TJ WALKER - THE HABIT INFLUENCER - Personal Development | LIVE STREAM

4 Jan 2017 · 3 min

Watch on YouTube

2:58

TJ Walker argues that every presentation, speech, or pitch should begin by identifying one specific action you want the audience to take. Before collecting material or designing slides, fixate on that single objective and then determine what will motivate the audience to do it. He contrasts academic assignments (e.g., a book report) with real-world speaking where influencing action is the goal. Walker illustrates by revealing his own objective for this video: to get viewers to like his Facebook page (facebook.com/tjwalkerinteractive) for ongoing public-speaking tips.

Chapters

What is the starting point for any presentation, speech, talk, briefing or pitch? I believe before you start gathering information, gathering data, arranging PowerPoint slides, you need to step back for a minute and ask yourself, what is it I want this audience member to do? What are you trying to influence people to do? Do you want them to vote for you for mayor, for president? Do you want them to hire you? Do you want them to endorse you? Do you want them to invest in you? What is the one, and I do mean literally, one thing you want your audience to do. Write it down, look at it, think about it, really fixate on this one thing. Then, and only then, ask yourself, let's back up from that one thing and ask yourself, what is going to motivate my audience to do that one thing? That's what I believe the starting point should be for every single presentation. Unless you're in the seventh grade and you're just asked to give a book report on the solar system. Sure, in an academic environment, it may be just to show mastery of a subject matter. But in the real world, in the political world, the business world, the civic world, the NGO world, that's not what you're there to do when you're speaking. You're there to influence people, to create some positive action for them, for you, for your organization. So you got to be more selective. So that's the starting point. So I did that today for this video. My starting point, my goal is to get you to like my Facebook page so I can continue to communicate with you on a regular basis. I'm hoping that if you're interested in public speaking and presentation skills, you got some value out of this particular video and that will motivate you to want to go to facebook.com tjwalkerinteractive if you're not there already. And just like the page, that way you don't have to pay anything. It's simple, it's easy. You can get regular updates on how to speak more effectively. So please, please, before you do any presentation, even a simple video on Facebook or YouTube, ask yourself, what is the one thing you're trying to get the audience to do?