Fearless Presentations

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 s...

How, exactly do we collect feedback on a presentation? Are there ways to solicit feedback that will help us grow as speakers? The answer is, absolutely, YES! However, the way that you typically ask for feedback may not be the best way to gain confidence as a speaker. In fact, many traditional feedback techniques can actually make you more nervous. In addition, speakers will sometimes make adjustme...

Most of what we cover on this podcast are things that you need to do. The secrets to effective visual aids, curbs against anxiety, the right ways to present, but what about the wrong ways?  You have to know what not to do in order to know what to do and, for a lot of us, we do a lot of what we shouldn't do. There are so many small habits you might not even realize you do that are actively hur...

“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 ner...

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...

Now that you know a few of the best (and safe) ways to start your presentation right, let's get spicier. No memorable speech you've ever sat through took no risks. The bare minimum a speech can be to not be bad is inoffensive. All the introductions I gave you last week are enough to make sure you don't have an embarrassingly awful first impression but they're not enough to make...

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 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 th...

So you did it! You graduated at the top of your class. You’ve proved you are the apex of knowledge, skill, and potential within your school, and now you get to prove it with a beautiful Valedictorian Speech. Just one problem, since this is the first (and only) time you will ever do it, you don’t know how to write a valedictorian speech .  Don’t worry, you’re not alone. Just about every Valedictori...

Most of the time, if you're good at writing one style of speech, you're good at writing all of them. Speech writing is a very transferable skill no matter if it's for a keynote, a lecture, a sales pitch, or pretty much anything else. But there are some exceptions.  Commencement speeches draw a weird, wobbly fine line between being casual, inspirational, funny, and reflective. You ca...

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 we...

Picture this: You arrive at a concert venue to see your favorite artist. The lights dim, the crowd buzzes, anticipation builds. They finally step on stage and perform the entire set with their hands stuck in their pockets. No gestures. No movement. No visible energy. Even if the music sounds incredible, something feels off. You’re listening, but you’re not fully feeling it. The performance lacks p...

The quickest way to make people not believe you're qualified is to not believe it yourself. Saying that confidence is important certainly isn't the most groundbreaking thing to hear but knowing exactly WHY it's so important is what really gives people the push to develop it.  After last week's episode discussing why you need to have more self-confidence in what you already know...

Every speaker wants to become a subject matter expert on the topic they present, but here's the truth these people aren't realizing: Regardless of what industry you are in or what expertise you have, you are the expert. The knowledge that you have on a specific topic is valuable to somebody, and that's really all that matters. Becoming an expert on a subject doesn't come with s...

What are the most important qualities of a good public speaker? What makes a great presenter? Just what are the fundamentals of a good public speaker that allow one orator to get up in front of an audience and mesmerize the crowd while another fails? When I first started teaching the Fearless Presentations ® classes, I did so because I knew from my own experience that the more self-confident a pre...

In the past few weeks we've covered a couple of the best entry points into public speaking from wherever you're starting at, but what do you do if you're starting with nothing at all. If you're not already in an industry that is looking for more speakers and you've tried to apply to some public speaking companies to no avail, it can start to feel hopeless.  Luckily, so man...

Over the last 2 weeks I've been going over the best ways to get started as a public speaker, and today we're delving into what I think is the easiest of those ways. Speaking on topics you already know and are passionate about takes so much of the stress away. Having real pedigree in something you're speaking on and the ability to go off-hand whenever you need to is something that ea...

Last week, we went over a few of the best ways to get into the public speaking industry. There's a few different entry points and over this episode and the next couple, we'll be covering, in more detail those three different ways to get started.  The first one I'm covering is joining an already established company. If the prospect of entrepreneurship daunts you and you want to go th...

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. In this episode, we'll be starting our series on the absolute best and easiest ways to get started on your public speaking journey! Show Notes: How to Start a Public Speaking Career ( https://w...

Last week, at the very end of the episode, I mentioned that one way to make your PowerPoint Presentations better is to create a good handout for the audience. And I shared a story about a breakout session I led where I spend most of the time in the presentation using the handout as the visual aid versus the slideshow. On this episode, I'm going to go into more detail about what I did. The tit...

Last week, on the last episode of the series on the Presentation Skills Checklist, we covered how many slides to put into a PowerPoint Presentation. This week, our topic is "3 Simple Ways to Create Better PowerPoint Presentations." By the way, if you are using the techniques I outline on other episodes of the podcast, creating a PowerPoint presentation should be really easy. Basically, i...

I hope you have enjoyed the Presentation Skills Checklist series. So far, we covered how to know your audience. Next we helped you create a great presentation title. Then, we helped you organize your presentation outline. And in the last couple weeks we showed you how to add credible evidence to reinforce the points you created in your outline. The last step is to create your PowerPoint Slideshow....

If you want to be a fantastic speaker, you have to be able to make any topic really interesting -- even if you aren't that excited about it. So on this episode, I'm going to give you nine things that I call "Impact Ideas". They are different types of evidence that you can use to make your point more compelling or interesting. This is a continuation of the series we started a fe...

Great speakers know how to tell a great story. On this episode, I'll give you the five key steps of storytelling that these great speakers know and use in every single speech that they deliver. (That's hat makes them great speakers!) This is a continuation of the series we started a few weeks ago about your Presentation Skills Checklist. And over the last couple of weeks, we covered the...

A few weeks ago, I gave you my Presentation Skills Checklist. And over the last couple of weeks, we covered the first two items on that checklist, (1) how to know your audience better, and (2) how to design a catchy title. On today's episode, I'm going to show you how to quickly and easily design your speech in a whole lot less time that what most people take to create a presentation. If...

A couple of weeks ago, I gave you my Presentation Skills Checklist. And last week, we covered step one in that checklist which was know your audience. If you haven't had a chance to listen to that episode yet, the things I covered were essential in creating better presentations and reducing public speaking nervousness. Most people design presentations by creating a long list of items they cou...