Fearless Presentations

I spent years (the better part of a decade) studying everything I could about presentation skills and how to deliver powerful speeches. Years later, I became a presentation coach. I had been coaching speakers for a few years before I got an interesting call from a prospective client. “We have a group of five presenters who are competing for a $300 million project. This contract is vital to the gro...

Okay, so you may not want to be a motivational speaker (and live in a van down by the river). However, all of us, at one time or another, will want to be a more inspirational speaker. Sometimes, we just want to motivate our team. In other situations, we may be asked to speak at an annual meeting and want the audience to see us as being an inspirational leader. Whatever the case, there are times wh...

Filler words are a natural part of everyday conversations, and in fact, if they aren’t there, you’ll actually sound strange (or even fake) to the audience, so you don’t want to eliminate the filler words altogether. However, that doesn’t mean they have to be a major part of your speeches and presentations either. Overuse of the filler words has the potential to detract from your message, so as you...

I received a comment from a website visitor last week thanking me for the blog and asking if I would cover tips for ESL presenters (English as a Second Language). I was actually shocked to realize that in the last four years, we haven't written anything about this topic. We actually have a step-by-step way to help ESL presenters deliver confident presentations in English. English as a Second...

Have you ever heard a great speaker end an amazing talk with a lousy “Thank you,” or worse, “That’s all folks, any questions?” Such endings are anti-climactic. You went through all that effort to deliver a good presentation and that’s how you end it? That is a real shame when it happens. To your audience, it’s like a great fairy-tale with a sad ending. A dud, a runner who had cramps a couple of st...

Quite often, when we are nervous speaking in front of a group, we do innocent-sounding things to help us be less nervous. However, many of the things that people do to reduce public speaking fear actually CAUSE PUBLIC SPEAKING FEAR. Below are seven of the biggest things that people do to reduce stage fright that is actually more likely to make you nervous. If you feel nervous when you deliver pres...

This part five of a five-part series on the four main presentation styles. Last week, we covered the Authoritative Presentation Style which has the opposite strengths and weaknesses of this style. In the prior two weeks, we covered the Energetic Presentation Styleand the Analytical Presentation Style (Technical Presentations). This week, we will cover the strengths and weaknesses of the Empathetic...

A few weeks back, I gave an overview of the four main presentation styles. Last week, we covered the Energetic Presentation Style. The week before, we covered the Analytical Presentation Style (Technical Presentations). You’ll remember from the last two sessions that the Analytical Presenter and Energetic Presenter are polar opposites in the way that they like to present. The Energetic has high en...

A couple of weeks ago, I gave an overview of the four main presentation styles. Last week, we covered the Analytical Presentation Style (Technical Presentations). This week, we will cover the strengths and weaknesses of the Energetic Presentation Style. This is the style of presenter that is more “direct” and “emotional”. Just as a review, by direct, we mean that this style of presenter will often...

Last week, I gave an overview of the four main presentation styles. This week, we will cover the strengths and weaknesses of the Analytical Presentation Style. This is the style of presenter that is more “indirect” and “logical”. Just as a review, by indirect, we mean that this style of presenter will often be more detailed and thorough. By logical, we mean that this style will focus more on facts...

Ask most presentation skill experts what the ideal presentation style is, and you will likely get a variety of answers. Am I supposed to start with a story? Am I supposed to tell jokes? Are visual aids more critical to performance or is the content itself more important? Do I have to warm the audience up, or should I just get right to the point? The answers to these and other presentation techniqu...

I wrote an article back in 2013 called Increase Security and Income with Presentation Skills Training. I wrote it to tout the value of investing in yourself. For the last couple of decades, we have seen thousands of people increase their income and job security by investing in professional development classes. So, when I originally wrote the article, I researched how much a Master's degree co...

Many of you know my background. I didn't set out to be a presentation skills coach. I was just a guy who had a challenge with public speaking. I studied and practiced for years, and I figured out a few secrets that make presenting much easier. I spent the first 10 years of my career learning everything I could about public speaking. I spent the next five years training thousands of people in...

Many of you know my background. I didn’t set out to be a presentation skills coach. I was just a guy who had a challenge with public speaking. I studied and practiced for years, and I figured out a few secrets that make presenting much easier. I spent the first 10 years of my career learning everything I could about public speaking. I spent the next five years training thousands of people in the s...

This part three of a three-part series on webinars. In this episode, I’ll show you a few of the technical secrets about how I deliver the actual webinars. I’m going to cover which of the paid-for webinar services that I recommend, how to deliver webinars for free, and which platforms are trending right now. If you missed either of the first two sessions, you can access them by clicking these links...

Continuing in our three-part webinar series, in this episode, we cover how to create webinar content to help you maximize audience retention. In the last episode, we covered 7 Important Things that You Should Know about Webinars before you start. Next week, we’ll cover a few of the technical aspects of how to deliver webinars. These are some of the most useful ways that I have found to create webi...

One of the most common questions that we receive in our public speaking classes is, "Do the things that you are teaching us about in-person presentations change when you are on a webinar?" The answer to that question is both "Yes" and "No". The way that we teach people to design presentations is based on (1) focusing on the audience and what the audience wants and nee...

Last week was part one of How to Create the Perfect Presentation Handout. In that article and podcast, I gave you three easy ways to create helpful handouts to accompany your in-person presentations. This week, I’m going to show you how to style your presentation handouts so that they look really professional. The good news is that you don’t need any special graphic design skills, and you don’t ne...

Have you ever wondered how to create the perfect presentation handout? You’ve been asked to give a speech, and you’re excited to give the best presentation possible. You put all kinds of preparation into putting together an amazing presentation and finding the perfect examples to prove your points. Your presentation is infused with memorable anecdotes, terrific insights, great visuals and even a w...

Whether you are brand new to speaking or you have been presenting for years, you will want to look confident when you stand up to speak. This can be a challenge though if you are really nervous. We are always afraid that the nervousness that we feel will be obvious to the audience. So, how do you look poised and confident in front of a group, even if you don’t actually feel confident yet? SHOW NOT...

It happens to all of us sooner or later. We prepare well. We practice over and over. But then, something happens that is totally out of our control, and we bomb. So, how do you recover after giving a terrible speech and bombing on stage? Whether the challenge occurs as a result of nervousness or presentation anxiety, or if nuclear reaction came from improper preparation, it happens. Even public sp...

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 confusing parts of speech...

So you have written a great presentation, but now you want to make it phenomenal. These 9 stellar presentation enhancers will add impact to any speech. In this series of podcasts, Doug Staneart breaks down his public speaking “Impact Ideas” that can be inserted into any speech to really make them come alive. Below is a list of all nine items. Each item links to more details below as well! Anecdote...

Audience Participation is one of the most effective ways to make a good presentation into a stellar presentation. However, it also has a lot of danger. A good, thought-provoking, open-ended question to the audience can help you persuade even the toughest audience. However, if the audience believes that your question is being used to manipulate them they may respond negatively or shut down entirely...

The word complacent may just be the biggest enemy of success. In fact, I’ve noticed that, if you look at history as well as the current business climate, you’ll find that past success almost always limit future successes. That is unless you are constantly looking for new ways to improve yourself and your organization. I have to admit, I have been both the beneficiary of capitalizing on others&apos...