Fearless Presentations

As we approach the 100th podcast episode, I'm amazed at how my company and training program have changed. I'm actually shocked at how important continuous improvement methodologies have been to this process. By the way, if you are looking for a long series of academic continuous improvement methodologies, this isn't it. However, if you can see what happened to me, The Leader's...

Do you need a business presentation coach? Well... It depends... Last week, I gave a number of different reasons why presentation skills are important to business success. Great presentation skills can create opportunities for advancement and increase income. How exactly do you improve your presentation skills, though? In this post, we are going to cover the pros and cons of hiring a business pres...

I was reminded this week about the importance of presentation skills in the workplace. Three participants in my presentation skills class in Detroit taught job placement skills. I noticed a couple of interesting things as the class went on. First, these participants offered tips in their class presentations similar to what I teach. These three class members also developed their presentation skills...

Okay, so we know that stories are fantastic pieces of evidence during the formal presentation. In addition, stories are as fantastic as answers to tough questions during question and answer sessions. But when we are under a deadline or currently in front of a tough audience, why are stories hard to remember? Three challenges occur when we are asked a tough question from the audience or we are othe...

Great speakers know how to tell a great story. This podcast will give you the five key steps of storytelling that these great speakers know. This is a continuation of the podcast on how inserting stories into your presentations reduces public speaking fear. In that podcast, I mentioned a recent class member who told me that he just wasn't good at storytelling. If you feel the same way, then t...

Feel nervous about speaking in public? Tell a 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 mot...

Looking for an elevator speech template? In this podcast, I'm going to explain how to create a 30-second commercial (elevator pitch) for yourself. (Or for your company.) This elevator speech can be used to introduce yourself to a new contact, help you get an interview, or help you sell an idea to a decision-maker. This type of presentation is critical when you have to grab a person's att...

Whatever your vocation, you’ll likely find yourself in front of a crowd at some point. And whether you’re a spokesperson, a motivational speaker, an athlete, an entrepreneur, a CEO, or simply a student, you’re a busy person, with more things to do than to sit there and memorize the lines for a speech or presentation. Take heart! The best speeches aren’t memorized line by line, but learned. Most pe...

So you did it! You graduated at the top of your class. Now you have to write your Valedictorian Speech. However, since this is the first (and only) time you will ever do it, you may not know exactly how to write a valedictorian speech. You are not alone. Just about every Valedictorian or Salutatorian has gone through this. You work very hard to get to the top, and now you have five minutes to educ...

Have you been asked to deliver a commencement speech? Or have you worked your butt off to become valedictorian or salutatorian, and now you have to deliver a graduation speech? In this session, we will cover one of the more challenging types of presentation creation: How to Write a Graduation Speech. (By the way, I have also included a few popular graduation speech examples as a guide for you.)Thi...

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 speech, you have to do research, list the pros and cons, and then use lots of data to win o...

Continuing in our series on how to design a presentation, in this episode, we will show you how to write a wedding toast. Over the years, I've had a few people come through our entire presentation training classes just to be able to not be terrified when they give a best man toast or father of the bride toast. Even though this is typically a very short speech, there is always a lot of pressur...

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. Once you understand the concepts below, you can us...

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. After being in the presentation skill industry for decades, now, though, I've come to realize that the statistics about this fear are...

Short anecdotes for speeches are a fantastic way to end a presentation with a bang. These stories can be fiction, actual incidents from history, or even just funny stories from your own personal life. When you deliver them well, though, they have a lasting impact. I often use these short anecdotes for speeches where I am training to teach something meaningful to the audience. So, in most instances...

Looking for a quick and easy way to memorize an entire presentation quickly? Well, the solution to how to memorize a speech in minutes will likely surprise you. In this article, we will cover a few important points. First, we will cover the big mistakes that most people make when they design a presentation that makes memorizing the presentation much harder. Next, we cover a few memory techniques t...

One of the most important aspects of many speeches is the ability to be persuasive. There is an art to creating a persuasive speech, but there is also a lot of communication skills that are important to the process as well. In this session, we will help you develop and strengthen communication skills that will help you use your words to gain enthusiastic cooperation from your audience. This is par...

Eventually, if you present often, you will be required to deliver content that the audience either isn't in agreement with or, about which, your audience will be argumentative. It takes a skilled presenter to be able to deliver content like this in a way that doesn't create a conflict with the audience. We are continuing our series on Improving Communication Skills, and this week, we wil...

When you stand up to speak in front of a group, you want to appear confident. However, of equal importance is the ability to build trust and rapport with your audience. Your audience will not believe you unless they first trust you. In this session, we are going to give you a few, simple communication skills that will help you build solid trust with your audience. Incidentally, these same skills w...

If you practice great presentation skills and focus on designing your presentations on what your audience needs and wants, you will likely not have much trouble with hecklers. However, it only takes a single mad-at-the-world heckler to quickly turn your presentation masterpiece into modern art. So, when you are rudely interrupted, you will want to have a strategy that calms the heckler and makes y...

A good communications coach (formal or informal) can help you identify communication strengths and weaknesses. Years ago, I was having coffee with a colleague. He mentioned that he had just had a session with his "personal coach." During the session, this coach helped him the layout, in pretty good detail, so strategic goals that he should be focusing on. Between you and me, the whole di...

So how do you create an online training course that people don't hate? Six months ago, we set out to recreate the online version of The Fearless Presentations ® Course. To be blunt, when we started, I just assumed that we would just update the videos of the old version, make it look prettier, and be done. However, the more we updated the more opportunities that we noticed. I think my biggest...

The world is constantly changing. In the past, businesses thrived when they created a single new product or idea and brought it to market. Today, though, businesses thrive by adapting to and adopting best practices that are constantly evolving and changing. One thing is for certain, if you stay still or rest on your laurels, you will fail. The world of training and employee development is also evo...

What are the most important qualities of a good public speaker? What makes a great presenter? What are the qualities that allow one orator to get up in front of an audience and memorize the crowd while another fails? Well, science may offer the answer to these questions. When I first started teaching the Fearless Presentations® classes, I did so because I knew from my own experience that the more...

I was teaching a presentation skills class in Houston this week, and I had two separate participants pull me aside at two separate breaks and ask the same exact question... "Why do I still get nervous when I speak in public?" This question is very common (both during a presentation class, and sometimes, even afterward). When you understand the answer to this question, though, you have a...