How to Develop Winning Presentations with Andrew Griffiths

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Welcome back to the Business Systems Summit, and in this session we're going to be chatting with a very good friend of mine, Andrew Griffiths. He's a little bit of a legend in the world of small business, having authored numerous best-selling books and speaks around the globe. In fact, whenever I chat with him, he's always on the road, and I think he spends more time traveling the world for speaking engagements than he probably spends at home. He's definitely one of the nicest guys that you'll ever meet, and I think that's one of the reasons the media seems to love him as well. He's been covered in all different types of media, from radio to being seen in newspapers and on TV. He's just excellent at a lot of different disciplines. One area where he's really strong, obviously, is to do with the way that he presents and speaks as well. I had him personally coach me through as I prepared my TEDx talk on systems. He was one of the people that gave me some real key insights to make, make sure that that message connects. And that's why when we were talking about what he would teach for the Business Systems Summit, and he suggested, well, I've got this 10-step process process for developing presentations that really command attention and engage the audience. I thought, well, that would be perfect for him to teach. He's going to take us through this process that he uses whenever he's delivering any sort of presentation. It's with great pleasure that I get to welcome Andrew Griffiths to the Business Systems Summit.

G'day, David Jenyns. How are you, mate?

Fantastic. We're into the final 100 meters for the summit now. We saved one of the best till last here, AG.

Who's that?

Well, I'm chatting with Tim Reid a little bit later.

So I've got to finish quickly, right? It's awesome to be a part of this. You always do such innovative things. It's been great for me to watch your world progress with everything you're doing from authoring to your TEDx talk to everything you're doing. And we, as you say, we've known each other for a while now. We've worked on quite a few projects. It's always a joy. It's always easy for me to say absolutely, whatever you're doing, I'd love to be involved in. So thank you. Thanks for having me on board.

You're too kind. Feeling is definitely mutual. So I'll let you drive from here, and then if it's all right, I'll just chime in if I've got questions as we go.

Absolutely, mate. Absolutely. So folks, settle back. As I said, it's great to be a part of the Business Systems Summit. To me, it's such an innovative kind of an idea. Personally, I'm really, really big on systems, frameworks, and procedures, processes, but I also like to maintain creativity. And I think that sometimes we think that by having a lot of systems you exclude creativity. Everything I do is creative, whether it be teaching people to write books or whether it be teaching people to be speakers. So I have a pile of systems that I use for everything, literally for doing all of those things that I just mentioned. When it comes to being at the speaking side of things, or professional speaking, I have been a speaker for over 30 years, and I started many, many years ago as a dive instructor, of all things, teaching people how to dive. And I realized way back then that if people didn't listen to what I was saying, if they didn't get my message clearly, then it could actually be dangerous for them. It could end their life. So I learned about the importance of being able to get your message across. I've learned a lot over that time. I've presented in all kinds of forums, from teaching people bush survival to promoting Queensland and the Great Barrier Reef, to the more traditional kind of speaker where I go and talk and do TEDx talks, or, you know, talk around the world to entrepreneurial groups or whatever it is. In fact, I'm going to Iran in a few weeks to present in Tehran, of all places. So being a speaker takes you, you know, to incredible places. Now, that said, about 10 years ago, I realized that I needed a system to follow for developing my own presentations, because I might present one day, might be to a large group, you know, I might have a lunchtime presentation to 6 people in a boardroom, it might be, you know, on a webinar, it might be like in this forum. I realized that I was constantly reinventing the wheel every time I needed to present, and that just It doesn't work. So this concept of systems works so wonderfully well with speaking. So I developed this 10-step framework, which I think you probably are able to see in front of you now. And if you're not, I'll just explain what the steps are. And it's very simple. Step 1 is research, or Stage 1 is research. Stage 2 is planning. Stage 3 is setting the mood. Stage 4 is structure. Stage 5 is the visuals. Stage 6 is rehearsing. Stage 7 is refining. Stage 8 is preparing, Stage 9 is engaging, and Stage 10 is reviewing. I'm going to talk this through. I just want to make it really clear, this can be applied to any kind of presentation, from a giant presentation to the auditorium style, right through to doing a webinar, right through into a one-on-one sales delivery. How deep you want to go into each of these stages is entirely up to you, but I follow it religiously. Okay, so, and it's been incredibly successful for me and it's really helped so many of the people that I've trained on this particular framework. Please note though that what I'm going to teach in the next half an hour, 40 minutes, really is just a cut-down version. Alright, normally I teach people this over a 1-day workshop or even if you can tell from the slide deck, these are slides from a Speaker 2.0 4-day retreat that I run in Bali with my friend Bree James. So we're going to kind of go pretty quickly through it, but enough for you to be able to understand the depth of the work that I put into doing a presentation. Presentation. And I get asked all the time, you know, how I've been so successful as a speaker for so long. To be honest, it's this. It is because I do have a great system, and it's because I put a lot of work into a presentation. Now, I've done a lot of research, and I've got a lot of friends who are speakers around the world, and I guarantee those who are the atypical, you know, speaker who gets up in front of large audiences, does that stuff, they are the same. They work and put a lot of effort into getting their presentations right.

Which is quite a funny thing as well, because from the outside looking in, you see someone do something so effortlessly and you just think, "Oh, that seems like the easiest job on the planet. You just get up there and have a little bit of a talk." But it's just like a comedian when they deliver a joke. Oftentimes it feels like they're saying it and it's the first time and it's fresh and it's funny and it's spontaneous, yet so much work goes on behind the scenes and there's a real method to it.

The truth of that, David, was the fact that someone like Steve Jobs, when he was presenting, everyone would say, "God, it looks like he just gets up and just, he's just got out of bed basically and just does this amazing presentation." But anyone who knew Steve Jobs knew that he was the ultimate control freak and he would have presented it 100 times. And most great speakers are the same. Sure, it gets easier because we present more and more. You get a natural skill and ability. Yet the art of being a great speaker is you do make it look effortless and you do make it look like you just got out of bed, literally, well, maybe not out of bed, but you just walked up on stage, spoke for an hour and everyone thought you just did it straight off the cuff. And that's what having a great system will let you do, from my point of view. So yeah, it's an interesting little take, isn't it? Okay, alright, so let's start at stage 1, folks. So stage 1 for me is really, really important. Stage 1 is about research, and that's where we've got to research a lot of things. What do we have to research? Well, let's go back a step and I'm going to tell you first and foremost, things go wrong all the time as a speaker. The more research you do, the fewer the things that go wrong. So what do I mean by things go wrong? Things go wrong, you might be staying at a hotel. And so let's say you're staying at the Mercure Hotel. Is that the right one? Or whatever brand it might be. You arrive in town, you get in a taxi and say, "Take me to this venue." And they say, "Well, there's 7 of those hotels, which one do you mean?" Now that might sound silly, yet that stuff happens. You might have mistakes with the audience. There's so much room for things to go wrong as a speaker. For me, before I go anywhere near a venue, before I go anywhere near a stage, and you'll notice that the first 7 stages of this framework, before you go anywhere near a stage, I might add, which probably is a big message overall about speaking side of things, is to do your homework. So, where do I start? I start by researching my audience. You never ever get up in front of a room full of people without knowing exactly who is in the room, okay? This is vital, and it's so easy to do it this day. If you're getting paid to speak, they should be able to give you a brief of who's in the room, If you're not sure, you should always be doing your own research online just to find out who's going to be there. You know, that's the standard question. What does it matter? Well, it matters a great deal. I find how I present to a room full of women is quite different to how I present to a room full of men. Okay, you need to know what their issues are, what their challenges are, what their trials are, what their tribulations are. You need to understand your audience really, really well. There's a great TEDx talk by a guy called Matt Chen, and he's the director and producer of a TV show called Hoarders. And he talks about the key to capturing an audience is to know your audience. If you do not know your audience, all you can do is hope that you'll capture them. When you've researched them and you know who they are, everything gets easier. And again, when I normally present this in a 1 or 4-day thing, I spend an hour explaining to you some of the disasters I've had with audience that have been simply caused because I didn't do my homework. The second thing is understanding your venue. Now, some really interesting examples here. What I will share, I had the great fortune of presenting with Richard Branson in Melbourne a few years back, and I did a couple of presentations. One of my presentations, I wasn't familiar with the room, so I went the night before to the venue and had a look at the room, and it was 600 people for my presentation. And I thought, I've presented in rooms with 600 people, it'll be a big square. It wasn't a big square, it was a really long, long, long, long thin room. And it looked like the inside of an aeroplane. Now, the problem with that was that the people at the back of the room wouldn't have been able to read my presentation. The font would have been too small because I had allowed for a square room, and I learned a really, really valuable lesson. So I had the time because I went there the night before to change my presentation, and I also then introduced an aeroplane theme. So when I first got on stage, I did like the safety talk that a flight attendant does, but I did that funnily enough about how to make sure your business survives this presentation. And had a little bit of fun with that side of it there. These days we can go online, we can research what rooms look like, but we've got to know where they are. You've got to— I'm always the first one at the venue. I'll either go in the night before, or if I'm presenting later in the day, I'll be in there at 7 o'clock in the morning. I'll go to the venue, I'll find out where's the AV desk, where is the stage, how do I get on and off the stage, where are the doors, where will we be coming from. You know, you've got to know your venue. I had a really funny experience years ago where I was asked to present at a function for some businesswomen in Port Douglas, Far North Queensland. And it was very interesting because I wasn't that experienced a speaker at the time, so I didn't do my homework. So I've arrived at this restaurant around 5:30 or something like that, and I was due to start speaking at about 6. They were all pretty much blind drunk. It was just a restaurant and there were tables set up, and I was actually talking in the middle of a restaurant that was still open, and still people just walking off the street to have their dinner. So I'm at this crazy restaurant, it's filled with people, my group are blind drunk. It was ridiculously loud and there was no sound system and I asked the restaurant owner if he had a microphone and he went out the back and came out with a little kid's microphone, a Fisher-Price kind of kid's toy, and I burst out laughing and he looked at me with all seriousness and said, "Andrew, no, no, I just put fresh batteries in it." So here I am in front of these 70-odd drunken crazy ladies, a room full of people who have no idea what this lunatic is getting up and talking about. It's loud. I've got a kid's toy that I'm speaking through. It was just a disaster. All could have been avoided if I'd done my homework on the venue, the people, and probably not just turned up. Anyway, many, many stories. I've had snakes in venues. I've had blackouts in venues. I've just— you got to plan for all contingencies. So anyway, research there. And another thing that I think is really important in the research stage is what's going on locally. So for me, I'm really big— if I'm going to go to Bendigo, I want to go and I'm going to go online, find out the business, the local Chamber of Business. Or the Chamber of Commerce rather, find the local Bendigo newspaper online and read it and just try and get a feel for what's happening locally. So when I go on stage, I can actually talk with some more knowledge. I'm not an outsider. I can get up and say, "Wow, I hear there's a few things changing in Bendigo. You've got this happening, you're dealing with this change, you had this disaster recently," whatever it might be. So those 3 categories, and again, normally when I'm delivering this, we would spend a couple of hours almost talking about the research you need to do. But as a minimum, research your audience, research your venue, and research what is going on locally wherever it is that you're going to be presenting, and that will put you miles ahead of everyone else. Okay, stage number 2, you've got to plan now your presentation. So what you've got to do is you've got to take that research into consideration and start to plan your presentation. What does it mean? What is the room like? What are the problems going to be? Ah, it's really long and narrow. Okay, is my font size big enough? It's a really wide room. How I've got to make sure that I keep everyone engaged. My planning says, well, the town, they're really doing it tough. You know, they're not very happy, they're struggling. If I get up there and start doing a, "Yay, let's all be happy," kind of presentation, they're going to drag me outside and lynch me up. So you've got to say, well, okay, I've learned a lot from the research in stage 1. Stage 2 really now is about putting all of that to practice and all the logistics. How am I going to get to the venue? What time do I need to be there? All of those things, like, will I stay around longer? How will that do? Make sure that you do the planning for your presentation. Again, this is before we get anywhere near content. We're still just doing the logistics. So plan it out. And again, when I look at that, I guess it's a simple saying, what did the research tell me? The third stage of this framework and this system is simply the mood. And this is where I also like to just take a step back and go, okay, so that's really interesting. I know a little bit about the audience. I know what is going on for them. I know the challenges or the opportunity or the positivity. What is the right mood that I need to bring to this presentation? Now, I've been caught out with that in the past where I didn't really bring the right mood or the right emotion to a presentation because I hadn't done enough homework. So what do I mean by that? Let's assume that you're talking at a town that really is doing it tough, and again, you go there being quite flippant and lighthearted. You might think that it's funny, but it doesn't really engage and resonate with the audience, and then you kind of just alienate yourself more than anything else. So if it's a tough time in a town, you've got to show that you understand. You've got to show that you get them. You know, you've got to show that you're on their side, and that's got to come out in a motive way. One of the important things here is to show that you, I guess, you really do understand where they're coming from. An example that I'll use for that is if I'm ever talking to a group of small business owners, the first thing I talk about and I open with is I bought my first business when I was 18. I bought a dive shop that was 30 kilometers from the ocean. And I tell everyone, you know, I laugh, yeah, I was ahead of my time. I was waiting for sea level to rise. I bought a dive shop. I had no idea what I was doing. I didn't know anything about business. I was a commercial diver, dive instructor. But I didn't know how to run a business. I didn't know about management of stock, I didn't know how to pay wages, I didn't know how to manage a checkbook back then. I got to know my bank manager because every day he'd pop by and give me back the checks that I'd bounced the day before. It was a disaster and I came so close to going broke. It was just a long story, but I've managed to turn it around. Straight away, that shows that I understand this small business audience. I get them, okay? And that's probably the right mood to have. If I'm talking to a room full of CEOs, Well, that conversation is pointless. It doesn't have any merit, doesn't have any benefit. If I'm talking to people about writing books, so the audience is filled with prospective authors, well, then I need to make sure that I'm tailoring that. The worst thing we can be as a presenter is just have a one-size-fits-all approach to everything we're doing, and it just doesn't work. Okay, so just again, just remember that. And of course, this is a point that people do forget the details, but they'll remember your emotion. And we've got to give our audience a significant reason to listen. And that's going to come from you determining the mood of the audience. If it's positive, if it's upbeat and things are good, but you're going to help them change direction, well, that's again, that's positive. So that was stage number 3. Again, it's literally that— make sure you have the right mood for the audience, otherwise you won't catch them. And if you don't get your audience quickly and if you've got the mood wrong, then you'll never get the audience. And you know, we've all been to those kind of presentations where, you know what, the guy stands up and it just doesn't work. I saw one in Sydney once, a room full of small business owners. The speaker got up and his opening line was, "Man, it's so freaking expensive to park your Lamborghini in this city. I don't know how any of you guys do it." Now, he thought it was a bit of a joke, but it really fell flat on the audience. Another one that I saw was a speaker at a regional town, I won't name the town, and he got up and he said, "I first came here 20 years ago and it's still a hole after 20 years." and, uh, and he thought that for some reason that would be funny with the audience. And of course, there was nothing but stony silence. It is so easy to lose an audience quickly. You've got to get the mood right. The same thing applies though. It's if you're going into to do a one-on-one sales presentation, you know what I mean? You've got to determine what is your mood going to be. If you're presenting to a board of directors, if you're presenting to a group of parents at a P&T, whatever it might be, establish what the appropriate mood is. Number 4, you now you've got to start to structure your presentation. So we need to start to put it together. And again, this is a really, really big topic, but this now is where I start to figure out a little bit about, well, how am I going to open it? How am I going to— will I make a big bold statement? Will I quote a really thought-provoking statistic? Will I ask the audience a great question or even tell an engaging story? That kind of stuff, as opposed to the fails. Of opening with a joke, you know, but it falls flat. Leave that for drunken best men. Or if you get up there on stage and you start complaining about how tired you are, how jet-lagged you are, how travelled you are, people don't resonate. Or if you get up, it's all about me, or you get up and ask a question that no one can answer, or you get up and insult them and tell them that their town is a hole. But however you kind of do that, you need to say, well, how am I really going to structure this presentation? And this is really as simple as it can be. If I look at that, if you look at this diagram here, you've got to have a memorable opening. You might have 1, 2, or 3 points and stories to share, and then a call to action close. Now, there are many, many different types of structure that you can have for a presentation. This is just one example, and without kind of confusing anyone or going too deep, I use this one because it's very easy to scale it. If you look at the diagram, you can see a 30-minute, 45-minute, and a 60-minute version down the left-hand side. All it means is how many anecdotes do I tell, how many stories do I share. However you want to put your structure together is really up to you. And as I say, it's a really, really big topic to try and talk about structure, but you've got to say, well, as a bare minimum, you've got to make sure you capture them in the first minute. If you don't capture them in the first minute, you probably never will. You want to have really clear details that are leading someone, and then you want to have a really strong call to action. You want to tell them what to do. Remember, the desired outcome from us giving a presentation is we want our audience to take action. So for whatever reason, what action we want them to take— it might be we want them to think differently, it might be that we want them to buy something from us, whatever it might be, we want them to take action. So the more able we are to deliver our message in a structured way that has impact, the more likely they are to actually take that action. Now, as I say, this is just one sample. However you want to kind of put your presentation together, That's up to you. Now, David and I were talking about doing TED Talks, TEDx Talks. I did mine and my topic was Imagine if We Were 33% Less Angry, and the theme for the event was curiosity. So the brief that I got, which has been the best brief that I've ever had in my life for a presentation, was to make them laugh, make them cry, and make them think. So I broke my presentation into the first section, which is to make them laugh. The second section was to make them cry. And then the third section was to make them think. And that's exactly the structure that I followed. Remember, and I'm sure again, anyone listening to this, you've been to a presentation and you've watched a presenter who just really kind of rambles. There isn't structure that you don't know where to start or the finishes, and you don't even really know what you're supposed to do, which leaves you kind of guessing, leaves you kind of thinking, well, what do I do with this? How do I manage this? I don't even know what I'm supposed to do as an audience member. Okay, so understand that one. So we did our research, we've done our planning, we've established our mood, and we've started to establish the structure for our presentation. The next stage is another big one, and this is about getting your visuals right and PowerPoint, Keynote, whatever you want to use.

Just as a note on that, how good are your slides here? I think that's another good thing I like about your work. You're one of the best examples of your own advice. So I think even just these slides, there's a lot of things to learn from them around the single point and the great graphics. I won't steal your thunder, but I just wanted to call people's attention to it.

And thank you for that too. And you'll notice that again, the framework that we're talking here, I've had my designer design that up. It's in my Andrew Groves Enterprises branding. So every framework that I do, I invest in the framework to make sure that it looks a part of my branding. and that was even though this was for a speaker retreat in Bali, the same kind of work applies. So I think there's nothing worse than seeing a great speaker with a lousy slide deck. And I go to many, many conferences, I see many, many presentations every year, and 9 out of 10 of the presentations I see are terrible. In fact, they're worse than terrible. And the reason is that people try too hard. Because they've got 150 fonts in their system, they feel that it's necessary to use them all. You know what I mean? They break all the rules and that's why we end up with slides like this. You know what I mean? Which to me, clipart is evil and I just think anyone that uses clipart, it seriously is terrible. We've all seen these kind of slides. They just are useless, absolutely useless, and to be honest, amateurish. These slides like this are just lazy slides where all the data is just thrown in there. They're just slides full of copy, poor text, poor colors. There's so many. It's unfortunate. It's really, really easy. To find examples of terrible slides. My strategy and philosophy is really, really simple on this one. How do we get it right? And I just have a very simple set of rules here. Rule number 1: use a maximum of 2 fonts, you know, so you've got a heading font and a text font like a copy font. Number 2: only ever use high-quality images. Now I buy my images for my presentations. I don't use free images. The reason I buy them is because most people use free images so they appear time and time again. Only use high-quality, only use high-resolution images. Number 3, use more slides, say less per slide. People seem to think that they're paying per slide. That's the nice thing about Keynote. You can have a million slides and you don't pay any more for it. So rather than have 10 points on one slide, as I'm doing here to illustrate this point, I have one point per slide, and I strongly encourage people to do that kind of model. Number 4, develop your own look and feel for your slides. So you, as I've done with mine, you want them to really kind of Carry your own branding and be distinctive. Rule number 5: take the time to get your presentations right. Again, this is a part that people overlook. I spend a lot of time, I spend hours and hours and hours doing a presentation. So I'm doing a keynote for the first time on Sunday this week, and I will spend at least 16 to 18 hours getting the slide deck right. Now I'll do that because again, it might not seem that economical, but I will be doing that presentation many times in the future. So I take the time to get the slide deck right now. Rule number 6: Learn from every presentation that you watch. So every time you're sitting down and watching someone else present, you know, just make a point of going, "Wow, I really like their visuals," or, "Their visuals sucked. That was terrible." And when you see bad visuals, look at how it makes the presenter appear less professional. Okay, and of course, there's the other ones. You have a lot of presenters who have a lot of tech stuff in there that always goes wrong. Particularly if you're trying to hyperlink something with a live internet connection and a slide deck, it never works. All I've seen time and time again are presenters bumbling around with a slide presentation while 2, 3, 4, 500 people are sitting there waiting. To me, that's an insult for everyone. So I keep my slide decks really simple. I do embed videos, absolutely, I love video, but again, really, really simple. Rule number 7: Remember, your presentation is an extension of your personal brand. So your presentation says a lot about you, no different to what you're wearing, how you carry yourself, the whole lot. If you do a great presentation, you know, you're already ahead of 90% of the other speakers. So it's worth spending the time to do that. So really look long and hard at other presenters' slide decks, learn what to do and learn what not to do is really the key for that one. And a couple of little things, be smart, don't keep reinventing the wheel. So I have a look and feel here that again, that I carry through most of my slide decks every year. I'll buy new images, update them, but it'll basically stay the same. And then every 5 years I'll kind of do a major update. Okay, so that's stage number 5. So we've done our research, done our planning, stage number 2. We figured out the mood, stage number 3. Stage number 4, we put our structure together. So stage number 5 is now we can do our visuals. So we're kind of putting our slide deck together. Stage number 6 is we need to rehearse it. And that's the best way to become a truly great speaker or a ballerina. So the moral to the story here is, I've got my rough slide deck. It is not appropriate to test that out on your audience. So when I've kind of got my slide deck done, I set up the overhead projector in my kitchen and I run through my slides, and I literally go through my slide deck and start and run through it, time it. My dog sits there obediently in the chair looking at me and nodding her head when she needs to, and slowly kind of go, right, how did that work? And you've got to do that. Ultimately, like when I did my TED Talk, I think I rehearsed that and presented it at least 15 or 20 times by the time I delivered it. So, and I will never do a presentation without rehearsing it. That's what I was saying before, you know, what makes a great presenter so impressive is that they look like they're not trying. Yet every great speaker in history that I know of has been able to— that makes it look effortless— perfectionists. And they're people who have tried it and rehearsed and rehearsed and rehearsed. So stage number 7, so we've rehearsed it, now we need to refine it. And this is where we go, well, what did that rehearsal tell me? About timing, about delivery. It might look good on a slide deck, but when you're actually standing there and you're actually delivering it, you know what, that joke didn't kind of work in there, the timing of that didn't work, I got a bit stumbled, I got a bit tongue-tied on that particular point, I need to change it. So we need to be prepared to go back and refine it. Another really good tip is when you start rehearsing is to actually film it. So just set up your iPhone or your phone, whatever it might be, just record the first time you run through your presentation, because you'll see things in the recording that you won't kind of pick up. You'll notice some— if you're saying something and you don't quite believe it, your body language will show that, and that's a little bit awkward when that kind of happens. So now we need to say, okay, so we've got to refine it. What did our rehearsal tell us? Okay, it's good, they're not so good. How is your timing? Remember, if you've got a 30-minute presentation and you're rehearsing in your kitchen and it's 30 minutes, you'll go too long, because what we actually find out is when we're on stage, we actually talk about 20% slower. Generally than we do when we're actually talking in real life. If I'm doing a 30-minute presentation, I want to make sure that when I'm rehearsing, it's about 23-24 minutes, and then it will be about right. Also, you've got to allow time for the audience interaction or the audience to clap or to laugh or whatever it is. Things just take a little bit longer when you get on stage, so you've got to allow for that as well. What are the sticking points in your presentation and things that we're trying to find, and what do your instincts tell you? That was good, not so good. Now for me, When I'm actually preparing a big presentation, I will actually rehearse it and get some friends to watch. Dave and I spoke about that, you know, we did Skype hookups just to make sure that how did his presentation feel, and I do the same thing. I've got a handful of friends that I might invite over and say, "Hey, I've got a really big presentation coming up. Can I just test it out on you guys?" And people will do that. Now remember, you want to make sure they know who your audience is so they can give informed feedback, but that's the extent that I go to to make sure that I get this stuff right. It's a lot more than people probably realize. So Stage 1, we research. Stage 2, we plan. Stage 3, we got our mood right. Stage 4, we got our structure right. Stage 5, we got our visuals done. Stage 6, we rehearsed. Stage 7, we figured out what kind of wasn't working, we refined it. We get to Stage 8, which is about getting prepared to get on stage. So once again, the first 8 stages are all before we go anywhere near the stage. And that in its own right, or however you're delivering it, that says what the key to being a great presenter is. All of this prep work— everyone thinks the hard work starts on your stage. To be honest, if you've done all of that other stuff, getting on stage is the easy part. If you're a nervous speaker, for starters, if you're someone— I've got a friend of mine who takes a Valium before she goes on stage. She's a professional speaker. How crazy is that, right? So, but if you've done all these other stages, I guarantee by the time you get to stage 8, you will be so in control, so organized, so confident. You'll be really absolutely amazed at just how confident and ready you are to deliver that presentation. And so that's probably my biggest tip for anyone out there who's nervous. Now, when it comes to getting prepared, always, always, always arrive early. For me, as I said earlier, I'm always the first guy there. I don't mind it. I'll hang out, I'll help people, I'll put brochures on tables, I'll Go and get coffee for the team. I just don't care. I don't have an ego about that kind of stuff. But you know what? I like to be the first guy to give my presentation to the AV team. I like to stand on stage and look at the room now that it's got all the chairs set up. I like to really understand about the venue. Where are people going to be standing at morning tea? Where can I stand? All that kind of stuff. The worst thing is to get off a plane, be late in a taxi, rush to the presentation, fumble with a USB stick, the AV person Run on stage out of breath. It's very hard to deliver a great presentation when you do that. Always turn up. So for me, this means full energy. If I'm presenting, I don't half turn up. I'm fully turned up or not at all. Okay, so, and with the right frame of mind, so I always have a good night's sleep. I'm always energized. I'm up fresh, do a bit of exercise beforehand. My head's in the right place. All of that kind of stuff is there. Nerves are not your own enemy, folks, too. This is another thing that I always say at this stage of the game, is if you're nervous, You know what? I got told by Anthony Robbins' team. I did a 4-day boot camp with a guy called Joseph McClendon III and Joe Williams. These guys are amazing, amazing speakers. And I learned that there because I was a nervous speaker. And they said, you know, that the reality is that if you're nervous, it means you care. And the time you should be nervous is when you're not nervous. And I agree with that. I still get nervous before I do a presentation. I get nervous in an intelligent way. Where I know I can deliver, but it does still mean that I'm— instead of actually nervous, I'm more excited. I've kind of changed that kind of feeling. These are just some tips, folks. Find a friend in the audience. So if you're there beforehand because you're early, you know what I mean, make a friend, have a cup of coffee with someone who's going to be in the crowd. Then when you're actually presenting, find that person because they're your friend, and now they've got an obligation. Mention their name. I was talking to David Jenyns over coffee this morning, and he said one of the challenges he finds in his business is this. Oh, there he is, David. Now, David is obligated to nod his head furiously and to be my best friend every time I look at him. So finding a friend helps those people who do struggle a bit with nerves. Be fully present. Don't kind of be checking your phone as you're walking up on stage. Forget about everything. Forget about everything out of respect to the audience that have paid or have turned up and given up their time to listen to you. So to me, be fully present. Is all that matters here. Get yourself in a really high-energy state. Most speakers, we listen to a bit of music before. My freaking— my head music is Highway to Hell by AC/DC, which is probably not the smartest one when you think about it. And another little tip there, alcohol is not your friend. Professional speakers, good speakers, do not drink before they go on stage, and they rarely drink afterwards from my perspective. So anyway, that's all there. Stage number 8 there is about getting yourself in the right state of mind before you get on stage. And again, sorry folks, I've just got to reiterate I normally spend hours talking about that stuff. So this is for the sake of the Business Systems Summit, we're really just giving you the cut-down version of it. I'm pretty sure you're kind of getting the point that I'm talking about here. Stage number 9, and this one of course is now you're on stage. And the first thing I'm going to say there is you want to— you got to believe that everyone wants you to succeed. We've all seen a speaker bomb and it's hard to watch. It's really, really hard to watch. The audience doesn't want to see that. It's like a train wreck, okay? They want to see you succeed. They want to know that you're kicking ass. They want to know that you're doing a fantastic job. They are on your side when you get on that stage. It is entirely up to you to lose them. Okay, so you've already got them, just don't lose them. So that's where you've got to make those first few minutes count. Your body language has to be strong. You know, you've got to be definitive. I get up on stage, if there's a lectern and I've got notes or books or something, I go there, I just wait a minute— not a minute, but I wait a few seconds. I'm going to make sure that I'm right. Then I normally walk out from behind the lectern, clap my hands, look around at everyone and say, "G'day, how are you going, folks?" and kind of really own that stage. Now, you can do the same if you're not comfortable getting out from behind the lectern or whatever the forum, but you've got to do it in your own pace. Do not be rushed. It's like a lot of speakers get up and they're out of breath because they're nervous, so they don't stop and take a big breath, so they're out of breath for the whole presentation. And they start to pant like a Labrador throughout the thing, and of course it's a bit distracting for the audience. And so just understand body language, you know, look into the white or the yellow of their eyes. Eye contact is really important. And of course another one there is about learning to use the power of the pause. And so as speakers, I know it feels unnatural, but the way that you engage an audience is to talk slower, is to use your voice, to have inflection, to be able to talk loudly, to be able to talk quietly, to talk faster than to talk slower. And a pause. Great speakers do that. And again, when you're starting out, it feels really unnatural, and I struggle with it, but I do it naturally now. And I tell you what, you really do. It's like telling stories. You've got to tell lots and lots of stories, and you've got to be really, really good at telling stories. Only way you're going to get good at telling stories is to tell them, practice them, get it wrong. You know, the stories we tell worst are generally our own stories because we don't think anyone cares, but that's all people care about. I have people come up to me all the time and say, "Oh, I heard you speak 10 years ago. I remember you told that story about the dive shop, and you told that story about getting attacked by an octopus, or you told that story about this." I go, "Oh, do you remember the framework that I gave you?" "No, no, I don't remember that, but I remember your stories." This is all about engaging. Never lose your cool on stage. My motto is, "I am the easiest speaker to work with in the world." No matter what happens, and seriously, I had stages collapse on me and I have kept talking as the stage has come down. And everyone stood up and gave me this huge round of applause. I've had people have heart attacks in the venue. I've had data projectors burst into flames on the roof of a building. I've had laptops burst into flames. Literally, I've had cameras fall off. You name it. I literally have had snakes in an outdoor event at night that I was emceeing, and I'm watching these snakes moving through the audience's feet, and I'm going, "Oh my—" You name it, I've had it. And my philosophy is no matter what happens, I never ever lose my cool. You got to be the coolest head in the room when you're the speaker. And it's hilarious. I'm going to tell you a funny little story there. I was at a conference in Cairns many, many years ago, and there was probably 300 of us. And one of the MC was a guy, Warren, amazing MC. And all of a sudden he's at the front and all the lights go out in the room. This was completely unrehearsed and not set up. It just happened. And he said, okay, Ron, no one panic. I want everyone just to put your hands up in the air and wave them around furiously. And you can just tell by the sound that everyone's got their hands up in the air waving them around furiously, and the lights came back on. And he said, see, that's just to prove my point that many hands make lights work. And of course, it was very corny, and I laughed about it. I've used the exact same joke with the exact same act at an event that I was emceeing. And you kind of— You just don't know what can go wrong, will go wrong. I was at an event where the event organizers were arrested by the police halfway through my presentation in front of everyone. So, you know, what do you do? You just keep talking. That's, that's been my philosophy. Don't take yourself too seriously as a speaker. I say to everyone, I became a good speaker when I stopped trying to be one. And I don't know about you, David, but I used to drive myself a little bit crazy with my OCD. But I think you can only do that when you've done the groundwork, when you know what to do. So, you know, you've done your 10,000 hours kind of concept to master it. That's when you get a whole lot better by saying, okay, I've done all that, I know what to do, I know what to do in any situation. Now I'm just going to relax, and my key is to be authentic as a speaker and get my message across. So then stage number 10. So we've done— so stage 1, we research. Stage 2, we do our planning for it. Stage 3, we've got our mood right. Stage 4, We got our structure right. Stage 5, we got an awesome slide deck. Stage 6, we rehearsed in front of the dog, the goldfish, and the cat, and they loved it. Stage 7, we refined it. The goldfish wasn't quite trusting in what we were saying. Stage 8, we prepared to go on stage, made sure we turned up fully ready to get on stage, fully energized, all that kind of stuff. Stage 9, we engage the audience. Great eye contact, great energy. You know, we listen, we talk authentically, we tell great stories. Stage number 10, we have to review what we've done. And this is something I do at the end of every single presentation, is I review it. You'll learn from what you get right and what you get wrong. And you know what, you've got to get it wrong. If every presentation you get up and go, "Well, I nailed it," you know what, you're not going to be a speaker for very long, okay? Because you've got to get it wrong, you've got to have blunders, you've got to have mistakes, because that means you're trying different stuff. And if you're not trying different stuff, you're playing safe, and they're the speakers that that have very short careers. So you've got to review your presentation. So I do it the day that I've delivered it. Doesn't matter whether it's a nighttime presentation, I'll go back to my room and I'll review it. It's a morning presentation, I'll find an hour somewhere quiet and I'll play it back in my mind. What worked, what didn't work. This is it, Kenny. You know, you've got to commit to constant, never-ending improvement as a speaker. You've got to learn from every other speaker that you get in front of. Every speaker, every webinar, every TED Talk. Every video you watch of someone speaking, everything you're doing is an opportunity to learn, and that's why that particular kind of part of the framework is so important. Always ask for feedback, but again, just be careful about the feedback. You get 3 or 4 people saying the same thing, then it's good. If one person comes up and says something, you know, listen to it, but don't necessarily change your entire world because of what one person says. And of course, the more you can present wherever you can, whenever you can, the better speaker you're going to become. So that's the moral to the story. This is my framework, and I'm sure you can see why I could easily deliver this over the space of days and even a year-long coaching program for some people, because it's so comprehensive. But most people think about speaking as, okay, well, I'll do a slide deck and I'll get up on stage. But my point here again goes back— we don't even think about getting on the stage till stage 8. We don't even get on the stage until stage number 9. It is all the stages in this system where all of the good stuff happens. The research stage is where the real magic happens. Understanding number 2, what you're going to do with that research, so you really plan it out, so you're going to be way ahead of everyone else again. Stage number 3, make sure you get your mood right. Is this the appropriate mood to deliver this message? You know, and if it's not, what is the appropriate mood? Stage number 4— sorry, let me just go back to that mood one. You know, like last year I presented on to a group of family lawyers, and my topic was 7 strategies to stay sane when it feels like the world is going crazy. That is not a topic for me to get up there and be flippin' about. You know, these people are really, really doing it tough, and I needed to get up there and I needed to really share. I had to be very open and vulnerable and authentic with them. You know, it wasn't a, "Hey, yeah, life's going to be great" presentation. Mood is a really important one. It's very easy to get it wrong. Stage number 4 is structure. Again, you know, make sure you figure out how you're going to structure your presentation. Stage 5, just do awesome visuals. Keep it simple. Follow those rules. Tools, 2 slides, big images, 1 slide per message, simple as that. Stage 6, rehearse to whoever will listen and record it. And then number 7, refine it. Stage 8, get yourself into the best physical and mental state, turn up fresh, energized, fully rehearsed, fully ready to go, a copy of your presentation, printed out copy of your presentation. Don't drink too much coffee if it makes you jittery, certainly don't drink before you present. Make sure you're dressed so that you feel fantastic, all those kind of things. I used to buy a new shirt before I did every keynote presentation because it made me feel better. It made me feel more confident, those kind of things. Stage number 9, get on that stage and own it. Take your time, make sure you get yourself ready, walk out on stage, make a move and own that, and then just be authentic. Talk from the heart, look at every single person in that room, have fun, tell stories, laugh at yourself. You know, do that kind of stuff. And then stage number 10 is to review every single presentation you deliver and every single presentation you see and say, how can I make my presentations better based on what I've just seen? So this framework will work every time. Again, whether you're presenting to 2 people or 2,000 people, trust me. And I've taught everyone how to use this, from priests to company CEOs to school teachers to TED Talkers to to scientists, to politicians, to you name it. It's been extraordinary that the, the people who have actually done a program with me on learning this framework, it just reinforces to me that it really does work.

I think what I love about going through this process is also it kind of demystifies a lot of things when you, again, you're looking from the outside in and something seems so seemingly easy and then understanding the process behind it and the work that goes in and you really articulated those steps. So they're really, really clearly applicable. And it's also— I love the idea of a framework. Once you get the, the solid framework in place, it can actually be applied to a whole bunch of different things. In the tail end here, just wanted to say a big thank you for being so generous with this, sharing it. I know it's something normally that you have guests come and, you know, pay to go to a 2-day workshop with you to go through this process where it's something that you've just very freely shared. And that's something I can echo and why I was quite— when I said right up front, you've got to be one of the nicest guys that I know. It goes to show you're just very transparent and very keen to help. So if people want to find out a little bit more about you and what you're doing and maybe even join in with some of your programs, where's the best place for them to head? Really easy, mate. Just www.andrewgriffiths.com.au.

And that's all roads lead there. And I would say, David, if I can also just one thing quickly in there. You're so right. It's like for me, whether it's teaching someone to write a book or teach this, often it looks effortless or it's simple, isn't it? You know, like the speaker gets up or the person writes the book and we assume they've just spent many a night behind a computer writing, but there's always so much to it. Yet when someone breaks it down, this is, I guess, the whole essence of your business, right? Is that when you've got a great system, it's actually not as hard and that's And the point I want to make is we often think that systems are just for business systems in an office, or, you know, like, this is how we manage our invoicing. My big thing is that it works equally as well to put a great system into place for a creative kind of task as it does for perhaps an administrative task as well. And I know that that's something that you do a lot of, both of those kinds of things. So that's, I guess, my key message as well.

Yeah, and I think the counterintuitive insight there is thinking that systems and processes reduce the creativity in a particular process, but it's actually the reverse is true. Because when you systemize and process certain things that just should happen consistently, what that does is it frees your mind up to not have to worry about those little details because you go, hey, that's taken care of. and now that gives the space in your brain to be creative, to innovate, to come up with all of the ideas. And that's the whole idea and premise behind the Business Systems Summit is the business owner gets so caught up in the doing that they haven't created enough space for that creativity. So if you start to systemize different parts of the business, it enables the business owner to remove themselves from the day-to-day operations and then start to look at the business from the outside looking in. and then it becomes much easier for them to innovate and come up with those creative ideas. But it's only one of those things that you have to experience it for yourself, and then you see that breakthrough, and then I believe everybody becomes obsessed with systems once they have had that breakthrough.

Now you may be going a little bit too far, but I'm with you. We will change the world one step at a time. I need some t-shirts.

I love systems. Or something like that.

Then you need people who are going to wear them. Thanks for having me on the summit, mate, and it's an absolute pleasure to have been able to share this, David, with your audience, and I hope people got value or get value out of this as well. And just try it, try it with the next time you do a presentation and just see what a difference it makes to what you actually deliver and the results that you get from your audience. I think people will be really surprised. Perfect.

And I'll put all of your contact details. Once again, thank you, Andrew, and we'll continue with the Business Systems Summit.

Thank you, David. You've just been listening to the System Hub Podcast. Remember, we've documented this system for you so you can literally swipe and deploy it within your business. Head to www.systemhub.com/podcast to download it now.