For the last few weeks, I've covered techniques that you can use to design better presentations. We talked about ways to start a speech first. Then, we covered how to design a good presentation. Next, we covered how to end a presentation. For the next couple of episodes, though, I'm going to share a few secrets about designing presentations that may also come in handy.Today, I'll give you a very simple three-step process to help you make your presentations more persuasive. This simple process works very effectively if you are trying to sell an idea or a product to your audience.

For the last few episodes, I've shown you how to start a speech, how to design a speech, and, last week, how to end a speech. But before we end this series, I wanted to cover one often-overlooked part of creating a compelling presentation.Today, I'm going to show you how to introduce yourself to an audience so that your presentation starts off on the right foot.Remember, when you are speaking to a new audience, they don't know who you are, what you want from them, or why in hell they should even listen to you. In this short session, I'll give you one of the best ways to establish your credibility to a new audience without sounding like you're bragging. In fact, if you do this really well, your audience will want to pay attention to the rest of your speech.

This week, we're continuing our series on how to design presentations that are more engaging for your audience. When your audience enjoys your speeches, they will give you positive feedback, which will boost your confidence.A couple of episodes ago, I showed you a few fun ways to start a speech. Last week, I showed you a simple way to design a speech so you don't have to memorize the presentation word-for-word. And today, I'll cover a few ways to end your speech so you leave the audience wanting more from you. Remember that the last thing you say in your delivery will be what your audience remembers. In this episode, I'll show you a few ways to help your audience retain the most important items from the speech. We'll also cover a few ways to end your speech so that the audience sees you as a credible authority on the subject.Keep in mind that different speech ending techniques can have totally different value for the audience. So, pick a speech ending that best helps your audience get the most value from your presentation.

Last week, we started a new series on how to design presentations that are more engaging for your audience. When your audience enjoys your speeches, they will give you positive feedback, which will boost your confidence.Last week,, we covered seven ways to start your speech. Today, we'll cover a simple three-step process for designing a great presentation. When we teach presenters how to reduce nervousness when they speak, a major component of the process is designing a great speech in the first place. For instance, what most people do is write out everything they know about a topic. Then, they make bullet points in a slideshow that cover every minute component of this knowledge. Really, though, these bullet points end up just being cheat notes for the presenter. This is a terrible way to organize a speech. The process also increases nervousness exponentially.The process I cover in this episode is really simple and works in 90% of the presentations I've seen in my career. First, I'll help you narrow down your topic to just the things that the audience is most interested in right now. Next, I'll help you create just a few bullet points based on what is most important to the audience. Then, finally, I'll show you how to reinforce each point with content that is easy to deliver without memorizing a bunch of stuff.Use this process to design your next speech, and you'll get a lot of positive feedback from your audience!

This week we're starting a new series on how to design presentations that are more engaging for your audience. When your audience enjoys your speeches, they will give you positive feedback. When that happens, you confidence will go up.In this session, we'll cover a few different ways to start a presentation effectively. What most presenters find is that once they say the first couple of sentences, their nervousness drops pretty dramatically. These seven presentation starters will help you win your audience over—even in the first couple of minutes of your presentation.By the way, the episode is sponsored by FearlessPresentations.com. So if you are looking for a faster way to reduce public speaking fear or become a more persuasive speaker, We have 2-day public speaking classes coming up in Chicago, Charlotte, Philadelphia, Los Angeles, Dallas, Atlanta, and Miami. For details, go to fearlesspresentations.com.

Last week, I recovered a few tips for better virtual training sessions where your entire group is participating through Zoom or Teams. This week, though, I'm covering tips to help you lead better hybrid training sessions. These are sessions where some of your team is sitting in a room with you while you teach, and others are participating virtually.This type of workshop delivery is more challenging, but over the last few years, we've come up with a few simple tips to ensure everyone attending the meeting has a better experience. And, in the last 10 minutes of the episode today, I will tell you about a piece of technology that will revolutionize these types of meetings for you. So, stick around until the end. This product is a real game changer in hybrid meetings.Show Notes: Tips for Hybrid Workshops (Both In-Person and Virtual Attendees)

The last few weeks I've been traveling around delivering a series of in-person training sessions all over the world. And I noticed that when I'm delivering this training in major urban areas like Washington DC, Chicago, New York, and the like, inevitably, my client will turn on a Teams meeting or Zoom meeting as I'm setting up. In many of these cities, coming into the office is still somewhat optional. These poor meeting organizers are trying to include virtual team members in their training sessions as well.So, this week, I want to go back and review a few tips we came up with during the pandemic that help make instructor-led virtual training sessions more interactive and meaningful. Then, next week, I'll show you how to best organize a hybrid meeting where some people are in-person and some are virtual.Virtual, instructor-led training is here to stay. In the past few months, many instructors and trainers have had to adapt to a virtual world. Trainers who embrace virtual platforms and adapt the best have an advantage over those who don’t. So, I thought it might be a good idea to cover a few Virtual Instructor-Led training best practices. So in this session, I’m going to cover a few tools and tips for virtual instructor-led training. In addition, I’ll start with exactly what virtual instructor-led” training is and how it is different from other types of training.Virtual Instructor-Led Training Tools and Tips.

In this episode, we cover a few tips and best practices for your virtual training sessions. The closer you stick to these guidelines, the better your training sessions will be.

Just as an FYI, though… These are tools and tips for virtual training sessions. If you are organizing a virtual staff meeting or just need to “get your team on the same page,” you only need one tip. Keep the virtual meeting short. Virtual staff meetings should take 15 minutes to 30 minutes — tops. The moment you cross that 30-minute mark, retention, and morale both go down exponentially.

With that being said, if you are teaching or training a group over Zoom or Teams, these tips can help you increase retention and morale.Show Notes: Best Practices and Tips for Virtual Instructor-Led Training

STEVE MULTER is a veteran corporate spokesman and trainer for more than 100global brands, including Cisco, Panasonic, Siemens, Fujifilm, HP, NTT Data, and Bayer. He is known as the chief storytelling officer for these and other brands. I wanted to have him on as a guest to give us a few tips on how to become better storytellers and use stories as a way to communicate more effectively and create more persuasive presentations.During the interview, Steve explains what a corporate story is. He also explains how the stories that we tell in presentations are almost identical to the marketing stories that big marketing companies develop for huge brands.You can visit https://corporatestorytelling.com/guide and enter code soldtold23 to download the publication, 5 Paths to Passionate Storytelling eGuide. You can also sign up for Steve's Tuesday Tips & Tricks.

Do I need to get a presentation skills coach? Well, unfortunately, the answer is probably… It depends. A public speaking coach can be very helpful in certain situations. However, in many cases, a public speaking coach can also be a complete waste of time and money. (The process may actually make you more nervous as well.)

In this episode, I cover the pros and cons of public speaking coaching. I give you a few circumstances where hiring a good public speaking coach can be very helpful. We will also cover the situations where a presentation coach can be detrimental. Next, I’ll give you a few ways to find a high-quality speech coach. Then, finally, I will share with you a list of skills where presentation and executive coaching are most helpful.The Pros and Cons of Public Speaking Coaching.

You have a lot of options for different types of presentation training. The most common way to acquire practical tips is by reading posts or books and/or watching videos online. This option is very cost-effective. (In most cases, it is free.) The downside of this type of training is that you won’t get feedback or coaching. So, quite often, this type of training can take a long time. You can also develop bad habits that may be more difficult to correct later.However, if you hire a good public speaking coach, feedback is built into the process. For instance, a coach can help you design a sample presentation. Then, you can practice delivering that presentation in front of the coach. Your coach will give you feedback so you can improve your delivery. So, when you hire a public speaking coach, you can speed up your learning process quite a bit. Your presentation coach may have years of experience mastering the skill that you want to improve in. This shortens your learning curve.Show Notes: The Pros and Cons of a Public Speaking Coach

Today, I'm covering the importance of proper room setup and how the room that you present in will either make you more nervous or help you deliver a better presentation. The way that you set up the room before you even say a word has a lot of impact on how well you present. It also will determine how you can interact with your audience.The main thing, though, is that if your audience is comfortable, they can help you present better. If they are uncomfortable, or worse, if you make them participating in your presentation hard, the audience will not be on your side.If you ever saw Men in Black with Will Smith, there is a scene where he goes for the MIB interview. All the interviewees are sitting in egg-shaped chairs. They then have to take a test. And for the next couple of minutes, they all try to take the test without a table. It's pretty funny, but it is also a good lesson about how important your room and venue are to the success of your speech.Proper room setup for a presentation can actually improve your performance in front of a group.

The downside is true as well. Improper conference room setup can actually make you more nervous and make delivering the presentation more difficult.

This post has two parts. Part one is about The Different Conference Room Styles. In that section, I’ll give you different conference room setup options with pros and cons of each. Then, in Part Two, I’ll give you the Best Practices for How to Set Up a Conference Room and how to set up a meeting room. These best practices will help you avoid some of the big mistakes that presenters make when they set up the tables, chairs, and audiovisuals for meetings.

On this episode, I'm going to cover a few of the biggest myths about public speaking. These are some of the things that well-meaning friends, family, and even coaches will suggest to us that are absolutely wrong. So, if you are doing any of these things, you may actually be causing yourself to be more nervous when you present.There are a number of myths about public speaking out there. Well, it’s time to set the record straight. ANYONE can be a fantastic, world-class speaker. It just takes a little bit of training, a little bit of coaching, and a little bit of practice. By the way, it doesn’t take years of study and practice. And it also doesn’t take thousands of dollars of investment.

One of the hardest things to get across to new presenters is the immutable fact that just about everything that you have ever learned about public speaking and creating good business presentations is flat-out WRONG! I like to tell people to do the exact opposite of everyone else, and you’ll do a lot better as a presenter!

So, in this episode, I debunk some of the biggest whoppers that are told about public speaking. Once you understand how wrong these public speaking myths are, it is much easier to reduce the fear of public speaking. You’ll also avoid terrible habits that actually increase public speaking fear.If you find yourself doing any of these things, make sure to stop. You might be increasing your presentation jitters.

Show Notes: The 5 Most Common Myths About Public Speaking Debunked

On this episode, I'm going to cover the dreaded errs and uhms. Yup, those filler words that High School teachers and Toasting Clubs try to eliminate from the speeches of their students and members. However, I think you will be shocked to learn that just about everything that you have ever learned about those errs, uhhms, and other filler words is just flat-out wrong.So stick around, and I will share with you a few truths about this symptom of nervousness.Filler words are a natural part of everyday conversations. In fact, if they aren’t there, you’ll sound strange (or even fake) to the audience, so you don’t want to eliminate the filler words altogether. However, that doesn’t mean they have to be a major part of your speeches and presentations either. Overuse of 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, you can also minimize filler words.Show Notes: How to Stop Saying Errs, Uhhms, and Other Filler Words in Speeches.

Have a team that needs to build communication skills as a group? Well, just as an FYI, business presentation training is quite different from university-level public speaking classes or what you might pick up at a tasting club. For instance, a good presentation that you deliver for your friends or coworkers may actually backfire if you deliver the presentation to senior executives.

In this post, I’ll cover a few best practices for organizing fantastic business presentation skill training classes. Effective presentations don’t happen by accident. And, when you get a bunch of “Type A” personalities who all have experience leading presentations trying to work together to organize a single speech… Well… Let’s just say that the results can be a little frustrating.

Different personalities have different strengths. So, when you organize corporate presentation training sessions, you want to make sure to help each participant maximize his or her strengths. But you also have to help your presenters create a clear message that is focused on the same outcome.

Here is a checklist of a few of the best ways to deliver presentation skills training for a business team.Show Notes: Business Presentation Training for Your Group

This week, I'm going to give you my secret to delivering boring presentations. In fact, this secret is the absolute most important thing that you have to know to have every audience fall in love with you as a speaker.I'll give you a hint... There actually is no such thing as a boring speech or a boring topic. There are only boring speakers. But you don't have to be one of them.Enthusiasm and Energy is the absolute most-important skill in public speaking. If you take only one piece of advice about public speaking, make sure that it is this pearl of wisdom.

If you focus on this one simple thing, the number of times you say “uhm” won’t matter. In addition, if you focus on this one thing, your gestures and not knowing what to do with your hands won’t matter. If you focus on this one thing, then the occasional loss of train of thought won’t matter. In fact, if you focus on this one simple thing, you can break just about every rule that public speakers are supposed to abide by, and you will still win over your audience.

Enthusiasm and Energy Make a Boring Speech More Interesting.This one simple rule has transformed countless mediocre speakers into good speakers, scores of good speakers into great speakers, and numerous great speakers into world-class speakers.

This simple rule that can make or break a speaker is… ENTHUSIASM.Show Notes: Make Boring Speeches More Interesting

This week, I'm going to give you a few simple ways to create some very effective presentation handouts. A couple are really easy and can be used effectively for internal presentations. The last one is the technique that I use when I create workshops and training programs. It takes a little more time but can elevate your presentations dramatically.One of the most often overlooked parts of a presentation is the presentation handouts. So, in this post, we’ll give you a few examples of presentation handouts that you can create very easily and add impact to your speech.

Good speakers and lecturers usually give presentation handouts to accompany their speeches. As a result, a great presentation handout can make your speech more memorable. It gives your audience the freedom to listen to your presentation instead of frantically taking notes.

The handouts you provide also help them remember the key points and highlights from your presentation, making your talk even more valuable. People are grateful for good handouts and will remember you long after the talk ends. Finally, your handout can be used as an exceptional marketing piece. If it is good enough, your audience members will both keep it and share it with others.To Download the Examples of Presentation Handouts Handout click here.

This is part two of a two-part series on Glossophobia -- the fear of public speaking. Last week, we talked about what this phobia is and what causes it. This week, I will give you a few of my best tips to overcome this fear -- even if you fall into the camp of having a full-blown phobia of public speaking.How to Overcome Glossophobia (An Irrational Fear of Public Speaking)1) Start Small.How do you eat an elephant? One bite at a time. If your fear is intense, there is no need to schedule a high-level presentation in front of 1000 people right away. Instead, start by speaking up more in staff meetings, at church, or join a social organization. Set a goal for each interaction. For instance, if you never speak up in staff-meeting, just set a goal to share a single idea with the group. Then, over time, increase the goal. Next week, add two ideas, etc.

2) Look for Opportunities to Present, and then Be Courageous.You will never conquer any fear if you simply avoid the situations that cause the fear. Instead, look for opportunities to speak where the consequence of failure is pretty low. For instance, you can offer to speak at career day at your child’s school. (If you totally bomb this presentation, so what?) Then, be courageous. I talked in the article 7 Qualities of a Great Speaker about the difference between Self-Confidence and Poise. Self-confidence comes from having a series of successes doing something. Poise, however, is where a speaker is not confident but performs courageously anyway. The more of these courageous successes that you can string together, the more self-confident you will be.

3) Document What You Did Well.The reason that our presentation skills classes work so well is that our instructors help each student document what they do well in each presentation. For instance, the instructor will teach the student a way to make part of his/her presentation easier, show the student how to do it, and then when the presenter succeeds, the instructor reinforces that success. You can do the same after each of your presentations as well. Immediately after presenting, make a list of some of the things that you did well in the speech. Turn off your internal critic for a while. (All of us are our own worst critic, so you will have to fight this.) Then, before your next presentation, refer to the items on your list. These lists will help you reduce the phobia and build confidence over time.

4) Practice in a Controlled Environment.If you want a faster way to conquer glossophobia, join us in one of our fear of public speaking workshops. One of the great things about being in a controlled environment like a class or workshop is that the risk of failure is reduced to just about 0%. The only way to conquer glossophobia is to string together a series of successes that outweigh, in our minds, the causes that we talked about above. As each participant masters each part of a fantastic presentation, the fear is reduced exponentially. In fact, in many cases, the growth is so fast and so dramatic that the irrational fear is replaced by confidence. The process isn’t foolproof, and it isn’t easy. However, it works almost 100% of the time!Show Notes: How to Overcome Glossophobia (An Irrational Fear of Public Speaking)

Want to know how to overcome glossophobia? Does stage fright sometimes make you pass up opportunities in your career? Do you feel like you have an irrational fear of public speaking? You are not alone!

Glossophobia, or the fear of public speaking, is very common. I’ve been in the presentation skill industry for decades now. During that time, I realized that the statistics about this fear were confusing. Some studies say that as few as 7% of the population has glossophobia. Other surveys claim that over 95% of people experience this fear.

However, the statistics depend on the definition of Glossophobia that you are using.

Show Notes: How to Overcome Glossophobia 

This week we're getting back to how to reduce public speaking fear. And on this episode, I give you the four main causes of public speaking fear. Once you understand why you are feeling the way you are, it becomes a lot easier to reduce that nervousness.As I cover each of the four causes of nervousness, I'll give you my best techniques for eliminating that particular cause. Here Are Some of the Causes of the Fear of Public Speaking and How to Overcome These Fears.Once you understand the root cause of your anxiety, you’ll often immediately begin to experience less fear. A lot of the fear comes from imagining the worst-case scenario in our heads and then psyching ourselves out before we ever even get in front of a crowd. The major thing to remember, though, is that all of the most confident speakers in the world started out as nervous speakers. Many of them felt the same physical symptoms of nervousness that you are feeling. They overcome this fear. You can too!

Here are the main causes of public speaking fear that we see most often. If you are experiencing any of these fears, click the link to access additional information about how to overcome that specific cause of performance anxiety.

• Lack of Experience Speaking in Front of a Formal Audience.
• A Concern that Others Are Judging You.
• Insufficient Preparation (Or Just Thinking that You Haven’t Prepared Enough.)
• Past Negative Experiences or a Prior Traumatic Experience.

Full Show Notes: What Causes the Fear of Public Speaking?

A couple of weeks ago, I started a series on how to get paid to speak. I mentioned that a professional speaker is just a person who gets paid to give a presentation. So, teachers, trial attorneys, salespeople, and really any supervisor or manager who leads internal presentations are professional speakers. They all deliver information in presentations or briefings that their audiences need in order to solve a problem. But almost all of them give away this important information for free. So, in this series, I'll show you that the information that you have is very valuable. And by just changing a few things, you can build up your credibility as an expert to generate additional streams of income. Last week I gave you a five-step process to create good content to speak about. This week, I will back up a little and show you how to identify what to speak about if you want to get paid to speak.Show Notes: Get Paid to Speak: How to Make a Fortune Speaking for a Living (https://www.fearlesspresentations.com/how-to-make-a-fortune-speaking-for-a-living/)

Last week I started a series on how to get paid to speak. And if you are a new listener to Fearless Presentations, you might be thinking, how can I get paid to speak if I'm scared to death to stand up in front of a group? If that is the case, just go back to some of the earlier episodes for tips on how to reduce nervousness. In this episode and the next couple, I'm going to show you how you can cash in on one of the highest-paid professions in the world.Last week, I mentioned that a professional speaker is just a person who gets paid to give a presentation. So, teachers, trial attorneys, salespeople, and really any supervisor or manager who leads internal presentations are professional speakers. They all deliver information in presentations or briefings that their audiences need in order to solve a problem. But almost all of them give away this important information for free. So, in this series, I'll show you that the information that you have is very valuable. And by just changing a few things, you can build up your credibility as an expert to generate additional streams of income. Today, I'll give you a five-step checklist to accomplish to get other people or groups to pay you to stand up and speak to them.By the way, if you are enjoying the episodes, I need a favor from you, please. Make sure to subscribe to the podcast and leave me a review wherever you download the podcast. Your subscriptions, downloads, and review help us keep the content of the show free because it allows us to reach a bigger audience.Show Notes: How to Get Paid to Speak (https://www.fearlesspresentations.com/want-a-career-as-a-public-speaker-ways-to-build-public-speaking-credentials/)

I'm starting a new series on how to get paid to speak this week. And I know that a lot of our regular listeners subscribe to the podcast for tips and tricks to reduce nervousness and become more comfortable in front of a group. However, public speaking is one of (if not THE) highest-paid professions in the world.In this episode, I'll dispel the myth about what a professional speaker is. Basically, a professional speaker is just a person who someone has paid to give a presentation. So, elementary school teachers are professional speakers. So are trial attorneys. So are salespeople, Realtors, and combat officers who give mission briefings. Each of these types of presenters delivers information in presentations or briefings that their audiences need in order to solve a problem. However, almost all of them give away this important information for free. So, in this series, I'll show you how you can generate an additional stream of income by speaking about your expertise.Next week, by the way, I'll give you a step-by-step process to help you refine your presentation to build up your credibility in the marketplace. This, in future episodes, I'll show you how to market yourself as a speaker.By the way, if you are enjoying the episodes, I need a favor from you, please. Make sure to subscribe to the podcast and leave me a review wherever you download the podcast. Your subscriptions, downloads, and reviews help us keep the show's content free because it allows us to reach a bigger audience.Show Notes: How to Get Paid to Speak (https://www.fearlesspresentations.com/want-a-career-as-a-public-speaker-ways-to-build-public-speaking-credentials/)

For the last couple of weeks, I've given you a series of presentation enhancers -- things that make good presentations better. This week, I'm going to cover a way that you can enhance persuasive speeches exponentially. If you are trying to win your audience to your way of thinking, then audience participation is a stellar way to do that. In essence, you can get your audience to convince themselves that your idea is sound.There are several different types of audience participation, though. So, I'm going to cover my top nine audience engagement ideas.Show Notes: How to Get Audience Participation in a Presentation (https://www.fearlesspresentations.com/9-reliable-ways-to-add-audience-participation-to-your-presentation/)

Last week I started a two-part series on how to make a presentation more interesting. If you recall from the first episode, I mentioned that you can be the most charismatic and confident speaker on the planet. But if your presentation is boring or complicated or uninteresting, your skill as a speaker won't matter.So last week, I gave you the first three presentation enhancers. This week, I'll give you four more ways to make a speech more interesting.Just as a reminder, I know that most people who listen to or download the show are looking for ways to reduce nervousness and feel more confident when they speak. However, there is a HUGE part of the presentation process that often gets overlooked that is critical to help you communicate better and more confidently. You have to be saying something that your audience finds interesting.You can be the most charismatic and confident speaker on the planet. But if your presentation is boring or complicated or uninteresting, your skill as a speaker won't matter. So in the next couple of episodes, I'm going to reinforce a few things that we have covered in previous episodes that will help you design and deliver better presentations so that your nervousness drops dramatically. (This review is really short, though, and I will include links to those episodes in the show notes.) Enjoy seven ways to make your presentation more interesting.Show Notes: 7 Ways to Make Your Speech More Interesting (https://www.fearlesspresentations.com/7-stellar-presentation-enhancers-that-add-impact-to-any-speech/)

I know that most people who listen to or download the show are looking for ways to reduce nervousness and feel more confident when they speak. However, there is a HUGE part of the presentation process that often gets overlooked that is critical to help you communicate better and more confidently. You have to be saying something that your audience finds interesting.You can be the most charismatic and confident speaker on the planet. But if your presentation is boring, or complicated, or uninteresting, your skill as a speaker won't matter. So in the next couple of episodes, I reinforce a few things that we have covered in previous episodes that will help you design and deliver better presentations so that your nervousness drops dramatically. (This review is really short, though, and I will include links to those episodes in the show notes.) Then, I  cover seven time-tested ways to make a good speech a fantastic speech. You can call these things ways to add impact, presentation enhancers, or just ways to make any speech more interesting. But these are a few of my favorite public speaking secrets that can really elevate your presentation.Show Notes: Make a Speech More Interesting (https://www.fearlesspresentations.com/7-stellar-presentation-enhancers-that-add-impact-to-any-speech/) 

One of the biggest causes of public speaking fear and nervousness is having too much time in between each speech. I mentioned last week that if you only drove a car once a year, each time you got behind the wheel, you'd be nervous.If you are a comfortable driver, it is because you get behind the wheel pretty often. It is the same with public speaking. The more often you present, the more comfortable you will be each time. So last week, I began a two-part series on venues where you can practice speaking in front of a group. We started with a few virtual venues that were the least risky. Those were fantastic speaking venues to get started in. As your confidence grows, try presenting in the speaking venues we cover this week. The more you practice, the less nervous you will become when you present.By the way, if you are enjoying the episodes, I need a favor from you, please. Would you mind taking a few seconds and leaving me a great review on your podcast app? On Apple podcast, if you go to the show's main page, you can scroll down until you see the review section. Just leave a review letting folks know what you think of the show. The show and all the great content we put out every week is absolutely free, and your reviews help us keep it that way. This helps the show so much and allows us to reach more people. Thanks for the help.Show Notes: Venues Where You Can Practice Your Presentations (https://www.fearlesspresentations.com/podcast-15-how-find-great-venues-practice-your-presentations/)

One of the biggest causes of public speaking fear and nervousness is having too much time in between each speech. For folks who only give a single presentation each month, once every few months, or once a year, there is a good chance that each time you stand up to present, you will be nervous.If you only drove a car once a year, each time you got behind the wheel, you'd be a nervous wreck (no pun intended.) If you are a comfortable driver, it is because you get behind the wheel pretty often. It is the same with public speaking. The more often you present, the more comfortable you will be each time. So, on this episode, I'm going to begin a two-part series on venues where you can practice speaking in front of a group. This week, I give you the least risky. These are fantastic speaking venues to get started in. As your confidence grows, try presenting in the latter speaking venues. The more you practice, the less nervous you will become when you present.By the way, if you are enjoying the episodes, I need a favor from you, please. Would you mind taking a few seconds and leaving me a great review on your podcast app? On Apple podcast, if you go to the show's main page, you can scroll down until you see the review section. Just leave a review letting folks know what you think of the show. The show and all the great content we put out every week is absolutely free, and your reviews help us keep it that way. This helps the show so much and allows us to reach more people. Thanks for the help.Show Notes: Low Risk Venues Where You Can Practice Your Presentations (https://www.fearlesspresentations.com/podcast-15-how-find-great-venues-practice-your-presentations/)

We often hear the term "Know Your Audience," but what does that really mean? In this episode, I  take you through a step-by-step process to help you customize every speech to the needs of the specific audience you are presenting to.Basically there are four things you need to know about your audience to be able to design a presentation that they want to hear. I spend the first half or more of the episode taking you through this simple four-step process to help you know your audience better.However, there is another really big concept that most presenters disregard. It is the emotional motive that the audience member has for being there. Once you understand this concept, your audiences will love your presentations.By the way, if you are enjoying the episodes, please do me a favor. Would you mind taking a few seconds and leaving me a great review on your podcast app? On Apple podcast, if you go to the show's main page, you can scroll down until you see the review section. Just leave a review letting folks know what you think of the show. The show and all the great content we put out every week is absolutely free, and your reviews help us keep it that way. This helps the show so much and allows us to reach more people. Thanks for the help.Show Notes: Know Your Audience (https://www.fearlesspresentations.com/know-your-audience-before-designing-your-sales-presentation/)

Want to calm down before a presentation? Even if you don’t regularly experience the fear of public speaking, just before you start a speech, it is easy to feel anxious. This initial nervous energy can cause a speaker to have a shaky voice, dry mouth, or sweaty palms just before a presentation. The good news is that this experience is very common. Most of the time, if you start your presentation well, the level of nervousness will drop very quickly.

However, sometimes when people feel that stage fright, they panic. When you panic in front of an audience, you will most likely experience even more nervous feelings.

So, what do you do to calm down before the presentation and calm those nerves? Below are 5 Simple Ways to Calm Your Nerves Before and During a Speech.

1. Create a Simple Presentation with Just a Few Key Bullet Points and Practice It with a Person.
2. Find a Quiet Place to Be Alone and Perform a Short Series of Exercises.
3. Interact and Network with Your Audience to Calm Your Nerves Before a Presentation.
4. Just Before You Start Your Presentation, Take a Steady and Deep Breath.
5. Start Your Presentation with a Personal Story to Calm Your Nerves Almost Instantly.

This episode covers each of these tips in more detail. For full show notes, visit How to Calm Down Before a Presentation(https://www.fearlesspresentations.com/how-to-calm-down-before-a-presentation-5-simple-ways-to-calm-your-nerves/)

This week is part 2 of a 2-part series on public speaking fear. Last week, I showed you where this fear comes from. We also cover five things that people do to try to reduce the nervousness that actually causes more nervousness. This week, I first show you how to lower the risk of failure when you stand up to speak. Then, I'll cover a 4-step process to help you eliminate public speaking fear once and for all.By the way, if you are enjoying the episodes, I need a favor from you, please. Would you mind taking a few seconds and leaving me a great review on your podcast app? On Apple podcast, if you go to the show's main page, you can scroll down until you see the review section. Just leave a review letting folks know what you think of the show. The show and all the great content we put out every week are absolutely free, and your reviews help us keep it that way. This helps the show so much and allows us to reach more people. The Fastest Way to Overcome Stage Fright Is to Lower the Risk of Failure.How do you overcome the fear of public speaking? Public speaking fear is just like any other anxiety in that the more that is unknown or the bigger the threat, the greater the nervousness that we experience from it. So the best way to tackle this common fear is to lower the risk involved.

When we lower the unknown factors, we lower the threat, and the fear diminishes. In fact, sometimes it even goes away entirely.

Anytime you do something somewhat dangerous, your body will react. Your heart rate will increase. You may get sweaty palms or a queasy stomach. Things, like riding a bike, driving a car, flying in an airplane, or firing a handgun, are all somewhat dangerous for people without any experience doing these things.

If you’ve ever seen a four or five-year-old kid riding a bike, you can typically see the tension in the kid’s face. It’s the same with a teenager with a driver’s permit. That very first time that your plane took off and you felt that tickle in your stomach, you likely grabbed the armrests a little tighter. And police officers practice day after day to get proficient at firing their handguns because they want to be extremely confident.

The point is that fear is normal. However, if you practice in the right way, the fear will go away.Show Notes: Public Speaking Fear (https://www.fearlesspresentations.com/fear-of-public-speaking/)

This week, I start a 2-part series on public speaking fear. In most of our episodes, we either cover ways to reduce nervousness or present more effectively so the nervousness is less distracting. In these two episodes, though, I'm going to cover what this nervousness is, where it comes from, why most training and coaching backfires and actually causes more nervousness, and how to reduce this fear once and for all.In fact, in this episode, I show you how public speaking fear is normal, and if you aren't feeling it, you may not be challenging yourself to grow.So, if you have ever felt public speaking fear, stage fright, or any other type of speech anxiety, listen closely. We cover ways to eliminate this fear once and for all.What Is Public Speaking Fear?

Stage fright is still one of the most prevalent anxieties in the world. In fact, psychologists created a specific term for this particular social phobia. They call it glossophobia — which is a form of social anxiety disorder.

Basically, this performance anxiety occurs when a person has to stand in front of a group and deliver a presentation. Since the symptoms of this fear are so common, presenters often have questions about why it’s there, where it came from, and how do you get rid of it?

Most people feel like they are the only ones out there who experience butterflies in the stomach, a shaky voice, or shaky hands. However, just about every speaker has some sort of nervousness when presenting in front of groups. The person may have had a bad experience at a previous speaking engagement. Now, when he or she stands to speak n front of any number of people, the person may feel a lot of nervous energy. If the speech is in front of a large audience, he or she may experience a full-blown panic attack.

As a result, a lot of people who feel that stage fright will avoid public speaking situations altogether. These people can miss out on big opportunities. If public speakers don’t do something about the anxiety, it can escalate and turn into a debilitating phobia. With all that being said, though, here is some really good news. As far as anxiety disorders go, this one is really easy to conquer.Show Notes: Public Speaking Fear (https://www.fearlesspresentations.com/fear-of-public-speaking/)

We talk a lot in the podcast about ways to reduce nervousness and become a better presenter. However, one of the big parts of making a speech is the ability to create presentations that (1) the audience likes and wants to hear, and (2) are interesting and easy to understand.On this episode, I'm going to show you the "secret sauce" to designing fun and interesting presentations. This secret will add humor to your speech. It will also help you make technical content way easier for the audience to understand.Interestingly, the technique is only a secret because so few presenters use these items in their speeches. In fact, the processes are taught in every literature class in the world.Metaphors, Similes, and Analogies: The Special Sauce for Your Presentation MasterpieceMetaphors, Similes, and Analogies are your secret weapon when you create presentations. I like to think of myself as a pretty good speaker and writer. I always hated English class in high school and college, though. So, I always got confused between what was a metaphor, what was a simile, and what was an analogy. To me, these parts of speech were so similar that I didn’t really see a lot of difference in them. (Still don’t, by the way.)

However, these often confused parts of speech are the special sauce to really great presentation burgers. If you use them just right, these items will be like adding the perfect piece of jewelry to a formal dress. They will take a speech that is already pretty good and make it exceptional.Show Notes: Metaphors, Similes, and Analogies: The Special Sauce for Your Presentation Masterpiece (https://www.fearlesspresentations.com/metaphors-similes-and-analogies-the-special-sauce-for-your-presentation-masterpiece/)

This week, I explain the difference between the different formats of public speaking training in 2023. You can listen to podcasts like this one, gain incites from online presentation classes, watch videos on YouTube or Rumble, get a public speaking coach, or even attend a public speaking class. With all of these different options, which will give you the best result? In this episode, I explain the differences between all of these formats and let you know what you can expect from each. By the way, all of these formats can help. But some will give you a much better return on your time and effort.Show Notes: Different Types of Public Speaking Training in 2023. (https://www.fearlesspresentations.com/public-speaking-training/)

My guest today is Tom Jackobs, an expert at helping companies and sales teams use success stories to attract customers and clients. And he shares with me how he used public speaking to take a start-up from zero customers to millions of dollars in revenue each year using public speaking as the main marketing apparatus. We also talk about how inserting stories into your presentations can reduce nervousness and increase the Know, like, and trust value that you have with your audience or clients.Tom spent his first career working in big a few big companies like BP and eventually transitioned to a medium-sized company where he worked his way up to the VP level. Then, after years of helping other people grow their businesses, he decided to go out on his own and built a fairly substantial business of his own in the fitness industry. Along the way, he began helping other entrepreneurs grow their businesses. So, in 2017, after he sold his fitness business, he became a full-time business coach helping business owners do what he did -- which is to grow their businesses by getting really good at sharing their stories with the world. So if you want to be a fantastic storyteller and captivate your audience, this episode can help a lot. Also, if you don't think you have a compelling story, you'll be surprised at the advice that Tom gives on the episode.To download the free storytelling workbook Tom mentions, click this link. (https://tomjackobs.com/storybook/)

For the last couple of weeks, we have been covering different types of persuasion speeches. A couple weeks ago, I gave you a three-step process to win audiences to your way of thinking. Last week, we covered how to put together a sales presentation. This week, we will show you how to present a proposal to management. For instance, if you have identified a problem or opportunity for your company, you may need to get approval. So, how do you present a proposal to management that will get approved? The process is actually pretty simple. The method of how to present a proposal to management that we use works about 100% of the time. Just follow the simple steps in the session, and your project will easily get funded.Show Notes: How to Present a Proposal to Management-And Get Approval (https://www.fearlesspresentations.com/how-to-present-a-proposal-to-management/)

Here are a few tips to keep in mind when you present a proposal to a client. Here is the scenario… You have done your homework. A team at your company painstakingly created the perfect sales proposal. In fact, the potential client was so impressed, that they moved you to their “shortlist.” Now, though, they want you to present a bid proposal to the purchasing committee.

Your team is one of just six to eight other companies competing for this contract. How do you make sure that the committee picks your team? Well, not to brag, but over the years, groups that I have coached have received over 80% of these contracts. Just follow this simple sales presentation outline, and your team will have a better shot at winning as well.

Don’t Get Hung Up on the Terms Proposal, Bid Proposal, Shortlist Presentation or Sales Presentation

By the way, don’t get hung up on the terms that I am using. People will often respond with something like, “We don’t present ‘bids’ to our potential clients.” In other cases, professional people may say, “But I’m not a salesperson. This isn’t a sales presentation.” My point is, don’t get hung up on the terms.

The process that I’m covering will help anyone who is presenting a solution to a person or group who will exchange money for this solution. The terms “Bid” and “Proposal” are standard procurement terms, which is why we are using them here.

I have heard this type of presentation called each of the following over the years.

• Bid Proposal
• RFP Presentation
• Shortlist Presentation
• Sales Presentation
• Present a Quote

Opportunities to close really big deals via a presentation are pretty nerve racing. We all want every, single advantage that we can get when we walk into the room. So, if you want to ace your next short-list presentation or RFP presentation, one of our coaches can help. Complete the form below, and one of our instructors will contact you.Show Note: How to Create a Business Proposal Presentation (https://www.fearlesspresentations.com/present-a-bid-proposal-great-sales-presentation-outline/)

This week, I'm going to cover a simple three-step process to help you design a persuasive presentation. Most persuasive speech techniques -- especially the ones that are taught in high school and often at the university level, actually make people want to play devil's advocate and even argue with the presenter. So in the session, I'm going to give you a time-tested technique that is much more effective. Whether you are selling a product or service to a customer or selling an idea to your boss, this technique will likely come in handy.One of the highest needs of human beings is to be heard and to be understood. So, when you are writing a persuasive presentation, it is important to remember that your audience wants you to understand them as much as you want to be understood.

Most people think that a single fact is good, additional facts are better, and too many facts are just right. So, the more facts you can use to prove your point, the better chance you have of convincing the other person that you are right. The HUGE error in this logic, though, is that if you prove that you are right, you are also proving that the other person is wrong. People don’t like it when someone proves that they are wrong. So, we prove our point, the other person is likely to feel resentment. When resentment builds, it leads to anger. Once anger enters the equation, logic goes right out the window.

In addition, when people use a “fact” or “Statistic” to prove a point, the audience has a natural reaction to take a contrary side of the argument. For instance, if I started a statement with, “I can prove to you beyond a doubt that…” before I even finish the statement, there is a good chance that you are already trying to think of a single instance where the statement is NOT true. This is a natural response. As a result, the thing that we need to realize about being persuasive is that the best way to persuade another person is to make the person want to agree with us. We do this by showing the audience how they can get what they want if they do what we want.

Show Notes: How to Design a Persuasive Presentation in 3 Easy Steps (https://www.fearlesspresentations.com/persuasive-speech-how-to-write-a-persuasive-speech/)

This week, I interview Kelsey Greenwood who is a professional speaker and consultant who just wrote a fascinating paper on five simple ways to overcome stage fright. If you are experiencing nervousness when you stand up to present, these tips can help you easily reduce that nervousness. The first couple are both mental things that you can do to prepare yourself before you speak, and the last three are things that you can physically do to combat stage fright.Want to overcome stage fright for good? Do you experience dry mouth, rapid breathing, and sweaty palms when you present in front of a crowd? If so, these five practical tips can help you lower that level of anxiety in less than a week.

Whether or not it’s your first time preparing for a speech performance in front of an audience, it’s best not to “wing it.” People experience the most stage fright when they feel unprepared. You prepare for a speech to feel more comfortable with your content, stretch your leadership skills and give you a sense of ease for the day of the performance. Each tip below provides a bit of wisdom with an actionable tip to help you overcome stage fright and reduce performance anxiety.Full Show Notes: 5 Practical Tips to Help you Overcome Stage Fright (https://www.fearlesspresentations.com/5-practical-tips-to-help-you-overcome-stage-fright-and-reduce-performance-anxiety/)

Imposter syndrome is a term used to describe the feeling of inadequacy, self-doubt, and lack of confidence that many people experience in their professional or personal lives. It is the feeling that you are a fraud, that you are not good enough, and that your accomplishments are simply the result of luck or circumstance rather than your own abilities.The good news is that while imposter syndrome is a common experience, it is not the only one. The opposite of imposter syndrome is a sense of confidence, self-assurance, and belief in oneself. In this blog post, we will explore the opposite of imposter syndrome, how it manifests itself, and how capable people can cultivate it in their lives.The opposite of imposter syndrome is a sense of self-assurance and self-confidence. It is also a belief in yourself. It is the knowledge that you are capable, competent, and deserving of the success you have achieved. Imposter syndrome is characterized by self-doubt and negative self-talk. The opposite of imposter syndrome is characterized by positive self-talk, self-awareness, and a sense of purpose.

By the way, this doesn’t mean being arrogant or overconfident. It is not about being boastful or self-promoting. Instead, the process is about recognizing your own abilities and accomplishments. You also have to have the confidence to share them with others.Show Notes: The Opposite of Impostor Syndrome-Journey to Self Confidence (https://www.fearlesspresentations.com/the-opposite-of-imposter-syndrome-a-journey-to-self-confidence-and-belief-in-yourself/)

Doug Staneart — President and CEO of The Leader’s Institute ® and Creator of the Fearless Presentations ® Public Speaking Training Programs.Last week I began a two-part series on the step-by-step process that I went through to overcome public speaking fear. I covered the first four life lessons that helped me get there.Most of the tips in the last session were things that I learned early in life that helped me have the right focus when I experienced that fear and that first failure in front of a group. This week, I'm going to give the top three things you can do if you have already made the decision to get better as a speaker. (Or get better at just about any skill that you struggle with.)Show Notes: How I Eliminated My Public Speaking Fear and Stage Fright (https://www.fearlesspresentations.com/how-a-shy-trailer-park-kid-became-a-world-class-speaker-and-how-you-can-too/)

Doug Staneart — President and CEO of The Leader’s Institute ® and Creator of the Fearless Presentations ® Public Speaking Training Programs.

My public speaking class members often ask me questions like, “Do you still get nervous when you speak?” “How did you become a professional speaker?” And the most common, “You were a nervous speaker… How did you overcome your public speaking fear?”

The answer to the first question is, “Sure. When I deliver big presentations or do something new, yes, I still get nervous from time to time. But the nervousness isn’t anywhere close to the public speaking anxiety I had years ago.”

The other two questions, though, have both a short answer and a long answer.

So, I thought that I would back up this week and show you how I overcame my fear of public speaking. You could also call this post how an incredibly shy person beat the odds to become a confident speaker and presenter. My first formal presentation in the business world was such a failure that it cost me my first career.

However, that failure was a turning point in my life. It was horrible when I experienced it. However, it allowed me to help over 100,000 people avoid making the same mistake.

I hope that my story can help you overcome your public speaking fear as well! If a person like me can become a great speaker… ANYONE can become a great speaker. You will have to work. You will also have to embrace your fear when you speak in front of an audience. However, you will also experience great rewards when you do!Show Notes: How I Eliminated My Fear of Public Speaking (https://www.fearlesspresentations.com/how-a-shy-trailer-park-kid-became-a-world-class-speaker-and-how-you-can-too/)

A few weeks ago, I gave you a few of my favorite ways to start a presentation. Then, for the last few weeks, we have covered several ways to make presentations more interesting. This week, I give you a few of my favorite ways to end your presentation with a bang. You want to make the last thing that you do or so in your presentation memorable so that the audience leaves the room seeing you as a qualified speaker and more likely to use the information that you gave them. I cover seven very effective ways to end a speech along with a few "show stoppers." The show stoppers are things that you want to avoid. The last thing that you want to do is design and deliver a great presentation and then end on a downer.Show Notes: How to End Your Speech (https://www.fearlesspresentations.com/how-to-end-your-presentation-with-a-bang/)

Storytelling in Speeches-The Easiest Way to Reduce Nervousness During a Speech

Feel nervous about speaking in public? Tell a personal story in your speech (early), and you can reduce public speaking fear dramatically. One of the first public speaking secrets that we share in our public speaking training classes is that stories are your friend.

When you tell a story, you reduce presentation jitters and build rapport with your audience. Don’t believe me? Watch any professional motivational speaker on YouTube. You will find that their entire speech is composed of a series of individual stories that they link together. In this post, we will cover some of the major benefits of telling stories as well as the best way to do it.In this episode, we comer the ins and out of why you should insert stories into your presentations. We also cover how, when you do this, your nervousness will drop dramatically.Show Notes: Storytelling in Speeches (https://www.fearlesspresentations.com/tell-a-story-in-your-speech-and-reduce-public-speaking-fear/)

The 5 Steps of Storytelling During a Presentation. Follow these Tips to Become a Better Storyteller.In this episode, we cover the Five Steps of Storytelling that we have identified in our presentation skills class. These best practices will help you organize your stories better. Remember that audience members have a short attention span. Good storytelling, though, can help you capture and hold the attention of your audience. In fact, inserting better stories is a simple way to improve your presentations dramatically.

The tips on this episode can help you improve your story structure,. However, the best way to deliver a story in your presentation is to just play the video in your head. Then just tell the audience what you are seeing. Great storytelling is really just sharing your own experience with your audience. So if following these steps is a little out of your comfort zone, start by just inserting a single personal story from your own experience into your next presentation. Then try each of these tips, one at a time, in future presentations.This final tip isn’t really one of the steps of storytelling, but it is an important part of how to tell a story. It is a good idea to practice different versions of your story. I got this from my friend Ton Antion when I interviewed him about building a personal brand. He suggested having a 30-second version, a one-minute version, and a two-minute version of every story.

By the way, I’m not saying to have three different kinds of stories. I’m suggesting that you get good at telling your stories in different ways, so the timing of your story is the right length, whether you have three minutes to speak, 30 minutes to speak, or three hours to speak. The best storytellers can condense the whole story down in time if they absolutely have to do so.

Although I had been teaching students how to tell a great story for years, I never really taught this. I’d say, “If time is short, just condense your story down.” After Tom mentioned this tip, though, I began to pay attention to the look on my student’s faces when I said this. I’d sometimes see a little confusion. So we actually started practicing this in class. It has been a big help. In fact, we sometimes find that a well-worded 30-second story can be more impactful than a longer one. Try it yourself and see!Show Notes: How to Tell a Good Story in a Presentation in 5 Simple Steps (https://www.fearlesspresentations.com/the-5-steps-of-storytelling-how-to-tell-a-great-story/)

Looking for how to write a speech in a few simple steps? Over the last 20 years, our instructors have dissected thousands of speeches. In that time, we’ve been able to identify simple things that can easily make or break a presentation. We’ve assembled a simple, step-by-step process that explains how to write a speech quickly and easily.

In fact, once you understand the concepts below, you can use our Online Speech Writer to organize and print your presentation. A little warning, though, the process is very simple if you follow every step. If you skip a step, you can get bogged down, and the process can take a lot of time. However, if you follow the steps, you can write an effective speech in just a few minutes (versus hours or days)!Show Notes: How to Design an Entire Speech in 3 Simple Steps (https://www.fearlesspresentations.com/how-to-write-a-speech-just-few-simple-steps/)

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.

In this post, we are going to cover the best way, a very simple three-step process that will help you introduce yourself in a presentation. A summary of the steps is below.

1. Start with your name and company (or organization or school).
2. Tell your audience what problem you can solve for them.
3. Share some type of proof (social proof works best) that you can solve this problem.

I will break down each step into a simple-to-follow process. Show Notes: How to Introduce Yourself Before a Speech (https://www.fearlesspresentations.com/how-to-introduce-yourself-before-starting-any-presentation/)

This is part two of a two-part episode on how to start a presentation.Looking for a few ways to start a presentation that are dynamic? The opening is really the most important part of your presentation. You want to make a good first impression. In addition, you also want the audience to see you as a subject matter expert.

Last week, we covered three ways to start a presentation to help your audience retain the content of the presentation better. This week, I give you five ways to capture the attention of even the most stoic audience right away!If you stick around for the last six minutes, I will give you my very best tip for starting a presentation. It is a bonus tip. It doesn't always work, but when it does, it is a show-stopper. So, stick around for it!Show Notes: How to Start a Presentation (https://www.fearlesspresentations.com/how-to-start-a-presentation/)

Looking for a few ways to start a presentation that are dynamic? The opening is really the most important part of your presentation. You want to make a good first impression. In addition, you also want the audience to see you as a subject matter expert.

Of course, we’ve all been there as a speaker. First, we design a powerful presentation. Then, we nervously walk out onto a stage or into the front of the room. The audience stares with skepticism written all over their faces. This stoic crowd has no patience for speakers who waste their time. And their demeanor is showing that fact right now. In a timid voice, we start with a simple, “Good morning.” We get no response from the audience — no warm welcome at all. As a result, our nervousness increases dramatically.

The good news is that your speech doesn’t have to start this way. Your first words will create first impressions.

So, in this session, I’m going to give you the best way to start a successful presentation so you can win over the audience members. Below are a few of my favorite ways to start a speech that will help you capture the attention of your audience and get even the most stoic crowd to want more from you.Show Notes: Best Ways to Start a Presentation (https://www.fearlesspresentations.com/how-to-start-a-presentation/)

In this session, I’m going to cover 10 simple ways to overcome the fear of public speaking. This is a continuation of the 3-step process to eliminate public speaking fear. In that episode, I showed you the process that a nervous speaker should go through to reduce speech anxiety.

As a review, the first step is to find out where the fear of public speaking comes from. Then, do a few simple things to reduce the risk of failure in those instances. (We will cover 10 of these tips in this episode.) Finally, you want to string together a series of successes speaking in front of a group of people. Basically, you want to get lots of practice so you can develop good presentation skills.

This is the process that we use in our public speaking classes. Your local toastmasters' club and your local speech coach might use this process as well. So, presentation tips can help you eliminate presentation fear symptoms. However, to permanently reduce nervousness, you have to follow the process over and over. Every time you use one of these key tips and have success, your confidence will grow.

That is why a good public speaking class or coach can help you move through this process more quickly. If you only give a single presentation once a year or a couple of times a year, you will find it difficult to string together this series of successes. You will become a much better speaker if you speak more often.

Remember, stage fright is a common form of anxiety. And public speaking is a learned skill. No one comes out of the womb as a great public speaker. So a good coach or class can speed up the process exponentially.Show Notes: 10 Ways to Get Rid of the Fear of Public Speaking (https://www.fearlesspresentations.com/10-simple-ways-to-get-over-the-fear-of-public-speaking/)

Happy Thanksgiving. And for those of you outside of the United States, happy third week of November. I wanted to take a break from the normal public speaking tips and share with you this week one of Abraham Lincoln's least quoted speeches but the one that has a significant impact on US citizens every November, his Thanksgiving proclamation that created the holiday.Where did the Thanksgiving Holiday come from? Yes, the pilgrim created the first Thanksgiving in Plymouth. And yes, President George Washington made the first Thanksgiving proclamation in 1789. But it was actually Abe Lincoln who created the national holiday. Ole’ Abe reinstituted the holiday that Washington created during his presidency.This episode covers the words of the Thanksgiving proclamation. I also add a little commentary to show you how you can incorporate some of Lincoln’s techniques into your own speeches as well!Show Notes: Abraham Lincoln’s Thanksgiving Proclamation(https://www.fearlesspresentations.com/president-abraham-lincolns-thanksgiving-proclamation-oct-3-1863-with-commentary/)

When folks ask me what I do for a living, I answer, “I help people eliminate public speaking fear.” It is always fun to watch the looks on their faces when they process what I said. Inevitably, I will typically get a response like, “You do what?” or “How do you do that?”

The process is really simple. In fact, anyone can reduce public speaking anxiety if they follow this process. Over the last 20 years, our great public speaking class instructors have perfected the best ways to reduce anxiety symptoms. And we have organized the process into three simple steps. The process works every single time!

In this session, we explain this simple process. However, if you looking for public speaking tips, see 10 Ways to Eliminate the Fear of Public Speaking. In that episode, we show you how to lower your heart rate, take deep breaths, and eight other ways to calm speech anxiety. This session is a little different, though. We are not going to give you a bunch of tips about how to reduce stage fright. Instead, we will show you how to become a good public speaker, so the nervousness goes away altogether.Show Notes: Eliminate Public Speaking Fear in 3 Easy Steps (https://www.fearlesspresentations.com/eliminate-public-speaking-fear-in-three-easy-steps)

This week, I'm going to cover how to make that mental shift to where you begin to see yourself as the expert when you present. Just so you know, one of the major sources of nervousness and fear comes from people standing up to speak and fearing that the audience is going to figure out that they are not the real expert or that they are not as much of an expert as their boss or coworkers or other people who do what they do. Once you realize that if you are the person speaking, it is because you have information that the audience needs to know it helps boost confidence immensely.You Are the Undisputed Expert. So, Now Prove It

Regardless of what industry you are in or what expertise you have, you are the expert. The knowledge that you have is valuable to someone.

When I was 14 years old, my dad owned a home remodeling company. Every winter, I crawled under houses helping him repair frozen pipes that had burst. After a couple of winters, I had so much experience doing this that I could do it in my sleep. So as a teenager, I was an expert at repairing ruptured PVC pipes.

After I graduated from college, my first real job was working for an oil company doing title work for mineral rights. Before long, I had not only gotten pretty good at it, but I had also trained a number of new people.

In my third year in the training industry, I generated a half-million dollars worth of sales for the first time. That same year, I also received a couple of awards for outstanding instruction.

It took me five years as an entrepreneur to attain my first million dollars. However, it only took about eight more months to generate my second million.

With each of these accomplishments, I became an expert at that thing. I had information that the general public didn’t have (even when my expertise was just repairing frozen pipes).

Don’t underestimate your knowledge. Your experience has made you the expert.One of my friends in college was going to school to be an elementary school teacher, and she absolutely hated math. However, once she graduated, she found out that in the State of Texas, Math and Science teachers got paid an extra fee. This was because teachers with this expertise were in high demand. So, she decided to be a fourth-grade math teacher.

Those of us who knew her pretty well were laughing when we asked her about her career choice. For the three or four years that we had known her, she complained over and over about her math classes. These classes were her nemesis. After a little teasing from us, she replied by saying, “In order to teach fourth-grade math, I just have to be an expert at fifth-grade math.” That day, I learned a prophetic life lesson…

In order to be an expert at something, you just need to have a little more knowledge than your audience.For instance, let’s say that you are a restaurant manager who turned around a struggling location. How many other managers are there in the world who would want to hear how you did it? You’d be the expert at restaurant turnarounds (especially if you were able to do it a second or third time). Or, if you are a dentist who is really good at getting your patients to show up for every sixth-month check-up, then other dentists would pay dearly to figure out how you do it. Whatever you do on a day-to-day basis makes you the expert at that activity.Show Notes: You Are the Undisputed Expert (https://www.fearlesspresentations.com/you-are-the-undisputed-expert-so-now-prove-it/)

I was shocked at the huge list of dumb exercises to improve presentation skills on the internet. When I say “dumb,” I mean don’t try those tips. They will not work. In fact, they will likely make you even more nervous. So in this episode, I’m going to dispel some of the worst exercises and give you a few really simple things that you can do to become a better public speaker. So get rid of the tongue twisters and vocal warm-ups. Stay tuned for a few way more effective ways to become a good public speaker!

Before I begin, though, there is an important point that you really have to understand. Developing public speaking skills takes time. If you have a presentation tomorrow morning and you are just now looking for exercises to improve public speaking skills, guess what? You are probably too late.

Someone called our 800 number last week looking for help with an upcoming presentation. I asked him, “How long have you known about this fear?”

He replied, “Well, I guess all my life.”

So he knew he needed help a long time ago but waited until just a few weeks before his biggest presentation to try to do something about it. That would be like a teenager just starting to learn to drive a week before taking the driver’s test. You can probably do it. However, the teen would do much better if he or she practices an hour or two every week for an entire year. If you practice the public speaking tips below a little at a time on a regular basis, you will slowly become a great public speaker. If you try to do it in a week, you probably won’t improve a lot.Show Notes: Exercises to Improve Presentation Skills

Want to calm down before a presentation? Even if you don’t regularly experience the fear of public speaking, just before you start a speech, it is easy to feel anxious. This initial nervous energy can cause a speaker to have a shaky voice, dry mouth, or sweaty palms just before a presentation. The good news is that this experience is very common. Most of the time, if you start your presentation well, the level of nervousness will drop very quickly.

However, sometimes when people feel that stage fright, they panic. When you panic in front of an audience, you will most likely experience even more nervous feelings.

So, what do you do to calm down before the presentation and calm those nerves? Below are 5 Simple Ways to Calm Your Nerves Before and During a Speech.

1. Create a Simple Presentation with Just a Few Key Bullet Points and Practice It with a Person.
2. Find a Quiet Place to Be Alone and Perform a Short Series of Exercises.
3. Interact and Network with Your Audience to Calm Your Nerves Before a Presentation.
4. Just Before Your Start Your Presentation, Take a Steady and Deep Breath.
5. Start Your Presentation with a Personal Story to Calm Your Nerves Almost Instantly.

This episode covers each of these tips in more detail. For full show notes, visit How to Calm Down Before a Presentationhttps://www.fearlesspresentations.com/how-to-calm-down-before-a-presentation-5-simple-ways-to-calm-your-nerves/

Are you a nervous public speaker? A majority of the population has some type of fear of public speaking. Ironically, a great deal of this nervousness or anxiety comes from well-meaning friends or coworkers who are just trying to help.

When we see a friend struggling, we naturally want to help. So, we might offer a little constructive criticism as a way to help a new presenter improve his/her public speaking. However, these “helpful” pieces of advice can actually have an extremely negative effect.

This session shows how constructive criticism can actually cause public speaking fear. We’ll also cover a few ways to reduce this nervousness when we coach or mentor a nervous speaker.

Public Speaking Fear is Normal.Public speaking is not unlike any other new skill we try to develop. When we try to speak in front of a group for the first time, every one of us will be nervous. The first time you rode a bicycle, you probably felt a little anxiety. You probably were also a little timid when you operated a computer for the first time. Remember the first time you drove a car on the freeway? You probably felt very nervous.

Each of these experiences has a risk of danger. So, the first time that we try them, we experience fear. Speaking in front of a group is no different. The first time that we do it, there is a risk of failure or embarrassment. The good news, though, is that with experience and a series of successes, your nervousness in each of these areas went down. Your fear of public speaking will also decrease if you follow the guide below.

Show Notes: How to Scare the Gooey Out of a Nervous Public Speaker (https://www.fearlesspresentations.com/how-to-scare-the-gooey-out-of-a-new-public-speaker/)

This week, I'm going to show you how you can make your audiences pay attention to your entire speech. If you use this strategy, you'll get the audience on your side right away and avoid situations where the audience tries to test you or put you on the spot. The strategy will also save you a TON of time and make delivering your presentation much easier as well.Make Your Presentation Audience FocusedFace it, most people hate meetings. They don’t want to sit through boring presentations, either. The best way to get your audience to listen and care about what you’re saying is to focus on them. You have to make your presentation “Audience Focused.” Focus on what the audience wants to hear, not what you want to tell them.Designing your presentations with the audience in mind engages them and draws a more concentrated focus on your presentation as a whole. Using an audience-focused approach is like proactive market research. Thinking from your diverse audience’s point of view to drive your design.I call this strategy the “Breadcrumb Approach.” Basically, we are throwing out a breadcrumb one at a time to try to get the audience to move toward us. Most presenters use a “Push” strategy. They push their ideas and content onto the audicne (whether the audience wants it or not.)Show Notes: Make Your Presentations Really Audience Focused – Get People to Want to Listen to Your Presentation (https://www.fearlesspresentations.com/podcast-make-presentation-audience-focused/)

This week, I'm going to show you how you can begin to develop your public speaking skills in low-risk public speaking venues. These are the tips I give to people after they come through my presentation classes if they want more practice. As I give you these venues, though, I have organized them in a step-by-step process. For instance, last week, I gave you a list of online venues that I ordered from least risky to most challenging. If you go through the earlier virtual venues first, you'll be able to build your skill and confidence without having severe negative consequences. This week,  we'll cover venues where actual people are meeting in person and how you can be asked to speak in these venues to get practice and gain skill in public speaking. Like last week, I start with the least risky and end with the most challenging. So, save the last ideas until you have built up your confidence.Show Notes: How to Find Great Public Speaking Venues to Practice Your Presentations. https://www.fearlesspresentations.com/podcast-15-how-find-great-venues-practice-your-presentations/

I often get a common question after people attend our 2-day presentation class. “Now that I feel more confident, where do I go to practice to continue to get better as a speaker?” “How can I continue to grow as a great speaker?”

The best way to continue to grow is with continued and consistent use of your presentation skills. If you take a public speaking class and then don’t present again for a year, your new skills wither away.

In fact, one of the reasons why people come to a public speaking class is to get practice very quickly. A class lets them develop these presentation skills in a controlled environment. In a small group setting like this, presenters get instant feedback and direction from a public speaking expert.

With all the positives, though, it would be impractical to go to a presentation class two or three times a year. So, where do you go to get additional practice? In this session, I share a few ways to find speaking venues that are always looking for good speakers. We’ll also cover how to build a solid reputation as a good speaker, so your reputation grows. (That way, you have meeting organizers reaching out to you to be a speaker at their meeting as well!)

*** Before a get started, though, here is a quick word of caution. Practice doesn’t make perfect. Practice makes permanent. So, make sure that you develop a good presentation first. Then, also work on your poise and confidence when you present. Do these two things before you start to practice. If you practice a poor presentation, you’ll get really good at delivering a terrible presentation. Also, if you practice bad habits over and over, you will have more difficulty later correcting these habits. ***Show Notes: Find Great Venues to Practice Your Presentations (https://www.fearlesspresentations.com/podcast-15-how-find-great-venues-practice-your-presentations/)

Congratulations! You’ve been invited to give a TED talk. This non-profit talk series is the gold standard of speeches, so you should be honored to be on the event’s roster. Not to mention how great it will look on your resume and website. You’ve undoubtedly been chosen because you’re an expert in your field, be it medicine, literature, pop culture, gerontology, or careers, but it’s not the topic that will have your audience hanging onto your every word. No, it’s more than that. Attendees will be there to learn, but they will remember you for your stage presence and personality. Think about your favorite TED talk speakers. They may speak on a variety of subjects, but they all have something in common. Each speaker has an amazing stage presence.

The most powerful talks all use similar tactics to engage their audience and present well. Today, we discuss five strategies for creating Ted talks to help you create that stage presence and make your Ted talk go viral!Show Notes: 5 Strategies for Creating TED Talks (https://www.fearlesspresentations.com/make-your-ted-talk-go-viral/)

It is a great honor for me to have Grant Baldwin of The Speaker Lab on the show today. Grant helps people break into the professional speaking industry and shows them how to find clients and get paid when they speak.Grant founded The Speaker Lab years ago and is also the host of The Speaker Lab podcast. His specialty is helping presenters create speeches that help their audiences solve problems. In the interview, he actually throws me for a loop a little. Since he has a hit podcast, I assumed that hosting a podcast might be a good way to generate new clients.His answer, though, will likely surprise you. Grant gives five things that you can do as a speaker that will help you generate revenue more quickly. His goal is to help speakers find customers in a more active way. The episode is full of great tips whether you want to be a professional speaker or not, though. Grant's incite will help you create better presentations that solve problems for your audience. For more details about Grant and his team, the Speaker Lab Website is at https://thespeakerlab.com/.You can also find Grant's book on Amazon at The Successful Speaker: Five Steps for Booking Gigs, Getting Paid, and Building Your Platform. (https://amzn.to/3B6vD2p)Full Show Notes at How to Find Public Speaking Gigs and Get Paid to Speak (https://www.fearlesspresentations.com/how-to-find-public-speaking-gigs-and-get-paid-to-speak-with-grant-baldwin/)

This special holiday episode is a continuation of our holiday series on great speeches in American history. What better way to honor and celebrate the holiday than by critiquing one of the greatest, well-known speeches? Before we begin analyzing The Gettsyburg Address, let’s dive into the history and math to put it into context.David Wills invited Abraham Lincoln to give this speech as a way to honor and memorialize those who had fallen during the Battle of Gettysburg. Why were Americans fighting? Well, if you recall, November of 1863 was the middle of our nation’s biggest divide.The Civil War took place in reaction to rising tensions between the north and south in large over slavery and state’s rights. The battle of Gettysburg, in particular, increased northerners’ morale and prevented the south from gaining more momentum. Gettysburg is the bloodiest, singular battle of the Civil War.

Lincoln didn’t want to ignore the actions and sacrifices the soldiers made by fighting and spoke to commemorate them in what is titled “The Gettysburg Address.”

“But, wait, you mentioned math…” Yes, I did because part of analyzing anything is making sure the language and wording used makes sense and are understood.Show Notes: 

One of the Greatest Speeches in American History (https://www.fearlesspresentations.com/greatest-speech-gettysburg-address/)

In this episode, we will cover a few of the common situations that occur that lead to experiencing public speaking fear. As I cover each one, I will also give you a few simple things that you can do to counteract each of these causes.So if you ever feel nervous when you stand up and speak in front of a group, these tips can really help.The Causes of the Fear of Public Speaking and How to Overcome ThemYou’re an expert in your field, and you know what you’re talking about. After all, you’ve worked in your field for years. You’ve done your research and received critical acclaim and possibly even some awards. But when you’re asked to speak in front of a crowd, which you often are, you break out into a cold sweat. Why does this happen? After all, nobody knows the topic quite as well as you. You’re not alone.The fear of public speaking is actually one of the most common fears in America.Public speaking anxiety has common symptoms, and fortunately, there are ways to remedy them. You don’t have to live with it or suffer through it. The key lies in understanding the causes of the fear of public speaking and dealing with those individual issues. Possible reasons for anxiety during public speaking situations have fairly common causes and have simple fixes.Here is your guide to some of the causes of the fear of public speaking and how to overcome those fears.Show Notes:  The Causes of the Fear of Public Speaking and How to Overcome Them(https://www.fearlesspresentations.com/the-causes-of-the-fear-of-public-speaking-and-how-to-overcome-them/)

In this episode, I share with you my presentation skills checklist that you can use when you are being asked to deliver a speech. It is kind of like a checklist that pilots use in order to lower the risk of failure. You can use it the same way. Make sure you do each of these simple tasks before you speak, and your risk of flubbing a speech shrinks, and your opportunity to perform well in front of the group increases dramatically.This presentation skills checklist can make designing and delivering a presentation easier and less risky. When folks go through our presentation skills classes, they are often surprised at how simple public speaking really is. That is if you have a great structure and follow a simple checklist.Before pilots take a plane off the ground, they always follow a written checklist. They don’t follow this process by memory. Instead, they check off each task one by one.There is a reason why every pilot does this. The process takes a tremendous amount of risk out of the equation. The checklist also takes something very complex and makes it very simple.Great presenters do the same thing. If you follow a simple presentation checklist, you make delivering the presentation less risky.Show Notes: The Presentation Skills Checklist (https://www.fearlesspresentations.com/checklist-presentation-skills/)

We just finished a five-part series about How to Start a Public Speaking Career. If you haven’t had a chance to listen to that series, it will help you understand the concepts that we talk about here much more clearly.5 Ways to Promote Yourself as a Professional SpeakerIn this session, we are going to cover how to promote yourself as a professional public speaker. In the earlier sessions, we talked about how to get experience speaking within your current industry. Some of the ideas were to start out as a trainer in your current industry and to speak to associations within your industry. This helps you practice your craft, but, more importantly, it helps you get a video of yourself in front of actual audiences. In the last session, we talked about how to create content like blog posts, videos, and books that you will be able to use to market yourself as a professional speaker.Last week, I covered steps one through three. This week, I focus on the final two ways to promote yourself as a professional public speaker.For full show notes, visit 5 Ways to Promote Yourself as a Professional Speakerhttps://www.fearlesspresentations.com/how-to-promote-yourself-as-a-professional-speaker/

We just finished a five-part series about How to Start a Public Speaking Career. If you haven’t had a chance to listen to that series, it will help you understand the concepts that we talk about here much more clearly.5 Ways to Promote Yourself as a Professional SpeakerIn this session, we are going to cover how to promote yourself as a professional public speaker. In the earlier sessions, we talked about how to get experience speaking within your current industry. Some of the ideas were to start out as a trainer in your current industry and to speak to associations within your industry. This helps you practice your craft, but, more importantly, it helps you get a video of yourself in front of actual audiences. In the last session, we talked about how to create content like blog posts, videos, and books that you will be able to use to market yourself as a professional speaker.For full show notes, visit 5 Ways to Promote Yourself as a Professional Speakerhttps://www.fearlesspresentations.com/how-to-promote-yourself-as-a-professional-speaker/

This is part five of a five-part series about how to start a public speaking career. In the past episodes, we focused on how to use public speaking within your current career, both as an income stream and as marketing.We also covered a session on how to become a professional speaker for an established speaking company. In this episode, I cover a few step-by-step items that will help you create your own presentation company or speaking career from scratch. If you want to be a professional public speaker, these practical tips can help you get started.Show Notes: Start Your Own Public Speaking Company from Scratchhttps://www.fearlesspresentations.com/start-your-own-public-speaking-company-from-scratch/

We are continuing our series on How to Start a Public Speaking Career, and in this session, we will show a shortcut by working for an organization that is already established. While the first episode mentioned a wide variety of approaches, one of the advantages of working with an established company is that the company the speaker is representing has already done the hard work. They have already created the content, vetted the content, and created a customer base. The downside is that the speaker can’t create or promote his/her own content as easily. In addition, if the speaker quits working for the company, he/she will likely have to start from scratch to create their own content and customer base.In this episode, I’ll cover the pros and cons in more detail. I will also give a step-by-step process that you can go through if you want to become a speaker for one of these companies.Show Notes: Become a Certified Speaker for an Established Presentation Companyhttps://www.fearlesspresentations.com/become-a-certified-speaker-for-an-established-presentation-company/

One of the easiest ways to become a professional public speaker is by speaking to groups within your current industry. In this article, we will show you several ways to get paid as a professional speaker without having to change careers. This episode continues our previous episode, How to Start a Public Speaking Career. Although this is just one of the three routes we will cover in detail, this route is one of the most common (and perhaps the most lucrative). So, we will spend a little more time on this one.

One of the most important steps in beginning is just that, to start. Otherwise, there’s no change. Just starting out gives you practice and room to improve. Improvement might be necessary because while you might have a friendly face, your body language could portray something else. While speaking, you may not connect with your audience enough, and you might need to practice making more eye contact. So start off by speaking at low-stress meetings or community centers. Don’t start out your career by jumping into corporate events- they’re likely to have a large crowd. The best thing to do is to start where you’re comfortable. In this episode, I show you a few ways to get practice as a professional speaker and generate income by speaking within your current industry.Show Notes: Become a Professional Public Speaker by Speaking within Your Current Industry

For the last couple of episodes, I talked about how lucrative a professional speaker career is. Last week, I gave you a few things that have to be in place before you will have a lot of success speaking for a fee. This week, I'm going to pull back the curtain and show you a step-by-step process of how to start a professional speaking career. By the way, if you don't think of yourself as a professional speaker but you have a following or a way of doing something better, the ideas in this episode will help you develop additional streams of income.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 into 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 advice to new speakers, I tell them to do the opposite of what I did. I’ve now trained over 100 professional speakers over the past 20 years. Many of these presenters are at the top of their industries. Below are a few ideas that may help.The ideas I share today can help you make public speaking an additional stream of income for you!Show Notes: How to Start a Public Speaking Careerhttps://www.fearlesspresentations.com/how-to-start-a-public-speaking-career/

This is part two of our two-part series on How to Become a Professional Speaker. Last week, I explained a few different types of professional speakers. This week, I give you five attributes that pretty much have to be in place to get people or organizations to pay you to speak.

1. Hone Your Craft Before Dabbling in Professional Speaking -- Basically, get good at something else first. No one is going to pay you to speak if you haven't first been successful at something.
2. Create a Magnetic Personality -- Professional speakers are larger than life.
3. Become an Expert in Your Industry (or Niche.)
4. Don't Rely on Speaking Gigs Alone. Create Multiple Streams of Income.
5. Develop a Tough Skin.

If you don't yet have these things in place, make sure to keep listening. The next few episodes can help you develop these traits.Show Notes: So You Want to Be a PAID and Successful Speaker. Here Are Five Things You Will Need to Become a Professional Speaker.https://www.fearlesspresentations.com/want-a-career-as-a-public-speaker-ways-to-build-public-speaking-credentials/ 

It’s easy to develop a career as a public speaker if you’re already a celebrity. If your last name is Trump or Schwarzenegger, you will have no problem getting people to pay you to speak. However, that is not the only way to become a professional speaker. In this post, I will share with you a few tips about how to become a professional speaker.

By the way, if you have a famous last name, it may not matter what you speak about. (People just want to say that they saw you in person.) You will also likely have a speech writer working on something inspirational for you anyway. But what if you don’t have a famous last name to back you up? What if you didn’t win an Olympic gold medal? What if people don’t know you from another face on the street?

Since 99.9% of us are in this situation, how can we increase our fame to become professional speakers? Before we explore these tips, let’s explore the types of professional speakers.SHOW NOTES: How to Become a Professional Speakerhttps://www.fearlesspresentations.com/want-a-career-as-a-public-speaker-ways-to-build-public-speaking-credentials/

Sometimes when I'm teaching classes, participants really love how with a few simple modifications, even the most boring or technical presentation can become a fantastic persuasive message. In fact, last week, we covered some of these simple modifications. The big quest that comes up, though, is "What happens if you have to deliver a negative message?"In the past few months, inflation has skyrocketed, gas prices are so high that the cost of everything is going up, and since the pandemic months are still very close behind in the rearview mirror, many presenters are being put into situations where they have to deliver news about layoffs, or cutbacks, or other negative topics. If you find yourself in situations like this from time to time, then this episode is going to be very helpful.For full show notes, see How a Presenter Can Deliver Bad News with Poise and Controlhttps://www.fearlesspresentations.com/how-presenters-can-deliver-bad-news-with-poise/

The persuasion technique in this episode will help you create an amazing persuasive speech outline. In fact, these sales presentation examples can be used in a number of different ways.

“Wait… sales presentation? Oh, I’m not a professional salesperson. This may not work for me.”

Whether you are a salesperson or just trying to persuade coworkers to accept your ideas, this process is important to success. By the way, this technique works both in written format and in a speech. The best way to prepare for them is by treating them the same way. Start by creating a speech outline. Obviously, when you create persuasive speeches, you don’t want them to be scripted. A quick outline will typically work much better.For the full show notes, visit Creating a Persuasive Speech or Sales Presentation (with a Few Examples)https://www.fearlesspresentations.com/amazing-persuasive-speech-outline-with-sales-presentation-examples/

In this episode, I'm going to explain the pros and cons of public speaking coaching. Sometimes, when I suggest to people that presentation coaching may not help them, they are a little taken back. "Wait Doug, aren't you a public speaking coach?" Yes, I am, but I very rarely work one-on-one with a single person in a coaching session. In this episode, I'm going to explain why. Also, if you have been listening to the podcast as a way to reduce nervousness, I'll also explain why that may not be the best way to conquer fear.Do I need to get a presentation skills coach? Well, unfortunately, the answer is probably… It depends. A public speaking coach can be very helpful in certain situations. However, in many cases, a public speaking coach can also be a complete waste of time and money. (The process may actually make you more nervous as well.)

In this post, I’m going to cover the pros and cons of public speaking coaching. I give you a few circumstances where hiring a good public speaking coach can be very helpful. We will also cover the situations where a presentation coach can be detrimental. Next, I’ll give you a few ways to find a high-quality speech coach. Then finally, I will share with you a list of skills where presentation and executive coaching are most helpful.For Full Show Notes, Visit Presentation Coaching-Do I Ned a Public Speaking Coach?

This is part 2 of a two-part series on Glossophobia (an irrational fear of public speaking.) In this episode, we cover a few simple tips to help you overcome glossophobia.1) Start Small.How do you eat an elephant? One bite at a time. If your fear is intense, there is no need to schedule a high-level presentation in front of 1000 people right away. Instead, start by speaking up more in staff meetings, at church, or join a social organization. Set a goal for each interaction. For instance, if you never speak up in staff-meeting, just set a goal to share a single idea with the group. Then, over time, increase the goal. Next week, add two ideas, etc.2) Look for Opportunities to Present, and then Be Courageous.You will never conquer any fear if you simply avoid the situations that cause the fear. Instead, look for opportunities to speak where the consequence of failure is pretty low. For instance, you can offer to speak at career day at your child’s school. (If you totally bomb this presentation, so what?) Then, be courageous. I talked in the article 7 Qualities of a Great Speaker about the difference between Self-Confidence and Poise. Self-confidence comes from having a series of successes doing something. Poise, however, is where a speaker is not confident but performs courageously anyway. The more of these courageous successes that you can string together, the more self-confident you will be.

3) Document What You Did Well.The reason that our presentation skills classes work so well is that our instructors help each student document what they do well in each presentation. For instance, the instructor will teach the student a way to make part of his/her presentation easier, show the student how to do it, and then when the presenter succeeds, the instructor reinforces that success. You can do the same after each of your presentations as well. Immediately after presenting, make a list of some of the things that you did well in the speech. Turn off your internal critic for a while. (All of us are our own worst critic, so you will have to fight this.) Then, before your next presentation, refer to the items on your list. These lists will help you reduce the phobia and build confidence over time.4) Practice in a Controlled Environment.If you want a faster way to conquer glossophobia, join us in one of our fear of public speaking workshops. One of the great things about being in a controlled environment like a class or workshop is that the risk of failure is reduced to just about 0%. The only way to conquer glossophobia is to string together a series of successes that outweigh, in our minds, the causes that we talked about above. As each participant masters each part of a fantastic presentation, the fear is reduced exponentially. In fact, in many cases, the growth is so fast and so dramatic that the irrational fear is replaced by confidence. The process isn’t foolproof and it isn’t easy. However, it works almost 100% of the time!For full show notes, visit A Few Simple Tips to Help You Eliminate Glossophobiahttps://www.fearlesspresentations.com/how-to-overcome-glossophobia-an-irrational-fear-of-public-speaking/#few-simple-tips-to-overcome-glossophobia

Want to know how to overcome glossophobia? Does stage fright sometimes make you pass up opportunities in your career? Do you feel like you have an irrational fear of public speaking? You are not alone!

Glossophobia or the fear of public speaking is very common. I’ve been in the presentation skill industry for decades, now. In that time, I’ve come to realize that the statistics about this fear are confusing. Some studies say that as few as 7% of the population has glossophobia. Other surveys claim that over 95% of people experience this fear.

However, the statistics depend on the definition of Glossophobia that you are using.

You can see the actual public speaking fear statistics here.

What is the True Definition of Glossophobia? Check out the podcast episode to find out!For the full show notes, visit What Is Glossophobia?

In today's digital world, there are so many ways to come by great public speaking types and presentation training. Here on Fearless Presentations, we have over 200 podcast episodes, and over 400 YouTube videos on our YouTube channel, and we have also published HUNDREDS of free presentation skill articles on our blog at Fearlesspresentations.com. These resources are all free to the public. However, some people prefer a more structured approach like an online public speaking training course. If you are a self-starter and want a few public speaking tips, these online courses can be very helpful. (They are also very cost-effective!)A third option is to get a presentation coach or attend an in-person presentation skill class. Public speaking classes are the absolute best way to eliminate the fear of public speaking. They work better because participants get a chance to practice and develop their presentation skills in front of real people. If you really want to get rid of presentation nervousness, then an in-person public speaking class is your best resource!Professional speakers can spend years mastering their presentation style. If you have years as well, then any of these options will work. However, if your next high-stakes presentation is coming up quickly, then your options are more limited. You will get the best results if you follow a reliable model for developing good public speaking skills. The Fearless Presentations ® system is the best process ever developed. We can help you become an effective communicator!For full show notes see Public Speaking Training. https://www.fearlesspresentations.com/public-speaking-training/

This is part 4 of a four-part series covering the 101 best public speaking tips. We are going to the last 25 today. In this episode, I will continue with a list of some of the best places to practice your public speaking skills. (As we progress further down the list, the locations will become more lucrative for you when you speak to these audiences.)Then, I will cover a few best practices for group presentations (especially group sales presentations.) The last major section of presentation tips will be about question and answer sessions (Q&A).Finally, just for fun, I end with the 7 Deadly Sins of Presenters.For full show notes and lots of additional details about many of the tips, visit 

101 Public Speaking Tips

https://www.fearlesspresentations.com/101-public-speaking-tips/

This is part 3 of a four-part series covering the 101 best public speaking tips. We are going to zoom through another 25 or so tips today.In this episode, I'm going to continue our series on 101 public speaking tips that you can use as a roadmap to improve your presentation skills. I have to go through them at lightning speed. though.So, if you want more information about any of these tips or you want to see all of them visually, just click the link in the show notes.Last week, I finished with tip #50 which was to add in at least one impact idea to add more content to the presentation outline we talked about earlier. The tips this week begin with three more ways to better organize your speech along with my best PowerPoint tips.To see all the show notes and for additional information and reading about any of the tips, visit 101 of the Best Public Speaking Tipshttps://www.fearlesspresentations.com/101-public-speaking-tips/

In honor of our 201st episode last week, I started a four-part series covering the 101 best public speaking tips. So if you missed last week, make sure to catch up before listening to this episode. We will zoom through another 25 or so tips today.These are public speaking tips 25-50. I cover a few ways to use stories to reduce public speaking fear. Then, I cover 20 or so of the best ways to add impact to a great presentation including audience participation tips and ways to add showmanship.For the full show notes, visit The 101 Best Public Speaking Tipshttps://www.fearlesspresentations.com/101-public-speaking-tips/

This is the 201st episode, so for fun a couple of years ago on my 101st episode, I started a series of 101 public speaking tips. So, in the 201st episode, I'm going to deliver those 101 tips a second time. (My humor knows no bounds.)So for those of you who listen to the podcast and say, just give me the tips without all the fluff, these are the episodes for you!This episode covers public speaking tips #1 - #24 and is part 1 of a 4 part series. To see all the tips along with additional details for each, visit the full show notes at 101 Public Speaking Tipshttps://www.fearlesspresentations.com/101-public-speaking-tips/

You have identified a problem or opportunity for your company. Now you need to get approval. So, how do you present a proposal to management that will get approved? The process is actually pretty simple. The method of how to present a proposal to management that we use works about 100% of the time. Just follow the simple steps below, and your project will easily get funded.

By the way, if you are presenting a proposal to a customer or potential client, see this post. The technique below is mainly for elevator speech types of presentations (short and to the point.) If you are presenting a proposal to someone outside of your own company, you want to be more detailed.For full show notes, see  How to Present a Proposal to Management in Three Simple Stepshttps://www.fearlesspresentations.com/how-to-present-a-proposal-to-management/

Here are a few tips to keep in mind when you present a proposal to a client. Here is the scenario… You have done your homework. A team at your company painstakingly created the perfect sales proposal. In fact, the potential client was so impressed, that they moved you to their “shortlist.” Now, though, they want you to present a bid proposal to the purchasing committee.

Your team is one of just six to eight other companies competing for this contract. How do you make sure that the committee picks your team? Well, not to brag, but over the years, groups that I have coached have received over 80% of these contracts. Just follow this simple sales presentation outline, and your team will have a better shot at winning as well.

Don’t Get Hung Up on the Terms Proposal, Bid Proposal, Shortlist Presentation or Sales Presentation

By the way, don’t get hung up on the terms that I am using. People will often respond with something like, “We don’t present ‘bids’ to our potential clients.” In other cases, professional people may say, “But I’m not a salesperson. This isn’t a sales presentation.” My point is, don’t get hung up on the terms.

The process that I’m covering will help anyone who is presenting a solution to a person or group who will exchange money for this solution. The terms “Bid” and “Proposal” are standard procurement terms, which is why we are using them here.

I have heard this type of presentation called each of the following over the years.

• Bid Proposal
• RFP Presentation
• Shortlist Presentation
• Sales Presentation
• Present a Quote

Regardless of what your industry calls this speech, the process will still work.For full show notes, visit How to Present a Proposalhttps://www.fearlesspresentations.com/present-a-bid-proposal-great-sales-presentation-outline/

In this episode, Doug Staneart of Fearless Presentations walks us through a simple three-step process to persuade others.Want to learn how to write a persuasive speech? Want to make sure that you persuade your audience without raising resentment? Well, if you use the techniques that you likely learned in school, you will often fail at both of these goals. In high school, you most likely learned that to write a good persuasive presentation, you have to do research, list the pros and cons, and then use lots of data to win over your audience. This technique is a terrible way to persuade people.

Most often, it actually causes the other person to want to play “Devil’s advocate” and argue with you. In this article, we are going to show you a simple way to win people to your way of thinking without raising resentment. If you use this technique, your audience will actually WANT to agree with you! The process starts with putting yourself in the shoes of your listener and looking at things from their point of view.For full show notes visit How to Write an Effective Persuasive Speechhttps://www.fearlesspresentations.com/persuasive-speech-how-to-write-a-persuasive-speech/

This “remember stories from your life” post is part three of a three-part series about how to tell stories in your speech. In the first two posts, we talked about the value of stories. If you recall, statistics and data are forgotten quickly and lead your audience to play “Devil’s advocate.” However, stories build rapport with your audience and reduce public speaking fear. They also make the data you are delivering more memorable.

Once you understand the value of inserting stories into your presentation, many people want to know how to do it. So, we also covered a few specific steps in storytelling to make the process easier.

My audience members will often come up to me after a presentation asking, “How do you remember all your stories?” Actually remembering stories from your life is pretty easy. It’s keeping track of all of them and being able to recall the perfect story at the perfect time. That is the hard part. In this post, I’ll give you a few of my secrets. I’ll give you a few simple ways to remember great stories as well as how to recognize when a success will make a great story.For the full show notes, visit Remember Stories from Your Life to Insert into Presentationshttps://www.fearlesspresentations.com/remember-stories-from-your-life-to-insert-into-presentations/

Feel nervous about speaking in public? Tell a personal story in your speech (early), and you can reduce public speaking fear dramatically. One of the first public speaking secrets that we share in our public speaking training classes is that stories are your friend.

When you tell a story, you reduce presentation jitters and build rapport with your audience. Don’t believe me? Watch any professional motivational speaker on YouTube. You will find that their entire speech is composed of a series of individual stories that they link together. In this post, we will cover some of the major benefits of telling stories as well as the best way to do it.

Major Benefits of Telling Stories in a Presentation

They say that a picture is worth a thousand words. Well, when you tell a story in your speech, you are presenting a series of pictures. These pictures magically appear in the minds of the audience. This is where true communication occurs. The human mind thinks in pictures. So, when a speaker is able to create this series of images in the audience’s mind that is similar to the picture in the presenter’s head, the speaker has communicated effectively. Stories are a powerful tool to capture and hold the audience’s attention.

Storytelling skills are easy to master as well. After you identify the important concepts you want to cover in your speech, recall instances from your own experiences where that concept was true. Just play the mental movie in your head of that memory. To tell the story to your audience, just describe this movie in enough detail that your movie also plays for the audience as well.For full show notes, visit Storytelling in Speeches-How to Reduce Presentation Fear Quicklyhttps://www.fearlesspresentations.com/tell-a-story-in-your-speech-and-reduce-public-speaking-fear/

Great speakers know how to tell a great story. This post will give you the five key steps of storytelling that these great speakers know. This is a continuation of the post about how inserting stories into your presentations reduces public speaking fear. I mentioned a recent class member who told me that he just wasn’t a good storyteller. If you feel the same way, then these steps of storytelling can be very helpful for you. Just between you and I, though… Whether you follow these steps exactly or not, just the fact that you are inserting stories into your speeches is a big advantage. Most presenters in the business world give very BORING speeches. A well-placed story is a powerful tool that makes your message much more interesting and entertaining.

Want to Know How to Tell a Great Story in a Presentation? The Steps of Storytelling Are Not as Important as the Story Itself.Storytelling in our personal lives is very normal. When we get together with friends or family, we build rapport by sharing good stories about ourselves. I went to my High School reunion a few years ago. I was visiting with friends that I haven’t seen for a long time. One of the funniest things, though, was that I expected that it would be a bunch of old people reminiscing about stories from our teenage years. However, the opposite occurred. It was really interesting to hear about what my friends had done since High School. We spent hours catching up. And the way that we caught up was by telling great stories to each other about our experiences. Many of my friends had accomplished some pretty impressive things. However, none of them sounded like they were bragging.

The biggest public speaking secret that I know is that you can do the exact same thing in your speeches. When you share stories of your successes, your audience lives vicariously through your stories. I remember growing up hearing the phrase, “Experience is the best teacher.” After being a business owner for 20 plus years now, I realize how dumb that statement is. Experience is NOT the best teacher. Someone else’s experience is the best teacher. When I hear a story about how someone else accomplished a goal that I want to accomplish, I can learn from it. I don’t have to experience all the turmoil that he or she went through.

So, follow the steps of storytelling below. However, just realize that the steps, in and of themselves, are not as important as the actual stories. Pick a good story to tell, the steps don’t matter.For the full show notes, visit How to Tell a Great Story in a Presentationhttps://www.fearlesspresentations.com/the-5-steps-of-storytelling-how-to-tell-a-great-story/

The Train-the-Trainer Model is very common in the business world. However, many Train-the-Trainer programs have big flaws. A good analogy of what happens during this process is the old “telephone game.”

Put ten people in a room. Whisper a phrase with more than 10 words into the ear of the first person. The second person then relays the message to the third person. This process continues over and over until the phrase reaches the final person. When you compare the first message with the last message, they will be totally different.

This is what often happens when organizations try to implement a train-the-trainer model of employee development.

However, this doesn’t have to occur. If you put the right steps and processes in place, your employee development can be phenomenal. (It is also the best way to cut your training costs dramatically as well.)For full show notes, visit How to Create a Train-the-Trainer Coursehttps://www.fearlesspresentations.com/train-the-trainer-model-how-to-create-a-train-the-trainer-course/

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.

In this post, we are going to cover the best way, a very simple three-step process that will help you introduce yourself in a presentation. A summary of the steps is below.

1. Start with your name and company (or organization or school).
2. Tell your audience what problem you can solve for them.
3. Share some type of proof (social proof works best) that you can solve this problem.

I will break down each step into a simple-to-follow process. By the way, if you are designing an introduction for a school speech, make sure to view the show notes for a very simple way to do this!For full show notes and a fill-in-the-blank introduction creator, go to How to Introduce Yourself in a Presentation (with Examples)https://www.fearlesspresentations.com/how-to-introduce-yourself-before-starting-any-presentation/

For the last couple of weeks, I covered how to start a presentation and also how to design a great presentation. This week, I'm going to show you a few ways that you can end your presentation with a bang.We start with a few "show stoppers." These are things to absolutely avoid when you end your presentation. Then, we cover seven very effective ways to end a presentation.By the way, I also designed a handout for this session since there are so many options. Just follow the link below to access the free handout or just type "How to End Your Presentation with a Bang" into Google and look for the post on fearlesspresentations.com. For full show notes and the free download, visit 7 Ways to End Your Presentationhttps://www.fearlesspresentations.com/how-to-end-your-presentation-with-a-bang/

Welcome back to the Fearless Presentations podcast. When most of you first started listening to this podcast, it was because you wanted to feel less nervous when you have to stand up and speak before a group. So, most people start listening to try to create a different feeling. An important thing that we often overlook, though, is that the way that we design a speech will either add to your nervousness or reduce your nervousness. For instance, if you try to write out your presentation word-for-word and memorize it when you stand up to deliver that speech, you will be nervous. The way you prepared for the presentation and the way you created the presentation caused you to be more nervous. So, on this episode, I'm going to cover an unbelievable simple process to go through to create a presentation from scratch that will reduce your nervousness and cause you to be seen as an exceptional presenter. I'm going to give you the steps in a cursory fashion, so you can use them right away. But if you want more details on any o the steps, I will put a link in the show notes to a blog post that will cover more details. By the way, Make sure to subscribe to the podcast so you never miss a session. Also, make sure to leave a comment or review if you like the podcast.For full show notes, see How to Write a Speech in 3 Simple Stepshttps://www.fearlesspresentations.com/how-to-write-a-speech-just-few-simple-steps/

Looking for a few ways to start a presentation that are dynamic? We’ve all been there as a speaker. You walk out onto a stage or into the front of the room. The audience is staring at you with skepticism written all over their faces. This stoic crowd has no patience for speakers who waste their time. And their demeanor is showing that fact right now.

You need the best way to start your presentation so that you win over the audience members.

I’ve been there myself. Below are a few of my favorite ways to start a speech that will help you capture the attention of your audience from your audience and get even the most stoic crowd to want more from you.

Here is the list of presentation openers.

7 Dynamic Ways to Start a Presentation

1. Give Your Presentation Summary and Conclusion First.
2. Start the Presentation with a Compelling Story.
3. Use a Startling Statistic to Start a Presentation.
4. A Funny or Motivational Quote or One-Liner.
5. Start with an Opinion Asking Question.
6. Make a Powerful or Shocking Statement to Start a Speech.
7. Arouse Curiosity with a Hook.
8. A Bonus Way to Start a Presentation Is to Add Showmanship.

I added additional information and examples for each of these presentation openers in the show notes at 7 Dynamic Ways to Start a Presentationhttps://www.fearlesspresentations.com/how-to-start-a-presentation/#summary-conclusion

Are your Zoom meetings kind of… well… blah? Want to make them more fun, engaging, and interactive? Below are seven of our best tips to help you jazz up your next online meeting. Keep in mind that anytime a conversation is one-sided, it will be boring for the listener. A good conversation is a dialogue — not a monologue.On this episode, we cover 7 simple things you can do to make your Zoom meetings more engaging. For full show notes along with all the links mentioned in the episode, go to https://www.fearlesspresentations.com/7-fun-ways-to-make-zoom-meetings-more-interesting-and-interactive/

I was shocked at the huge list of dumb exercises to improve presentation skills on the internet. When I say “dumb,” I mean don’t try those tips. They will not work. In fact, they will likely make you even more nervous. So in this episode, I’m going to dispel some of the worst exercises and give you a few really simple things that you can do to become a better public speaker. So get rid of the tongue twisters and vocal warm-ups. Stay tuned for a few way more effective ways to become a good public speaker!So, in this episode, I'm going to share a few exercises that you can practice to become a better public speaker. Remember that public speaking is a skill. So the more you practice, the better you will get. The ideas I share in this episode will help you create habits that lead to presentation confidence.For full show notes, visit 

Exercises to Improve Presentation Skills

https://www.fearlesspresentations.com/exercises-to-improve-presentation-skills-become-a-better-public-speaker/

Want to calm down before a presentation? Even if you don’t regularly experience the fear of public speaking, just before you start a speech, it is easy to feel anxious. This initial nervous energy can cause a speaker to have a shaky voice, dry mouth, or sweaty palms just before a presentation. The good news is that this experience is very common. Most of the time, if you start your presentation well, the level of nervousness will drop very quickly.

However, sometimes when people feel that stage fright, they panic. When you panic in front of an audience, you will most likely experience even more nervous feelings.

So, what do you do to calm down before the presentation and calm those nerves? Below are 5 Simple Ways to Calm Your Nerves Before and During a Speech.

1. Create a Simple Presentation with Just a Few Key Bullet Points and Practice It with a Person.
2. Find a Quiet Place to Be Alone and Perform a Short Series of Exercises.
3. Interact and Network with Your Audience to Calm Your Nerves Before a Presentation.
4. Just Before Your Start Your Presentation, Take a Steady and Deep Breath.
5. Start Your Presentation with a Personal Story to Calm Your Nerves Almost Instantly.

This episode covers each of these tips in more detail. For full show notes, visit How to Calm Down Before a Presentationhttps://www.fearlesspresentations.com/how-to-calm-down-before-a-presentation-5-simple-ways-to-calm-your-nerves/

This episode contains my 5 top hybrid presentation tips when you are meeting in person but also have virtual attendees as well. In the last few weeks, I’ve had a number of odd things happen in my in-person meetings and training sessions. The first occurred when a big client called me the day before the meeting asking for a favor. One of the participants had gotten ill. She was wondering if I would mind allowing that single individual to participate in the training session virtually. Although I’m all about making the customer happy, my initial response was, “If he is ill, why are we trying to make him attend the meeting?” After thinking it over, she recommended just sending him the handouts from the meeting.

It got me thinking, though. A year ago companies were opening back up and some team members were in the office while others were remote. We began to alter the way that we led meetings. For instance, in our office, half our team was remote and the other half came into the office every day. However, to include the entire team, each of us who were in the office closed our doors and entered virtual meetings versus having everyone come into the office. It looks like we have come full circle.

In the last few weeks, “vaccine only” offices have emerged in different cities. Most of these employers are not mandating vaccines, by the way. They are just mandating that only vaccinated people can come into the office workspace. Non-vaccinated team members have the option to work remotely.

So, we now see more organizers scheduling more hybrid meetings — in-person presentations with a few remote participants.

Best Practices for Hybrid Presentations with Both In-Person Attendees and Online Participants.

Before I get to the meeting tips, let’s set a few ground rules for delivering presentations in a hybrid world. The first thing that you want to consider is what is the best way for the majority of the audience to meet? Often, an event manager may want to schedule in-person events just because she’s tired of virtual events. However, before you decide on the type of meeting to schedule, think about what is best for your specific audience type.

When you mix a remote audience with in-person audience members there is always a chance that both groups suffer. For instance, let’s say that you work in a competitive corporate culture. Your online audience may feel that the team members who have the face-to-face experience with you have an advantage.

Or, the in-person participants may resent the virtual team being able to turn off their microphones or cameras. Just realize when you schedule your first hybrid event, you will experience challenges you didn’t anticipate. So, below are a few of the top tips to help you improve hybrid meetings.For full show notes, visit Hybrid Presentation Tipshttps://www.fearlesspresentations.com/hybrid-presentation-tips-presenting-in-person-but-with-virtual-attendees/

One of the most challenging types of impromptu speaking situations can be question and answer periods. But these situations are also places where we as speakers can really shine. We can also gain tremendous credibility with our audience. By the way, if you use the processes and techniques from this book, you will establish solid trust and rapport with our audience throughout the presentation. So, the questions you get from your audience will usually be fairly cordial and actually easy. Question and Answer Sessions at the Conclusion of a Speech Hurt Both the Speaker and the AudienceBefore I give you tips on handling these sessions better, though, let’s first talk about when speakers should allow – and even encourage – questions. One thing to keep in mind is that if someone in your audience is confused and has a question, it is much better for everyone if the speaker can clear up that confusion right away. If your speech is 30-minutes long and people in your audience have some confusion five minutes into the speech, you don’t want to have them wait until the end of the speech to ask their questions. This would cause them to be confused for twenty five of the thirty minutes. On the other hand, if you encourage questions throughout the presentation, you clear up the confusion right away. This makes the rest of the presentation more clear and easier to understand.So having a standard question and answer session at the conclusion of your presentation is a very outdated concept. It is also a big mistake for meeting organizers. For instance, if the Q&A session is on the agenda, audience members will see it and think they can not ask questions during the presentation.A better alternative is to encourage your audience to ask questions during your speech. Early on in your presentation, you can just say something like, “By the way, if I say something confusing or if you have a question, just ask.” A simple statement like this gives the audience permission to interact with the speaker.One of the things that I tend to do early on in my speeches is to ask the audience an opinion-asking question. (See Chapter 8 Impact Ideas.) By doing this early in the speech, the entire audience sees that it is okay to speak up during the presentation. As the speaker, your goal is to create a communication with the audience. So dialogues typically work better than a boring monologue.With all that being said, you still may want to leave a little time at the end of your speech for questions – just in case. To download the free presentation master class audio guide, visit https://www.fearlesspresentations.com/audio-guide

On this episode, we continue our master class about presentation skills. This week we cover one of the most challenging public speaking skills for most people which is how to speak off the cuff on an impromptu basis and still look poised and confident. If you have ever been in one of those situations where someone puts you on the spot and panic sat in, then this session is for you.By the way, I have created a free downloadable guide for you. Just go to https://www.fearlesspresentations.com/audio-guide to access it. Impromptu speaking occurs when someone ask you to speak on a topic or give an answer to a question where you haven’t had a chance to prepare ahead of time. Often this occurs during a speech when someone stops you to ask a question. Or, it may occur when a boss or coworker asks you to give a spontaneous report during a staff meeting. When situations like this pop up, the nervousness that we feel can increase, so you want to have as many advantages on your side as possible. This session on impromptu speaking can help!

In this episode, we continue our master class about presentation skills. This week we take that presentation skeleton that you created a couple of weeks ago and show you 10 ways to add impact to it. Last week, we covered 5 of the items. This week, we finish up with the final 5 impact ideas.By the way, I have created a free downloadable guide for you. Just go to https://www.fearlesspresentations.com/audio-guideAfter you create the basic structure of your talk to inform,  you can add additional zing to your speech by adding some of these impact ideas.  

 Typically, if you design a great outline using the ideas in the previous chapter, you will create a good presentation skeleton. In this chapter, we will put a little meat on the bones of the skeleton. Remember, we are presenting our case to the jury. So these ideas just add a little more evidence to prove that each bullet point is true. Most often, just one or two of these ideas added to each bullet will create fantastic content that your audience will both enjoy and believe.

 Proceed with a little caution, though. 

 These impact ideas will make good presentations great presentations. However, if you have a poorly designed presentation and add in these enhancers, you will likely make the presentation worse.

 If you have a good presentation centered around just a few key bullet points, then adding a couple of enhancers under each bullet for reinforcement will work well. If you have 50 slides already prepared and add in additional content, you’ll likely make the presentation worse.

In this episode, we continue our master class about presentation skills. This is week 2 of a two-part series on how to design a talk to inform your audience. Here, I cover how to design an entire presentation. Last week, we covered how many bullet points should you create for your presentation. The answer by the way is that it depends on the type of speech. So this episode is very important if you want to understand how great presenters create great speeches.To Be More Concise, Limit Your Content to Just the Absolute  Most-Important Points.

So, unless you can hone your talk into just a few points, your audience will have a tough time retaining your information.  It’s okay to give additional information, but the more information outside of the scope of the main points, the more diluted your entire message will be. 

 So How Many Points are Ideal in a Presentation?

 Well, it depends on the purpose of the presentation. I suggest between a single bullet point (rare but effective in certain speeches) up to a max of about five bullet points.

 When you want to design a presentation, picture the structure like a put-together storage cabinet unit. (Picture one of those stand-alone units with double doors and adjustable shelves on the inside.) The cabinet itself is the presentation. The shelves inside the unit represent the main items (or bullet points) that you’ll cover. The interesting things that you will put on the shelves are what we call “impact items.” These are presentation enhancers that use to reinforce each bullet point (we will cover these in the next chapter.)

 These put-together storage cabinets come with several adjustable shelves. Technically you could cram a lot of shelves into the cabinet. However, every time you add a new shelf, the storage space per shelf gets smaller. The problem that a lot of presenters make is that they think that people buy a cabinet to look at the shelves. “If I have a lot of bullet points, then my presentation is going to be better.” That is like saying, “The more shelves that I have, the better the cabinet. Who cares if I can’t actually store anything in it.”

 The “Presentation Cabinet” that we teach in Fearless Presentations ® is called “The Three-Point Talk.” It is a flexible structure that can easily be adjusted based on the purpose of the presentation. In the class, we focus on designing a presentation around three important points (bullets.) The reason why is that three points provide the most balance between solid content and entertainment. If you have too many bullet points, your presentation will be boring and hard to deliver. On the other hand, if you design presentations with too few points, the content will seem fluffy (vague.)To access the show notes, go to the Online Presentation Guidehttps://www.fearlesspresentations.com/audio-guide/

In this episode, we continue our master class about presentation skills. This week we take that presentation skeleton that you created last week and show you 10 ways to add impact to it. If you recall last week, I mentioned that you want to only give a max of five key concepts per sitting. And for that reason as well as just for time sake, we will break this session into two parts. So we will cover a few items on this episode and the remainder next week to make the content easier to remember.By the way, I have created a free downloadable guide for you. Just go to https://www.fearlesspresentations.com/audio-guideAfter you create the basic structure of your talk to inform,  you can add additional zing to your speech by adding some of these impact ideas.  

 Typically, if you design a great outline using the ideas in the previous chapter, you will create a good presentation skeleton. In this chapter, we will put a little meat on the bones of the skeleton. Remember, we are presenting our case to the jury. So these ideas just add a little more evidence to prove that each bullet point is true. Most often, just one or two of these ideas added to each bullet will create fantastic content that your audience will both enjoy and believe.

 Proceed with a little caution, though. 

 These impact ideas will make good presentations great presentations. However, if you have a poorly designed presentation and add in these enhancers, you will likely make the presentation worse.

 If you have a good presentation centered around just a few key bullet points, then adding a couple of enhancers under each bullet for reinforcement will work well. If you have 50 slides already prepared and add in additional content, you’ll likely make the presentation worse.