I do my best to make this blog a resource for presenters - not pro-speakers, but real people who need to make presentations as part of their 'day job'. If there's something you really want to know about, just email me and I'll see what I can do (no promises except that I'll read your email - use simon@ and you can guess the rest of my address. :) )
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This post comes in two parts. Part one is about not starting with any “why” at all and the second part is about not starting your presentation with your “why”. The start of your presentation isn’t the right time to tell people ‘why’ they should be interested There’s a whole lot of tosh online about …
Read more “Presentations – don’t start with why! Simon sinek was sort of wrong!”
Let’s be clear, there’s no silver bullet. If fantastic presentations were as easy as we hope, I’d be out of a job… but while the how you do things is more complicated, the what you should should do to get better presentations is more straight-forward. And even just knowing what you’re trying to do will …
Read more “Better presentations – the simple three part model to make them”
There’s something about being perfect that set’s people’s teeth on edge. Perhaps it’s the idea that if something is perfect it must be artificial – not authentic. It’s true both in presentation in real life. Let me give you a couple of examples. About a year ago, my Mum died. At her funeral, my younger …
I’m not a huge fan of “the X secrets to…” for anything. Inevitably the real world is more complicated than the blog post with that kind of title has suggested. Maybe it’s me, but it seems that posts like that always finish with an extra step of “realise you don’t know how to do it …
It’s nearly conference season, so here we go… I have to confess I’ve been driven to write this so that I can sleep better and let my frustrations somewhere to go. Last year I attended some conferences where I wanted to scream at the presenter “I’m sure what you’re saying would be helpful but I …
When we talk about an image being ‘isolated’ we mean that the main object of the image isn’t cluttered up by a messy background – usually there’s no background at all. The image of the girl to the right is isolated. If you want to show someone bored, there’s a good chance that this image, or …
Before I was a presentation skills trainer – not quite in my youth – I spent about seven years touring as the technical director of a dance company. I learned a lot from them to do with discipline and hard work. I learned about focus and I learned what effort looks like. (I might even …
A bit of a change here in this blog! This is a a guest post from Meetupcall and therefore very different from the usual presentation genius stuff! At Meetupcall, they’ve been looking at some famous speakers from history and sharing their thoughts on what makes them effective. Don’t try too hard to do exactly as these …
Once upon a time I was taking instruction on playing the piano with a view to becoming a professional pianist. I never got that far (I was never that good, not even close!) but it gave me an interesting perspective on how professional performers work. And it’s not like it’s portrayed in the movies. (C’mon, …
Read more “How to present better: Presentation stage management”
Leading a team or doing your own marketing? Awesome! But not having the impact on the world you think you should? Less Awesome.
StoryMaking is my new book that looks at how to tactically use stories in your presentations, your marketing and your sales. It's my usual light-weight style over heavy-weight research!
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The StoryMaking System is the result of reading (in mind-numbing detail) over 400 peer-reviewed research papers, dozens of books, thousands of ours of observational research and blood sweat and tears!
It's the framework for designing a presentation which gives you the fastest way to getting something is (almost) guaranteed to work. It gives your audience what they need - and only what they need - to be impacted.
The key elements are:
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