Ep 19 The Indezine.com PowerPoint Special Edition

So where do you start when it comes to creating a presentation?

Speaking the show about effective speaking in public to the media, at work and in Life. Speaking with T.J. walker.

Hi and welcome. I'll be answering that question and many others in the show today. Today's show is a joint production. It's a joint venture with a website media business. Many of you are familiar with indazine. That's@indazine.com. this is the website that tells you and gives you everything you possibly need to know about PowerPoint, about plugins, about all the technical aspects of creating presentations. And they have a huge, huge following all over the world. Whether you go directly to their website, Facebook, LinkedIn groups, they do a fabulous, fabulous job. So today is a joint production with them, which, by the way, I try to practice what I preach when it comes to giving presentations. And the presentation on this podcast and on this video is a type of presentation. Always look for new ways of engaging people. Always look for new ways of connecting with audiences. So that's what we're doing here today. This show you can find at the normal place on itunes if you look up speaking or public speaking or go to the section where they have my show speaking with TJ Walker. But you can also watch and listen to this program by going to Indazine. And that's I n D E Z I N E. The questions today all come from the editor, founder and publisher of Indizine, Gitesh Bajaj, who is a true, true expert on the craft and creation of PowerPoint slides, plugins, and all the numerous technical aspects of it. Let's hop right in. First question. Many people just do not know where to start. And, and this is true with creating presentations too. Can you tell us how to get a good start? Well, here's what I believe you should do. Anytime you're getting ready to start a presentation, don't even think about a slide, don't think about PowerPoint, don't even think about typing anything. Your very first thing you should focus on when you're starting a presentation is you gotta step back a moment and ask yourself, what is it I am trying to accomplish? What is it I want my audience to do? So if you are selling them a product, you want them to actually buy the product. And it could be as specific as whipping out their checkbook today or giving you a credit card. It could be that you want them to recommend your private equity company to their board of directors. There are many, many things you could want an audience to do, but what you don't want is to go in with a general fuzzy sense of, well, I want these people to think I'm smart and competent, and here's 150 ideas to tell them about everything I've done in the last six months. That, unfortunately, is the de facto assumption many people have when they start a presentation. It's just a general fuzzy notion of I want people to think I'm smart and not incompetent. That's a horrible, horrible starting point. So, Gites, that is my answer to your first question is the way to start a presentation is focus on the end. What is the action you want your audience to do? And then, and only then back up and figure out what ideas are going to motivate this audience to actually take the action you want. Too many people just start off gathering lots of facts, gathering lots of data, creating slides because they can, and it seems productive to sit there and. And typing. That's a horrible way to start a presentation. Always focus with the end in mind. Then focus on literally the handful of ideas that are going to motivate your audience to do what you want. Then what I would recommend is come up with an interesting story, an example, a case study for each one of your message points, and that will really help you the most.

Body language.

I want to focus on the body language a moment because it relates to your next question. You said DJ people often stumble while talking, even though they are very familiar with and they thoroughly know their subject well. They're stumbling because they're saying it for the first time in front of the audience. And because of that, it just seems awkward. They're focusing all of their energy on remembering stuff. It's as if they're reading a teleprompter in their brain and they might get it right. They might stumble. Regardless, they tend to freeze their body up. They tend to grab lecterns, hold papers, hold pens, put their hands one over the other or in their pocket. They're doing all these things to their body language and it just messes them up. The answer to that is you have to practice on video. I love the fact that people go to indizine.com to get the latest on technology to help them with slides. But the number one piece of technology that will help any presentation is, is not a slide. It's not PowerPoint. It is, in fact, a video camera on your cell phone, on your iPad, on your laptop to allow you to practice your speech on video so you can see the body language and hear yourself and really make sure you're Making some sense. That way you don't have to stumble. You're asking about stumbling, and it relates to your next question. Are they less confident than others? Well, some speakers stumble a lot, some speakers stumble a little. Both might be lacking in confidence somewhat, but if you're stumbling and you know you're stumbling in the middle of it, that chips away at your confidence. If you're a little bit nervous and not completely confident, but you objectively know, hey, I'm not stumbling at all. That gives you a little boost of confidence. In my experience, everybody is lacking in confidence that some aspect of their speaking skills. And maybe they're comfortable talking to a camera alone, or maybe they're comfortable talking to 50 or 100 people, but you put them outside their comfort zone and. And they're all of a sudden speaking to 200 or 1,000 people, then they lack confidence. Then they tense up. Then if they make a mistake, they go, ugh. Now I made a mistake about 30 seconds ago. I stumbled over a word, but I didn't apologize. I didn't stop and go, I didn't. For those of you watching on YouTube or Facebook, you can see what I didn't do. I didn't grimace. I didn't look up like, oh, boy, I wish I hadn't done that. For those of you listening on itunes and other podcast forums, I just continue to look confident, relaxed the whole way. I didn't plan that, but I am human. I do make mistakes. The difference is when I make a mistake speaking to people, whether it is on video, in audio podcast, I don't tell anybody about it. I don't apologize. I don't hold up a flag and wave it and draw attention to it. So that's a huge part of being a more confident speaker, is simply realizing you don't have to reveal your blunders to the world. For the most part, no one else will really know. Further Questions Posted by Indizine in this joint production today, what sort of help should they get? Talking about people who are lacking in confidence and stumble? Also, can they help themselves? Well, someone can always hire someone like me or you, or other trainers, or go to organizations like Dale Carnegie and get professional help. And hey, I don't want to sound like I'm a completely selfless person. I would love for as many listeners and viewers to call me up to hire me to help them get more confident. But you don't have to do that. I mean, here's the dirty little secret about my business is you can become a great speaker without professional Training if you simply practice on video. Now, those of you who are my regular listeners and viewers may get tired of me saying this, but unfortunately, it's good advice that is rarely followed. You know, and sometimes I feel like an obesity expert who tells people, eat more vegetables and eat a lot less processed foods and fatty meats. It's great advice. Most people don't follow it if they're already obese. Same with speaking. If you are a little bit nervous or uncomfortable, if you stumble, the solution is something where you can solve it yourself by practicing your speech on video until you actually like what you see. If you've practiced your speech or your presentation on video to the point where you like what you see, guess what? It becomes virtually impossible for you to be nervous when you speak. What makes us nervous and uncomfortable is the fear that we look like fools, that we're boring people to death, that we're not interesting. Well, the problem is you might actually be boring. You might actually not be interesting. So if you're fearful about it, if you're nervous about it, probably pretty rational. Now, let's deal with some bad advice out there because it relates to your next question.

Bad advice.

Okay, the next question is as follows. For many speakers, English may not be their first language. So how should they approach communication with others using English? The bad advice I hear from people all the time is, oh, well, you have to lose your accent. Let me tell you, there are few things harder to do in the world and more time consuming than trying to change your accent. First of all, everybody has an accent. There's no such thing as unaccented English or Spanish or French. There's everyone has an accent. I have an accent. Question is, do you have an accent that is favored by the dominant group of your audience? That's really the question. Here's my experience. As long as people can understand you and you're saying something interesting, important, and relevant, that's far more important than your accent. Now, here's the other thing that I think will surprise a lot of you. In my experience, people who speak English as a second language and they're now giving a speech or presentation in English, actually have an advantage over native English speakers. Native English speakers, and it could be native in any language. If you're speaking in your own first language, the tendency can be to use bigger words, longer words, fancier words, and you lose your audience because your vocabulary may be made up of 100,000 or more words. So you get too fancy, you confuse your audience. If you're speaking in a second Language, quite often your vocabulary is just more limited. Not always, but as a general rule, that's true. So if you're using a vocabulary based on 2,000 or 5,000 words, it's actually going to be easier for your audience because you'll use simpler words and smaller words. Now, here's the thing. Don't focus energy on trying to translate the perfect word when you're speaking. Just use the simplest word that conveys the idea, and you'll be in much better shape. I do have clients come to me all the time and they say, tj, I'm worried about my Indian accent or my Chinese Chinese accent or my Southern accent or my Brooklyn or Bronx accent or my now I live in Long island, my Long island accent. How can I get rid of this? And my response is that, well, you know, you could, you could spend a thousand hours, work with a speech therapist, spend all Tuesday night and Thursday night, record yourself, do practice, and you can sound like anything. If you've ever seen Meryl Streep or some of the best actors, Kevin Spacey, they can sound like anything. But they're also people who've devoted their lives into becoming chameleons, to sound like anyone. They put a lot of time into it. My recommendation, don't worry about that. Now I'm going to give an example in English. And those of you who are listening, you speak English and at least understand English. So that's why Deepak Chopra has a strong Indian accent, a lot more successful than I am, and yet I have the accent that many would say is the more standard American accent. Arianna Huffington has a strong Greek accent. She's a lot more successful and a lot richer than I am, and probably you, too. So these accents have not hurt them. Rosie o' Donnell sort of strong New York accent has not hurt her career. Bill Clinton, strong Southern accent didn't seem to harm his chances of becoming President of the United States. So it's far more important to have something interesting to say than to speak with a particular accent. So if you have a different accent or English is not even your first language, use that to your advantage. And if you're going to spend time being a better presenter, my advice, make sure you have an interesting speech, make sure you have interesting stories, interesting examples, because that takes a lot less time than trying to change how you've been speaking since you were three years old. By the way, your accent is determined primarily by your peers, not your parents, your peers from when you were ages 3 to 7. So that's why people often move from one part of the country to another as adults and their accent never really changes. Let's take another question from Indizine. How important is the ability to communicate in today's world? And why are so many people lacking in this field? I will address that in one moment.

For a free, no obligation online public speaking or media training course, go to mediatrainingworldwide.com and start learning today.

So how important is it to communicate? To me that's sort of like a question like how important is it to breathe? If you want to survive, you have to communicate. Everybody has to communicate. Now, I understand not everybody wants to be a professional speaker or a trainer or have their own podcast or daily video on YouTube. I understand most people aren't like that. But everybody has to speak. There are so many professions where you're speaking all day long. Every salesperson, every teacher, certainly every CEO, every journalist, they're speaking all day long. But I don't care who you are. If you're in the bowels of a bureaucracy, if you're in the accounting department, you have to speak to other people in the accounting department. If you want to advance in almost any organization, you have to speak to other people who work with you. Now some of you are saying, well, tj, maybe you're just an old guy. You don't realize everybody likes to just text everything all the time and sorry folks, but if you want to actually manage a lot of people, you're going to have to still speak. It might not be giving the so called formal big presentation, it might not be using PowerPoint, but the most powerful form of human communication is still, and I believe will continue to be speaking. Now, it may be someone seeing you speak on video or listening to you speak, as in the case of this podcast on itunes, but it's still the most powerful medium. If you don't learn how to speak effectively, you are putting a glass ceiling on your career. Because no matter what field you want to be in, you're limiting yourself. You can say, well, they'll teach you, I just want to be a novelist. Well, guess what? The most successful novelist, with very few exceptions, they have to go sell their books by going on prominent TV shows and talk shows to talk about their book to get people interested. So I don't care what field you're in, you're really, really rich. You don't have to have a job. Guess what? You have to speak to your servants. You have to tell them how you want your silver shined and how you want your clothes laid. Out really, really poor and you're homeless and you think you don't have the problem. Well, guess what? You have to speak to people begging for money. Folks, I don't mean to sound trash here or glib, but my point is everybody in the world has to speak. It's a skill. Not everyone has to learn how to tweet or have an active profile on Pinterest, although that can't hurt. But everyone does in fact have to speak. Now, the second part of your question from Indozine. Why are so many people lacking in this field? It's because no one's taught them. It is not taught in most schools and certainly in the United States. I can tell you it's rarely taught. If it is, it's generally taught in a horrible way. First public speaking class I had in high school, no video cameras. Now you could make the excuse, well, TJ, you're really old. Video didn't exist back in 1979, or certainly not inexpensively for most high schools. Well, guess what? In this day and age, cameras are really cheap. They're everywhere. And still in most high schools and colleges, video is not used, certainly not used in every single class. Maybe you're on three times a semester, which is frankly a waste of time. You need to practice many, many times on video any day you're getting instruction on it, in my view. So that's why it's not taught. It's also why you saw me just show, show that ad a moment ago. If the readers of Indozine want to get better, I have a free no obligation course on public speaking. It's an online video based course that can help them. But that is the answer to the question, it's just not taught. People know how to write because they're given formalized instruction every day in school. First grade, second grade, through high school and college. So most people who graduate from high school or college, they might not become best selling novelists, but they can write a simple memo, they can certainly text a message to an employee or a boss, and they don't necessarily know how to speak because they haven't been taught. So I'd like to thank my partner for this program at Indazine. Again, if you haven't been to this site, huge, huge site. I n D E z I n e dot com. They've got massive numbers of tutorials on PowerPoint and they've got Mac tutorials as well. So if you're a Mac user, don't say, well, that's just PowerPoint, that's just PC they've got everything you need for the Mac users as well. They've got every kind of add in for PowerPoint. They've got the small programs that plug into the PowerPoint and give you all sorts of extra capabilities. If you're trying to figure out how to add more content and edit, this site will show you how to do it. Now a lot of these add ins at Indazine are absolutely free. So if you don't have a huge budget or you want to just test the waters, I would highly recommend you go to Indizine. Check it out. Now some do cost but you don't have to start with that. You can start with the free ones. There are a lot of free ones from Microsoft that will help you create free add ons and there's hundreds and hundreds of them that you can also get great reviews of. All the add ons and all the extra bells and whistles, all the technology tools to help you with your PowerPoint creation. So again, thanks to Indozine and please check out the site if you haven't been there before. Those of you joining us from Indozine Community, I do want to thank you for being a part of our program today and joining us for the first time and I'd hope that you check us out and go to mediatrainingworldwide.com I'm TJ Walker. Make all of your presentations in life be a huge success.

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