This is the third in a series of three blog posts I’m doing on presentations.  Today I want to focus on the importance of preparing for your presentations.  Tweet 119 in my career advice book Success Tweets says, “Discipline yourself to prepare for presentations.  Practice out loud until you are totally in sync with what you’re going to say.”

Many people fear making presentations.  That’s why they’re not very good at them.  I subscribe to James Malinchak’s ezine on speaking.  It’s always full of interesting anecdotes.  A couple of days ago, James told a very interesting story about a conversation he had with Michael Jordan.  He posed the following scenario to Michael…

“It’s Game 7 of the NBA Finals and your team is playing on the road at your opponents’ place.  There’s 00:01 second left on the clock and your team is losing by 1 point.  You’re at the free-throw line to shoot two shots.  This is literally win or lose time, and the ball is in your hands.  If you make both free throws, your team wins their first ever championship.  If you miss both, your team loses the championship.  How would you feel?”

Michael Jordan’s response…

“That’s easy!  That situation wouldn’t bother me because I would have already disciplined myself to make sure I had already prepared for success in that, or any other situation!”

James went on to say…

“Not the answer I was expecting, but it’s very profound when you think about those two words that most would rather simply skim over: 1) Disciplined; and 2) Prepared.  The more I thought about those two words, the more I began to realize just how important they are for becoming a successful speaker, author, trainer or coach!  Most people are not disciplined to prepare themselves for success.”

James is on to something here.  Disciplined preparation is the key to becoming a dynamic presenter.  I teach my coaching clients a five-point model of presentation success.  The fifth point is “practice, practice, practice.”  I suggest practicing your talk out loud using your visuals.  I suggest doing this as many times as it takes to become 100% comfortable with what you are going to say and how you are going to say it.

When I say this I am often met with frowns and a lot of excuses about not having the time to do the kind of preparation I suggest.

And that’s why many people suck at presenting.  In Michael Jordan and James Malinchak’s words, they don’t have the personal discipline to prepare for a successful presentation.  And without disciplined preparation it’s basically impossible to do a good presentation.

A couple of years ago, Cathy and I were in Florida to celebrate our niece, Morgan’s, wedding.  Cathy was hosting a bridesmaid luncheon.  The night before the luncheon, she practiced the welcoming talk she was going to give at the luncheon at least five times.  And you know what?  It got better every time she practiced it.  She practiced one more time the morning of the luncheon, and she had it down cold.  She disciplined herself to prepare for her talk.  She was ready to do it.  And she gave a killer talk.  Good for her.

Cathy often accompanies me when I travel.  If I am doing a talk the next day, she knows my ritual before going to bed.  I will practice my talk – out loud – at least twice, and as many times as it takes for me to feel that I have it perfected.  It takes a little bit of time to practice like this, but the audience applause and, more important, my feeling of satisfaction after delivering a great talk are worth it.

By now it should be pretty clear that I think that practicing your presentations – out loud – is the most important presentation success tip.  I’ve mentioned practice in the last five success tweets.

Here’s a recap of why I think it is really important to practice your presentations out loud.  Practicing your presentations out loud…

• Calms your nerves.  When you practice several times, the presentation is familiar and comfortable to you.  This makes you less nervous.
• Helps you edit your talk for impact.  There is nothing like saying it out loud to show you the rough spots in your presentation.  Once you identify these rough spots, you can correct them before you’re in front of an audience.
• Helps you get better.  The more times you repeat a talk out loud, the better it gets.  It’s almost impossible to be over-prepared.  Practice does indeed make perfect.

These three reasons should convince you that it’s important to practice your talk out loud.  Yet, I am always amazed that so many people don’t take the time to practice.  They have some great excuses…

• It takes too much time.
• I know what I’m going to say, I don’t need to practice.
• I feel foolish talking to myself.
• I won’t get any better.
• I’ve done this talk a million times, I don’t need to practice.

And I say, “WRONG!!!”

Practice is the main ingredient of any successful presentation, not funny slides and animation – practice.

Thomas Edison is famous for saying, “Many people miss opportunity because it comes dressed in overalls and looks like work.”  I am semi-famous for saying, “Most people know the right thing to do in most situations, their common sense tells them.  They don’t use their common sense for a bunch of bogus reasons.”

So don’t come up with bogus reasons for not practicing your presentations out loud.  If you want to become a dynamic communicator, and create the life and career success you want and deserve, you have to practice your talks – out loud.  That’s some of the most important career advice I can give you.

The career success coach point here is simple common sense.  If you want to be able to deliver dynamic presentations that will enhance your career success, you have to follow the career advice in Tweets 119 and 120 in Success Tweets.  “Discipline yourself to prepare for presentations.  Practice out loud until you are totally in sync with what you’re going to say.” (119) “Practice presentations.  You can control your nerves by practicing out loud.  The more you practice, the less afraid you’ll be.” (120)  Disciplined preparation is especially important to becoming a great presenter.  If you want to become a great presenter, discipline yourself to prepare for your talks by practicing – out loud and with your visuals – until you are totally in sync with what you are going to say and how you are going to say it.  Besides controlling your nerves, you’ll get better each time you practice.  Trust me on this one, time spent practicing a presentation is time well spent.

That’s my career advice on the importance of practicing your presentations – out loud.  What do you think?  Please take a minute to share your thoughts with us in a comment.  As always, thanks for reading my daily musings on life and career success.  I value you and I appreciate you.

Bud

PS: If you haven’t already done so, please download a free copy of my popular career advice book Success Tweets and its companion piece Success Tweets Explained.  The first gives you 140 bits of career success advice tweet style — in 140 characters or less.  The second is a whopping 390 + pages of career advice explaining each of the common sense tweets in Success Tweets in detail.  Go to http://budurl.com/STExp to claim your free copy.  You’ll also start receiving my daily life and career success quotes.

PPS: I opened a membership site last September.  It’s called My Corporate Climb and is devoted to helping people create career success inside large corporations.  You can find out about the membership site by going to http://www.mycorporateclimb.

Yesterday I blogged about my five steps for becoming a dynamic presenter.  Here is some more career success advice on presentations.

Tweet 118 in my career success book Success Tweets says, “Presentations are easy to create.  Write your closing first, your opening next.  Then fill in the content.  Practice.  Practice.  Practice.”  Let’s look at this career advice in a little more detail.

Begin at the End

Writing your presentation closing first is some of the best presentation and career advice I can give you.

People remember two things about your talk: how you begin and how you finish.  They remember how you finish because that’s the last thing they hear.  You want to finish strong, reinforcing and highlighting the main points you want people to remember.  That’s one reason for writing your closing first.

Another reason for writing your closing first is because it will help you map out the rest of your content.  You’ll probably have more information than you need for any presentation you make.  If you write your closing first, you can use it to help you decide what information to leave in and what to leave out of your presentation.

For example, when I do my talk “How to Create the Life and Career Success You Want and Deserve” I always end by saying something like…

And there you have it, my best advice on how to create the life and career success you want and deserve.

It comes down to Four Cs: clarity, commitment, confidence and competence.

If you want to create a successful life and career, you have to

a) Clarify the purpose and direction for your life and career.
b) Commit to taking personal responsibility for your life and career success.
c) Build unshakeable self-confidence.
d) Get competent in four areas: creating positive personal impact, outstanding performance, dynamic communication, and relationship building.

Hopefully, you know more about how to create the life and career success you want and deserve now than an hour ago.  But, like the US Steel pencils my dad would bring home from work used to say, “Knowing is not enough.”  You’ve got to use the information you learned here today if you are going to create the life and career success you want and deserve.”

When I was writing this talk, I wrote this closing first.  I began by listing the key points I wanted to make – in this case the 4 Cs of Success.  Any time I was wondering if I should include a specific piece of information in the talk, I asked myself, “Does this information reinforce the point you want people to remember about this talk?”  If the answer was “yes,” I left it in.  If “no,” I took it out.

OK, got it about writing your closing first?  Good.  Now let’s talk about writing your opening second.

Capture Your Audience’s Attention and Tell Them What You’re Going to Tell Them

You want to accomplish two things in your presentation opening: 1) Capturing the audience’s attention, and 2) Giving them some idea of what you will be covering in your talk.

When I do my talk, “How to Create the Life and Career Success You Want and Deserve” I always begin by saying something like…

Hello and thank you for coming.  Today, I want to dispel one of the biggest myths about life and career success.  And that myth is, “good performance is enough to create the life and career success you want and deserve.”  Good performance not only is not enough, it is merely the price of admission in today’s highly competitive world.

If you want to create a successful life and career, think C – no, think 4 Cs…

Clarity, Commitment, Confidence and Competence.

If you want to create a successful life and career, you have to:

a) Clarify the purpose and direction for your life and career.
b) Commit to taking personal responsibility for your life and career success.
c) Build unshakeable self-confidence.
d) Get competent in four areas: creating positive personal impact, outstanding performance, dynamic communication and relationship building.

Over the next hour, I’m going to tell you more about each of these four Cs and show you how to put them to work to create the life and career success you want and deserve…

See what I mean?  I captured the audience’s attention by telling them that I was going to explode a myth about life and career success.  Then I shared the myth.  Then I outlined what I was going to cover in the next hour.

This format is the golden rule of journalism: Tell them what you’re going to tell them.  Tell them.  Tell them what you’ve told them.

By writing your closing first and your opening second, you’ve done two of these: you’ve told your audience what you’re going to tell them, and you’ve recapped what you’ve told them.  Filling in the content becomes pretty simple once you’ve completed these two steps.

In tomorrow’s post I’ll cover the importance of putting in the preparation time necessary to ensure you deliver a dynamic presentation.

The career success coach point here is simple common sense.  If you want to create dynamic presentations that communicate and get you known as a high performer, follow the career advice in Tweet 118 in Success Tweets.  “Presentations are easy to create.  Write your closing first, your opening next.  Then fill in the content.  Practice.  Practice.  Practice.”  Writing your closing first gives you the direction you need to create a dynamic presentation.  Writing your opening next helps you capture the audience’s attention and gives you an outline for creating the rest of your content.  I learned this bit of career advice early in my career – way back in 1973 – and have used it ever since.  If you use it, you’ll be on your way to creating the life and career success you want and deserve.

That’s my career advice on how to write a dynamic presentation – one that engages the audience and sells them on your ideas.  What do you think?  Please take a minute to share your thoughts with us in a comment.  As always, thanks for reading my daily thoughts on life and career success.  I really appreciate you.

Bud

PS: If you haven’t already done so, please download a free copy of my popular career advice book Success Tweets and its companion piece Success Tweets Explained.  The first gives you 140 bits of career success advice tweet style — in 140 characters or less.  The second is a whopping 390 + pages of career advice explaining each of the common sense tweets in Success Tweets in detail.  Go to http://budurl.com/STExp to claim your free copy.  You’ll also start receiving my daily life and career success quotes.

PPS: I opened a membership site last September.  It’s called My Corporate Climb and is devoted to helping people create career success inside large corporations.  You can find out about the membership site by going to http://www.mycorporateclimb.

I’ve received a lot of questions on how beat presentation anxiety from My Corporate Climb members lately, so I thought I’d devote a blog post to becoming a dynamic presenter.  Presentations are an important communication tool.  More than one career has been launched by a great presentation.

Tweet 117 in my career advice book Success Tweets says, “Presentation steps: 1) Determine the message; 2) Analyze the audience; 3) Organize the information; 4) Design visuals; 5) Practice.”

A lot of people suffer from presentation anxiety.  Public speaking can be frightening, although it doesn’t have to be.  Presenting is like any other process, there is a series of logical steps to follow.  The five steps to effective presentations in the Tweet have served me well for over 35 years.

In this post, I’m sharing the material I cover in a three-day workshop on presentations skills.  So this is a quick overview, but one that captures all the basics you need.

Breaking the presentation process down into the five easily manageable steps listed in Tweet 117 in Success Tweets is the best way I know to get over presentation anxiety.  Let’s look at them in some detail.

1. Determine your message.
2. Analyze your audience.
3. Organize your information for impact.
4. Design supporting visuals.
5. Practice, practice, practice.

Ask yourself these questions to help you determine your message:

• What do you want or need to communicate?
• What information does the audience need?
• Why do they need it?
• At the end of the presentation, what should the audience: Understand? Remember? Do?

Determine the best way to communicate your message by analyzing your audience.  Ask yourself these questions:

• Who is the audience for this presentation?
• Why are they attending?
• What is their general attitude toward you and the topic?
• What is their knowledge level on this topic?

Use the golden rule of journalism: “Tell them what you’re going to tell them, Tell them, Tell them what you told them” to organize your information.

• Begin at the end.  Prepare your presentation ending first.  This is helpful, because it keeps you focused on where you’re going.
• Prepare your presentation beginning.  A good beginning has two things: a hook, and an outline of your talk.
• Fill in the blanks with your content.

Design visuals to support and enhance what you are saying.  Good visuals support the points you are making, create audience interest, improve audience understanding, save you time – a picture is worth a thousand words, and they are memory aids.

Practice, Practice, Practice.  There is an old saying, “practice makes up for a lack of talent”.  Prior to getting in front of an audience, say your presentation out loud – several times.  Listen to yourself.  Consider videotaping yourself.  If you don’t have the equipment, practice in front of a mirror, or your spouse, or your dog or cat – just practice.

The career success coach point here is simple common sense.  You can beat presentation anxiety and use presentations as a way to enhance your career success.  Dynamic communicators present with impact.  Many people are frightened by the idea of standing in front of a group of people and doing a talk.  Unfortunately, presentations can make or break your success.  You can conquer your fear of public speaking by following the career advice in Tweet 117 in Success Tweets.  “Presentation steps: 1) Determine the message; 2) Analyze the audience; 3) Organize the information; 4) Design visuals; 5) Practice.  If you follow the career advice in these five steps – especially number 5, practice – you’ll become a confident, successful presenter and a career success.

That’s my career advice on becoming a dynamic presenter.  What do you think?  Please take a minute to share your thoughts with us in a comment.  As always, thanks for reading my daily musings on life and career success.  I really value you and appreciate you.

Bud

PS: If you haven’t already done so, please download a free copy of my popular career advice book Success Tweets and its companion piece Success Tweets Explained.  The first gives you 140 bits of career success advice tweet style — in 140 characters or less.  The second is a whopping 390 + pages of career advice explaining each of the common sense tweets in Success Tweets in detail.  Go to http://budurl.com/STExp to claim your free copy.  You’ll also start receiving my daily life and career success quotes.

PPS: I opened a membership site last September.  It’s called My Corporate Climb and is devoted to helping people create career success inside large corporations.  You can find out about the membership site by going to http://www.mycorporateclimb.

I had someone come to me and ask for help in developing her presentation skills recently.

She asked for my one best bit of advice when it comes to doing dynamite presentations.  I told her, “Practice out loud.”

Tweet 120 in my career advice book Success Tweets says, “Practice presentations.  You can control your nerves by practicing out loud.  The more you practice, the less afraid you’ll be.”  I think that practicing your presentations – out loud – is the most important presentation success tip.   Here’s why I think it is really important to practice your presentations out loud.

Practicing your presentations out loud…

• Calms your nerves.  When you practice several times, the presentation is familiar and comfortable to you.  This makes you less nervous.
• Helps you edit your talk for impact.  There is nothing like saying it out loud to show you the rough spots in your presentation.  Once you identify these rough spots, you can correct them before you’re in front of an audience.
• Helps you get better.  The more times you repeat a talk out loud, the better it gets.  It’s almost impossible to be over-prepared.  Practice does indeed make perfect.

These three reasons should convince you that it’s important to practice your talk out loud.  Yet, I am always amazed that so many people don’t take the time to practice.  They have some great excuses…

• It takes too much time.
• I know what I’m going to say, I don’t need to practice.
• I feel foolish talking to myself.
• I won’t get any better.
• I’ve done this talk a million times, I don’t need to practice.

And I say, “WRONG!!!”

Practice is the main ingredient of any successful presentation, not funny slides and animation – practice.

Thomas Edison is famous for saying, “Many people miss opportunity because it comes dressed in overalls and looks like work.”  I am semi-famous for saying, “Most people know the right thing to do in most situations, their common sense tells them.  They don’t use their common sense for a bunch of bogus reasons.”

Practicing your presentations out loud is common sense.  Don’t come up with bogus reasons for not practicing your presentations out loud.  There aren’t any.  The career success advice here is simple.  If you want to become a dynamic communicator, and create the life and career success you want and deserve, you have to practice your talks – out loud.

The career success coach point here is simple common sense.  If you want to be able to deliver dynamic presentations, you have to follow the career advice in Tweet 120 in Success Tweets.  “Practice presentations.  You can control your nerves by practicing out loud.  The more you practice, the less afraid you’ll be.”  Besides controlling your nerves, you’ll get better each time you practice.  Trust me on this one, time spent practicing a presentation is time well spent.

That’s my career advice on becoming a dynamic presenter.  What do you think?  Please take a minute to share your thoughts with – and your presentation horror stories and triumphs – in a comment.  As always, thanks for reading my daily musings on life and career success.  I really appreciate you.

Bud

PS: If you haven’t already done so, please download a free copy of my popular career advice book Success Tweets and its companion piece Success Tweets Explained.  The first gives you 140 bits of career success advice tweet style — in 140 characters or less.  The second is a whopping 390 + pages of career advice explaining each of the common sense tweets in Success Tweets in detail.  Go to http://budurl.com/STExp to claim your free copy.  You’ll also start receiving my daily life and career success quotes.

PPS: I opened a membership site on September 1.  It’s called My Corporate Climb and is devoted to helping people create career success inside large corporations.  To celebrate the grand opening, I’m giving away a new career advice book I’ve written called I Want YOU…To Succeed in Your Corporate Climb.  You can find out about the membership site and get the career advice in I Want YOU… for free by going to http://www.mycorporateclimb.

As I mentioned yesterday, I recently launched a career advice membership site called My Corporate Climb.  It is dedicated to helping people create career success while working for a large – or medium or small – company.  The common sense, practical career advice inside the site is also helpful for people who work in non profit and government organizations.

The site covers seven keys to corporate career success:

1. Clarify the purpose and direction for your corporate career success.
2. Commit to taking personal responsibility for creating your corporate career success.
3. Build unshakeable self confidence.
4. Become a high performer.
5. Create positive personal impact.
6. Become a dynamic communicator.
7. Build solid, lasting mutually beneficial relationships.

Today, I’d like to offer some corporate career success advice on becoming a dynamic communicator.  All dynamic communicators are highly skilled public speakers and presenters.  But fear of public speaking is an affliction that is all too common in the corporate world.  Many people have conquered their fear of public speaking and have gone on to become dynamic speakers and a career success by joining Toastmasters International – a service organization dedicated to helping people learn to speak well in public.

I have done workshops for Toastmasters groups all over the country.  I always enjoy these workshops because I am dealing with a highly motivated group of people.  All of the Toastmasters I have met are interested in building their corporate career success.

Here are the Toastmasters 10 tips for successful public speaking.  Read closely, this is great career advice…

1. Know the room. Be familiar with the place in which you will speak. Arrive early, walk around the speaking area and practice using the microphone and any visual aids.
2. Know the audience. Greet some of the audience as they arrive. It’s easier to speak to a group of friends than to a group of strangers.
3. Know your material. If you’re not familiar with your material or are uncomfortable with it, your nervousness will increase. Practice your speech and revise it if necessary.
4. Relax. Ease tension by doing exercises.
5. Visualize yourself giving your speech. Imagine yourself speaking, your voice loud, clear, and assured. When you visualize yourself as successful, you will be successful.
6. Realize that people want you to succeed. Audiences want you to be interesting, stimulating, informative, and entertaining. They don’t want you to fail.
7. Don’t apologize. If you mention your nervousness or apologize for any problems you think you have with your speech, you may be calling the audience’s attention to something they hadn’t noticed. Keep silent.
8. Concentrate on the message — not the medium. Focus your attention away from your own anxieties, and outwardly toward your message and your audience. Your nervousness will dissipate.
9. Turn nervousness into positive energy. Harness your nervous energy and transform it into vitality and enthusiasm.
10. Gain experience. Experience builds confidence, which is the key to effective speaking. A Toastmasters club can provide the experience you need.

The career success coach point here is simple common sense.  If you want to create the corporate career success you want and deserve, you need to become a dynamic communicator – in conversation, writing and presenting.  The Toastmasters International 10 tips for successful public speaking are a great place to begin your journey to becoming a dynamic presenter.  Joining and participating in a local Toastmasters chapter is the next logical step.  You can conquer your fear of public speaking.  You can even become a great public speaker – but like anything else when it comes to corporate career success, you have to work at it.

That’s my career advice on becoming a dynamic presenter.  What do you think?  Please take a minute to share your thoughts with us in a comment.  As always, thanks for reading my daily musings on life and career success. I value you and I appreciate you.

Bud

PS: If you haven’t already done so, you can download a free copy of my latest career success book Success Tweets Explained.  It’s a whopping 390 + pages of career advice explaining each of the common sense tweets in Success Tweets in detail.  Go to http://budurl.com/STExp to claim your free copy.  You’ll also start receiving my daily life and career success quotes.

PPS: I opened my new membership site on September 1.  It’s called My Corporate Climb and is devoted to helping people create career success inside large corporations.  To celebrate the grand opening, I’m giving away a new career advice book I’ve written called I Want YOU…To Succeed in Your Corporate Climb.  You can find out about the membership site and get the career advice in I Want YOU… for free by going to http://www.mycorporateclimb.com.

I’m at Penn State today.  I received my degree from here 39 years ago almost to the day.  I graduated on March 25 1972.  Time flies.  I’m doing a talk on life and career success tonight for my Sigma Nu fraternity brothers.

I just saw a great quote from Abraham Lincoln on Twitter. “If I had eight hours to chop down a tree, I’d spend six of them sharpening my axe.”  This quote goes directly to the heart of the importance of preparation, and reminds me of the career advice on making great presentations in tweets 119 and 120 in my career success book Success Tweets.

Success Tweet 119 – “Discipline yourself to prepare for presentations.  Practice out loud until you are totally in sync with what you’re going to say.”

Success Tweet 120 – “Practice presentations.  You can control your nerves by practicing out loud.  The more you practice, the less afraid you’ll be.”

Here’s a recap of why I think it is really important to practice your presentations out loud.

Practicing your presentations out loud…

• Calms your nerves.  When you practice several times, the presentation is familiar and comfortable to you.  This makes you less nervous.
• Helps you edit your talk for impact.  There is nothing like saying it out loud to show you the rough spots in your presentation.  Once you identify these rough spots, you can correct them before you’re in front of an audience.
• Helps you get better.  The more times you repeat a talk out loud, the better it gets.  It’s almost impossible to be over prepared.  Practice does indeed make perfect.

These three reasons should convince you that it’s important to practice your talk out loud.  Yet, I am always amazed that so many people don’t take the time to practice.  They have some great excuses…

• It takes too much time.
• I know what I’m going to say, I don’t need to practice.
• I feel foolish talking to myself.
• I won’t get any better.
• I’ve done this talk a million times, I don’t need to practice.

And I say, “WRONG!!!” 

As Abe Lincoln pointed out in his advice about chopping down a tree, practice is the main ingredient of any successful presentation – not funny slides and animation – practice. 

Thomas Edison is famous for saying, “Many people miss opportunity because it comes dressed in overalls and looks like work.”  I am semi famous for saying, “Most people know the right thing to do in most situations, their common sense tells them.  They don’t use their common sense for a bunch of bogus reasons.” 

So don’t come up with bogus reasons for not practicing your presentations out loud.  If you want to become a dynamic communicator, and create the life and career success you want and deserve, you have to practice your talks – out loud.  That’s some of the most important career advice I can give you when it comes to becoming a dynamic comunicator.

The common sense career success coach point here is simple.  If you want to be able to deliver dynamic presentations you have to follow the career advice in Tweets 119 and 120 in Success Tweets.  “Discipline yourself to prepare for presentations.  Practice out loud until you are totally in sync with what you’re going to say.”  “Practice presentations.  You can control your nerves by practicing out loud.  The more you practice, the less afraid you’ll be.”  Besides controlling your nerves, you’ll get better each time you practice.  Trust me on this one, time spent practicing a presentation is time well spent and will enhance your chances of creating the life and career success you want and deserve.

That’s my take on the career advice embodied in Abraham Lincoln’s thoughts on the importance of preparation – whether for cutting down a tree, or making a presentation.  “If I had eight hours to chop down a tree, I’d spend six of them sharpening my axe.”  What do you think?  Please take a minute to share your thoughts with us in a comment.  As always, thanks for reading my thoughts on life and career success.  I value you and your input.

Bud

If you’ve been reading lately, you know that I’m doing a series of blog posts that further explain the career advice in Success Tweets: 140 Bits of Common Sense Career Success Advice, All in 140 Characters or Less, my latest career success coach book.  I’m going to be sorry when this series is finished.  I hope you’re enjoying reading it as much as I’m enjoying writing it. 
 
Success Tweets has gone into its third printing.  That really pleases me.  It has become a greater success than I thought it would be.  I really appreciate your support.  You can pick up a copy at your local bookstore or at Amazon.com.  Better yet, you can download it for free at www.SuccessTweets.com. 

Today’s career advice comes from Success Tweet 120…

Practice presentations.  You can control your nerves by practicing out loud.  The more you practice, the less afraid you’ll be.

By now it should be pretty clear that I think that practicing your presentations – out loud – is the most important presentation success tip.  I’ve mentioned practice in the last five success tweets.  Success Tweet 118 ends with three pieces of career advice on delivering dynamite presentations: Practice, Practice, Practice.

Here’s a recap of why I think it is really important to practice your presentations out loud.

Practicing your presentations out loud…

• Calms your nerves.  When you practice several times, the presentation is familiar and comfortable to you.  This makes you less nervous.
• Helps you edit your talk for impact.  There is nothing like saying it out loud to show you the rough spots in your presentation.  Once you identify these rough spots, you can correct them before you’re in front of an audience.
• Helps you get better.  The more times you repeat a talk out loud, the better it gets.  It’s almost impossible to be over prepared.  Practice does indeed make perfect.

These three reasons should convince you that it’s important to practice your talk out loud. 

Yet, I am always amazed that so many people don’t take the time to practice.  They have some great excuses…

• It takes too much time.
• I know what I’m going to say, I don’t need to practice.
• I feel foolish talking to myself.
• I won’t get any better.
• I’ve done this talk a million times, I don’t need to practice.

And I say, “WRONG!!!” 

Practice is the main ingredient of any successful presentation – not funny slides and animation – practice.  And it is the thing that many people refuse to do.  I don’t get it.

The common sense career success advice here is simple.  If you want deliver a great presentation, you need to practice it out loud.

Thomas Edison is famous for saying, “Many people miss opportunity because it comes dressed in overalls and looks like work.”  I am semi famous for saying, “Most people know the right thing to do in most situations, their common sense tells them.  They don’t use their common sense for a bunch of bogus reasons.” 

So don’t come up with bogus reasons for not practicing your presentations out loud.  If you want to become a dynamic communicator, and create the life and career success you want and deserve, you have to practice your talks – out loud.  That’s some of the most important career advice I can give you.

The common sense career success coach point here is simple.  If you want to deliever dynamic presentations you have to follow the career advice in Tweet 120 in Success Tweets.  “Practice presentations.  You can control your nerves by practicing out loud.  The more you practice, the less afraid you’ll be.”  Besides controlling your nerves, you’ll get better each time you practice.  Trust me on this career advice; time spent practicing a presentation is time well spent.

That’s my take on the career advice in Success Tweet 120.  What’s yours?  Please leave a comment sharing your thoughts with us.  As always, thanks for reading – and commenting.

Bud

I’m continuing my series of blog posts that further explain the career advice in Success Tweets: 140 Bits of Common Sense Career Success Advice, All in 140 Characters or Less, my latest career success coach book.  I’m going to be sorry when this series is finished.  I hope you’re enjoying reading it as much as I’m enjoying writing it. 
 
Success Tweets has gone into its third printing.  That really pleases me.  It has become a greater success than I thought it would be.  I really appreciate your support.  You can pick up a copy at your local bookstore or at Amazon.com.  Better yet, you can download it for free at www.SuccessTweets.com. 

Today’s career advice comes from Success Tweet 119…

Discipline yourself to prepare for presentations.  Practice out loud until you are totally in sync with that you’re going to say.

Many people fear making presentations.  That’s why they’re not very good at them.  I subscribe to James Malinchak’s ezine.  It’s always full of interesting anecdotes.  A couple of years ago, James told a very interesting story about a conversation he had with Michael Jordan.  He posed the following scenario to Michael…

It’s Game 7 of the NBA Finals and your team is playing on the road at your opponents place. There’s 00:01 second left on the clock and your team is losing by 1 point. You’re at the free-throw line to shoot two shots.  This is literally win or lose time, and the ball is in your hands. If you make both free throws, your team wins their first ever championship. If you miss both, your team loses the championship.  How would you feel?”

Michael Jordan’s reponse…

That’s easy! That situation wouldn’t bother me because I would have already disciplined myself to make sure I had already prepared for success in that, or any other situation!
 
James went on to say…

Not the answer I was expecting, but it’s very profound when you think about those two words that most would rather simply skim over: 1) Disciplined; and 2) Prepared.  The more I thought about those two words, the more I began to realize just how important they are for becoming a succsessful speaker, author, trainer or coach.  Most people are not disciplined to prepare themselves for success.

James is on to something here.  Disciplined preparation is great career advce.  It is the key to not only becoming a dynamic communicator and great presenter.  it is the key to creating the life and career success you want and deserve. 

In the post on Success Tweet 118, I shared the five step model of presentation success that I teach my career success coach clients.  The fifth point is “practice, practice, practice.” 

I suggest not just practicine your talk, but practicing it out loud using your visuals.  Do this as many times as it takes to become 100% comfortable with what you are going to say and how you are going to say it.  Pay attention here.  This is important career success advice.

When I say this to my career success coach clients, I am often met with frowns and a lot of excuses about not having the time to do the kind of preparation I suggest. 

And that’s why many people suck at presenting.  In Michael Jordan and James Malinchak’s words, they don’t have the personal discipline to prepare for a successful presentation.  Without disciplined preparation it’s basically impossible to do a good presentation.  If you can’t good presentations, you’ll never create the life and career success you want. 

Cathy and I were in Florida last year to celebrate our niece’s wedding.  Cathy was hosting a bridesmaid luncheon.  The night before the luncheon, she practiced the welcoming talk she was going to give at the luncheon at least five times. 

And you know what?  It got better every time she practiced it.  She practiced one more time the morning of the luncheon, and she had it down cold.  She disciplined herself to prepare for her talk.  She was ready to do it.  And she gave a killer talk.  Good for her.

Cathy often accompanies me when I travel.  If I am doing a talk the next day, she knows my ritual before going to bed.  I will practice my talk – out loud – at least twice, or as many times as it takes for me to feel that I have it perfected.  It takes a little bit of time to practice like this, but the audience applause and, more important, my feeling of satisfaction after delivering a great talk are worth it.

The common sense career success coach point here is simple.  Successful people are dynamic communicators.  Dynamic communicators are good presenters.  They follow the career advice in Tweet 119 in Success Tweets.  “Discipline yourself to prepare for presentations.  Practice out loud until you are totally in sync with that you’re going to say.”  As Michael Jordan and James Malinchak point out, disciplined preparation is a key to success in any endeavor – from basketball to business.  Disciplined preparation is especially important to becoming a great presenter.  If you want to become a great presenter discipline yourself to prepare for your talks by practicing – out loud and with your visuals – until you are totally in sync with what you are going to say and how you are going to say it.

That’s my take on the career advice in Success Tweet 119 and on disciplined preparation and becoming a great presenter.  What’s yours?  Please leave a comment.  Share your presentation victories and horror stories with us.  We can all learn from, and help, one another.  As always, thanks for reading.

Bud

If you’ve been reading lately, you know that I’m doing a series of blog posts that further explain the career advice in Success Tweets: 140 Bits of Common Sense Career Success Advice, All in 140 Characters or Less, my latest career success coach book.  I’m going to be sorry when this series is finished.  I hope you’re enjoying reading it as much as I’m enjoying writing it. 
 
Success Tweets has gone into its third printing.  That really pleases me.  It has become a greater success than I thought it would be.  I really appreciate your support.  You can pick up a copy at your local bookstore or at Amazon.com.  Better yet, you can download it for free at www.SuccessTweets.com. 

Today’s career advice comes from Success Tweet 118…

Presentations are easy to create.  Write your closing first, your opening next.  Then fill in the content.  Practice.  Practice.  Practice.

Writing your presentation closing first is the best presentation and career advice I can give you.

People remember two things about your talk.  How you begin and how you finish.  They really remember how you finish because that’s the last thing they hear.  You want to finish strong, reinforcing and highlighting the main points you want people to remember.  That’s one reason for writing your closing first.

Another reason for writing your closing first is because it will help you map out the rest of your content.  You’ll probably have more information than you need for any presentation you make.  If you write your closing first you can use it to help you decide what information to leave in and what to leave out of your presentation.

For example, when I do my talk “How to Create the Life and Career Success You Want and Deserve” I always end by saying something like…

And there you have it, my best advice on how to create the life and career success you want and deserve.

It comes down to Four Cs: clarity, commitment, confidence and competence.

If you want to create a successful life and career, you have to

a) Clarify the purpose and direction for your life and career.
b) Commit to taking personal responsibility for your life and career success.
c) Build unshakeable self confidence.
d) Get competent in four areas: creating positive personal impact, outstanding performance, dynamic communication and relationship building.

Hopefully, you know more about how to create the life and career success you want and deserve now than an hour ago.  But like the US Steel pencils my dad would bring home from work used to say, “Knowing is not enough.”  You’ve got to use the information you learned here today if you are going to create the life and career success you want and deserve.

As I leave you today, I want to challenge you.  I want to challenge you to take at one thing you’ve learned here today, and put it to work tomorrow.  Do the same the next day.  And the day after that.  Because remember, knowing is not enough.  You have to put your knowledge to work if you want to create the life and career success you want and deserve.

When I was writing this talk, I wrote this closing first.  I began by highliting the key points I wanted to make – in this case the 4 Cs of  career success.  Any time I was wondering if I should include a specific piece of information in the talk, I asked myself, “Does this information reinforce the point you want people to remember about this talk?”  If the answer was “yes,” I left it in.  If “no,” I took it out.

OK, got it about writing your closing first?  Good.  Now let’s talk about writing your opening second.

You want to accomplish two things in your presentation opening: 1) Capture the audience’s attention, and 2) Give them some idea of what you will be covering in your talk.

When I do my talk “How to Create the Life and Career Success You Want and Deserve” I always begin by saying something like…

Hello and thank you for coming.  Today, I want to dispel one of the biggest myths about life and career success.  And that myth is “good performance is enough to create the life and career success you want and deserve.”  Good performance, not only is not enough, it is merely the price of admission in today’s highly competitive world.

If you want to create a successful life and career, think C – no think 4 Cs…

Clarity, Commitment, Confidence and Competence.

If you want to create the life and career success you want and deserve, you have to:

a) Clarify the purpose and direction for your life and career.
b) Commit to taking personal responsibility for your life and career success.
c) Build unshakeable self confidence.
d) Get competent in four areas: creating positive personal impact, outstanding performance, dynamic communication and relationship building.

Over the next hour, I’m going to tell you more about each of these four Cs and show you how to put them to work to create the life and career success you want and deserve…

See what I mean?  I captured the audience’s attention by telling them that I was going to explode a myth about life and career success.  Then I shared the myth.  Then I outlined what I was going to come over the next hour.

This format is the golden rule of journalism: Tell them what you’re going to tell them.  Tell them.  Tell them what you’ve told them.

By writing your closing first and your opening second, you’ve done two of these, you’ve told your audience what you’re going to tell them, and you’ve recapped what you’ve told them.  Filling in the content becomes pretty simple once you’ve completed these two steps.

The common sense career success coach point here is simple.  If you want to create dynamic presentations that communicate and get you known as a high performer, follow the career advice in Tweet 118 in Success Tweets.  “Presentations are easy to create.  Write your closing first, your opening next.  Then fill in the content.  Practice.  Practice.  Practice.”  Writing your closing first gives you the direction you need to create a dynamic presentation.  Writing your opening next, helps you capture the audience’s attention and gives you an outline for creating the rest of your content.  I learned this bit of career advice early in my career – way back in 1973 — and have used it ever since.  It is powerful.  If you use it, you’ll be on your way to creating the life and career success you want and deserve.

That’s my take on the career advice in Success Tweet 118.  What’s yours?  What presentation creation tips and tricks can you share with us?  Please take a minute to share them in a comment.  As always, thanks for reading.

Bud

If you’ve been reading lately, you know that I’m doing a series of blog posts that further explain the career advice in Success Tweets: 140 Bits of Common Sense Career Success Advice, All in 140 Characters or Less, my latest career success coach book.  I’m going to be sorry when this series is finished.  I hope you’re enjoying reading it as much as I’m enjoying writing it. 
 
Success Tweets has gone into its third printing.  That really pleases me.  It has become a greater success than I thought it would be.  I really appreciate your support.  You can pick up a copy at your local bookstore or at Amazon.com.  Better yet, you can download it for free at www.SuccessTweets.com. 

Today’s career advice comes from Success Tweet 117…

Presentation steps: 1) Determine the message.  2) Analyze the audience.  3) Organize the information.  4) Design visuals.  5) Practice.

If you want to become a dynamic communicator and career success, you need to become an excellent presenter.  Presentations are an important communication tool.  Many careers have been made on the strength of one or two good presentations.

A lot of people suffer from presentation anxiety.  Public speaking can be frightening, although it doesn’t have to be.  Presenting is like any other process, there are a series of logical steps to follow.  The career advice in the five steps to effective presentations in the tweet has served me well for over 35 years.

In this post, I’ll be sharing a very condensed version of the material I cover in a three day workshop on presentations skills. 

Breaking the presentation process down into the five easily manageable steps listed in the tweet is the best way I know to get over presentation anxiety.  Let’s look at them in some detail.

1. Determine your message.
2. Analyze your audience.
3. Organize your information for impact.
4. Design supporting visuals.
5. Practice, practice, practice.

Ask yourself these questions to help you determine your message:

• What do you want or need to communicate?
• What information does the audience need?
• Why do they need it?
• At the end of the presentation, what should the audience: Understand? Remember? Do?

Determine the best way to communicate your message by analyzing your audience.  Ask yourself these questions:

• Who is the audience for this presentation?
• Why are they attending?
• What is their general attitude toward you and the topic?
• What is their knowledge level on this topic?

Use the golden rule of journalism: “Tell them what you’re going to tell them, Tell them, Tell them what you told them” to organize your information.

• Begin at the end.  Prepare your presentation ending first.  This is helpful, because it keeps you focused on where you’re going.
• Prepare your presentation beginning.  A good beginning has two things: a hook, and an outline of your talk.
• Fill in the blanks with your content.

Design visuals to support and enhance what you are saying.  Good visuals support the points you are making, create audience interest, improve audience understanding, save you time – a picture is worth a thousand words, and are memory aids

Practice, Practice, Practice.  There is an old saying, “practice makes up for a lack of talent”.  Prior to getting in front of an audience say your presentation out loud – several times.  Listen to yourself.    Consider videotaping yourself.  If you don’t have the equipment, practice in front of a mirror, or you spouse, or your dog or cat – just practice.

The common sense career success coach point here is simple.  Successful people are competent.  Dynamic communication is an important career success competency.  Dynamic communicators present with impact.  Many people are frightened by the idea of standing in front of a group of people and doing a talk.  Unfortunately, presentations can make or break your success.  You can conquer your fear of public speaking by following the career advice in Tweet 117 in Success Tweets.  “Presentation steps: 1) Determine the message.  2) Analyze the audience.  3) Organize the information.  4) Design visuals.  5) Practice.  If you follow the career advice in these five steps – especially number 5; practice – you’ll become a confident successful presenter and a career success.

That’s my take on the career advice in Success Tweet 117 and importance of developing your presentations skills.  What’s yours?  Please take few minutes to leave a comment sharing your thoughts with us.  As always, thanks for reading.

Bud