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 will cover a few ideas that will help you avoid disagreement and resolve conflicts. Before I cover these tips, ho...
May 06, 2019•32 min•Ep. 79
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 will help you build trust and rapport within any relationship. SHOW NOTES: https://www.fearlesspresen...
Apr 29, 2019•29 min•Ep. 78
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 you continue to look like the expert in the room. One of the more recent occurrences in social media ...
Apr 22, 2019•24 min•Ep. 77
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 discussion seemed weird to me. Honestly, I thought that this "coach" was, most likely, a con-artist. I had heard...
Apr 15, 2019•28 min•Ep. 76
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 obstacle at the beginning was my preconceived notions about online training. SHOW NOTES: https://www.fear...
Apr 01, 2019•24 min•Ep. 75
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 evolving. If you are training and developing your employees the same way that you did 20 years ago, 10 ...
Mar 25, 2019•28 min•Ep. 74
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 self-confident a presenter appears to an audience, the more respect that the audience will have for ...
Mar 18, 2019•33 min•Ep. 73
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 much better chance of eliminating your public speaking fear for good. The answer has three parts. First, many ...
Mar 11, 2019•26 min•Ep. 72
We just finished a five-part series about How to Start a Public Speaking Career. If you haven't had a chance to read (or listen to) that series, it will help you understand the concepts that we talk about here, much more clearly. In this session, we are going to cover how to promote yourself as a professional speaker. In the earlier sessions, we talked about how to get experience speaking within your current industry. Some of the ideas were to start out as a trainer in your current industry and ...
Mar 04, 2019•40 min•Ep. 74
This is part five of a five-part series about how to start a public speaking career. In the past posts, we focused on how to use public speaking within your current career, both as an income stream and as marketing. We also covered a session on how to become a professional speaker for an established speaking company. In this session, we will cover a few step-by-step items that will help you create your own presentation company. If you want to be a professional public speaker, these tips can help...
Feb 25, 2019•38 min•Ep. 73
We are continuing our series on How to Start a Public Speaking Career, and in this session, we will show a shortcut by working for an organization that is already established. Just as a recap of what I discussed in the first post, the advantages of this route is that the company the speaker is representing has already done the hard work. They have already created the content, vetted the content, and created a customer base. The downside is that the speaker can't create or promote his/her own con...
Feb 18, 2019•40 min•Ep. 72
This is part three of our sessions on How to Start a Public Speaking Career. In the last session, we talked about the easiest way to begin as a professional speaker — by Speaking within Your Current Industry. In this session, we are going to show you a few simple ways to use public speaking to promote or market your product or service. In fact, using a speech to promote a product or service is a fantastic way to conduct a marketing campaign. SHOW NOTES: https://www.fearlesspresentations.com/usin...
Feb 11, 2019•43 min•Ep. 68
One of the easiest ways to become a professional public speaker is by speaking to groups within your current industry. In this article, we will show you a number of ways to get paid as a professional speaker without having to change careers. This article is a continuation of our previous article, How to Start a Public Speaking Career . Although this is just one of the three routes that we will cover in details, this route is one of the most common (and perhaps the most lucrative as well). So, we...
Feb 04, 2019•35 min•Ep. 67
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 for how to start a public speaking career. Just as an FYI, the way that I did it is not the ideal way to become a professional speaker. In fact, when I give advice to new speakers, I tell them to do the opposite of what I did. However, over the past 20 years, I’ve trained over 100 professional speakers, and many of these presenters are at ...
Jan 21, 2019•36 min•Ep. 66
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. In addition, the old adage, “You never get a second chance to make a first impression” is very tru...
Jan 14, 2019•27 min•Ep. 65
Want to know what not to do during a presentation ? (I know it isn't grammatically correct, but that is what people are typing into search engines.) Well, here are 10 of the biggest public speaking mistakes that presenters make. This is a list of what we call the 10 deadly sins that turn off audiences. Use it as a checklist for yourself. If you find that you sometimes do one or two of these items, then the list will help you identify what to work on. SHOW NOTES: https://www.fearlesspresentations...
Jan 07, 2019•16 min•Ep. 64
I was doing article research this week, and I came across a statement by a world-renowned public speaking coach that made me stop dead in my tracks. This coach was answering the question, "If I’ve only got five minutes for a speech, how do I get my key points across in an interesting way?" The speaker answered by saying, "Five minutes is too short a time to persuade an audience of anything complicated, sophisticated, or controversial." I was dumbfounded. That is one of the most ridiculous statem...
Dec 10, 2018•29 min•Ep. 63
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 growth of our company. Can you make sure they are delivering the best possible group presentation for u...
Dec 03, 2018•23 min•Ep. 62
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 when the purpose of our speech is not necessary to inform or persuade but to motivate and inspire. The...
Nov 19, 2018•55 min•Ep. 61
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 become more and more comfortable speaking in front of a group, it might be a good idea to fine-tune...
Nov 12, 2018•19 min•Ep. 59
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 Language presentation challenges are very common in today's business world. In fact, I'm often hired to c...
Nov 05, 2018•37 min•Ep. 58
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 steps before the finish line. So near, yet so far. Below are a few tips that will help you end your pr...
Oct 29, 2018•31 min•Ep. 57
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 presentations, make sure that you are not doing these things. In fact, if you eliminate these “crutches”...
Oct 22, 2018•36 min•Ep. 56
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 Presentation Style. (Psychologists call this style of presenter a Sanguine.) This is the style of p...
Oct 08, 2018•40 min•Ep. 55
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 energy and tends to like to create presentations that are general and broad. The Analytical likes deta...
Oct 01, 2018•34 min•Ep. 54
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 be more spontaneous and quick to act. By emotion, we mean that this style will focus more on connec...
Sep 17, 2018•41 min•Ep. 53
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 and data. You will find the style of presentation more frequently in certain industries. If you wor...
Sep 10, 2018•35 min•Ep. 52
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 technique questions are... yes. And, well...no. The truth is that we all have specific strengths and equal a...
Sep 03, 2018•46 min•Ep. 51
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 cost to achieve, and I compared that cost with the additional potential revenue that you could make by rece...
Aug 29, 2018•36 min•Ep. 50
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 skill. Eventually, though, I got to a point where I didn't have any more time. So, I began to train o...
Aug 27, 2018•27 min•Ep. 49
