Toastmasters International

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Three time bestselling author, Dave Ramsey, has had a lot of practice giving speeches. He has a secret and he is telling anyone that listens. Dave Ramsey has a passion for debt free living and he travels from coast to coast spreading the word. Dave has a huge following and those followers pay a small amount of money to spend the week-end listening to Dave speak about life changing steps you can take to be debt free. At first, the idea of listening to someone speak about money, credit cards, retirement, mortgages, investments and any other financial principles sounds monotonous and rather boring. However, when Dave speaks everyone listens. Dave does not look like a Hollywood star; he is just like any white collar professional. He always wears blue jeans, button down shirts and loafers. His stage doesn’t have an elaborate background or fancy effects only simple back lighting. A small table sits stage right and only has one purpose, to hold his notes. Dave never stands behind the table; he continues to move all over the stage and sometimes into the crowd of listeners. So how could this be a fun filled, sold out event? Dave takes a simple concept like debt, adds visual aids and the speech becomes a comedy, a serious moment and a life changing event. Without the visual aids the speech would be jammed packed with boring statistics but Dave keeps the crowd laughing and surprised with all the visual aids to illustrate his secret about debt. The simple visual aid of scissors is a rather blunt way of showing the audience what needs to be done to credit cards. Dave holds a shiny, large pair of scissors and effortlessly cuts up stack after stack of credit cards and allows the tiny pieces to fall all around his feet. The listen...

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...how to place the visual aids in the speech so it is relevant and it flows.

My Personal Insight

I have always been a visual learner. I have been known to ask someone to draw me a picture so I can understand what they are trying to explain. I have a tendency to let my mind wander when listening to someone speak. I seem to listen and learn when visual aids are used in a presentation. I attended the Dave Ramsey Financial Peace University and I came away with so much knowledge and information and I have been able to share what I had learned. All the financial jargon confused me but once Dave pulled out the visual aids I began to understand the concepts he was trying to teach. What I thought was going to be a boring, technical speech turned out to be one of the most informative, comical, fun events all because of the giant scissors illustrating cutting out debt!

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