Mike Pacquiaone, a keynote consultant and communication coach, breaks down the three most common public speaking mistakes. He covers speech writing, slide design, and delivery techniques to help speakers engage their audience and build confidence.
Hey, everybody, Today I'm going to give you the top three mistakes that almost all of us are making when we give a speech or presentation. Today I'm with my friend Mike Pacquiaone, who is a keynote consultant and communication coach. And Mike's worked with probably 10,000 plus people by now. Fortune 500 companies. He's worked with people like Pat Flynn, James Clear. And me and Mike were working on a speech for me today, and we thought, hey, why don't we give you guys the information on how to improve your communication when you're giving your next talk? So, Mike, what are the three things that people need to know?
Okay, so there are three parts that go into a speech. There's the writing in the speech, there are the slides, and there's the delivery. I'm going to give you one for each of those. Okay? Number one in the writing of the talk. I understand why this happens, but most people take way too long to get started. So the classic beginning of the talk is, hey, thank you for being here. Oh, I came in from Portland today, and I was excited to get to Reno. Oh, my gosh, I was excited to see that you have a coffee shop. Right? Like, that's how so many people start it. I get why it happens. It's weird to get on stage. It's weird to start talking. We need to start faster. So what a lot of people will do is they'll say, okay, well, then I'm going to start with the agenda. So I'm going to get on stage, I'm going to say, hey, I'm Mike. We're going to talk about bullet point one, bullet point two, bullet point three. Y'. All. Like, can you imagine if you went to the movies and Tom Cruise comes on stage? He says, hey, my name is Tom Cruise and I'm starring in the sequel to Top Top Maverick. And in this movie, you're gonna see. No, like, they would never do that. You go straight into the action sequence. And the same thing should happen in a speech.
Yeah, dude. It's just like when we were talking about videos. When we start this video, we went straight into what you guys are going to learn and similar. Right?
Right.
Yeah.
So, like, let me give an example. Joel Runyan is someone that I worked with before. Joel could start his speech by saying, hey, my name is Joel. I'm from Chicago. When I graduated college, I couldn't get a job, so I started working at ups. Da, da, da, da. It's not terrible. But here's the way he starts. Instead, he says, So I was in Antarctica. Well, which of those two videos or which of those two speeches are you going to listen to? Push the audience into the pool, get right into the action. I know it's uncomfortable, but it makes for a better speech.
Yeah. You even suggested. I noticed this on a previous talk you did, just maybe doing something almost polarizing. Right? Like, almost like attention grabbing in the very beginning.
Yeah. And I'm not saying fabricate things or make things up, but give the audience a reason. I mean, everybody who is sitting in the audience the first minute, they're wondering the same thing. Is this going to be worth my time? Yeah.
And so this is something that I think we all can do, you know, even in our video content. Just get straight into it. I don't think, like, I just don't see the need to say your name. And obviously they saw your name up there. It's all there. Like they know the day of the week, they know the name, they know what city we're in. So dispense with all formalities. Okay. What's number two?
Yeah, number two is about slides. Most people use too few slides. Too few. At least most people in the corporate world have at some point had someone tell them, you know, you should, you should have three slides or five or ten in a deck. Again, I understand why that happens. Someone is thinking, lower number equals less chance for mistake, but actually it's. It's a greater chance for mistakes to happen because what you do then is each slide becomes its own mini speech. And that becomes so much for you as an audience member, that becomes so much for you as the presenter to remember. So what you should do instead, same amount of content, but break it up into smaller pieces. And each piece is just like a 30 to 60 second chunk. There's just a few sentences, maybe a paragraph for you to say. It's not an entire speech. You can deliver that better. It is easier for the audience to ingest when you throw a ton of text, a ton of data, a ton of anything on the slide. You're asking the audience to pay attention to the slide instead of to you. They should be paying attention to you.
I see that all the time. I've seen actually many presentations within one slide. Way too much data on there. And it's like, I don't even think I could read all that because I'm so far back. And then also, like, you're right, you start to like, want to write down stuff or take pictures of the slide and not the person. So I've had that experience Myself.
It's like a big sign overhead saying, do not listen to what I'm saying out loud.
Yeah. So that. That's a huge thing. I think we could all probably make it a lot cleaner if we just dumbed it down on each one. Each slide. Like, less information per slide.
Just strip out most of the info or break it up into multiple slides because. Got it.
Okay. Number three.
Number three is about delivery. Again, I understand why this happens. Most presenters look to the audience to give them confidence. So this is you. You've worked for weeks, months on this speech. You're thinking to yourself, oh, my gosh, this speech is great. They're going to be so enraptured. You walk in and you're picturing every audience member having, like, this big smile on their face. Just every single person, like, oh, I can't wait to listen to Mike. Oh, I can't wait to listen to Neil. It would be great if that's what audiences look like. But more likely, the audience might be on their phone or they might just have a look on their face that's like this. But you know what? That's what people look like. If you think about learning something. I don't know, when you were sitting in a class and you learned something, were you sitting there saying to yourself, like, this is great. I love it. That's not what people look like. So what that means is that when you are presenting, you need to walk in there with an attitude like, I know that this is good. You need to present as if you know it's good. Like, you have run through it already. You've gotten feedback from people. You know that this will help your audience. And by the way, it's not the worst idea in the world to rehearse. This is a hack. So rehearse in front of an audience. See what they laugh at, see what they smile at. You know, those things are good already. So when you walk out on stage for the, like, the true presentation, you already know it's good. And when you do that, you can carry the speech forward rather than looking to the audience for confidence.
Yeah, I think I've done this many times where I. For, like, I just didn't prepare. Yeah. You know what I mean? Like, I thought I could just get out there and wing it. I had my slides. I know that. The other problem is, like, we. We know the topics, so we think we don't need to practice the speech. But I can attest to this, guys, like, just because you're an expert at what you're doing. You're not an expert at public speaking. So practice, get more comfortable, and then you won't feel like that, that anxiety, I guess, when you're on the stage. The other thing I noticed, too, is, like, it's okay to have a topic or I guess, like a subject matter that's maybe not the most engaging, but you can make it more engaging and just the way that you're presenting it. So there's different hacks you can get into. But that would be another video. But if you guys have more questions on any of this stuff, check out Mike's content. You go to Mike Talks.
Co. That's. Yeah.
And Mike's got a ton of information on speaking. You could find other YouTube videos online as well. And we'll see you guys on the next video.
