So how do you make a great acceptance speech? We've all seen great Academy Award acceptance speeches, and we've all seen awful ones. The awful ones are remarkably consistent. The person stands up they're usually fumbles has a long list of I like to thank brown, brown, brown, brown, and they're just listing thing my accountant, my lawyer, my lawyers, accountant, my accountants, lawyer, my agent. It's perfunctory. It's not from the heart, it's reading, there's no emotion.

It's awful, and it's boring. Don't do that doesn't matter if you never win an Academy Award. You might win an award for your local civic contributions to the scouting organization. There may be a time when you do get to give a brief speech, accepting an award, make the most of it. The people who do really well with this, speak from the heart. Now they may have planned it, they may have even memorized it.

They don't just give a long laundry list of names. When they thank people, they look at them in the eyes, some movie stars will look at the director and the audience, thank them directly thanked fellow cast members. When Philip Seymour Hoffman won an Academy Award, he gave a compelling story about when he was young, and it was just him and his mother. She was the one there with him, when it really counted and gave a gripping emotional story about that. Thanks, Mom. It became emotional and it became sincere and genuine.

So if you're going to thank people be specific and what you're thanking them for. Don't give a long laundry list. And even if you're only speaking for 60 seconds, you can still put some humor, a story and some personality into it. Do that and it'll be a great acceptance speech.