Stories by Justin Pettigrew, Assistant Professor, Kennesaw State University

In my experience, it’s often helpful to save writing the opening of the speech for later in the process, rather than trying to start with some engaging anecdote or shocking fact and then trying to build your speech around your opening.

As a PR pro, writing speeches can be one of the most challenging things to do. It becomes especially difficult when writing a speech for someone else, like your CEO, COO or another C-suite executive, whether you’re in-house or at the company’s agency of record.