TJ Walker's Secret to Speaking Like Barak Obama

Through easy to follow instructions and helpful examples, becoming a better presenter has never been so easy or entertaining.

This DVD will teach you how to:
(PLUS show you examples of Barack Obama applying these principles)

Speaking skills are the ONE KEY FACTOR that separates the
winners in business (and life) from, well, everyone else!

Media Training / Presentation & Speaker Training: TJ Walker is one of the leading authorities on media and presentation training in the world. With more than 25 years of experience, Walker has trained thousands of CEOs, authors, and experts, including United States government officials, European Prime Ministers, and African diplomats.

Keynote Speaker: TJ Walker gives more than 100 keynote speeches and training sessions a year on leadership communication, media and presentation skills. His most popular speech is “Bully Pulpits: Speaking Secrets of World Famous Leaders.”

Television Host/Producer: Walker is the host of two daily TV shows seen on The Speaking Channel. “Bully Pulpits: Speaking Secrets of World Famous Leaders” features short video clips of everyone from Roosevelt to Reagan to Obama. “Speaking with TJ Walker” gives practical, nuts-and-bolts advice on all aspects of speaking and dealing with the media.

Author: TJ is the author of “TJ Walker’s Secret to Foolproof Presentations,” (Spring 2009) “Media Training A-Z,” “Presentation Training A-Z” and more than 100 other books, videos, DVDs, CDs, software programs and other learning tools. Walker also writes a daily column, “TJ’s Insights,” that is widely read by CEOs, political leaders, and business executives worldwide.

Newsmaker: A frequent news commentator, TJ has hosted more than 2,000 talk radio and TV shows and has been featured numerous times on the following networks: CNN, Headline News, ABC-TV, Fox News Channel, MSNBC, Court TV, Bloomberg TV, Comedy Central, National Public Radio, ABC Radio, NBC Radio, CBS Radio, and Westwood One.

The Web: TJ is the founder of The Speaking Channel www.SpeakingChannel.tv, a source for all speaking related information on the Internet and Media Training Worldwide www.MediaTrainingWorldwide.com.

Education: Walker was a Merit Scholar at Duke University where he graduated magna cum laude. He has lectured or trained at Yale University, Columbia University and Princeton University.

Clients: TJ’s clients include Microsoft, Bank of America, Charles Schwab, Unilever, Allstate, Miss Universe Organization, EMC, The Hartford, Dun and Bradstreet, US Trust Unitedand hundreds more. TJ has worked personally with Prime Ministers, Nobel Peace Prize winners, beauty queens, CEOs, professional athletes, and Members of Congress.

It was a moment and a speech that people have waited for since election night in November. In a historical sense it was a speech that some people thought they would never hear in their lifetime. President Barack Obama made history being sworn in as our country’s first African-American president and delivered a speech that will be remembered by supporter and foe as ushering in a new era of leadership and communication. President Barack Obama’s Inaugural speech was well-written and well-read, something that can’t be said of Inaugural addresses since 1996.

Style: Obama gave an average speech. But an “average” speech for Obama has been fantastic, stylistically, at least for the last year. Obama continued to read the teleprompter well (not a skill that should ever be dismissed). Obama pauses brilliantly, changes his pace, speed, tone and volume for maximum dramatic impact. Everything about Obama’s body language and use of his voice conveys confidence, authority, and command.

Minor Nit to Pick: Obama is a much more skillful Teleprompter reader than most politicians, but there is one thing he does incorrectly. He turns his head too quickly back and forth from the left TelePrompTer screen to the right screen. He is doing this every 2-3 seconds. He would appear much steadier and even more confident if he simply read off of the same TelePrompTer for a full thought (about 6-8 seconds) before turning to the other prompter. This would create an even steadier presence and allow for people in the audience to feel as though he were speaking directly to them.

Substance: Obama managed to communicate two very important and, at times, contradictory messages. On the one hand, he laid out the case that the world is in extreme crisis and that tough choices and sacrifice would have to be made by all. On the other hand, he expressed extreme optimism that problems could be solved. He deftly criticized old ideologies that idolized free markets as infallible, and yet expressed his core belief in capitalism. The speech was light on programmatics, as it should be. Instead, Obama focused on painting a broad picture of the human condition at the moment and what his general approaches would be. On the one side, he’s not afraid to suggest that these radical times will require radical solutions, and on the other, he is as mainstream, moderate, and reassuring as they come. He consistently flavored his speech with a wider range of yin and yang than his predecessors. Obama thanked God and mentioned the US is a country of Christians, Jews and Muslims, but he also, courageously, mentioned that we are a nation that includes non-believers.

Packaging of the substance: Obama’s speech lacked noticeable sound bites present from other past great inaugurals, i.e. Kennedy’s “ask not…” The problem for Obama is that today’s media culture fancies itself so sound bite savvy that it is harder for politicians to use them in a major address without sounding gimmicky.

Minor detractions: Obama’s presentation began before the actual “‘speech” started. The presentation is the moment you stand up. And in this case, it began with his swearing in portion with Supreme Court Chief Justice John Roberts. Both men made small blunders. Unfortunately for Obama, he is under such a microscope that his enemies will pounce on every mistake, no matter how microscopic. Because Obama did not actually say the Oath of Office word for word in a correct manner, I fully anticipate that right-wing fringe groups will file a flurry of lawsuits claiming he is not legitimately in office. Of course, this will be dismissed by the courts as frivolous, but only after months and months of costly litigation. (Don’t laugh, conservative opponents tried to have Obama disqualified by claiming he couldn’t prove he was a natural born citizen and fought it all the way to the Supreme Court.) My suspicion is that Obama practiced his inaugural speech numerous times (it showed) but did not rehearse the swearing in portion, and that he did not rehearse it with the chief justice. In retrospect, it would have been well worth it to have spent 10 minutes rehearsing the swearing in portion so that it could have gone of flub-free.