In Conversation with Eric Feng, TheFAQBook on Public Speaking + Special for SGE readers

Our local young champion of public speaking, Eric Feng has won many speech competitions and manages his own public speaking consultancy. He usually shares his tips on his blog, but now, for the first time, he has gone the way of publishing a book! Here, we speak to him at length and hear his enthusiastic thoughts about The FAQ Book on Public Speaking. Plus, read on for Eric’s special gift for SGE readers – qualification: only the first few who read this announcement will be able to “redeem” this opportunity.

Gwen: Hi Eric, perhaps you can first give us a brief history of yourself.
Eric: Gosh, how do you compress 25 years of history into one brief paragraph?!

Ok let’s see.

Hi, I was born talkative. Even though I was warned countless of times by my teachers to talk less and listen more, I ended up making a living out of talking. On top of representing Singapore in various national-level speech competitions, I get paid to help my clients become confident speakers that leave a lasting positive impression in their listeners. I also write regularly at The Public Speaking Blog.

Gwen: Tell us about your latest project.
Eric: I am writing a book! My first official hard copy book titled “The FAQ Book on Public Speaking”.

Gwen: How did it start?
Eric: It all started with an email sent by my current partner Andrew when he chanced upon an article about me on Straits Time. (Recall Straits Time Top 25 Alternate Achievers under 25 in Oct 2006) He wrote me a 53 page proposal on how we can leverage on my speaking skills to impact more people. Part of the plan was to write a book and viola, The FAQ Book on Public Speaking was birthed!

What triggered the creation of the FAQ book was the stunningly lack of quality books on public speaking. We have friends who read truckloads of public speaking books but they never attain the success they wanted!

And it boils down to one simple reason – these books were simply useless! They give you advices that are absolutely lame. For example in one of the “public speaking” books, we found this advice on overcoming stage fright – be yourself! And I was like “Huh? How exactly do you be yourself? Do you even know who you are in the first place??!!”

Some books even make you browse through 137 pages of crap before finding a paragraph that vaguely answers to your question…

Public speaking is already hard enough and we don’t have to make it any harder.

So we set off to find an answer to this pressing problem. And it started with first asking one question:

“If you get to spend one hour with a world class speaker, for a one-on-one consultation on public speaking, what would you ask?”