How to Give a Great Toast No Matter the Occasion

Photo: Create & Cultivate

Whether you’re celebrating your work wife’s promotion or raising a glass of bubbly at your best friend’s wedding, knowing how to give a great toast is a life skill that’s worth mastering, but, of course, that’s easier said than done. When honoring someone with a toast, you want to be heartfelt, kind, funny, and poignant, which is no small feat (especially when you consider that 73% of people suffer from speech anxiety before giving a presentation or public speech), so we tapped two experts for some tips.

At our recent Future You Festive, Jeni Britton Bauer, the founder and chief brand officer of Jeni’s Splendid Ice Creams, and Brian Fairleigh, the brand education manager at Chandon, spilled the details on how to give a great toast, no matter the occasion. If you missed their must-watch workshop at our digital summit, don’t worry, we have you covered! Scroll on for Bauer and Fairleigh’s tried-and-true tips on how to raise a glass and give a memorable toast that won’t end in dreaded awkward silence or elicit eye rolls.

Psst… If you’re having serious FOMO, join Create & Cultivate Insiders to get unlimited access to all of our Future You Festival content including video recordings of every panel and workshop download in C&C history.

Tip #1: Read the Audience

When preparing to give a toast, the very first thing you need to do is read the audience. “It's important to see who's in front of you,” advises Fairleigh. “Because what you're going to say to an audience of old businessmen versus your friends at your friend's wedding are totally different things.” Consider who will be raising their glasses with you and let that help inform the content of your toast.

Tip #2: Read the Situation

After you’ve considered your audience, you want to be mindful of the situation. "Sometimes you want to make jokes, sometimes you want to roast the person a little bit, sometimes you want to be very sincere and very from the heart," explains Fairleigh. Being mindful of the occasion will ensure your toast resonates with your audience.

Are you at a wedding where a heartfelt toast describing the happy couple’s meet-cute moment would be most appropriate? Are you raising a glass to your work wife’s promotion where that funny anecdote about how she accidentally signed off an email with “have a nice eek” will get a laugh? Be sure to take both your audience and the situation into account to give a cheers-worthy toast people will remember.

Tip #3: Keep It Short and Sweet

Just as important as reading the room, knowing your audience, and being mindful of the moment is knowing when to wrap it up. “I can't tell you how many times I've seen people give a toast where they absolutely crush it in the first couple of lines, but then, when they see that they're doing well, start taking risks and don't cut it off when they're still in their prime,” says Fairleigh. “Remember the three B’s: Be brief, be brilliant, be gone.”

Tip #4: Prepare

While toasting is meant to be improvisational, a little bit of preparation goes a long way, especially if you’re nervous. “There are a lot of templates that you can use if you're freaked out,” recommends Bauer. “Take someone else's speech and rewrite it for yourself because you will change it in such a way, based on your own life and your own experiences, that no one will recognize it.”

If you’re debating whether or not to use notecards as you prepare for giving a toast, Bauer is pro notecards. "It's not a problem to use cards if you have to, as long as you love people, you care about them, you care about what you're doing, and as long as you're speaking from the heart, it doesn’t matter," she notes. The most important thing is that your words are coming from a place of sincerity.

Tip #5: Be Authentic

Fairleigh's number one piece of advice for giving a great toast? Be authentic. "You just have to be authentic,” he says. “When you're giving a toast, people will see through it if you're saying something that you don't believe in." Speaking from the heart is always a good idea when honoring someone with a toast.

Tip #6: Practice

"Always, always practice," advises Fairleigh. "I mean it works for anything, whether your public speaking or whether giving a toast." Practicing your toast ahead of time will ensure that you’re prepared to deliver a memorable toast and help keep nerves at bay (along with a glass of sparkling Chandon wine, that is!).

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Women Apologize for Their Answers More, But They Also Do This

photo by Brittni Mehlhoff

Though Siri will tell you that she's genderless, there is a distinctly female quality to her voice (at least in her US version). There's a business reason for that: people tend to react more positively to female voices. And yet, women are less likely to speak up in meetings than men. Why would this be? In his book Wired for Speech, Stanford communications professor Clifford Nass wrote that people prefer for our technology to help us, but we want to still be its boss. In other words: even in tech, the female voice is interpreted as more subversive. 

In January 2015, Lean In founder Sheryl Sandberg and Wharton business school professor Adam Grant published an op-ed in the New York Times titled "Speaking While Female." The piece outlined multiple pieces of research showing that in the workplace, women speak less, are "manterrupted" more, and have their ideas more closely scrutinized. 

Well, it's time for a change. It's time to speak up. Here are five ways to chime with confidence in your next meeting. 

KNOW THAT YOUR THOUGHTS ARE WORTH SHARING

We're not talking garden-variety comments that don't contribute to the task or meeting at-hand, but it is important to speak up at least once in a meeting. Otherwise your colleagues and higher-ups will start to think you have nothing to add. 

The biggest hurdle is speaking up for the first time, and if you're not quite ready, next time you’re in a meeting and you have an idea, write it down. 

Go home and practice saying that idea out loud in multiple different tones. Find the one that resonates with you, that feels like most authentic. Next time you’re in a meeting draw on that at-home experience and be heard!  

ENUNCIATE 

If you’re pitching a business or trying to sell your boss on an idea, you need to be articulate and concise.

Attention to the small details of your speech can actually give you with a sense of confidence that you didn’t know you had. Elocution may not be taught in school anymore, but vocal clarity brings vocal confidence. And nothing derails a confidence train like being asked to speak up or to stop mumbling mid-sentence. 

"Vocal clarity brings vocal confidence."

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So, work on enunciation, clarifying all of your consonant sounds and varying your vowel length— these small changes can make a significant difference in how you’re heard. 

SPEAK SLOWLY 

There is a difference between being excited about what you’re sharing and rushing through your idea. When you speak too quickly what you are conveying is that you’re nervous or that what you have to say is not valuable. 

If you’re speaking, hold the room’s attention, slowly and confidently. If you’re making them wonder whether you believe in what you’re saying, there is a good chance they aren’t going to believe in it either. 

EXPAND YOUR VOCABULARY

We’re reading less. There’s no way around it. However with dropping book sales comes a dropping vocab. One of the best ways to make sure that you’re ever-expanding your word base is by reading. This can be as simple as reading a page out loud every night when you get home. It can be any kind of written word, from fiction to newspaper. Not only will this exercise help you practice enunciation, but you’ll start to learn words without even trying. 

The next time you speak up in a meeting, you’ll find there is much greater fluidity to your speech and you’ll be drawing on a bigger vocabulary base. 

DON'T DISQUALIFY YOURSELF AT THE END OF YOUR STATEMENT

We hear a lot about women apologizing for their answers in advance and how we should nix this from our speech. What we hear less about, is discrediting yourself at the end of a statement or an idea. 

This can be as simple as ending a presentation with one of the following colloquialisms: I guess,  I don’t know, I think. Make sure that you are ending as strong as you start. Be certain beginning, middle, and end. 

Sometimes when we get to the end of what we say, and it isn’t resonating quite right with a room, we get nervous and qualify it with a, "does that make sense?" Stick to your verbal guns, even if the room doesn’t agree. You can still sit back down with as much gusto with which you stood up. 

Have tips for speaking up in meetings? Share in the comments below! 

Arianna Schioldager is Editor-in-Chief at Create & Cultivate. You can follow her @ariannawrotethis. 

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How to Use Public Speaking to Build Your Brand

Have you ever looked at speakers on a stage and thought – how do I get there?  How can I become confident, clear on my message, have the courage to stand in front of so many people and share what I love and what I know?

Well you’re not alone.  As we move into the era of what I like to call the ‘Power Personal Brand’ where we follow people who have something to say and who say it so well, the personal brand has become the visual connector that we have to people and content that we love. In this digital age, having something to say and saying it well can be the difference between mega success and getting lost in the crowd. 

Now when I talk about public speaking and presenting I think of it as speaking to a group from 2 people to 200,000 people.  It doesn’t really matter the size, your ability to impact and connect with 1 person is just as important as the masses.

So if owning the stage is something that you would love to do here are some of my tips on presenting with power and purpose and getting the gigs that you want.

BE CLEAR ON YOUR MESSAGE

One: decide what your message is. This may sound simple, but what will you talk about exactly?  If you can decide on 1 – 4 topics that you cover then it makes easy for event managers and hosts to know if you’re right for their business, event, and audience.  If you’re able to give a clear outline then it makes for an easy decision. I’m sure that you already have a number of topics that you focus on in your business, so go with those. Consistency of message across all your platforms is what builds brands, so bang that drum!

"Consistency of message across all your platforms is what builds brands, so bang that drum!"

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SHOUT IT OUT

If you want to be a speaker then let people know by creating a speakers page. Creating a speakers page means that it’s easy for those who come to your website or blog to see that you’re a speaker. They can see what you talk about, where you’ve spoken before, and they can see what others have said about their experience with you as a speaker. 

TESTIMONIALS

If you’ve spoken before and have testimonials then those are also a great thing to provide event organizers.  Knowing that you’re an engaging speaker whose personality is congruous to my brand is really important to me as well as an event organizer.  My brand personality is bold, fun, and focused on educational content, so my speakers need to be like that as well.  If you’re able to show the type of content you share and the way in which you share it then you’ll appeal to the right event organizers.

GETTING STARTED & FINDING GIGS

 

So where to start?  There are a couple of things you can do to get started.  One of the easiest things to do is to run your own event.  This means that you could have from 5-50 people, whatever works for you and test your message and talk it out. This could be free or charged. By doing this you’ll get a feel for what works for you when you’re speaking and what doesn’t. It may also mean that you’re able to get testimonials for your speaker’s page.

CONNECT WITH EVENT ORGANIZERS 

If running an event sends you into cold sweats then it’s time to connect with others who run events and see if you’re the right type of speaker for them. I’ve spoken in paid and unpaid workshops and events for other women who run networking groups and events and that’s worked well for me.  As an international conference speaker I also connect with those who run large scale conferences to ensure that I build a relationship with them for future events.

GOOGLE IT! 

I secured a speaking event this year by Googling – ‘speaking opportunities in Melbourne’ and applying when I saw one that I thought was a good fit for me.  Not only did I make some awesome connects at this event but I also gained a number of new clients. The event was unpaid but is still benefiting my business today.

PROMOTE YOURSELF

I saw a video on Facebook recently of someone advertising that they are open to speaking at events.  It shared some information on where they had spoken before and what they speak about.  Now you may not want to go that far (or maybe you do) but like anything in your business, if you want to build up your reputation in a certain area then you need to be out there sharing it.  Social proof is always a great way to do that.  When I get the professional photos back from places that I’ve spoken then I put them up on my social channels as well as my website to build up the social proof of what I’ve done.  I always connect it with a testimonial where I can so that there is a visual as well as praise for a job well done.  

HAVE A GOAL

With any speaking gig I do, I have a clear goal.  The goal is convey a specific message, to connect with certain people, to entertain, educate or inspire. Know what your goal is and ensure that you set yourself up to be successful in achieving that goal.  I’ve worked with women who have no idea what they want to get out of the experience and therefore miss an opportunity.

Speaking is one of the quickest ways to reach a large audience in a single instant, so if it’s something you’re looking to do, I would say go for it. 

I’d love to know - what’s your biggest fear, worry or barrier to speaking?

An original version of this article appeared on Blog Society. 

Suzanne Chadwick is a Business & Brand strategy coach and the CEO of The Connection Exchange providing coaching, training & events for women in business and supporting them to build their business, brand and bottom line. As an international conference speaker and trainer, Suzanne also coaches women to create the ‘Power Personal Brand’ through public speaking and Owning the Stage.  You can find and connect with Suzanne on Facebook and Twitter.

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9 Killer Public Speaking Tips from Top Female Entrepreneurs

Jittery hands, racing heart, blank mind. If you're climbing the career ranks, there is a good chance you've experienced one or all of these emotions when you get up to give a presentation or a talk. There's no escaping it, and the earlier you accept that public speaking is going to be a part of your career, the better. After all, practice makes perfect (or so said Tina Craig of Bag Snob this weekend at Create & Cultivate Dallas). 

Whether you're prepping for a pitch meeting or you're planning to one day give a world-changing TED talk, we asked the industry best to give their quick and dirty tips for getting up in front of a crowd or an investor. 

ANNIE LAWLESS, NY TIMES BEST SELLER, CO-FOUNDER SUJA, CREATOR BLAWNDE.COM

"Don't filter yourself because everyone can tell. Be authentic-- that will help you be conversational. And don't worry about what you think they want to hear." 

DANIELLE DUBOISE, CO-FOUNDER SAKARA LIFE

"Memorize three things you know you want to say. Don't memorize anything else because you'll sound like a robot. And have a code word for yourself. Mine is solar plexus, for when I tap into my power." 

SOPHIA RIVKA ROSSI, CO-FOUNDER HELLO GIGGLES

"The key to public speaking is to disassociate, j/k, to connect to what you are expressing, and just remember no one really ever cares more than you do." 

JACLYN JOHNSON, FOUNDER CREATE & CULTIVATE

"The worst thing you can do on stage is think about yourself. What matters is the audience. So get out of your head and your inspirational insight will find a way into theirs." 

JULIE RICE, CO-FOUNDER SOULCYCLE

"Speak from your heart. Everyone can understand passion...oh yeah and 'takeaways.' Leave people with something actionable." 

TINA CRAIG, CO-FOUNDER BAG SNOB

“I talked about the end user, as if she was there.” On “Shirley,” the character she created and used when pitching HSN. Adding, "You do anything enough, and it becomes fun. Practice in your sleep."

HILLARY KERR, CO-FOUNDER WHO WHAT WEAR, CLIQUE MEDIA

"Some people thought we were cream puffs, but we were smart. I like to say it was like being bitten to death by a butterfly." On early fundraising meetings for Who What Wear.

RACHEL ASHWELL, FOUNDER RACHEL ASHWELL SHABBY CHIC  

"Be truthful. It's too easy to say what you think sounds good." 

ELIZABETH CUTLER, CO-FOUNDER SOULCYCLE

"And concise." 

Mic drop, Elizabeth. *claps*