Fearless Presentations

Want to establish solid trust and rapport during a job interview. Prospective employers will first weed through a lot of resumes. Then comes the hard part. Because next, they want to see if the candidate is a good fit within their team. The job interview is the main way they determine this. In this session, I’m going to show you ways to relax and take charge of the interview. In fact, I’ll also sh...

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...

This is part 2 of a 2-part series on how to use presentations and speaking to find new customers and clients. I know what some of you are thinking… “You said we would get new clients by speaking. However, very little of what you have covered so far has ANYTHING to do with speaking. What gives?” The often overlooked part of being a great speaker is to master your craft first. You can be a great spe...

Ways to Get Clients for Your Business by Speaking to Groups If you happen to be a great speaker, you have a number of ways to get clients for your business by speaking. (By the way, if you aren’t a great speaker yet, keep tuning in, because we can help with that.) The most important thing to keep in mind is that your goal is to build your authority on a specific topic. Once you do that, you will c...

This is a fun interview with Dr. Benjamin Ritter who started an entire consulting business from scratch using just seminars that were open to the public. If you want to learn how to use speaking and/or creating seminars to build your authority in your industry, make sure to listen to this episode! Connect with Dr. Ritter on his website at https://www.liveforyourselfconsulting.com/

This is part 2 of a 2-part series on Train-the-Trainer programs. In the first episode, we talk about how to uncover the quality of a train-the-trainer process before investing in it. On this session, we talk about the steps involved in training your trainers using the process. Train Your Trainers Using the Train-the-Trainer Model. That last story leads us into the next part of the train-the-traine...

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 o...

Amazing Persuasive Speech Outline In the post, How to Design a Speech Quickly , we gave a few tips to create a quick presentation outline. In this session, we add a little more detail about how to make your presentation more persuasive. This simple, three-step process will help you persuade event the toughest audiences. Change from Feature/Benefit to Problem Solver. Identify the Three Most Importa...

On this episode, I interview Cody Lowry who is a best-selling author and the founder of a successful advertising agency. However, Cody is actually more famous for being able to talk his way into meetings that are typically pretty hard to get. For instance, he tells us how he had a couple of extra days in New York, so he decided to audition for Saturday Night Live. He actually got the audition less...

“I don’t present very often, so how do I prepare for a presentation?” That is, by far, one of the most common questions that we get as presentation skills coaches. In fact, most public speaking fear comes from situations where presenters just don’t speak very often. They have a hard time building up momentum. For instance, if you only drive a car once every couple of years, you will likely be nerv...

This is episode #151, and this week, I interview Claire Chandler and Ben Baker. They are the authors of the new book Leading Beyond a Crisis. Ben's background is in creating a brand for yourself and your company, and Claire started out in human resources and has spent the last few years helping companies attract high-level employees and retain them. The topic they wanted to cover, though is h...

6 Years to a Million Dollars & 6 Months to $2 Million In this episode, I’m going to pull back the curtain and show you a few of the key things that happened in the early years of my company. It took me six years of training and learning before I felt comfortable enough to start my own company. Then, my new team and I spent another six years building a million-dollar per year income. However, w...

How do I build a million-dollar company? Better yet, how can someone build a multimillion-dollar public speaking company? Well, although I have done both of those things, I wouldn’t suggest anyone try to do what I did. I made every mistake in the book. In fact, every mistake showed me what “not to do.” Then, I’d use that lesson to get me closer to what “to do.” By the way, the reason that I am not...

This is part 2 of a multipart series.  Feel the Fear and Do It Anyway — From Timid to Fearless in One Year Coach Dykes kept his word. I got an excellent education… And I had to pay for it myself. My college days often looked something like this… 4:30 AM in the gym lifting weights and running. 8:00 AM – 2:00 PM Class. Since I was paying for my school on my own (I was still really poor), I took as m...

Doug Staneart — President and CEO of The Leader’s Institute ® and Creator of the Fearless Presentations ® Public Speaking Training Programs. This is my story of triumph over public speaking fear. I overcame being an incredibly shy kid who got beat up and bullied in grade school to become an NCAA football player . My first formal presentation in the business world was such a failure that it cost me...

I interview Tiffany Foote, a public speaking coach who helps people reduce nervousness when they have to speak in front of groups. Tiffany specializes in helping Millennials who have to present in front of their bosses or executives. For many of us, when the pressure is on, we tend to feel more nervous and anxious. She talks about how real leaders are not the people who are fearless. They are the...

Doug interviews Mike Acker author of the book Speak with No Fear. In the interview, Mike covers a few of his 7 strategies from the book. These strategies will give you a new perspective, they will prepare you, and they will give you actions to practice. As you implement these strategies, your fear will begin to fade.  It can easily seem like everyone is a gifted speaker when you watch TED talks or...

Doug Staneart has a fun interview with Jacqueline Wales who is the author of the book The Fearless Factor at Work. She offers a number of ideas on where fear comes from and how to deal with it. One of the most interesting things that come up in the interview is how there are many people out there, probably quite a few listening right now, who feel nervous or intimidated when you speak in front of...

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...

Visual Aid Examples for Virtual Meetings. Your PowerPoint Slides Should Have More Images and Action than a Typical Slideshow. People tend to have a shorter attention span on virtual meetings. Because of this, I tend to use more images and change them more frequently. This causes the audience to be engaged more. For instance, when I am presenting in person, my slide might have three key bullet poin...

So you have designed a great presentation. Now you want a few visual aid examples to make your presentation more memorable or interactive. If that is the case, you have done well, Grasshopper. You have begun to look at your visuals in the correct order. As a presenter, you always want to design your presentation first. Then, design your visual aids. Contrarily, if you are starting your presentatio...

Looking for a few fun Zoom icebreakers for trainers or facilitators. These seven activities can be used very easily to help you start your Zoom meetings on the right foot. I was leading a virtual training session via Zoom this week. Of course, the entire group was commenting at the end about how different the session was from the typical Zoom meeting. After all of the pleasantries, I said bye to e...

It's time to set the record straight. ANYONE can be a fantastic, world-class speaker with a little bit of training, a little bit of coaching, and a little bit of practice. It doesn't take years of study and practice. It also doesn't require thousands of dollars of investment. In fact, one of the things that I tell my clients early in our coaching sessions is, "Just about everyt...

This is part two of my interview with Tamara Glick who is a personal brand consultant. In this episode, she gives us a number of really cool tips on how to make a temporary (or permanent) home office space look more professional. If you want to look and sound good on your next Zoom meeting or virtual meeting, Tamara's tips can be very helpful. She also covers details on how to match the items...

This is a really fun interview with Tamara Glick, a Personal Brand Strategist. She specializes in helping clients create a professional appearance in the boardroom and on virtual calls. On this episode, we talk about how, for a short time, the casual business casual (sweat pants) was accepted as people were learning how to work from home. However, the grace period has now gone away. She covers a f...