It’s Peter Zinn’s fault. My friend a fellow professional speaker from the Netherlands said it again and again: You need a story book, Florian! The format doesn’t matter, but as a public speaker you need a place where you store ideas for your stories and speeches. These ideas, you gather them every day and everywhere. If you do not put them down right away, they are gone with the wind in no time. Since 2013 my story book is called Twitter.
Above all, I use Twitter for storing great phrases I hear in my trainings. To all these phrases I add #greatseminarphrases. Over the years, the collection has grown into a nice little fountain of inspiration. But see for yourself.
First sentences
- How would you feel, if I told you that this is the last time we meet?
- Are you here?
- I’m a bad person. [pause] I mean I’m not a bad person. I’m a bed person.
- What’s the Holy Grail for marketing people?
- If only… If only…
- You’re dead!
- Do you exist?
- I’ve been selfish all my life… I’m not proud of it.
- I’ve never been a proud man…….. till today!
- Have you ever been a sperm?
- Not good enough… They say it’s not good enough.
- Do you love happy ends?
- Baking has always been a passion of mine.
- I will die in the year 2045.
- Disappointment is good… and a big disappointment is even better.
Sound bites
- I’m a successful single.
- Sitting is the new smoking.
- Crises are assholes.
- I’m an unrestrained idealist.
- iHolo is Skype on drugs.
- I’m a problem fetishist.
- I was the prototype of a nerd.
- Love is the hooligan of emotions.
- I’m the Muhammad Ali of introverts.
- I’m a smile terrorist.
- I felt the silence.
- In Berlin the sirens sing too.
- I’m the Apple for your job.
- People from Munich are string puppets with style.
Sign posts
- There were three moments in my life that meant a before and an after.
- There are three things on my check list.
Rhetorical devices
- Food is to life what sex is lo love. #analogy
- Ideas are seeds that can grow into strong trees. But you need to take care of the seeds. #metaphor
- My strengths are the lighthouses of my life.
- I felt like a victim in a river of decisions. #simile
- Relationships are like football. Sometimes you win, sometimes you lose. #simile
- By definition, every artist is a crazy person. #hyperbole
- People at my funeral will think, ‘He finally finished something!’ #hyperbole
- If you have nothing, you value everything. #antithesis
- The difference between living and dying is your passion. #antithesis
- We will turn your sad pigs into happy birds. #antithesis
- We’re not a local bank; we’re Deutsche Bank. #paradoxicalantithesis
- I cried without crying. #paradox
- We don’t have the money to save costs. #paradox
- Great characters drive great stories. #anaphora
- Big data is not the new oil. Big data is not the new gold. Big data is a mess! #anaphora
- Regret without learning is no regret. #epanalepsis
- I don’t know everything, and I don’t WANT to know everything. #amplification
- Fake news destroy our future. #personification
- The dictionary was wrong. #personification
- Failure is a gift. Take your gift. #epistrophe
- All I remember is this freezing drizzle. #assonance
- That day I learned how to live with loneliness. #alliteration
- Motivation needs time, trust and talking. #alliteration
- And then, I held her in my arms and I thought, Wow… life! #onomatopoeia
- Regret is a powerful feeling, but it makes you feel powerless. #chiasmus
- Better persons make better companies. #parallelism
- I hate this question and I love this question. #parallelism
Leadership and inspiration
- Optimism is a faith that takes you to achievement.
- If you don’t come up with a solution, you are the problem.
- YOU need to be the solution!
- Stop thinking in departments!
- Standard doesn’t work anymore.
- Say the things the way you think they are, and they will follow you.
- When your mouth is open, you’re not a motivator. You’re just the center of attention.
- Explaining means respecting.
- Motivation is individual.
- Motivation is a feeling.
- I didn’t feel really lucky. #vulnerability
- Manager is a formal position. A leader is you.
- Do you remember your dreams?
- The universe is no longer our limit.
- Delivering a message is delivering yourself.
- If you want to motivate others, your body can tell you how to do it.
- If money isn’t there, you have a problem [as a leader]. But if it’s there, it doesn’t mean anything.
- What I said yesterday, I have to do it tomorrow.
- It’s safer to assume the worst-case scenario.
- Let’s face it – everything hurts in life.
- Life is a fragile gift.
- The difference between chaos and harmony is perception.
- You cannot move forward, if you don’t leave things behind.
- Emotional moments make you richer.
- We drink from the sun; we pulsate with life.
- Love is the only constant in my life.
- At the age of 8 I founded my first company. #ethos
- Success is not all the things you have, but all the things you don’t need.
- More important than money is to travel the world.
- You can’t fall if you don’t climb. But there’s no joy in living your whole life on the ground. –Unknown
- The thing that had the biggest impact on my life was a non-existing country [Soviet Union].
- Smart people aren’t necessarily great people.
- I don’t sell porcelain; I sell the extension of your guest list.
Humor
- An expert opinion is helpful…. if the expert knows what he’s talking about. #unexpected
- He’s a VP of something. #unexpected
- Damn, had we only started 5 years ago! #selfdeprecation
- When you’re not stupid when you become a model, you become stupid when you’re a model. #selfdeprecation
- In my life I turn frontiers into borders. #selfdeprecation
- I get used to the state of food pregnancy. #selfdeprecation
- It feels like many people attending business meetings are there for their own therapy. #hyperbole
- At that time the person closest to Harry Potter was Albert Einstein. #hyperbole
- Germany – land of the tall men. #hyperbole
Feedback
- I love your words and your warmth.
- In two days, you turned from an aerobic penguin into an albatross.
- If this were a Grimm’s fairy tale, you’d be the big-hearted giant.
- Yesterday you were ‘Who am I’. Today you are ‘Here I am’.
- You are 360!
- You’re a heart with legs.
- When I search for the word reliability in Wikipedia, your photo pops up.
- You’re a German oak tree with Greek roots.
- Take me to the climax!
- You’re a monument of emotion.
- It was amazing to see how you moved from nervousness to freedom in just two days.
Do you love public speaking? Do you regularly give presentations at work? Then, follow Peter’s advice and start filling your story book today.