Memorandum

To:

Mrs. Renee Pay

From:

Braxton Giles

Date:

December 7, 2015

Re:

Professional Speaker Analysis

____________________________________________________________________________
I had the opportunity to attend the 16th Annual Leadership Conference at Utah Valley University
on Monday, October 26, 2015. The title of the conference was Come Alive. Hoan Do was the
keynote speaker in the conference. He was a fantastic presenter and inspired everyone. He
knew what his audience consisted of and targeted his speech toward the teenagers. Hes a
great leader, athlete, and motivational speaker.
Organization
Hoan Do emphasized three main points throughout his speech: Choose the Right Attitude,
Find Your Outfit, and Make Meaningful Connections. When Hoan Do said Choose the Right
Attitude, he was saying that no matter what situation you are going through in your life you
have the ability to change your attitude towards it. Your ability to succeed comes down to the
decisions you make. We make around 35,000 decisions every day, each one of those should
be towards your goal of being a successful person. Hoan Do mentioned that we are going to
face some OMG moments. These are the moments that are going to push you to your limits to
the point where you can no longer take it and you just scream OMG. When Hoan Do would
say Find Your Outfit, he was talking about how you have to find the things that you enjoy. Hoan
Do said that you have to Try on different outfits, until you find your passion in life. In order to
find what you want to do you have to explore your options. When Hoan Do said Make
Meaningful Connections, he is talking about how you need to have other people around you to
make life worthwhile. He was very specific about the three types of people you should have in
your life, he called this the Three Ms. The Three Ms consisted of: Mentors, Mates, and
Mentees. A Mentor can be anyone who can help or provide guidance to you and help you
overcome a situation in your life. A Mate is a true friend, and is somebody who is always going
to be there for you. A Mentee is someone that you can teach, and help them get through things.
It is essential that you have these three things in your life.
The organizational pattern Hoan Do used was Problem/Solution. Hoan Do gave an example of
this when his Drama teacher told him that he had to give a do a performance for his whole class
and choreograph a dance. This was a major problem for Hoan because he was very
embarrassed. He ran home and tried to find a way out of to get out of it, and realized that this
was necessary, he had a problem. After some thinking He figured out what he had to do.

So he called his cheerleading friend and borrowed her outfit. The solution to his problem was to
embrace this performance and give it all he had. He performed to one of the most embarrassing
songs Hey Mickey by Toni Basil, and had the best choreographed lip sync dance in the whole
class. This is a great organizational pattern with teenagers. Teenagers always have problems
with getting outside their comfort zones. This can be hard when you are not sure if you like
yourself and you are not so confident in your abilities. Hoan Do addressed this issue as well by
saying if you ever had bad thoughts about yourself you have to say Hold up, that is Whack!
This strategy helps teens gain confidence whenever they get down on themselves. Hoan Do
gave us solutions to most of the problems that teens have to endure through every day. Hoan
Do used inductive reasoning in his presentation. This was obvious because every problem was
not solved intelligently. The problems were solved through his own personal experiences and
the conclusions he had gotten from winning and losing the situations. Hoan do told us about a
time when he saw a beautiful girl that he wanted to ask on a date. He then started doubting
himself and getting nervous because he didnt think he was good enough. He then told himself
that he could do it and was going to get the girl. The solution of this problem was not found
logically but through believing in himself. This supplied strong evidence, but not absolute proof
that the conclusion would work.
Supporting Material
Ethos
Ethos is defined as convincing an audience of the authors credibility or character. Hoan Do
proved Ethos by giving us his story. The conference program stated: Hoan is a student success
coach and competes on the TV show, American Ninja Warrior. Hoans parents had to go through
a lot of trouble to escape to the United States during the Vietnam War and at an early age he
began to understand the sacrifices that they had to make in order to achieve their goal. Feeling
indebted to his parents, he vowed that one day, he would take care of them. Hoan worked hard
throughout his life, and that hard work got him to Pepperdine University in Malibu, California. He
was recognized as the best youth mentor by the International Examiner and because of that he
is traveling across North America to speak at different universities, high schools, and student
leadership conferences. In these programs he shares advice that is practical, and necessary for
students to know how to succeed in and out of school. Hoan has a great personality, and a
special gift that allows him to work very well with youths. His gift earned him the Verizon
Wireless Motivator Award. He was able to convince the audience that he knew what he was
talking about, just by giving us some information on him.
Pathos
Pathos is defined as persuading an audience by appealing to their emotions. Hoan Do
demonstrated Pathos through telling several jokes to the audience and telling stories of when he
was depressed. Hoan shared with us his story of not being able to connect with anyone and
feeling very lonely in high school. Hoan was one of the top wrestlers in his high school, his
whole life at that time was wrestling. During the last competition of the year he was pitted
against a very strong opponent. It was a very intense match and he was able to pin his
opponent down. Thinking he just won he started celebrating, all of a sudden the referee said
there was an error, and continued the match. Hoan went on to lose this match.

As Hoan was pinned to the ground and losing he thought to himself What about all the time I
spent training, it means nothing. Hoan lost after feeling victory, and this crushed him. As he
finished you could look around at the crowd and feel everyone suffering with him as we
experienced his pain and emotion. The story was so relatable because we have all had an
experience where there wasnt a doubt in our minds that we had it in the bag and then things
didnt go as planned. Luckily, Hoan told us the secret to getting ourselves back up after a
heartbreaking defeat. You have to tell yourself that you are good enough, and that it is okay.
After doing this he Chose the Right Attitude and moved on with his life.
Logos
Logos is defined as convincing an audience by use of logic or reason. Hoan Do had Logos
evident throughout his entire speech. Hoan told us that if you go through a really hard challenge
like asking that girl out, then you should be able to do the challenge again because you already
know the solutions. Also he talking about being Lethally Confident if you are Lethally Confident
than you can kill any situation of self-doubt. This convinces the audience because everyone
would like to able to conquer all of their problems from simply thinking well about themselves
and if Hoan can do it that way, than I can do it! Hoan Do said that everyone gets stressed and
has bad days. When people get stressed they lose sight of other important things in their life,
they dont understand that all you have to do is step back and take a few moments to think
about the situation. Hoan tells us to do this and just to look at the situation for what it really is.
This convinces the audience because it helps us all put our problems into perspective. This
allows us to not get as frustrated at simple problems and endure through them.
Delivery
Hoan Do was a very prepared public speaker because you could tell he was very passionate
about speaking to the teenagers. Hoan Do had a great fluctuation in his tone keeping the
audience with him the entire time. He also knew when to slow it down and when to speed it up
to add dramatic effect. Hoan used fantastic non-verbals, when he was talking about being
depressed he would squat down to show humility. When he was making all of us stand up to
repeat his Whack chant he was pacing the stage showing his energy, and enthusiasm. He also
had great eye contact which helped all of us follow along.
Hoan Do had a PowerPoint as his visual aid. The PowerPoint was very minimalistic and
consisted mostly of pictures. It was very smart to put it together like that because it didnt
distract the audience from his speech. All it did was really add emphasis to each of his points. I
felt as if he might have stayed on each slide a little too long and the PowerPoint could have
been slightly more interesting. Also he did a performance as a visual aid. Hoan dressed up as a
cheerleader and danced on the stage and that captured everyones attention.
Motivation
Motivation is a critical element of any speech. If your speech is not motivating someone to act
then you have failed. Motivation is a vital tool in public speaking and should be used in every
scenario. If the audience is not motivated they will not gain anything from you. Hoan Do was
very motivational, and inspirational. He told us the story of how he saw American Ninja Warrior
on TV and thought I want to do that. He went, tried out and made it. He made it to the next
round and was on National TV! This showed the whole crowd that you can do anything if you
want it bad enough.
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Hoan Dos speech was really something to admire. He made us laugh, and he made us sad. He
made an effort to make everyone in the room participate, and he got rewarded for that. He
made the whole room recite his This is Whack chant and I bet you could hear it from the other
side of the university! At the end of his speech he asked the audience had any questions and
many hands popped up. He answered questions about American Ninja Warrior, his high school
years, and even how much weight he could lift. After the presentation there was at least a ten
minute line just to meet the guy. This shows that Hoan motivated and inspired many that day. I
am very grateful that I got to hear such an amazing presenter speak and I will try and emulate
his techniques in my future speeches.