Fearless Presentations

The 5 Steps of Storytelling During a Presentation. Follow these Tips to Become a Better Storyteller.
In this episode, we cover the Five Steps of Storytelling that we have identified in our presentation skills class. These best practices will help you organize your stories better. Remember that audience members have a short attention span. Good storytelling, though, can help you capture and hold the attention of your audience. In fact, inserting better stories is a simple way to improve your presentations dramatically.

The tips on this episode can help you improve your story structure,. However, the best way to deliver a story in your presentation is to just play the video in your head. Then just tell the audience what you are seeing. Great storytelling is really just sharing your own experience with your audience. So if following these steps is a little out of your comfort zone, start by just inserting a single personal story from your own experience into your next presentation. Then try each of these tips, one at a time, in future presentations.
This final tip isn’t really one of the steps of storytelling, but it is an important part of how to tell a story. It is a good idea to practice different versions of your story. I got this from my friend Ton Antion when I interviewed him about building a personal brand. He suggested having a 30-second version, a one-minute version, and a two-minute version of every story.

By the way, I’m not saying to have three different kinds of stories. I’m suggesting that you get good at telling your stories in different ways, so the timing of your story is the right length, whether you have three minutes to speak, 30 minutes to speak, or three hours to speak. The best storytellers can condense the whole story down in time if they absolutely have to do so.

Although I had been teaching students how to tell a great story for years, I never really taught this. I’d say, “If time is short, just condense your story down.” After Tom mentioned this tip, though, I began to pay attention to the look on my student’s faces when I said this. I’d sometimes see a little confusion. So we actually started practicing this in class. It has been a big help. In fact, we sometimes find that a well-worded 30-second story can be more impactful than a longer one. Try it yourself and see!
Show Notes: How to Tell a Good Story in a Presentation in 5 Simple Steps (https://www.fearlesspresentations.com/the-5-steps-of-storytelling-how-to-tell-a-great-story/)

This week is part 2 of a 2-part series on public speaking fear. Last week, I showed you where this fear comes from. We also cover five things that people do to try to reduce the nervousness that actually causes more nervousness. This week, I first show you how to lower the risk of failure when you stand up to speak. Then, I'll cover a 4-step process to help you eliminate public speaking fear once and for all.
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The Fastest Way to Overcome Stage Fright Is to Lower the Risk of Failure.
How do you overcome the fear of public speaking? Public speaking fear is just like any other anxiety in that the more that is unknown or the bigger the threat, the greater the nervousness that we experience from it. So the best way to tackle this common fear is to lower the risk involved.

When we lower the unknown factors, we lower the threat, and the fear diminishes. In fact, sometimes it even goes away entirely.

Anytime you do something somewhat dangerous, your body will react. Your heart rate will increase. You may get sweaty palms or a queasy stomach. Things, like riding a bike, driving a car, flying in an airplane, or firing a handgun, are all somewhat dangerous for people without any experience doing these things.

If you’ve ever seen a four or five-year-old kid riding a bike, you can typically see the tension in the kid’s face. It’s the same with a teenager with a driver’s permit. That very first time that your plane took off and you felt that tickle in your stomach, you likely grabbed the armrests a little tighter. And police officers practice day after day to get proficient at firing their handguns because they want to be extremely confident.

The point is that fear is normal. However, if you practice in the right way, the fear will go away.
Show Notes: Public Speaking Fear (https://www.fearlesspresentations.com/fear-of-public-speaking/)

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 when I’m trying to teach something meaningful to the audience. So, in most instances, speakers use these anecdotes in training sessions or motivational speeches.

When You Use an Anecdote in a Speech, Tie the Story to the Greater Meaning of Your Presentation.

The anecdotes themselves add entertainment and humor to a speech. But when you use the story to relay a greater message, they almost have a magic quality. When you tell an anecdote in a speech, spend time at the end tying the incident back to the main point of your presentation.

When my daughter graduated from High School, a local pastor delivered her commencement address. He used a well-known anecdote in a masterful way as the start of the commencement speech. Since he was a pastor, he told the story of John the Baptist baptizing Jesus. Being a professional speaker myself, I wondered exactly how he would tie that story to a graduation ceremony.

He went on to explain how many Christians might see a “Baptism” as the ending point. However, Jesus started his public ministry at his baptism. The pastor then shared with the graduating class that many of them are likely seeing the ceremony as the end of their schooling. In reality, though, commencement means the beginning. The speaker used the anecdote really well and inspired the graduating class with the short story.

So, I thought that it might be fun to just jot down a few of the most inspirational (or just funny) short anecdotes for speeches that I have come across in my career. Perhaps you can use them in your next presentation.
For full show notes and text of each of the parables and anecdotes, visit Short Anecdotes and Parables for Speeches and Presentations
https://www.fearlesspresentations.com/short-anecdotes-for-speeches-and-parables-to-amaze-your-audience/

How do I build a million-dollar company? Better yet, how can someone build a multimillion-dollar public speaking company? Well, although I have done both of those things, I wouldn’t suggest anyone try to do what I did. I made every mistake in the book. In fact, every mistake showed me what “not to do.” Then, I’d use that lesson to get me closer to what “to do.”

By the way, the reason that I am not the best role model for building a business is that I’m pretty hard-headed. It is both a blessing and a curse. Hopefully, if you are a business owner and you are looking to grow, you can use my example to help save you time and effort. I spent 12 years putting everything back into my business before I crossed the million-dollar per year threshold. However, I was able to generate the second million dollars in less than six months after that.

Hopefully, a few of these lessons-learned can help you in your journey.

Learn from Experts Who Already Have “Fruit on the Tree.”

I was teaching a class in Boston long ago and was staying in a hotel out by Logan Airport. There were no restaurants in or around the hotel. However, the airport shuttle dropped me off in a little village that had three eating choices. One of the three was a barbeque place. Being from Texas, I’m pretty picky about my BBQ, but the line was out the door. While waiting to get a table, I began to read the press-clippings posted in the lobby.

It turns out that the owner of the BBQ joint was a Korean Doctor who came to the US to practice medicine. Shortly after he arrived, he attended a meeting where the caterers served barbeque. He loved it. A few years later, he was traveling to a different state and saw a BBQ place. Hoping to get a similar meal, he stopped in. However, he was shocked that although he had ordered the same type of meat, it tasted fantastic but totally different from what he remembered. This started a 10-year quest to travel the US collecting BBQ recipes. He experimented with Texas brisket and Tennesse pulled-pork. Then he perfected the St. Louis baby-back ribs.

When I was finally seated at a table, I ordered the brisket. I loved every mouthful. In fact, I felt like the food critic in the movie Rattatoui. The meal made me think of home. The point is that this Korean doctor didn’t invent Texas BBQ brisket. He just traveled to Texas and learned how to do it properly from someone who was already an expert.

That is what I did as well.

You Must Invest Time and Resources into Your Craft to Become the Expert.

For those of you who don’t know, my college degree is in the Oil & Gas industry. My first big break was with Atlantic Richfield as an intern. However, at the end of the summer, I had to give a presentation and I totally bombed it. I hated public speaking and knew I needed help. So I read books, attended Toastmaster, and took presentation classes. Nothing really seemed to work, though. That is until I came across an expert in the industry.

Eventually, I found a professional speaker named Mary Ann Smith who was offering classes to the general public. The fee that she was charging for a seat in her class was about what I made in a month. I was desperate, though. I had already tried so many things and nothing worked. But this coach had built a company that was generating about a half-million dollars in income in a city of about 89,000 people.

For full show notes, visit How I Built a Multimillion-Dollar Speaking Business
https://www.fearlesspresentations.com/how-i-built-a-multimillion-dollar-speaking-company/

The last few weeks I've been traveling around delivering a series of in-person training sessions all over the world. And I noticed that when I'm delivering this training in major urban areas like Washington DC, Chicago, New York, and the like, inevitably, my client will turn on a Teams meeting or Zoom meeting as I'm setting up.
In many of these cities, coming into the office is still somewhat optional. These poor meeting organizers are trying to include virtual team members in their training sessions as well.
So, this week, I want to go back and review a few tips we came up with during the pandemic that help make instructor-led virtual training sessions more interactive and meaningful. Then, next week, I'll show you how to best organize a hybrid meeting where some people are in-person and some are virtual.
Virtual, instructor-led training is here to stay. 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 addition, I’ll start with exactly what virtual instructor-led” training is and how it is different from other types of training.
Virtual Instructor-Led Training Tools and Tips.

In this episode, we cover a few tips and best practices for your virtual training sessions. The closer you stick to these guidelines, the better your training sessions will be.

Just as an FYI, though... These are tools and tips for virtual training sessions. If you are organizing a virtual staff meeting or just need to “get your team on the same page,” you only need one tip. Keep the virtual meeting short. Virtual staff meetings should take 15 minutes to 30 minutes — tops. The moment you cross that 30-minute mark, retention, and morale both go down exponentially.

With that being said, if you are teaching or training a group over Zoom or Teams, these tips can help you increase retention and morale.
Show Notes: Best Practices and Tips for Virtual Instructor-Led Training