How to be a confident presenter 🗣️ | Andrea Pacini

I tried, started many projects and all of them failed. Those failures were useful because in that process I realized that there are so many great ideas that fail. They fail not because of the ideas themselves, but just because of the way they are presented. That's why my mission today is to stop great ideas from failing just because of the way they're presented. My vision is to help hundreds of thousands of business leaders inspire their audiences, increase their influence, and make a positive impact in the world.

This week's Millennial Master is Andrea Pacini, founder of Ideas On Stage and author of The Confident Presenter. Andrea's on a mission to stop brilliant ideas from failing just because of how they're presented. He coached everyone from first-time founders to TEDx speakers and built his business helping leaders land their message. So if you've ever walked into a pitch frozen in front of a crowd or wondered why your big idea isn't landing, Andrea has the answers. In this episode, we talk about the simple formula every founder should use to make their pitch stick, why confidence isn't about personality and how anyone can learn it, and the method for creating presentations people actually remember. Millennial Masters is brought to you by Jolt—fast, reliable web hosting built for founders. Whether you're launching a WordPress site or scaling an app, Jolt gives your project a rock-solid home starting from just £3.95 a month. You'll get 99.99% uptime, support in under 30 seconds, and flexible payment options including Bitcoin and Amex, so you can rack up those points while you build. Get your first 3 months free at jolt.co.uk. Smart hosting for people building what's next.

Andrea, welcome to Millennial Masters. How are you today?

Thank you, Daniel. I'm very good. And yeah, thank you for inviting me.

This is going to be quite an education for a lot of people who think they've got it all figured out, because you've said your whole mission is to stop great ideas from failing just because of how they're presented. So for a founder with a killer idea, but zero pitching experience or confidence, what would you say is the real starting point? Why do so many founder pitches fall flat even when the product is strong?

The starting point is understanding where confidence in pitching and presenting comes from. Because you see, Daniel, many people think that confidence comes from natural talent or innate self-belief. It has nothing to do with that. Confidence, and I'm talking about confidence in presenting, comes from, first of all, familiarity and preparation. I watched a YouTube video of Kobe Bryant, NBA star, passed away unfortunately, and he was giving an interview. And one question was, Kobe, how is it possible that every time I see you playing, 'You always look so confident.' And he said, 'Well, the only reason why you think I'm confident is because when you see me doing certain things, I've done those things 1,000 times before.' Confidence comes from familiarity, from preparation. The more familiar you are doing certain things, including pitching, speaking in public, the more confident you will become at doing those things. So that's the foundation. Also, confidence comes from following a certain process. There's a structured way of thinking about presenting that goes way beyond just opening up the presentation tool, because that's what most people do. They just open up PowerPoint or any other presentation tool, it doesn't make any difference, and they start putting together some slides. That's not the first step. There's this, again, there's a structured way of thinking about presenting from understanding your audience, to brainstorming to identify your key messages, to creating a clear storyline from the very beginning to the very end, to then perhaps illustrating your content from a visual perspective, to the last step, which is your ability to make a good connection with the audience. And you do that with your delivery. So there's a structured way of thinking about presenting. And finally, in my experience, Daniel Ionescu, 80% of your confidence comes from your ability to develop a compelling message. The story, your story makes a difference. Again, many people think, and that's a mistake, many people think that if they need to improve their pitching and presenting skills, many people immediately start thinking about their delivery. Things like eye contact, body language, gestures. Now, I'm not saying that those things are not important. We do work on those things with our clients, but that's 20% of the process. If you really want to become a more confident presenter, you need to understand how to develop a compelling message. Without a story that resonates with the audience, it doesn't matter how good you are from a delivery perspective. And that's the starting point.

And I know you have a method and a framework for developing a compelling message, which we'll get to in, in a second, because you've coached everyone from first-time founders to TEDx veterans. So I'm wondering, From your experience, Andrea, what are the most common mistakes you see when entrepreneurs build their pitch decks and present to investors? Because you said that's also one of the first things they do.

Yeah. In addition to the, what I said about just opening up PowerPoint as the very first thing they do, which is not the very first thing we need to do, but I see, I'll give you, I'll give you one on the bigger mistake I see. The main one is that the message we communicate, we think because we know so much about it, we are so close to it, we think that we are communicating something which is simple for the audience to understand. It's clear for them to follow. In reality, the audience, and in this case, going back to your question, investors, they're not, in most cases, they're not experts in what you do. They don't have your level of understanding of your subject, your experience, your expertise. And so for them, what you are communicating is complex or too technical. And there's a term for this. The Heath brothers in their fantastic book, Made to Stick, which I recommend, talk about the curse of knowledge and they use a great example to illustrate it. And here is the example. In 1990, a psychology student asked two groups of people to play a game. You had the two groups. One group was the tappers and the other group was the listeners. If you were a tapper, you had to tap out rhythms to famous songs on a table. So think about very famous songs, but instead of singing the songs, you just had to tap them out on a table. If you were a listener, you just had to try and guess the songs. That's it. That, that was the game. Now, before the experiment started, the student asked the tappers to estimate how many songs they thought that the listeners would've guessed, and they estimated 50%, 5-0. That's what they thought. Now, in reality, it was very different. The listeners guessed only 2.5% of the songs. 2.5% versus 50%. Massive difference. Why? Because if you are a tapper, you have knowledge that the listeners don't have. If you are a tapper, you have the songs in your head. And so for you, it's obvious. Why can you not guess it? But if you are a listener, you don't have the knowledge. You don't have the songs in your head. So you do find it very hard. And this is the number one problem in communication. And you see the same thing when pitching to investors. The number one problem in communication is the curse of knowledge, which is our inability to imagine what it means not knowing what we know. It's our inability to put ourselves in the audience's shoes. And by the way, you say between founders and investors, but you, you see this communication challenge everywhere. You say between between writers and readers, you see it between politicians and voters, even beyond investor pitches, you see it between presenters and the audiences. And it's very easy to fall into this trap unless you find a way, and it can be your own way, to get access to some sort of an external perspective.

So this curse of knowledge at the same time Could it be because a lot of founders or entrepreneurs think their tech or product is too complex for simple language? Because in some, I believe in your book and also in a few other podcasts, you've cited Steve Jobs and Bezos for using great school-level language even for tough subjects. So how important and how do you in a way not necessarily dumb down, but simplify your message and your jargon for your audience.

Absolutely. And it is true that many people think that their message, their product, their company, their startup, their service is different. It's too complex. But the reality is that when you get access to an external perspective, then you realize that it's always, always, always possible to simplify, and you've described it very well, Daniel. It's not about dumbing it down. It's not about oversimplifying your ideas. Your ideas may be very complex. I'm not denying that. They may be very technical, but the language you use to explain your concepts should never be complex. Now, for example, you gave the examples of Steve Jobs and Bezos. Bezos, yeah. Now, Steve Jobs, if you take the introduction of the first iPhone, many years ago. So we're talking about a business presentation. It's introducing a new product, introducing a new technology. Now, if you take the first 1,000 words of that presentation and you upload them onto tools like the Hemingway app or Grammarly, those tools, what they do is they analyze language. And in addition to giving you suggestions for improving your text or what you're saying, they also give you a grade, which is a number. And that number tells you how old someone needs to be for them to be able to understand what you're talking about. And if you do this exercise with that presentation, it returns a grade of 8 to 9 years old, 8 to 9. So believe it or not, an 8-year-old watches that presentation and they would be able to understand what he was talking about. Jeff Bezos, if you take the shareholder letters that he sends Like we're talking about more than 20 shareholder letters as the CEO of Amazon. Now, again, think about the context. We are talking about letters that the CEO of Amazon has to write for the shareholders. So again, talking about business strategies, maybe new launches, technologies, all of these kinds of things. And again, the content may be very complex. It may also be technical, but the language used should never be. If you do the same exercise, 70% of those letters return a grade of 13 to 15 years old. And that's the kind of benchmark that we want to try and respect. Every time you want to communicate something, especially if it's complex, especially if it's technical, ask yourself, okay, if I were to explain this idea to a 15-year-old, how would I do that? What language would I use? And again, this is not about dumbing it down. It's not about oversimplifying it. It's about finding and using language that everyone in your particular audience, of course, can understand. We always go back to the audience. Of course, if you are pitching or presenting to an audience who have a very, a very, very good understanding, even from a technical perspective of what you're talking about, that's a different story. But in most cases, that's not what we're talking about. So using simple language is something that we should all consider.

So you can fall into a trap of using big words and fancy language, believing it will make you more credible and intelligent, but actually your audience might not get your message because of that.

Exactly. It's the opposite. And by the way, you're right. That's why Most people do that either consciously or unconsciously. Many people use complex language, and that could be acronyms, it could be jargon, it could be technical terms that you understand as the presenter. Again, not necessarily your audience. Many people do that because they think that if they do that, then they sound more credible. They sound smarter. The opposite is true. If you think about people who you consider smart and credible, I can promise you what they do, at least from a communication perspective, they replace complex language with simple language, simple words, simple sentences. So for example, instead of price point, you should say price. Instead of core competency, you should say skill. If there's a long word or phrase and a short one, and both words or phrases say the same thing, the short one is always going to be more effective in communication. In the same way, if you can tell me something, Daniel Ionescu, if you can explain a concept to me, and if you can do it in 13 sentences, if you can explain the same concept in 2 sentences, the 2-sentence version is going to be more effective, more concise, more impactful in communication.

Speaking of acronyms, Andrea Ionescu, you have 5 of them for a framework you developed, which is the SCORE framework. Can you run through what the SCORE framework is and how founders and entrepreneurs and people in general can use it to be more effective communicators. Sure.

In our company at Ideas On Stage, we've got, as you said, we've got this method, we call it Presentation SCORE, because when you give a pitch, when you give a presentation, you want to score like in football. And SCORE, yes, it's an acronym and it stands for 5 things, 5 principles. SCORR: Simple, Clear, Original, Related to the Audience, and Enjoyable. Simple, Clear, Original, Related, and Enjoyable. And enjoyable. These are the 5 key principles for effective presentations. And by the way, these are fundamental principles of communication. You can apply them in the context of giving a formal pitch or presentation, But they apply just as well in day-to-day communication as well. Now it's a very high level. And then again, I'm happy to go deeper on each of the 5 principles if there's an interest. Let's do it. Now, simple because the more you say, the less they remember. So you need to be able to keep it short, simple, and to the point. Clear because your key messages should be obvious to everyone, including you as the presenter. Often that's not the case. Original. Because you want your presentations, your talks, your, your calls, your pitches, you want them to, to stand out, to be a bit different so that they'll pay more attention and remember it for longer. Related, and that's the most important principle, because it's always their presentation, not yours. It's always the audience's presentation. So you need to make sure that what you say is useful and relevant to them, to your audience, not to you. And then enjoyable. Well, again, if your audience enjoys your talks, your presentations, again, they'll pay more attention, they'll remember more, and maybe they'll do what you want them to do. They will take action. And if that's the objective, and that should be the objective of most presentations, we want the audience to do something as a result of them. That's why these 5 principles work so well.

And is there a place there, Andrea, for one more R for repetition. Everything I read at some point or another tends to mention repetition, which makes it stick with people. And if we're mentioning at least Steve Jobs, he in his keynotes, and Apple uses it as well to this day, they always repeat the key messages and the keywords and the key features towards the end of each mini presentation. And we've seen it in action even this week as we're recording when they presented a whole new set of features for their product.

Yeah, so repetition, I agree with you. Repetition is good in communication, provided that we do it in a certain way. And I'm going to explain. It's not, it's not part of the 5 principles. Because if you think about it, those 5 principles that I've just described, Again, these are universal principles of communication. Repetition is more of a practical technique that you can, that you can use. It is true that repetition is good in communication because if you have an important message that you want to get across, if you tell the audience once during a presentation, it is very likely that they'll forget about it. If you repeat that message, it could be a couple of times, it could be 3 times. Of course, you don't want to do it 1,000 times. That's boring. Provided that every time you repeat it, you do it in a fresh way. And that could mean that you say the same thing using different sentences, using different words. Because otherwise, if you tell me exactly the same thing in exactly the same way, that can be boring because, yeah, come on, you told me. Whereas if you do it in a fresh way, or maybe you tell me the same thing, but you illustrate it with a new example, with a new story. So there are many ways to keep it fresh. If you do that, then yes, that's what you want to do. So for example, you have an important message. Definitely you should open the presentation somewhere in the opening. You should mention the main message and then you have the main body of your presentation. And then perhaps you get to the recap, to the summary, and you could say something like, so the message from my presentation is simple. And then you tell what is it? And maybe that's something that you told them already in the opening. You tell them again, and then maybe there's a call to action. Maybe you handle the Q&A, and then you get to the very end of the pitch or presentation where you want to remind the audience what was your main point and why they should care about it. That's one more opportunity for you to repeat the main message. But again, the key is that every time you do it, you do it in a fresh way.

You also mentioned, Andrea, being aware of your audience, and that can change. Obviously, if you're pitching, it could be investors, but they could be from different industries. Or you could be presenting to your staff, your new vision, whatever is the case. And in your book, I believe, as well as on your website, you called it, I think, the audience hero move and making it about them rather than you and what you're trying to present, making it about what they need to understand. What does that actually look like in a practical sense? Sure.

Now, the specific term that you mentioned, the audience hero move, doesn't ring a bell to me, but it doesn't matter. The concept is correct. This is the foundation of effective presenting, effective communication in general. We want to start with the audience rather than, again, opening up the presentation tool, rather than maybe even thinking about what we want to say. All of these things, what we want to say, our objective, that's much better than opening up the presentation tool, but they need to be, they all depend on the audience. Now I'll give you an example. Some time ago, we worked with a client. Her name is Marie from, from Paris. Marie is an executive. She's an expert in leadership. And she was invited by an association in Finland to give a talk about leadership. And she was super excited. It was one of the first international speaking opportunities, so she prepared really well. She knew her message. She told us that she had prepared 50 beautiful slides, and also she practiced, so she was ready to go. She flew to Finland the day before the conference, then arrived there on the day half an hour before the audience because she wanted to make sure that she had time to set things up. And when she was about to connect her laptop to the screen, She realised that there was no screen. So a little bit of panic, she went and asked the organisers, assuming that they would say, "Sorry, Marie, now we're going to fix this for you." But what they did instead was they started laughing. They started laughing. And so she says, "Why are you laughing?" And they say, "Look, Marie, you want to show 50 slides, but actually you've been invited to give a talk to the association in Finland." of blind people. Blind people. Now, Daniel, I know it's an extreme example. It sounds like a bad joke. Quite. Yeah, quite. But it happened for real. You see, Marie was very well prepared, apart from one thing. She didn't know her audience. She didn't even take the time to translate the name of the association from Finnish to French, and she would have realized that perhaps there was no need to have 50 beautiful slides. So what does this mean for us as presenters, as speakers? If we want to make sure that our presentations are— remember what R of the SCORRE method stands for? Related. If we want to make sure that our message is related, which means relevant to them, then before we do anything else, Before PowerPoint, but not just PowerPoint, before we do anything else, we need to take some time and ask ourselves some questions about the audience, their needs, and the context. And this is the only way for us to try and communicate something that works for them, for our audience.

And let's say in the example you've given us, there was also possibly a bit of an oversight from the organizers who invited your client, not mentioning the audience. But are there any effective ways you can do your research about the audience you're going to be speaking to?

Yes, it is true that the organizers, of course, should have mentioned it, but we can only control what we can control. And as speakers, as presenters, then it's our responsibility to do due diligence, if you want. Now I'm going to give you a practical framework. That's what I do when I prepare my own presentations. That's the very first thing I do. And we follow exactly the same approach when we work with our clients. We call it the ABC of preparation. ABC. Now ABC stands for audience, burning needs, and context. ABC. And these are the questions I was describing earlier. You want to ask yourself some questions around these three categories. The audience, who are the key people in the audience? Which company do they work for? Are they investors? Okay. Who are they? Have they invested in similar startups in the past? Or something about the audience. And then also burning needs. Okay. What do they really need? What do they expect from your presentation? What challenges do they have? How do those challenges relate to your activities? Do they have any concerns about your activities? You may want to know. Are there any internal politics that you need to be aware of? I'm not, I'm not saying that you will have an answer to all of these questions all the time, but at the very least, you want to try and ask yourself those questions. Audience, burning needs, and then also context. For example, how much time do you have? Is it one-to-one? Is it one-to-many? If it's one-to-many, how many? Is it in person? Is it online? Is it hybrid? Now, again, don't get me wrong. I'm not saying that if you don't do that, then you can't create a great presentation. You can. But the risk is, like with Marie, with a client, the risk is that you develop a fantastic presentation, but for the wrong audience.

So there's no one-size-fits-all when it comes to the perfect presentation. The perfect presentation is tailored to your audience.

First of all, I think, Daniel, there's no such thing as a perfect presentation. That there's always, there's always room for improvement, for making it better. But yes, the, The perfect presentation, quote unquote, should, yes, should always be tailored to the audience. Now I understand that sometimes there are situations where perhaps you have your pitch, you've got your sales presentation. This is just an example, which is, that's your presentation. And then it's just a matter of tweaking it a little bit. Maybe you've got 80% of that presentation is always the same. And then you tweak 20% of it every time depending on who you have in front of you. And it could be that the messages are the same. Maybe you use a couple of examples to illustrate your messages, and you change the examples. You try and find examples or analogies that are relevant to that particular audience. Again, this is just an example. There are other ways to do it. But yeah, I appreciate that there are some situations. For example, one of the One of the things we do in our company from a, from a marketing perspective, from a lead generation perspective, is an online event that I've personally been running since 2018, or every other week. And essentially, it's the same present— it's an introduction to the Presentation Score Method for those who are interested in what we do. And then from there, there's a call to action if someone wants to learn more about that method and how it can work for them or for their companies, then I'll give them an opportunity to have a conversation one-to-one. That presentation since 2018 has always been exactly the same presentation. Of course, you always try to improve it. You tweak it. The only difference is then I do, I always do, like for example, tomorrow I've got the event. I always do a bit of an analysis of the audience beforehand, and then you try and tailor it. In sometimes in small ways, sometimes in bigger ways to make it work for that particular audience.

So what do you look for when you do your audience analysis? I'm assuming age, I'm assuming possibly gender, possibly professional status.

Yeah, those kinds of things. Exactly who they are, where they are based. So that tells me, it tells me something about the language as well, the company they work for, and then some things that are specific to what's of interest to us at Ideas on Stage. For example, say for example, there is a sales leader or someone who is responsible for learning and development. So if I know that in front of me, I've got someone, I'll give you a practical example. If I have a business professional, or if I have a business owner, and maybe it's a solopreneur, for example, then I will go through the same method, but I will explain how that method can help someone who wants to become themselves, who want to become a more effective and more confident presenter. If in front of me, I have someone who is responsible for learning and development, people development training within a large organization, I'm going to explain the same method, but how that can be useful for those who want to develop a team of confident communicators. So you see, The core message is the same, but you just tailor it to who you have in front of you.

And you mentioned as well Zoom or virtual presentations as well as in person. Now, what do people have to do differently when doing a virtual presentation or a pitch compared to an in-person one?

I can think of 3 things that we need to consider online. One is the, it sounds obvious, but it's important, the setup, the technological side of things. In person, the setup is not that important apart from making sure that if you're using slides or if you are sharing maybe a video, you want to make sure that the projector works apart from that. And by the way, even if you were planning to do that, and the projector fails, if you are prepared, the show must go on. So you should be able to deliver an effective presentation anyway. Apart from that, that's it. Online, the setup becomes really important. So from things like having a reliable internet connection, lighting, background, microphone, headphones, all those kinds of things. So that's one thing to consider, having a solid setup. The other thing is the level of interaction with the audience. Now, I think that any presentation should feel like a conversation for the audience, and this is in person as well. You see, the audience's attention is a bit like the sand in an hourglass. If you think about the sand in an hourglass, it runs out after a few minutes, but it's very easy to just flip you over and start again. When you are presenting, it's the same thing. The audience's attention will drop after a few minutes, but it's, it's relatively easy to just flip you over and start again, which means that it shouldn't be up to the audience to work hard to pay attention. It should be up to you as the presenter to work hard to keep the attention high. And the best way to do that is to include moments of interaction. Now, a moment of interaction doesn't have to be complicated. You don't have to use technology. It could be as simple as asking a question, a very simple question, which is either connected to what you've just said in the presentation or to what you're planning to say next. That's it. Now, if you are presenting in person, research tells us, and this comes from the book Brain Rules by Dr. John Medina. I also interviewed John Medina on, on the Ideas On Stage podcast. Research says that The audience's attention tends to drop every 10 minutes, more or less. So if you are presenting in person, you need to— it's as if every 10 minutes, if your presentation is longer than 10 minutes, it's as if every 10 minutes you need to buy the audience's attention back. You need to include a moment of interaction more or less every 10 minutes. Online, we know that it's even harder to keep the audience's attention high. Sometimes the webcam is off. You can't control everything. So the 10-minute rule becomes the 3 to 5-minute rule. You are presenting, you're pitching online. Ideally, every 3 to 5 minutes, you want to include a moment of interaction. That's another difference. And then the final one is from a delivery perspective. There are some delivery techniques, like for example, hand gestures or eye contact. Now the principle is the same. Let's take eye contact, for example. You want to make eye contact with the audience. And the reason why that's important is because it allows you to make a good connection with them. The way you do it is different. The way you make eye contact in person, of course, is very different from the way you make eye contact online. So you see, the principles are the same. The way you apply is different. Just to recap, 3 things. One is the setup, the technological aspect. The other one is the level of interaction with the audience. You want to do it even more when you are online. And then finally, the way you apply certain delivery techniques, like eye contact, the principle is the same, the way you do it is a bit different.

So what are some good interaction examples? Because I've seen, now that you mention it, I've seen it practiced in a lot of talks at conferences, etc. But some of them can feel a little bit cringe and forced at the beginning. So from your experience and what do you advise are some good interaction ways? Yep.

The key is that the moments of interaction, the questions you ask or the prompts you give, they have to be organic. They have to be very much connected to the topic. I'm not talking about communicating something and then you stop. Any questions? No, that's not what I'm talking about. I'll give you, I'll give you practical examples. If I think about my weekly or biweekly web class. I introduce the Presentation Score Method, and then it's online. And sometimes I can see some people, a few others are with the webcam off, and sometimes I've got 10 people in front of me. Sometimes I've got 20 people. And so I simply say, okay, before we get started, I just want to make sure that we are all aligned. Before we get started with the first principle, can you please give me a quick exclamation mark in the chat? Just type a quick exclamation mark in the chat if we are all ready to get started with the first principle. And then the symbols come up and then you get started. And then I talk about, for example, principle number 1, simple. You want to be able to simplify your message. I explain it, I give an example, and then I say, okay, before we move on with the second principle, just out of curiosity, on a scale from 0 to 10. And I also draw, I like to sketch when I present online. I've got a tablet as a second screen. On a scale from 0 to 10, where 0— and this is self-assessment— 0 means that you find it very hard to simplify a message. 10 means that you find it very easy to do that, or anything in between. Where are you? Give me your self-assessment in the chart. That's it. Then I talk about— I'll give you one other example, Daniel. I'll talk about the second principle: clear. You want to be able to create a clear structure. And to do that, I talk about the Rule of Three, the Power of Three, which is one of the simplest and most powerful principles in communication. The idea of communicating 3 key messages, because that's what people can remember instead of 1,000 messages. And then I say, okay, now that we talked about that, because I want to make sure that this is useful for you, again, can you give me another exclamation mark in the chat if you can see how you can apply this principle? The idea of communicating 3 key messages in your very next presentation? If that's the case, give me an exclamation mark in the chat. So you see, very simple things like that. And the idea is that every time the audience does something, even if it's as simple as typing yes or no in the chat or typing a number in the chat, it means that they are there with you. They're listening to you, they're not doing something else.

So that's basically the trick when somebody does a presentation and asks, how many people had this problem? Raise your hand. Or how many people have had this? Raise your hand. That's one of the tricks to maintain attention and get interaction with your audience.

As long as that's an example, raising hands, it's an example of including a moment of interaction. The audience is doing something. As long as it's organic, organic and connected to your flow, to your content, then it can work.

Yes. And alongside these tips and tricks, are there any quirky virtual body language tips that you have as well in order to be engaging? I'm assuming kind of like wooden on the stage or with your arms crossed is not the best posture for doing a presentation and being an effective communicator.

Arms crossed is an interesting one because it has become now a bit of a public speaking myth. The myth is that folding your arms, crossing your arms is a blocking behaviour. It's a defensive behaviour, which is not, which is not true. The reason why, and then stay with me, Daniel, I'm going to explain because I would not encourage people to do it. The reason is different. The reason is not that it's a blocking behavior. It's not a blocking behavior. The reason why most people cross their arms is because it's just a comfortable position. That's it. Now, if I could, I would cross my arms 24/7. It's just the most comfortable position for me. It's not blocking. It's not defensive. However, as I said, don't do it. I wouldn't encourage you to do it when you're speaking in public, not because it's a defensive type of body language. It's just because because this myth now has become a myth. It has become so well known that it's very likely that there will be someone in the audience who thinks that you are having a blocking, you are having a blocking behavior. So just for that reason, I would discourage people from doing it. Having said that, body language, we can talk about a few things. I just mentioned one, hand gestures. Yeah. The more you move your hands, the more dynamic you will be. And everyone likes dynamism. You want to become a more dynamic presenter. Hand gestures is also an interesting one because when, if you think about it, when you have a conversation with friends, then whether you are aware of it or not, you do, we all do, we all move our hands and we do it because we know the audience, our friend, and we also know our topic, what we're talking about. As soon as the dynamic is a little bit more formal, the pressure is higher, we are giving a presentation, a pitch, then often these two things our hands start taking on a life of their own. We don't know what to do with them. There are 3 key things you can do with your hands. Number 1, nothing. It is one option. You don't have to move your hands all the time. Another option is that you move your hands without thinking about what you're doing with them. And I can promise you, if you are prepared, if you have rehearsed, if you have internalized your message, you don't have to memorize it, but you do need to internalize it. You need to own your content. If you get to that point, you don't have to worry about what you're doing with your hands. It's as if you are talking to a friend and you will move your hands whether you are aware of it or not. The third option is that you move your hands with intention or with purpose. So for example, before Daniel, we were talking about eye contact online versus in person. If I do, for those watching on video, if I do online and in person, as I say these two things, my body language is in harmony with my content. If I tell you that there are 3 things you can do with your hands, and again, for those part just listening, I'm doing 3 with my hand. Now, this is another intentional hand gesture. The key is to find the right balance among these 3 options, which means that within the same presentation, sometimes you do nothing. You don't have to move your hands all the time. Most of the time, just move your hands without thinking about what happens. Just make sure that you have internalized your content. And then from time to time, not too often, because otherwise it feels forced and robotic, but from time to time, if you can move your hands in a way which is synchronized with your content, that will help you find the right balance among the three options. But the bottom line is that, of course, within certain limits, do what works for you, but the more you move your hands, the more dynamic you will be.

But certainly don't put them in your pockets.

Don't put them in your pocket.

I agree with that. Any other no-nos then?

In terms of hand gestures?

Or in terms of body language? Okay.

In terms of body language, what you want to do is you, at all times, you want to be grounded. So the no-no is not being grounded. Being grounded doesn't mean being fixed. It doesn't have to be monospot. You can move if you want. But at all times when you don't move, you want to be grounded. Being grounded means that if you are standing, for example, you need to feel the weight of your body being equally balanced on both legs. So now I'm not standing, but for example, if I were standing and if I'm like this, it's because my left leg, my weight is too much on the left leg. This is the opposite. And this, It doesn't give the appearance of a confident presenter. You want to be grounded. This confident posture, make sure that you want to have your feet shoulders apart, more or less pointing towards the audience and then— Head straight, back straight. Yeah. Yeah. In a natural way. And then the most important thing is that at all times you need to feel the weight of your body being equally balanced on both legs. Then from there, of course, You can move a little bit, but again, movement should be intentional. Maybe you make a point and you move towards this side of the room. And then when you stop moving, you ground yourself. And then you start making another point and you move a little bit. When you finish your movement, you ground yourself. Movement, you don't want to be, want to have the cage, the cage tiger approach to public speaking. You've got those speakers where they just move left and right, left and right.

Yeah, constantly your head has to move with them. Yeah.

Movement should be intentional. It should be connected to your message.

And I just wanted to cross-check two tips for presentations that I've had before. One was about the eye contact, especially when you do something in person and to a group if you do a talk. And it was the trick about kind of like looking at a fixed point somewhere in the back or maybe in the lights coming on to you so you don't get intimidated by seeing all the people in front of you. Is that something you recommend, or is this just some quirky trick that I've heard before?

I wouldn't recommend that. I just recommend one, one thing. The, the nice thing about this practical tip is that it works every time, whether you've got 5 people or 5,000 people. It's always a person-to-person interaction. The, the mistake many people make is that they move their heads around like a lighthouse. They let their eyes fly around the room way too quickly. Why? Because of what you said, because eye contact, if you're not used to it, if you're not trained, it can feel intimidating. It's uncomfortable. But then you need to get over that. And the idea is person to person, which means that you say one sentence, more or less. Could be one thought. It could be half a sentence. You don't want to be looking at one person for 10 seconds if you have a long sentence. So either one sentence or half a sentence or in general one thought and you look at one person and then you share another thought and you look at another person, then you share another thought and you look at another person. Often what we do is we change, and that's the mistake, we change the person we are looking at within the same sentence, often even within the same word, whether we are aware of it or not. If you really want to make good eye contact, in person. And it's important for that connection, the human-to-human connection. It's a human, it's a person-to-person interaction. One thought, one person. You change the person you are looking at only if you're changing thought.

And that's the best practice. And that stops your head wobbling all the time as well. Exactly. And how about, you know, getting your breathing in check, especially if you're nervous before you start your presentation, your talk, or your Breathing is one of the best things you can do, especially before a presentation.

Not to overcome the nerves because we all feel nervous. I'm a presentation coach. I always feel nervous before a presentation. Apparently, Mark Twain said that there are only two types of speakers, those who get nervous and those who are liars. So we all feel something when we are speaking in public. I always, I have a, and I don't want to take me as an example, but to give you a practical example, I have a bit of a ritual before any presentation. It's a 1-minute warmup and that includes breathing as well. And it could be as simple as breathing in through your nose. And what I do, for example, is I breathe in through my nose and I count to 3, 3 seconds, and then you breathe out. Through your mouth and you count to 6. You want to make sure that when you breathe out, that has to be longer than when you breathe in. That helps you calm down. Other people like, sometimes I do that as well. You've got the, I think it's called box breathing. So imagine like a box, like 4, 4, 4, 4, 4 seconds, 4 seconds, 4 seconds, 4 seconds. So it means that you breathe in for 4 seconds, you hold your breath for 4 seconds, you breathe out for 4 seconds, and you hold for 4 seconds, and then you repeat. So one of the two, there are many other, but breathing is super, super useful to help you calm down before a presentation.

Or at least bring down your heart rate, if not calm down.

Yeah, yeah, whatever, whatever, whatever the effect will be. And it's not, it's not the only, the only thing you need to do, but it's one of, it's a very effective way.

Moving on a little bit with our topics, Andrea, but still in the realm of presentations, you said you believe AI plus human is the future and that you use AI every day. So I'm wondering first, how do you use AI every day? And then what are your tips for other people to be using AI to improve either their pitch or their story or their team presentation?

Yeah, I do use AI every day. I do, I guess, in 2 or 3 ways. One is for communication, either my own communication or with our clients. So all of the things, for example, with our clients, all of the things that we were, myself and with our colleagues, all of the things that we were doing just us manually. Now we still do it. That's the support we give to our clients, but we have our own support, which is artificial intelligence. So working together with AI to make sure that what we, that the value we bring to our clients is even better. So that's one case study. The other one is from a business perspective. I'm running my own business and there are so many things that you need to do if you want to make sure that the business works. So every day there's something that you can do with the help of artificial intelligence to make the business better, more effective, stronger. And then also personal, like for example, this morning I had to go to my son's nursery because they were doing a Father's Day activity and I wanted to go by bike because it's nearby and I had to take the bike from our garden and then our neighbor locked the garden gate. And so I couldn't do it and I was super frustrated. I had to find another solution and then because I didn't have time, then I found a way. I took the bike and then as I was cycling just in the first few seconds, it was safe. Just like ChatGPT voice message, can you write a reminder? Because I told him already, can you write a reminder to my neighbor reminding them that they should not lock the garden gate because I'm not tall enough to, from the outside to to unlock it. And is it just like day-to-day things that you need to do? And the message was ready, copy and paste, and it was done, things like that. So that was the first part.

And not let slip your frustration with the incident, but still be polite.

Yeah, that's why I said just be polite, make sure that you are polite. So that's one thing. That was the first part of the question. There was also a second part of the question, which I've forgotten now. Do you remember, Daniel?

Of course. I was wondering With AI, how can people deploy it to improve their pitches or to bounce back ideas? Yeah.

So one is this bouncing back ideas from a brainstorming perspective is super useful. So you should definitely use it as a brainstorming tool. One of the very first steps after you analyze the audience, and by the way, AI can also help you analyze the audience. And also after that, you need to brainstorm to identify your key messages and AI can help you brainstorm. And also, once you have your key messages, you want to make your content more— two of the five principles, you want to make it original and enjoyable. How do you do that? Well, you need to tell stories that illustrate your points, examples, analogies, metaphors. Then again, you can brainstorm ideas with AI. You say, okay, this is the message I want to communicate. Can you give me a list of 10 stories or examples that illustrate that particular point. The key though is that, and that's why I say that it has to be AI plus the human element, because if it's just AI, then it's not going to land. People, people will say it, but if it's AI plus you, that's a very powerful combination. And for that to happen, you need to have a strong understanding of those fundamental principles of communication, because otherwise, It's garbage in, garbage out. With whatever you put in, your prompt will have a massive impact on whatever comes out of the tool. If you don't have that understanding, then it's garbage in, garbage out. Now, going back to Jeff Bezos, he often says that he's often asked, what do you think is going to change in the next 10 years? And he says, no one has ever asked me What do you think is not going to change in the next 10 years? And he thinks that the second question is much more interesting because if you, as he puts it, if you focus on the things that don't change, you will be successful. In the case of Amazon, for example, they know that 10 years from now, people will still want cheap prices, fast delivery, and a massive selection. If they keep focusing on those things, they will be successful. In communication, it's the same thing. There are things that change and things that don't change. The things that change are tools and technology. 50 years ago, we didn't have PowerPoint. 5 years ago, we didn't have— maybe 10 years ago, we didn't have Zoom. Just a few years ago, we didn't have AI. And these tools will change. That's inevitable. But what will never change are the fundamental principles of communication. Aristotle was the first one more than 2,000 years ago who gave us the building blocks of effective communication. And today's best communicators still follow those principles. So for example, Daniel, let's say that 10 years from now you give a talk at a conference and after your talk, someone comes from the audience, they come to you and they say, Daniel, that was a great talk. I just wish that your message was not so simple for me to understand. That will never happen. Or I just wish that your storyline was not so clear for me to follow, or that your ideas were not so original and enjoyable. Or maybe, Daniel Ionescu, great talk. I just wish that your message was not so relevant to me and my needs. That will never happen. And it will never happen because these are the fundamental principles of communication. Don't get me wrong, you do want to use tech, you do want to leverage technology. As I said, I do it every day for myself, for my business, for my communication with our clients. But it has to be that AI technology in general, plus you, plus the human element. And if you have that, that's a very powerful combination.

And Keeping it in the practical steps, what would you say is the best closing line for a pitch or a presentation? Or what's your go-to closing line?

Here is my go-to. My go-to is this. First of all, I approach it by saying something like, or similar, something like, okay, if there's one thing I would really like you to take away from this presentation, it's this. Something along those lines. Whatever you say next, they will pay attention. And then my go-to punchline is, it follows this format: what, so what, what next? What means, okay, what's the key message? What's— any presentation should have one big idea, not two, just one. What's the big idea behind your presentation? Even if you tell them already, we talked about the importance of repetition. Tell them again, a reminder of the most important thing they need to take away. Then, so what? And this is the key to great presenting. The key to great presenting is to always make it about them. The what, the main idea is important, but it's not enough. So what? Tell them why should they care? Why is this important and relevant to them? Not to you. And then what next? Okay. Now that they care, now that they understand why this is important to them, What do you want them to do after your presentation? Or at the very least, what do you want them to think, to believe, to feel as a result of your presentation? And you can create a paragraph. It could even be like a 70-word paragraph, 30 seconds. That's it. That follows this format: what, so what, what next?

And that's a very powerful conclusion. So you're counting just like in TV production, about 3 words per second.

I count roughly 150, 140, 150 words per minute. That's a good pace when speaking in public, more or less 150 words per minute. So for example, that means that if you have a 70-word paragraph, 75-word paragraph, it should take you 30 seconds to deliver. That's, that's my benchmark.

Now, Andrea, I know you grew up in a family business in Italy. Now you run your business internationally from London. But if my research is correct, you previously said that you've been inspired to become a more effective communicator and presenter because you've seen them struggling. What's the story behind that?

The story is this, that your research is correct. The reason why I'm so passionate about public speaking is because When I was a little kid growing up in Italy, I grew up in a family of very small business owners. My parents have always been running their own very small business together. They still do. So as a kid, I saw their challenges because raising 4 kids while running a business is not easy, but I also saw their proactive approach to life. That's why I always wanted to be an entrepreneur, to run my own thing. Now, in reality, that remained a dream for a long time because before doing what I do now, tried starting many projects and all of them failed. Can I, can go into more detail if you're interested, but all of them failed, but that was useful. Those failures were useful because in that process, what I realized was that there are so many great ideas that fail. And you started with this in this podcast. They fail not because of the ideas themselves. But just because of the way they are presented. And that's why eventually I became a presentation coach. That's why my mission today is to stop great ideas from failing just because of the way they are presented. My vision is to help hundreds of thousands of business leaders inspire their audiences, increase their influence, and make a positive impact in the world.

So what would you say from your previous project was your greatest idea that, uh, didn't land because you haven't by that point refined your presentation and communication skills? Very simple, very simple ideas.

It's not that it was a mind-blowing idea, but ideas that you could see were working effective elsewhere. So for example, I launched a blog and that was maybe more than 10 years ago. I launched a blog and I would write, like for years, I wrote a weekly article article, and it took a lot of time. I was super passionate about it. And the idea was to make sure that thousands of people would read my articles. In reality, after a few years, I just had 2 readers. One of them was my wife. So it wasn't really making an impact. I'll give you another example. After the experience, I said, okay, rather than creating content, why don't I curate content? So I launched a newsletter, again, a weekly newsletter, and I would curate content on certain topics, and then I will send it out to my subscribers. And the idea once again was to get to thousands of subscribers, because once you have a large audience, then you can start thinking about, okay, how can I monetize that? And after a few years, I remember the maximum I got was 119 subscribers. And half of them were just friends being polite. Again, not very effective. I'll give you one, one more example. I'm very big advocate of business as a force for good, purpose-driven business and entrepreneurship. And we have our own social impact project. We have a charity partner and together once we run an event with a charity partner to try and motivate people to to donate something for, for their social activities, and it didn't make a massive impact. And in all of these cases, if you think about it, it wasn't the idea that was bad. It wasn't the idea that failed. It was just the way the idea was communicated.

And if we were gonna leave founders, entrepreneurs, and business leaders tuning into us today, what's one thing people listening to us should do this coming week to become a more confident presenter, no matter how busy or introverted they are?

The one thing is to do it. Take any opportunity you have to put your skills into practice, whatever they are. Even if you think that you are not a good presenter, a good speaker, there's always I'm a presentation coach. We've been doing this for years. Also, for me, there's always room for improvement. So you can spend hours listening to podcasts, and we've got our own podcast. I've got my book. You can read books. You can watch YouTube videos. But then, and that's what most people do. Most people listen to podcasts, they watch videos, they read books, and then what do they do? Nothing. They procrastinate. They think that now is not the right time, so they'll wait for the perfect time. The perfect time to start your journey to becoming the best presenter you can be is now. Mastering the art of, let's call it public speaking in general, can be rewarding. It is rewarding, but there's no reward without action. So again, if this speaks to our listeners, here is my invitation to them. Start your journey now. Start your journey to be, or continue your journey if you've started already, continue your journey to become the best presenter you can be today, not tomorrow. Or as you said, Daniel, this week, not the following week. Start your journey to becoming the best version of yourselves as communicators this week, not the following one. And I can promise you, if you do that, your audience will thank you.

Well, that was a great parting thought for everybody tuning in. So thank you so much for joining Millennial Daniel Masters today, Andrea. And just a quick one as we wrap up, where can people find you and your book and sign up to any of your webinars? Thank you.

A couple of things. One is the only social media platform I actively use is LinkedIn. So feel free to connect and say hi. You'll find me there with my, with my name. Our website is ideasonstage.com. And then what I can do, I can share with you a link with some free resources for listeners. It's in just one link. They can claim a free copy of my book, Confident Presenter. If they are in the UK, if you are in the UK, you can claim an actual physical copy for free. If you are not in the UK, you can get a free PDF version, you'll have information on how to register for the upcoming, and these again are free web classes. And there's also in the link, there will also be an opportunity to take the Confident Presenter Scorecard, which is an online tool that allows you to assess your current presentation skills against the 5 principles we talked about in this conversation. You just need to answer a few questions. It's free, it takes less than 3 minutes, and then you get a score from 0 to 100% on each of the 5 principles and the total score as well. And then once you take the scorecard, it also identifies opportunities for improvement. The specific link for the scorecard is like our website, ideasonstage.com/score, like the method, like when you score a goal.

I'll make sure I add it in the show notes. So wherever people are tuning in, whether it's on millennialmasters.net, YouTube, Spotify, or Apple Podcasts, they'll be able to get it. So thank you for the generous offer to share your book for free as well with everybody tuning in. It was great to get lots of practical tips and insight on becoming a better communicator and presenter.

Thank you, Daniel. Pleasure. Thanks for tuning in all the way to the end of this episode. If you enjoyed it, please share it with someone you think would get value from it. And don't forget to subscribe on YouTube, Spotify, or Apple Podcasts so you never miss an episode. For the best way to stay in the loop, head to millennialmasters.net. That's where you'll get all the latest features and new episodes straight to your inbox every week. Catch you next week.