Fearless Presentations

This is part three of our posts on How to Start a Public Speaking Career. In the last session, we talked about the easiest way to begin as a professional speaker — by Speaking within Your Current Industry. In this session, we are going to show you a few simple ways to use public speaking to promote or market your product or service. In fact, using a speech to promote a product or service is a fantastic way to conduct a marketing campaign.

One of the easiest ways to become a professional public speaker is by speaking to groups within your current industry. In this podcast, we will show you a number of ways to get paid as a professional speaker without having to change careers. This podcast is a continuation of our previous podcast, How to Start a Public Speaking Career. Although this is just one of the three routes that we will cover in details, this route is one of the most common (and perhaps the most lucrative as well). So, we will spend a little more time on this one. BLOG: https://www.fearlesspresentations.com/become-a-professional-public-speaker-by-speaking-within-your-current-industry/ Thank you for listening! Be sure to follow to stay up to date with all of our content!

Being a professional speaker is a very lucrative and rewarding profession. But, if you have never actually made money from speaking before, you may be looking for how to start a public speaking career. Just as an FYI, the way that I did it is not the ideal way to become a professional speaker. In fact, when I give advise to new speakers, I tell them to do the opposite of what I did. However, over the past 20 years, I’ve trained over 100 professional speakers, and many of these presenters are at the top of their industries. Below are a few ideas that may help. BLOG: https://www.fearlesspresentations.com/how-to-start-a-public-speaking-career/ WEBSITE:https://www.fearlesspresentations.com/

One of the more challenging parts of any presentation is the very first part. If you are wondering how to introduce yourself before starting your presentation, you are in good company. For most of us, once we get the first few sentences out, our nervousness will diminish pretty significantly. So, this initial self-introduction is really important. If we struggle here, our nervousness will increase. In addition, the old adage, “You never get a second chance to make a first impression” is very true.

10 Biggest Public Speaking Mistakes (What Not to do During a Presentation) Want to know what not to do during a presentation? (I know it isn’t grammatically correct, but that is what people are typing into search engines.) Well, below are 10 of the biggest public speaking mistakes that presenters make. This is a list of the what we call the 10 deadly sins that turn off audiences. Use it as a checklist for yourself. If you find that you sometimes do one or two of these items, then the list will help you identify what to work on. If you find that a few of these are common, then, just know, that we help participants solve ALL of these 10 things in our Fearless Presentations ® class. Follow the link for details about classes coming up in your area. Data-Dumping. Too much information or too many slides and/or bullet points. The biggest (worst) thing that a speaker can do is to Data Dump. This is where the speaker gives endless bullet points and endless slides with way too much data for a single sitting. As speakers, we often feel like, if we don’t tell the audience everything, we have failed as a presenter. In reality, though, that is really unrealistic. For instance, I have been teaching presentation skills classes for over 20 years. If I tried to explain to the audience EVERYTHING that I know about the topic in a single one-hour presentation, it would be disastrous. Instead, I would do much better to focus on just a few key items that will be most helpful to that audience, right now. A few items covered really well is always better than a lot of items covered in a cursory way. Reading a long series of bullet points to the audience with little additional information. This mistake often occurs when the presenter is nervous about forgetting important parts of the presentation. To reduce the nervousness, though, he/she will often add a bullet for every single data point covered in the presentation. This causes the “Read… Click… Read… Click…” method of presenting. Here is a reality check for you if you have ever used this technique… IT DOESN’T WORK Most speakers who do this will sound really boring. The technique also forces the presenter to cover EVERY SINGLE BULLET, no matter what. So when the speaker looks out at the audience and sees them getting droopy and drowsy, he/she will often panic. The speaker will rush through the remaining points and seem very unprofessional in the process. Instead, limit your main bullet points to just a few, most important items. Then use attention getting pieces of evidence like stories, examples, analogies, quotes, audience participation, props, and the like. (We cover how to add each of these in the Fearless Presentations ® class by the way!) Speaking while audience tries to read the slide. Coming in at #3 (and my personal pet peeve) is when a speaker provides a complicated visual aid, but then doesn’t refer to it. I remember sitting through a company meeting, once, where the speaker put up a slide with 10 bullets. Then, he just started talking. A kept looking at the slide as he spoke. I assumed that he was on bullet number four, but then he clicked to the next slide. Since he never referred to the slide, it didn’t really help us understand the content. It just confused everyone. Remember that your visual aid is there to help you explain your content. Poor eye contact. This item always comes up high in survey results. However, we actually don’t see it occur much in our classes. The reason why is that if you design a good presentation, this typically fixes itself. For instance, if you are violating the top two or three of these tips, your going to be looking at your slides and your bullets (not your audience). If you focus on just a few items and use examples, stories, and analogies to reinforce each point, you will naturally make good eye contact with your audience. (This one is the easiest one to fix!) Repetitious or predictable gestures. I had a Business Law professor in college who I absolutely loved. He had phenomenal stories that kept us all entertained. However, he had one, very noticeable habit that was actually pretty funny. Whenever he got a question from the audience that made him have to think a little, he would walk to the left part of the stage, pull Chapstick out of his pocket, and lather on the lip balm as he answered the question. It became so predictable, that, as the semester progressed, a few of the students were constantly asking him questions just to see how many times he would apply the balm in a single class. My professor had gestures and movements that were predicable. As a result, these actions became a distraction. Although we don’t do a tremendous amount of video recording in our presentation classes, we do a little. These short video sessions are essential to determine what our predicable gestures and habits are. Once we know about them, we can work on eliminating them. Low energy delivery. Although this isn’t #1 on our list, in my opinion, I believe it is the most destructive to a presenter. Energy and enthusiasm is the absolute, most sought after trait in a speaker. If you have low energy, your audience will see you as being boring. You will constantly see people on their phones or glancing down at their notes. Most often, people do this to hide their drowsiness. A church I used to attend was led by a fantastic pastor who led very detailed studies. His style, however, was very low energy and lots of detail. Anytime I felt my eyes getting heavy, I’d quickly look down at my Bible. I was afraid that if I kept looking at the pastor, I’d fall dead asleep. Please don’t put your audience through this! Your audience will never have any more enthusiasm about your topic that you do. Kick up the energy a little, and your audience will love you. (For more details, view Enthusiasm: The Secret to Great Presentations.) Shop-talk. Industry specific terms or complicated verbiage when simple will do. We all have internal acronyms that will make absolutely no sense to people outside our organizations. Be careful not to insert these into your presentations. Even in my company, internally, we get tired of saying Fearless Presentations class over and over. So, when we are talking to each other, we just say, the FP class. If I’m giving a presentation, though, and I use this acronym, I will confuse a lot of people. So, be careful about your industry semantics. The biggest challenge with this, however, happens because of insecurity. When a speaker is going to be delivering a presentation to an audience who he/she sees as being highly educated or more successful, the speaker will often fill the presentation with, what I call, “Harvard Words.” They will start to say things like… Diminishing Social Anxiety while Disseminating Knowledge to Vast Audiences of Information Gatherers. They this complicated verbiage, because they want to appear educated in front of the group. In reality, though, they sound confusing. Instead, just use plain, every day language. (By the way, if you haven’t figured it out yet, the phrase above is just a complicated way to say Fearless Presentations. Monotone voice. Or a narrowly ranged voice shows lack of emotional interest in the subject. Monotone voice is just an offset of the low energy speaker above. This version, however, often occurs when the speaker is reading a speech or delivering a memorized speech. Avoid doing these things and kick your energy up, and you will stop this symptom very easily. Useless words. Too many filler words or sounds that make the speaker sound unsure of his/her content. Fillers occur when we get nervous. The more nervous the speaker, the more fillers. We have found that people who attend our classes reduce their fillers pretty dramatically automatically because we help them increase their confidence. So, if you find that you are using a high concentration of ers, uhm, and you knows, come to one of our classes, and we will help you eliminate this challenge very quickly. (For more details, visit How to Eliminate Ers, Uhms, and Other Fillers in Your Speeches.) Going overtime without consent. There are very few things more disrespectful to an audience than going overtime. For instance, let’s say that you are at a conference and the schedule says that lunch will be at Noon. The speaker, right before lunch, though, is a little long-winded. At exactly 11:50 AM, people are going to start looking at their watches. At 11:58 AM, they will start to squirm. By 12:01 PM, the speaker will start to get dirty looks. At 12:05 PM, the entire group will be lost. One of the great things about the presentation outline that we teach in Fearless Presentations ® is that it helps speakers create presentations that hit time frames EXACTLY. In fact, if the organizer came up to one of graduates a few minutes before the speech and said, “I know we gave you 30 minutes on the agenda, but a few speakers ahead of you have gone over. Can you do your speech in 20 minutes instead?” Our graduates would look back at the organizer, smile, and say, “Piece of cake.” The process allows you to adjust your content on-the-fly without reducing the retention or understanding from the audience. For details, you can view the class syllabus at Public Speaking Class. For full notes, visit 10 Biggest Public Speaking Mistakes

I was doing article research this week, and I came across a statement by a world-renowned public speaking coach that made me stop dead in my tracks. This coach was answering the question, “If I’ve only got five minutes for a speech, how do I get my key points across in an interesting way?” The speaker answered by saying, “Five minutes is too short a time to persuade an audience of anything complicated, sophisticated, or controversial.” I was dumbfounded. That is one of the most ridiculous statements I have ever heard. In fact, it is right up there with… “Read my lips… No new taxes.” “I did not have sexual relations with that woman…” “Saddam has weapons of mass destruction.” “If you like your plan you can keep your plan.” So, I guess that the statement is not the most ridiculous statement that I’ve ever heard, but it is in the top five. The way that I know that this statement is ridiculous, though, is two-fold. First, because I am a married man. If this statement were true, then I and about 95% of all men would never, ever get married. (Most proposals take way less than five minutes.) Second, for the last 20 years, students in the Fearless Presentations ® public speaking classes have put together thousands (cumulatively) of persuasive speeches that all lasted about five minutes or less. In fact, we create these presentations dozens of times each week. Here is the process that we use.

I spent years (the better part of a decade) studying everything I could about presentation skills and how to deliver powerful speeches. Years later, I became a presentation coach. I had been coaching speakers for a few years before I got an interesting call from a prospective client. “We have a group of five presenters who are competing for a $300 million project. This contract is vital to the growth of our company. Can you make sure they are delivering a the best possible group presentation for us?” That single request started me down a road that has been a fantastic accomplishment for hundreds of presentation teams over the last couple of decades. Just as an FYI, the group that I coached in that first session didn’t get the big contract. However, from that experience, we learned and adapted. Over the next three years, the group closed over 80% of the contracts that they competed for. Whether you are presenting group sales presentations, or you are presenting a group presentation in school, the following tips can be very helpful. In this group presentation guide, I will share with you some of the alterations and best practices that we found. SHOW NOTES: https://www.fearlesspresentations.com/group-presentation-guide-how-to-get-your-team-on-the-same-page-for-a-group-presentation/

Okay, so you may not want to be a motivational speaker (and live in a van down by the river). However, all of us, at one time or another, will want to be a more inspirational speaker. Sometimes, we just want to motivate our team. In other situations, we may be asked to speak at an annual meeting and want the audience to see us as being an inspirational leader. Whatever the case, there are times when the purpose of our speech is not necessarily to inform or persuade but to motivate and inspire. These are a few tips that will help you be a more inspirational speaker and presenter. So what is the point? If you look at some of the most inspirational speakers of the last 60 years, you will notice a few important things. Each and every one of these speakers designed their inspirational talks around either a single concept or a few simple steps. Almost all relied heavily on powerful stories to build rapport with the audience and insert humor. However, each of these speakers adapted to the media of the time. For instance, Nightingale designed his speeches to fit a single side of a phonograph record. Why? Well, for those of you who are old enough to have ever played one, the good stuff was always on “Side 1” of the record. Side 2 was the filler. So, Nightingale, a radio guy, was creating a message that fit his media. MLK wasn’t concerned about recordings. He was more concerned about inspiring crowds in-person. So, his repetition and cadence made it easier for the crowds to remember his words and act upon them. Most of Zig, Les Brown, and Brian Tracey were most popular in the era of cassette tapes. Most of these tapes could hold 60 minutes of content. I have no research to back this up, but I believe that this is probably why most keynote speeches are still 60 minutes long today. (Although 60 minutes is just about a perfect time to keep people from having to leave the room when nature calls.) Anthony Robbins was one of the first speakers to create comprehensive box sets of inspirational speeches. He made a bunch of money selling CD-Rom sets on QVC. So, he began to create a series of shorter, bite-sized presentations that people could digest over a longer period of time. So, the Story, three-point-talk, story technique was perfect for him. Although Ted Talk seminars have been around for decades, they have become incredibly popular in the YouTube age. Ted’s normal time frame is about 20 minutes per speech. So, interestingly, many of the most watched Ted Talks follow Earl Nightingale’s technique. So, it appears that we have come full circle. In the near future, I’m going to do a similar post about YouTube. I will do a similarly in-depth view of what people are looking for, today, from professional speakers on YouTube. I will give you a hint, though, most professional speakers aren’t yet giving this new market what they really want. Stay tuned!

Whatever your vocation, you’ll likely find yourself in front of a crowd at some point. And whether you’re a spokesperson, a motivational speaker, an athlete, an entrepreneur, a CEO, or simply a student, you’re a busy person, with more things to do than to sit there and memorize the lines for a speech or presentation. Take heart! The best speeches aren’t memorized line by line, but learned. Most people can tell when you’re reciting a speech from memory, rather than speaking about a subject you know thoroughly. That’s because when you deliver a speech you know inside and out, you sound more interested. There are inflections in your voice, and you’re not staring at your notes, so you’re freed up to make eye contact with your audience. You’d be a far better speaker than someone who is rattling off lines they’ve committed to memory. We’ve got some great tips about how to memorize your speech on a tight timeline. 1) Don’t Memorize a Speech – Learn an Outline Instead of learning eight pages of notes, which is impossible for most people in such a short period of time, commit to learning your speech’s outline. Write down points that you absolutely have to cover, in the order that you cover them, and commit that to memory instead. A common outline is introduction – supporting point 1—supporting point 2—conclusion. For business presentations, the common outline is: identifying the problem—presenting the solution—benefit 1—benefit 2—call to action. This is where knowing your subject comes in. You can talk around the points you have to cover, filling in the gaps and bridging the subjects with anecdotes, examples, and related stories. It’s far more natural-sounding this way. 2) Assign Mental Pictures for Each Point You Write Down This is a great technique if your short-term memory isn’t that good, or you keep forgetting a specific part of your speech. Dissect the section of the speech you’re stuck in, and imagine a scene or object that somewhat resembles it. For instance, if you’re speaking about animal health, and you want to talk about dogs, and then cats, don’t remember the words – try picturing a dog standing next to a cat. Why? It’s easier to remember images than words. Next time you’re reciting the speech, you might get stuck in the same topic again. What do you think will happen when you try to recall what’s next? You’ll probably see images of cats and dogs in your head, and that’s when your brain will start connecting the dots. 3) Map it Out in Your Memory Palace This is the same principle used when memorizing a deck of cards. Basically, you picture a room then associate each item in that room with a particular card, to help you recall them. Now, pick a location you can easily remember in great detail. It could be your bedroom, kitchen, or even your closet. Then create a logical ‘route,’ based on which objects you see first. For example, what are the objects you’ll see on the walk from your bedroom door to your bed? After deciding on a route, imagine taking that route and focusing on the items AND the order you see them. Using the bedroom example, when you open the door, you enter and see your desk and laptop in front, and on the left side you see a bedside table and a lamp. Next to the bedside table is your bed. Now you can use the outline of your presentation to make visual associations with items in your memory palace. Don’t worry if the associations are weird, or outlandish, as that will actually help you recall them faster. The important thing is that the object and topic associations are in the same chronological order as the items you see using your chosen route. Keep Picturing until it Sticks Let yourself get comfortable with your speech’s outline and image associations. Now, when you get up on stage, you won’t be struggling to remember words on a page. All you have to do is picture those objects, which represent your ideas and points, inside that room. Only thing you have to do now is imagine yourself opening the door to that room.

Filler words are a natural part of everyday conversations, and in fact, if they aren’t there, you’ll actually sound strange (or even fake) to the audience, so you don’t want to eliminate the filler words all together. However, that doesn’t mean they have to be a major part of your speeches and presentations either. Overuse of the filler words has the potential to detract from your message, so as you become more and more comfortable speaking in front of a group, it might be a good idea to fine-tune your message by reducing these distractions. The best speakers in the world have trained themselves, over time, to minimize their use of filler words. (Notice that I said minimize, not eliminate.) Excessive use frustrates the audience and makes the speaker less credible. With a bit of practice, though, you can minimize filler words as well. SHOW NOTES

I received a comment from a website visitor last week thanking me for the blog and asking if I would cover tips for ESL presenters (English as a Second Language). I was actually shocked to realize that in the last four years, we haven’t written anything about this topic. We actually have a step-by-step way to help ESL presenters deliver confident presentations in English. English as a Second Language presentation challenges are very common in today’s business world. In fact, I’m often hired to conduct public speaking classes in Europe and South America, because many business people in countries outside of the US realize that the better that a person can deliver English business presentations, the more doors of opportunity can be opened. Way back in 2005, we started offering our Fearless Presentations ® classes in Paris. Our native French speaking instructor showed up to teach the class, and he was shocked when the entire class wanted him to deliver the class in English. One of the class members said, “If we wanted to be better at giving presentations in French, we could go to dozens of places within a few kilometers of this office. We came to you because you work for an American company.” We were pleasantly surprised and realized that there was a real market for helping non-native English speakers become better presenters. In 2006, one of our big clients, CapitalOne started hiring us to come into their office and deliver the Fearless Presentations ® class as an accent reduction class. Although the class was never designed for this purpose, we got phenomenal results. So if you are not a native English speaker, and you are required to deliver presentations in English, there is help available. Below are a few tips that can really help. SHOW NOTES

Have you ever heard a great speaker end an amazing talk with a lousy “Thank you,” or worse, “That’s all folks, any questions?” Such endings are anti-climactic. You went through all that effort to deliver a good presentation and that’s how you end it? That is a real shame when it happens. To your audience, it’s like a great fairy-tale with a sad ending. A dud, a runner who had cramps a couple of steps before the finish line. So near, yet so far. Below are a few tips that will help you end your presentation with a bang, so that you will finish your race like you ran it. Eliminate these Things from Your Presentation Conclusion Question & Answer Periods. Avoid these Presentation Show Stoppers One of the things that drives me up the wall is ending a fantastic presentation with a Q&A session that is, quite often, lackluster. I remember my Jr. High School football coach talking about passing the ball. He’s say, “Only three things can happen when you pass the ball, and two of them are bad.” I kind of feel the same way about Question & Answer periods. If your audience asks you great questions, you can end your presentation on a high note. However, if your audience asks you odd or uninteresting questions, you can end on a low note. Worse, you may not get any questions, and the ending will just seem odd. When I present, I encourage people to ask questions DURING my presentation. That way, I can use one of the above ideas to end my presentation with a bang. Thanking the Audience for Their Time. When you stand up to speak, you should have the attitude that your audience is there to hear you because you have important information that they need. When you thank your audience for their time, you are conceding that their time is more important than your time. An Abrupt Ending with No Conclusion. When I was in college, I had an internship with Atlantic Richfield. At the end of the internship, I had to give a presentation in Dallas to a room of executives. I bombed the speech. The thing that really put an exclamation point on my failure was that once I ran out of content, I just abruptly stopped and sat down. There was dead silence in the room. The woman who had introduced me just minutes prior, slowly stood up and said, “Well, I guess this is a good time for a break.” Everything that happened after my abrupt ending just made the whole thing more awkward. So, spend time preparing your conclusion. Practice it a few times, and you will end on a high note. The Danger of Not Announcing an Imminent Close Our brains are wired to look for structure in things. That’s why people get frustrated with cliffhangers in movies. Only in movies, there’s a sequel. In speeches and presentations, the end is the end. Give a few hints a couple of slides or paragraphs before the ending. Make it clear that you’re about to wrap things up by saying, “So let me review what we’ve discussed”, “As I wrap up this presentation” or “In conclusion” or “As I conclude this speech, allow me to…” Signaling the close politely prepares your audience for the ending. Plus, those who are starting to lose interest will start paying more attention. Ironically, announcing the ending also makes it more memorable. But how do you make an ending memorable? If saying “Thank you” or “Any questions” is not advisable, what can you do? To view full podcast notes, visit How to End Your Presentation with a Bank.

Quite often, when we are nervous speaking in front of a group, we do innocent sounding things to help us be less nervous. However, many of the things that people do to reduce public speaking fear actually CAUSE PUBLIC SPEAKING FEAR. Below are seven of the biggest things that people do to reduce stage fright that are actually more likely to make you nervous. If you feel nervous when you deliver presentations, make sure that you are not doing these things. In fact, if you eliminate these “crutches”, you will likely feel more comfortable right away. 1) Writing Your Presentation Word-for-Word 2) Designing Your PowerPoint Slideshow First 3) Relying on Notes 4) Asking for Critiques from Friends/Coworkers 5) Practicing Alone 6) Videoing Your Presentation and Reviewing It Alone 7) Cognitive Dissonance For full podcast notes, visit 7 Presentation Habits that Cause You to Become a More Nervous Speaker

This part five of a five part series on the four main presentation styles. Last week, we covered the Authoritative Presentation Style which has the opposite strengths and weaknesses of this style. In the prior two weeks, we covered the Energetic Presentation Styleand the Analytical Presentation Style (Technical Presentations). This week, we will cover the strengths and weaknesses of the Empathetic Presentation Style. (Psychologists call this style of presenter a Sanguine.) This is the style of presenter that is more “indirect” and “emotional”. Just as a review, by indirect, we mean that this style of presenter will often be more cautious and slower to act. By emotional, we mean that this style will focus more on the feelings of others than facts and data. You will find this style of presentation more frequently in certain industries such as the teaching, philanthropic organizations, and service industries. For full podcast notes, visit Empathetic Presentation Style Great for Teaching and Emotional Content

A few weeks back, I gave an overview of the four main presentation styles. Last week, we covered the Energetic Presentation Style. The week before, we covered the Analytical Presentation Style (Technical Presentations). You’ll remember from the last two sessions that the Analytical Presenter and Energetic Presenter are polar opposites in the way that they like to present. The Energetic has high energy and tends to like to create presentations that are general and broad. The Analytical likes details and is much more sedate in his or her delivery. This week, we will cover the strengths and weaknesses of the Authoritative Presentation Style. This is the style of presenter that is more “direct” and “logical”. Just as a review, by direct, we mean that this style of presenter will often be more spontaneous and quick to act. By logical, we mean that this style will focus more on facts and data versus people’s feelings. You will find this style of presentation more frequently in certain industries such as the military, construction, manufacturing, and sales. We will cover the last style, Empathetic, next week. You will find that the Authoritative Presenter and Empathetic Presenter are also polar opposites just like the previous two presentation styles. Show notes can be found at Authoritative Presentation Style Great at Informative and Decision Making Presentations