Tag - National Speakers Association

The “Take the Stairs” Tour Rolls into Steve Spangler Science

Blog Editor Susan Wells

All of us at Steve Spangler Science know we do not work at your average company. We don’t even work at a normal company. When you show up in the morning you never know what is in store for the day.

So when Steve made the announcement that author Rory Vaden was going to stop by and bring his large tour bus into our parking lot, we didn’t know if he was kidding or serious. At 1:30 p.m., when the huge, black tour bus pulled into our parking lot, we realized Steve was actually serious this time. We all went out to meet the bus and Rory.

Steve and Rory know each other through the National Speakers Association. Rory was in Denver to promote his book, Take the Stairs.

Take the Stairs will help you get motivated, improve your self-discipline and learn strategies for taking action in your life. The book is #1 on USA Today, #1 Wall Street Journal, #1 Amazon and #2 New York Times Best Seller. The Take the Stairs bus tour is
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Spangler Inducted into the Speaker Hall of Fame – Council of Peers Award of Excellence CPAE

If you’re a professional speaker, being inducted into the Speaker Hall of Fame® is kind of like getting an Academy Award… without the cool golden Oscar… but you get the idea. The National Speakers Association (NSA), the leading organization for professional speakers, inducted five professional speakers into the CPAE Speaker Hall of Fame at the 2010 NSA Convention in Orlando, Florida, and I’m honored to have received one of the awards. To date, there are 196 Speaker Hall of Fame inductees throughout the world, and the list includes Ken Blanchard, Norman Vincent Peale, Ronald Reagan, and Zig Ziglar.

Established in 1977, the Council of Peers Award for Excellence (CPAE) is a lifetime award for speaking excellence and professionalism given to speakers who have been evaluated by their peers and judged to have mastered seven categories: material, style, experience, delivery, image, professionalism and communication. The award is not based on celebrity status, number of speeches, amount of income or involvement in NSA. It’s an award presented by your peers… and that’s why it’s so special to me. As you can
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Paul Huschilt Recaps Steve Spangler’s Presentation at the CAPS Convention

… and things didn’t turn out exactly as I had planned. Back in December, I had the great opportunity to speak to professional speakers in Canada. Seems a little strange for a speaker to be speaking to speakers about the art of speaking, but that’s how it works. In the U.S. we have the National Speakers Association (NSA), and in Canada they have the Canadian Association of Professional Speakers (CAPS). After I stepped off the stage, I met Paul Huschilt who introduced himself as a professional speaker who was asked to perform a comic recap of my keynote. He wanted to know if I had any extra MENTOS® and a bottle of Diet Coke for his recap of my presentation at the end of the conference. After you watch this video, you’ll see why I consider Paul to be one of the most brilliant speakers on the circuit today. And I laughed until I cried when I saw it happen live. Take a look at the video.

Reach Them to Teach Them 2009 – Motivating Teachers to Achieve Peak Performance

If you’ve ever taught a day in your life, you know that the job is both rewarding and exhausting. In an effort to keep our students inspired and motivated to want to learn, sometimes we forget to recharge our own teaching batteries. Amy Crawford is an amazing elementary teacher based out of Knoxville, Tennessee who understands the need for teachers to have a profound impact on the lives of their students… but she also understands the need for teachers themselves to stay motivated. In 2006, Amy and a her dream team created a non-profit organization called Reach Them to Teach Them. The mission is clear… To train, motivate and inspire leaders so that every child is equipped to reach his/her maximum potential. I was honored to be invited to serve as the keynote speaker at this year’s event at the historic Tennessee Theater with 1,700 teachers on hand.

Avoid an Audience Riot – How to Write a Great Introduction for Your Next Speaker

As a professional speaker, I’ve learned over the years the importance of a good introduction and how detrimental a bad intro can be to the start of even a good presentation. We’ve all probably been in an audience and experienced an introduction that is in itself a mini-speech. These are the intros that go on and on forever for the sake of… who knows. In extreme cases, the audience begins to grow restless… some want to throw things while others begin chanting, “Hey, we didn’t come to hear you!” The bottom line is that a speaker’s introduction plays a huge role in how the speaker is perceived by the audience (before the speaker ever steps onto the platform). In contrast, a great introduction is worth its weight in gold – long enough to cover the subject but short enough to be interesting (there’s a joke here, but not in this forum).

Yesterday, I had the privilege of speaking to the Colorado Chapter of the National Speakers Association (NSA Colorado) and I couldn’t have asked for a better introduction from Glenn Thayer. Sidebar… speaking to a group of professional speakers
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