Fearless Presentations

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...

Are your Zoom meetings kind of... well... blah? Want to make them more fun, interesting, 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. Give Your Team Clear Instructions Ahead of the Meeting. Create an Agen...

One of the most common questions that participants in our 2-day presentation class ask us after completing the class is, "Now that I feel more confident, where do I go to practice to continue to get better as a speaker?" In this session, Doug shares a few ways to find speaking venues who are always looking for good speakers, and how to build a solid reputation as a good speaker so your r...

The Importance of Self-Confidence People will judge our COMPETENCE by the CONFIDENCE that we show. For example, let's say that you are going in for surgery, and just before you go under, the surgeon walks into your room. His posture is slouching, as he speaks, he stumbles over his words somewhat, and when you look at his hands, they are trembling a little. Now, it doesn't matter how good...

Narrating PowerPoint Presentations designed by someone else can be very challenging. In fact, one of the fastest ways to increase public speaking fear and make your PowerPoint presentations sound canned and… well boring, is to try to deliver a PowerPoint slideshow that someone else designed for you. This doesn’t mean that you can’t deliver PowerPoint slide decks that someone else created. It just...

One of the fundamental steps in improving your presentations is to realize that you are the expert . Regardless of what industry you are in or what background you have, you first have to realize that you are the expert at that thing. The knowledge that you have is valuable to others . When you understand this, your presentations , and really your communication in general, will improve dramatically...

When folks are having challenges with public speaking, they will often contact us with questions. Since all of our consultants are both professional presenters and public speaking coaches, we thought it might be a good idea to answer a few of the most frequently asked questions. Perhaps the answer here could help you when you deliver your next speech or presentation. If you have additional questio...

This is part 2 of a two-part interview with public speaking coach and author Ivan Ruiz. I interview Ivan Ruiz, a public speaking coach in Canada. He quickly turns the tables on me and ends up interviewing me, somehow. If you ever wanted to know what professional public speaking coaches talk about when they are just chatting with each other, here is your chance. The interview is fun and lighthearte...

I interview Ivan Ruiz, a public speaking coach in Canada. He quickly turns the tables on me and ends up interviewing me, somehow. If you ever wanted to know what professional public speaking coaches talk about when they are just chatting with each other, here is your chance. The interview is fun and lighthearted. Ivan tells how he transitions from a government worker in Canada to a professional sp...

One of the most terrifying moments as a speaker is when you are sitting in a meeting, minding your own business, and someone asks you to stand up and give an impromptu speech. Surveys show that public speaking, in general, causes a lot of fear and nervousness. This nervousness can increase dramatically when the speaker has to create and deliver the speech off-the-cuff . In this session, we going t...

Looking for an easy way to create killer content for your blog? Or, are you trying to design a motivational speech for your team? In this post, I cover a simple way to create content that your audience will love. The technique works equally well if whether you are delivering in verbally (in a speech) or writing it. The Keys to Good Communication Are Similar Whether You Are Writing or Speaking. Way...

This part three of a three-part series on webinars and live online meetings. 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 the best online meeting platforms to use along with sound and video suggestions. If you missed either of the first two sessions, you can access them by clicking these links. The first session...

Continuing in our three-part webinar series, in this episode/post, we'll 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 Online Meetings before you start. Next week, we'll cover a few of the technical aspects of how to deliver online meetings and webinars. How to Create Webinar Cont...

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 or an online platform?" 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...

The Covid-19 virus has significantly altered the way that people communicate and interact with each other. These changes may be temporary. However, many of these changes are likely to cause a significant change in the way we do business. One of the main changes is in the training and development programs for employees. In the past, businesses thrived when they created a single new product or idea...

We have spent a lot of time focusing on using a speech or presentation to sell a product or service . Let's back up a little and talk about how to write copy that sells . For instance, how to write an article that sells a product or service. The techniques will help you craft better text on your webpages, emails, presentation slideshows, and social media posts . Before You Write Ad Copy or Ma...

You've designed a great presentation. Now you need a great ending to drive your points home. In this session, we cover a few presentation endings that you want to avoid at all costs. (One of these is question & answer periods, by the way.) We also give you a little bonus tip to help you properly set up your speech ending so you get a better response. Then, we end with seven (7) different...