How to use a teleprompter. You have seen presidents do it newscasters do it. Now you can use a tap. You see what I'm doing there. That's what you don't want to do with a teleprompter. Now we've all seen political conventions, where speaker after speaker gets up and they sound wooden, contrived, phony, and it's because they're using a teleprompter the wrong way.

Here's what's happening to most people if they've never used the teleprompter before, and they haven't practiced it and gotten really comfortable with it is, instead of speaking the way they want to, and letting the teleprompter follow them. They make the teleprompter in charge. So they're reading the script. And what happens when people read is they flatten out their voice, all of a sudden the volume is the same. The speed is the same. The pause between words and sentences is the And you're already asleep.

Now, it's this consistency. The other thing that happens is they freeze their body. They freeze their face. And it's just a complete disaster. So if you want to be great at the teleprompter, there are a few simple rules you have to follow. Number one, you have to sometimes speak a little louder than usual.

Sometimes number two, you have to speak a little softer than usual. Sometimes, number three, you have to speak a little faster than usual. Number four, sometimes you have to speak a little slower than usual. And number five. Sometimes you have to pause. It really comes down to that if you do all of those things plus have some natural head and hand and facial expressions.

If you do that, you won't sound like you're reading a teleprompter. Now there are certain politicians Well known for doing a good job with a teleprompter, nothing partisan here, Ronald Reagan and Barack Obama both great with a teleprompter. Now they have different messages, different philosophies, but the way they use the teleprompter was exactly the same. They change their speed, tempo volume. They paused, and they sounded as if they were just talking to you. The other thing they do is they rehearse people use a teleprompter because they think great, I won't have to rehearse or memorize.

Now I can just talk now. If you want to use the teleprompter effectively, it actually requires more time. You need to practice that speech you need to get used to it. Here's the final thing I want to say about teleprompter is don't let someone talk you into using it. If you really don't need it, a lot of major national conventions, trade conventions are somehow convincing their executives to do this because it gets things on time. Yeah, no it doesn't.

It tends to make everyone really boring and flat. Most people most of the time are much better off speaking from a simple sheet one sheet of paper, rather than having the whole script Now, something else you can do with your teleprompter is you can use it just to put notes or an outline. So if you're going to use teleprompter, by all means, practice, rehearse, rehearse on video. It's not something to do to save you time. It's something you use if you have even more time than usual, to practice and rehearse.