Walking through the woods in NC where I live is an adventure.  We’ve got a bevy of venemous snakes to keep your eyes peeled for in addition to that lovely three-leafed plant, poison ivy.  When you get home, you may also have to rid your clothes of a nuisance that we call “hitch-hikers”.  Do you know what I’m talking about?  They’re the seed of some plant that sticks like glue to your clothes.  Ridding your clothes of these seeds after a walk in the woods is a chore!

A few months ago, a reader asked me what I meant by “sticky messages”.  I wanted to give you the visual of our woodsy “hitch-hikers” to let you into my brain.  I want my messages to be just like those little seeds–so “sticky” that they’re hitch-hikers that don’t simply fall off as my audience walks out the door.  I want my message to ride home and seriously mess with the lives of my hearers.

There’s one very simple way to make sure our messages are sticky.  Keep them simple.  The old-school 3 points and a poem may be wonderful to listen to but often hard to remember.  Andy Stanley, in his message-transforming book Communicating for a Change, is a huge proponent of the one point message.  Here are a few tips to keep a one point message meaty and full of rich content:

• The point should not be a dumbed-down sound bite.  It should be a proverb.  In Made to Stick by Chip and Dan Heath, they explain that these points should be short, concise statements with long experience.  Think of the golden rule as an example of a very sticky statement.
• Creating a “sticky statement” based on a truth or principle from scripture gives you a core that a whole message can be written around.
• Make the statement so relevant that people will bump into it in their every day lives within 24 hours.  This is a principle that Lysa TerKeurst taught me.  In her She Speaks keynote last year, her sticky statement was “Let God chisel.”  It’s the rich truth that God uses the hard circumstances of our lives to make us more beautifully into His image.  Just consider the myriad of applications that each woman in the room could make.  It’s a relevant truth that will be applicable immediately.

Creating a core, sticky statement is just one way to make your messages sticky or memorable.  What ways have you used to make your messages memorable?

Amy

I love to laugh.  But I’m not funny.  Sad but true.

I know that one of the quickest routes to connection with our audience is to make them laugh, but too often I’ve been left standing with crickets chirping after telling what I thought was a funny.  I’ve learned a few methods over the years (through the school of hard knocks) that have helped me get my funny on, and I’ve tried to learn from others.  I’m not shooting to be Chanda Pierce, but I do long to allow people to laugh and connect.

If you’re humor-challenged too, here are a few tips for adding some humor to your speaking:

• Collect funny stories from outside sources– There are so many funny stories being written or told that I’d be remiss not to recommend sometimes using other people’s funny.  Be careful, though.  It should be a story that’s fresh, not a forward that half the world has read.  I’ve got a hilarious story  I read on the internet that I use in one of my talks, but I’ve never heard it anywhere else.  Also, make sure to give an outside source credit rather than acting like it’s your own.
• Take cues from your own life–I have an aunt and uncle who have countless hours of funny stories from their own life.  Although it does seem that more funny/wacko things happen to them than anyone I know, it’s really just their perspective.  Even disasters are hysterical, because they see them as funny.  Pay attention to your own daily life, and you’ll have material until the end of time!  Jeff Foxworthy recommends keeping blank notecards with you so that you can write down observations from real life.  You’ll have a file of hilarious stories and thoughts in no time.  Also, I’ve learned that self-deprecation is my best form of humor.  Making fun of my own goofiness is the best way to get people to laugh with me.
• Practice–Give your stories a trial run in front of family members or friends in conversation.  Do they laugh?  Their reaction is an indicator of how an audience will probably react.  Their laughter will be a confidence builder for the day that you tell it in front of a group.
• Let yourself go a little–One of the things that I’ve had to fight from within is the tendency to shut down emotionally when I get on stage.  It’s purely a selfish self-protection mode, but it is a negative when trying to connect with my audience.  I’ve found that praying to be focused on the audience rather than myself allows my natural expressiveness and animation to come out.  Those things enhance funny stories.  I gave the qualification “let yourself go a little“, because too much is just too much.  When listening to the recordings of my speaking, I’ve noticed that I laugh at myself.  Out loud.  Too loudly.  There’s nothing like awkward laughter to make an audience clam up.  I’ve been working on making a face or dead-panning rather than laughing my goofy laugh.

Occassionally I still hear crickets after I’m pretty sure I’ve been hilarious, but it’s less often now.  Have you had to find your funny?  What’s working for you?

Amy