Photo by Erin Nelson.
Patrick O’Mara speaks with a group of patrons at Brock’s Gap Brewing Co. as he demonstrates his plan to break a Guinness World Record for the most speeches given in 24 hours on April 6. O’Mara is attempting the world record on June 8.
A Hoover man is trying to break a Guinness World Record for the most speeches given in a 24-hour period.
Patrick O’Mara, a subrogation analyst for the State Farm insurance company who has a side business providing training in public speaking, wants to break the Guinness record of 30 speeches in 24 hours, which was set in 2018 in Gujarat, India, by a man named Piyush Vyas. O’Mara’s goal is to do 34 speeches in 24 hours, and his target date is June 8.
There are certain conditions that must be met for each speech to qualify for the Guinness World Record. Each speech must be an unscripted, unique speech that lasts at least 10 minutes, which means he can’t give the same presentation 40 times, or even twice.
Each speech must be in a different venue, and each venue must be capable of seating at least 50 people. Also, there must be at least 10 people in the audience at each speech, with no duplicate audience members.
In order to achieve his goal, O’Mara has calculated that he must give 2½ 10-minute speeches every hour over the course of 16 hours, since getting audiences in peak sleep times is unlikely. That means he will need to give the speeches in close proximity to one another to limit travel time, he said.
O’Mara has all of his venues lined up. He plans to start the day with his first speech at 5:15 a.m. at 459 CrossFit in Bessemer, then spend a good bit of time at venues in Hoover that include several hotels, the Hoover Area Chamber of Commerce, Hoover Recreation Center, Hoover Senior Center, Hoover Public Library and Aldridge Gardens. He then will speak at numerous locations in Homewood and Birmingham before ending the day with a final speech at 9:25 p.m. at Brock's Gap Brewery in Hoover.
However, O'Mara still needs to make sure he has enough people at each venue to qualify for the record. Advance registration is not required, but registration helps O'Mara anticipate audience size at each location. To see O'Mara's complete schedule and list of venues and times, and to sign up as an audience member, see this registration site.
So what does O’Mara plan to talk about? His plan is to draw from a box of fortune cookies at each venue and speak on whatever topic is written down on the paper inside the cookie.
He already has been practicing. He obtained two boxes with more than 300 fortune cookies and has been reading through the fortunes and developing speeches, he said. As of early April, he had gone through at least 100 fortune cookies, he said.
Of course, he’s not guaranteed to get the same topics when the actual day comes, but he’s gaining practice on developing speeches in the spur of the moment, he said. A company called Digital Motion Event Services in Homewood plans to film each speech for documentation.
O’Mara believes having achieved the Guinness World Record will serve as a good marketing tool for his public speaking business, which is named Pro Presenting. He conducts training for both individuals, companies and organizations. Two of his biggest clients are the University of Alabama at Birmingham and Southern Co., he said.
He also does public speaking training for construction management engineering graduate students at UAB to help them improve their “real world” presentation skills.
He has six UAB students in a business entrepreneurship program who are helping him plan and arrange this Guinness World Record attempt, as a part of a senior project to help someone grow their business.
“It’s been a huge learning opportunity for the students from a small business standpoint,” he said. “I just want to grow my business.”
O’Mara already has been in touch with the Guinness World Record organization. He submitted an application to be considered for a world record attempt, and at first, months went by without a reply, he said. Then he finally heard back from Guinness and has been working with the organization since November on the details for his world record attempt.
For more information, O'Mara can be reached at 205-914-0602 or patrick@propresenting.com.
