a state of mind. It is what you believe. Your beliefs are mostly a matter of faith and apply in more areas than just the spiritual. Believe in yourself and it will strengthen your ability to make people laugh with a educational and fun talk at a business meeting.

Have that faith and you can realise your full potential in public speaking. Stand-up, be funny and afterwards think carefully about how you can make your humorous talk better the next time. Whatever you do - have fun doing it.

John Bell is a professional speaker who has been voted 'Best UK Conference Speaker of the Year' on four occasions. www.johnbellspeaker.com