BEC – Presentations - Conversation

AJ: So the next topic I think we should talk about is the topic of presentations,
just because it’s such a common thing. It’s another one of those fears. I think
in the interview conversation, or one of those lessons, I mentioned that
interviews are a terrifying experience for a lot of people. I also mentioned that
the other common terrifying experience was public speaking -- standing up in
front of other people and talking -- in other words, giving a presentation.

That could be just a meeting where you have to stand up and do a little
presentation for a small group, a department, a team or it could be something
much larger, at a conference or a seminar or something even quite large if
you’re expected to give like a keynote speech or something. So I think it’s an
important topic and the ability to make good presentations really can help
your career quite a bit.

George: Absolutely. I don’t think it matters much what job you’re in, in one way, shape
or form you’re going to be giving a presentation some time or other in your
career. It may be a simple one-on-one presentation with your boss or a
presentation to your boss’ boss, your second line manager or somebody up
even higher than that. Or, it could be just a presentation to your team of, pick
a number, anywhere from three to 10 people I suppose.

Every once in a while, particularly since we know that you are very good at
what you do, there’s a possibility that you’re going to end up having to stand
in front of a group of 20-30-50-100 people and present something and you’re
absolutely right. It is a terrifying experience until you get the hang of it and
you are accustomed to standing up in front of groups of people.

I know when I first started that, in fact when I was a teacher I guess was my
first real experience of giving a “presentation” and I was scared to death.
When I got in the business world I wasn’t much better until I learned a few
basic techniques and ideas to get me over the hump, but it’s a traumatic
experience for people.

AJ: I think the most important thing – we were talking earlier – is that the number
one thing is you have to totally and completely know what you’re talking
about, know your subject, know your topic. I mean that’s the starting point for
all of it, because if you don’t really know, if you’re not quite confident about

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 what you’ll be talking about, knowledgeable about it, then you’re naturally
going to be super nervous even if you’re a great speaker.

It’s going to kill your confidence if you don’t really know, so the first step is to
just really, really, prepare and that means knowing all about your subject. It
does not mean memorizing a speech. It does not mean writing out a speech
and memorizing it word for word. That is horrible. It’s the kiss of death. It’s
super boring. Do not memorize word for word.

What it does mean is let’s say I’m going to give a speech about teaching
techniques, English teaching techniques. Imagine I’m speaking to other
English teachers. Well, I need to know my subject, English teaching. I need
to know about all the techniques I’m going to be teaching them. I need to
know that very, very, very well. Now, that is a subject I know well because I
have lots and lots of experience so for me that would be easy to prepare for.

If I had to give a speech for some reason, I don’t know why, but if I had to
give a speech about physics then I would really, really have to do a lot of
studying and learning and reading and talking to people to be comfortable
giving a talk about physics. Of course, usually I would just turn down that. I
wouldn’t do it, but if for some reason I was forced to.

Sometimes in your job maybe you’ll be forced to give a speech about

something you’re not an expert in. Maybe your boss will say I want you to
give a presentation about something. Then you’ve just really got to start
studying hard. I think that’s the main first step before any techniques.

George: Oh, I agree totally. If you know what your subject is, you know what the
message is that you want to get across and you believe in it, I guess is
another way to say it, it really becomes very easy. The terrifying part I think
for people is, one, maybe they’re not comfortable with the subject and then,
two, if they are comfortable with the subject they’re afraid of the questions
that might come back.

If you’re prepared, you know your stuff, you know your subject then you’re
ready for any kind of question. The only thing left that you have to worry
about and you don’t even have to worry about it, the only thing you have to
think about is what kind of techniques you want to use in terms of slides and
pictures and the way you walk and move your arms and all that kind of stuff.

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 I tell you what, it’s outstanding to be able to stand up in front of a group of
people and only be concerned, not only concerned, but you’re conscious of
the movements that you’re making and the way you’re presenting things
because you can become a showman, an actor, if you will.

AJ: Yeah, yeah, it’s definitely a performance. That’s how I think of it. When I’m
giving a speech or something or a presentation to a small or large group, I
do, I feel like I’m an actor. You know I’m performing for them and I mean that
not in a fake way. I’m not being fake. I’m not being insincere. What I mean is
that I’m giving them like my sort of top level of confidence and energy,
everything.

So I’m performing at the top level that I can and because I know the subject
really well, yeah, then I can focus on my energy level, my confidence, the
way I’m going to walk around the room, all of those other techniques which
we’ll talk about in some of our commentaries. The main thing is you’ve got to
get that core confidence and that comes from really knowing what you’re
talking about.

George: Yup, exactly. Once you know what you’re talking about, than it’s very easy for
you to come across to any size of audience as being committed to the
subject, enthusiastic about the subject and in some way or other you’re
probably trying to sell that group you’re talking to on your subject, whether it’s
a new program that you’re going to recommend being implemented.

Or, whether you’re talking to the vice president about saving money and
increasing efficiencies and effectiveness and things of that nature or whether
it’s just the weekly update to the 10 people and your boss that work together
on whatever your phase of the business is.

AJ: Once you really know what you’re talking about let’s say the next step might
be just thinking about the basic structure of the speech, how you’re going to
communicate. So let’s say you have a lot of information. For example, again,
I’m giving a speech about teaching techniques. Let’s imagine I’m doing that,
so how will I prepare. How will I present that? I could just talk about it, lecture
like most teachers do and that’s a really boring way to do it.

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There are many different techniques, but one technique I learned, the basic
technique I learned at the Dale Carnegie Speech Course, which is the first
speech course I ever took and it was excellent, was to use lots of stories.
Stories, stories, stories, personal stories or stories you personally know of to
communicate the information.

So instead of just telling someone to do something, what you do is first you

tell a story. What’s a story? It’s just an example. It’s quite similar to the
interview techniques we talked about. So first you tell your story. Maybe it’s a
story about you. Maybe it’s a story about a customer, somebody who had an
experience related to what you’re talking about.

So you tell your story. Keep it short. Just a couple minutes, a few minutes,
three-four minutes at the most. Then after you tell your story you might give
some basic data, if that’s required, some research statistics or something like
that to support your main idea. Then you tell them an action -- what’s the
action that they should take – and then, finally, you tell them the benefit of
that action -- what will happen when they take that action; what beneficial
result will they get.

That’s a really basic formula. It won’t necessarily work with every single
speech, but for a lot of presentations that formula works. I use it all the time
in my seminars. So instead of just giving information and lecturing, for
example, first I’ll tell a story about my own teaching experience. Maybe I’ll tell
a story about some disaster, some terrible thing that used to happen and
then I’ll tell about how I learned a better way.

Then I’ll give some data, some information, some statistics about the number
of students who fail or student motivation numbers being really low,
something to support my point. Then I’ll tell them the actual technique they
should use instead, what I learned, what is better and then I’ll tell them the
benefit. If you do this your students will get better results and they’ll be
happier. Then, if necessary, if I’m actually training something then I would
actually train them to do the technique themselves.

So that’s a nice little basic outline you can use for a lot of presentations and it
keeps it more interesting because stories are more emotional. It’s not just
giving them a bunch of facts. You’ve got to connect people with real life and
with real emotions.

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George: Well, I agree totally, but I would add that I’ve always been partial to
analogies. Maybe that’s because a lot of my presentations to small groups
and even very large groups I’ve made were on a subject that maybe
everybody in the audience didn’t quite understand or there was a specific
topic that I was dealing with that was a little difficult to conceptualize just
sitting there listening to somebody.

So I always interject a lot of analogies and I’ll be quite honest with you, most
of them just come off the top of my head as I’m talking. There are a few that I
plan to use and that’s like AJ’s stories, that’s really what they are, except
they’re stories that are designed to take maybe a complex idea and bring it
down to a simpler thought process.

Actually, I can’t think of one off the top of my head right now, but an analogy
is very, very useful. It is just a way to explain a process, an issue or a
problem on a lower level that makes sense to everybody, whether they
understand the overall subject or not.

In other words, let’s say it’s a financial concept or there are financial issues
that you’re doing a presentation on. Everybody in the room isn’t a financial
person, but they all have a vested interest and a need to understand what
you’re trying to get across so you interject a lot of analogies to bring it down
to the simplest terms so everybody can follow where you’re going with your
story and your presentation.

AJ: Yes. So, you know, you’ve got stories, personal stories, true, real stories from
yourself, customers, whatever and then using an analogy or another way to
say it is metaphor. An analogy is just like a symbolic story. It’s a little story
that uses metaphors really. I’ll give you a very short example of this from
Effortless English from my teaching system.

Sometimes there are a lot of complicated things I’m talking about,

psychology and motivation and research studies and teaching methods and
all this stuff, but I have a really basic metaphor or analogy for this and it’s
called the Effortless English Engine. So I say there are two parts, there’s fuel
or gas and there’s a motor. I say the gas – the fuel – that’s emotion, that’s
energy, that’s motivation and then the motor.

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 Those are the actual teaching techniques, so I tell them you need both. You
have to have a great method, great techniques of teaching – a motor – but
then you also have to have students who have great motivation. Their energy
level is high. They’re really concentrating. They’re excited. They’re
enthusiastic. You need both, right? If you have gas and a motor then you go.
You can go quickly. If you’re missing one then you can’t go. You go nowhere.

So that’s just a simple example of using metaphors or an analogy. It’s some

kind of symbolic way to teach. It makes it simple. You take something that’s
complex and then you compare it to something else and make it more
simple.

George: Absolutely. It’s really not as hard as you think. It’s just getting over the initial
shock and the reaction. I really believe once you give it a try a few times
you’ll actually probably be like AJ and I. You’ll enjoy getting up in front of a
group of people and talking to them. It can be a very fun-filled event and a
very rewarding situation. I’ve done a lot of it and it’s great.

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BEC – Presentations - Vocabulary
Hi, this is AJ. Welcome to the vocabulary lesson. Let’s get started.

The first phrase is ‘keynote speech’, keynote speech. You might give a keynote
speech. A keynote speech is sort of the main speech or the starting speech usually of a
seminar or a convention. It might not always be the first speech, but it’s the main
speech. So kind of the big speaker does the main big speech. That’s called the keynote
speech.

The next phrase is ‘get the hang of’, to get the hang of something. To get the hang of
something means to become good at it, to become comfortable with it, so we usually
use this with a skill. So, for example, if I’m learning how to surf and I’m struggling, I’m
not good, I’m not good, I’m not good and then suddenly I start to get better. My skill
increases. I’m starting to be good at it. Then I might say I’m getting the hang of it. I’m
getting the hang of surfing, meaning I’m starting to get good.

‘Accustomed to’, accustomed to something. If you’re accustomed to something it

means you’re used to it. You’re used to it. You’re comfortable with it.

The next phrase is ‘get me over the hump’, or to get over the hump. To get over the
hump means to get past the most difficult part. You can imagine ‘hump’ means like a
hill, a hill or even a mountain. If you’re going up a mountain ah, you’re climbing, you’re
climbing, you’re climbing and then you get over the hump, you get over the top of the
mountain, over the top of the hill, well then you’re going down the hill it’s much easier.
So the hump is kind of the top part of the hill. So to get over the hump, you can imagine
again then the hump is kind of the most difficult part, getting over the top. Then after you
get over the top, after you get over the hump, now everything becomes much easier.

Okay, ‘the kiss of death’. If something is the kiss of death it means it will cause a
disaster. It’s something that will destroy you or destroy something. So I said memorizing
a speech word for word that’s the kiss of death. It means if you do that it will destroy
your speech. It will make it terrible. It will make it really boring.

‘To have a message to get across’, a message to get across. To get across means to
communicate. So if you have message to get across to people it means you have a
message to communicate to people.

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‘Know your stuff’, you need to know your stuff. It’s a little bit of an idiom here. To know
your stuff means to know your subject. So in this situation, in this case, stuff means
subject. Know what you’re talking about. Know your stuff. Know your subject.

An ‘analogy’. An analogy is a symbolic story usually used to teach some idea, so it’s a
symbolic story. You know probably the story about the rabbit and the turtle or tortoise,
right? They have a race and the rabbit runs really fast, but then he stops because he’s
kind of lazy and he takes a long break. Then he runs a little bit more and then he stops.
Then the turtle just slowly walks at the same speed all the time and eventually the turtle
wins because the rabbit falls asleep. That’s an analogy, right? It’s not really about
rabbits and turtles. It’s about the idea of slowly moving forward to accomplish a goal. It’s
a symbolic story that teaches you something.

‘To come off the top of your head’, like oh, that idea just came off the top of my head.
It means something that just comes into your head quickly. It means a quick thought. It’s
not something you planned it’s something that’s spontaneous. It’s a spontaneous
thought or a spontaneous idea. So if you said oh, that just came off the top of my head,
it means that was a spontaneous thought. It was a spontaneous idea.

Finally, to have a ‘vested interest in something’. I have a vested interest in this

football game. To have a vested interest means you have some kind of committed
interest. It means you have a serious interest in it, right? It means there will be some
kind of result to you so, for example, the football example. I have a vested interest in
this game, this football game. Maybe you bet money. You bet that one team would win.
Well, now you have a serious interest in that game because if your team wins you’ll
make money, if your team loses you’re going to lose money. So it’s a very serious
interest, it’s not just a relaxed, casual interest. You have a very practical reason to be
interested in it. That’s called a vested interest.

And that is all of our vocabulary this time. So, as usual, I want you to listen to the
vocabulary lesson every day for 10 days or more, 10 to 14 days or more and I would
like you to listen to the basic conversation every day in this set for 10 to 14 days and
listen to each of the commentaries every day for 10 to 14 days. That repetition is so
important.

I know that sometimes you might feel it’s boring. Oh, I already know this. After seven
days maybe you feel like it’s easy and you want to go to the next lesson set. Don’t. I
encourage you to go for at least 10 days, maybe even 14 days using the same lesson
set. You’ll really learn deeply. This is how you master something.

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This is what athletes do if they’re practicing a golf swing, for example. They’ll practice
the golf swing hundreds of times, thousands of times. They learn it very deeply. So
listen, listen, listen a lot and learn this deeply even when it feels easy, especially when it
feels easy. Keep on repeating.

All right, see you next time. Bye-bye.

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BEC – Presentations - George
Hi, it’s George here on the subject of presentations, my comment and a few thoughts.
I’m going to tell you that the very first and foremost important thing that you’ve got to do
when you do a presentation is know your subject. We talked about that in our
conversation and I just want to reinforce that. Know your subject, because after that
everything else is really very easy.

Let me give you a very simple format when you’re preparing your presentation,
something I learned a long, long time ago. It pertains to presenting and it pertains to
education too. Three things, there are three components to your presentation.

The first component is you tell the audience. You tell them what you’re going to tell
them. What I mean by that is in the very beginning you give them an overview of the
subject that you’re going to be talking about, just a brief overview that gets their
attention so they know what direction your conversation or your presentation is going to
take.

The second thing you do – here’s the body of the presentation – you tell them here’s
where you get all the details, all the issues, whether it’s a problem you’re solving or an
issue that needs to be dealt with or just a simple informational presentation. Tell them.
That’s the body.

The third and final piece is what I’ll call the wrap or the closing piece and in that piece all
you do is tell them what you told them. So, in other words, you give them a recap and
this is where you basically discuss the key points that you were trying to make in your
presentation. That’s just a very basic format.

The other piece or the most important piece really sometimes to a presentation is the
style and by style I’m talking about the use of slides, the use of PowerPoint, the use of a
PC in any way, shape or form, the use of charts, some of you may still use overhead
projectors. That is one big piece of style. And it doesn’t matter which one you use, but I
would warn and tell you, one, do not put a lot of information on any charts, slides, PC
presentations, anything of that nature.

Keep your presentation visual material down. I like two, but I’d say two to five maximum
bullet points so that you don’t have people sitting there reading all the time that you’re
trying to talk. Then behind that what you have to do is from those bullet points you have
your discussion, your presentation based on those bullet points. Those bullet points can

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be keywords -- they might even be pictures in some cases -- keywords or pictures from
which you then take off from that spot and go forward with the details of your
presentation. You do this all the way through the presentation.

You do not want to ever, ever, ever read the charts, the foils or whatever is on the
screen of your presentation. Don’t stand there and read that stuff to them. You’ve got
short bullets, they can read, or you may just comment on them and then go on from
there. Not only do you not want to read them, you don’t want to turn around and look at
it. If it’s one of those situations where you’ve got a screen behind you, hopefully, that’s
the ideal situation, don’t turn around and look at that thing. You know what’s up there.
Look at your audience. Look at your audience, which is the next probably big thing in
my mind for a presenter is to look at your audience.

There are a couple old, old thoughts on how to get over the fear of dealing with a large
audience. One of them that I think is kind of funny is they tell you just picture your entire
audience as being naked and that will relax you instantly. If you want to try it go ahead,
but let me tell you something. That never relaxed me and I’m not sure that’s the greatest
idea in the world because…well, you get the idea. I don’t know if I’d try that.

Another thought that somebody comes up with and this is getting a little closer to a
better idea, that is to pick out somebody in the audience, make eye contact with them
and make your presentation to them. Forget about everybody else in the room. Well,
that’s a good start. I would tell you let’s take it a step further.

Make eye contact with as many people as you can as you are moving back and forth
around the stage. If you’re on the right side of the stage, look at somebody directly
when you’re making a point. If you stay on that side and make another point, look at
somebody else. As you move to the middle, pick out somebody, look at them and keep
looking.

As you do this throughout your presentation, you will probably end up either looking
directly at or in the direct vicinity of everybody in the room. That makes for a great
presentation because everybody is sitting there saying he or she is talking to me, great
way to get people to listen and absorb what you’re trying to get.

I mentioned also movement. I’m sure you’ve seen a lot of presenters who’ve stood
behind the podium with their hands clasped to the side, never moved an inch, looked
down every three seconds at their notes and just monotone talked through the
presentation. Did you enjoy that? I’m going to bet that you did not enjoy that. Don’t do it.

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I’m sure you’ve also seen presenters who’ve stood there with their back almost totally to
you reading the presentation that’s up on the screen. Did you enjoy that? Did you really
think they were talking to you? I’m going to bet that you didn’t.

There’s nothing wrong with moving around the stage and the stage can be maybe just
the end of a room when you’re presenting to your team. Get your chair out of the way
and move back and forth making eye contact with people as you move making your
points. That is a very effective presentation mode that you can get into.

I’ll go back to what I said in the conversation piece. If you know your subject and you’ve
got short bullets on your flipcharts, foils or slides or whatever they are and you know
what each one of those bullets means and what your conversation or your presentation
is about those bullets, the movement, the eye contact, all the rest of that is going to be
very easy and this fear of presentations is going to be a piece of cake.

Do you know what means, a piece of cake? Well, a piece of cake is something good. If
you want something good, you want a piece of cake? Well, a piece of cake in the
business world means that’s easy. That’s easy to do, very easy. It’s easy and it’s good.

One last thought, try in your preparation, get yourself to where you know the subject,
you know your presentation so well that you need very, very few notes. Now, I used to
give a lot of presentations where there was a podium and I couldn’t stand behind that
podium. I use moving all the time, but I would leave notes on the podium and every
once in a while I’d drift past the podium and take a quick peek to make sure that I was
covering what I wanted to cover and I was on track, if you will, for the subject and the
whole presentation.

There’s nothing wrong with doing that, but just don’t carry a notepad around with you
and don’t stand behind that podium and read off your notes. Feel free, act like you were
at a party just having conversation with a whole bunch of people at once. It really is that
simple.

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BEC – Presentations - AJ
Hello, this is AJ. Welcome to my commentary for this conversation. So we’re talking
about presentations, giving speeches of some kind or another. I think the main point is
preparation. We talked about that in the conversation, my dad mentioned it, this idea of
being totally and thoroughly prepared, almost over prepared. And, again, what that does
not mean, it does not mean memorization.

Please, do not try to memorize your speech word for word. That will make you terrified,
because if you have to remember every single word you’re going to get up on that stage
feeling nervous and you’re going to be worried. What if I forget! What if I forget! Oh, my
God! Then you probably will forget and then when you forget you’ll freeze and panic. It’s
terrible. Don’t do that, please.

The other thing you don’t want to do is just write it out and read it, okay? That’s a
reading. That’s not a speech. It’s not a presentation. Nobody wants to sit there while you
read to them. I mean that’s what we do with little children. It’s boring. So the question is
how can you be super prepared, right? I mean what should you do to be prepared?

Of course, you need to know the subject, whatever it is you’re talking about very well.
So I’m assuming – I believe – that if you’re going to make a speech about something
that you know about it and if you don’t then you should really study that subject very,
very well, know it very well. So I’m not going to talk about that. You have to do that of
course, but that’s different for every speech, it depends on the topic, but I can talk about
more general things you can do to prepare, kind of how to prepare for a speech.

The first thing to do with a speech is to just kind of gather, take notes. Not word for word
writing the speech, but just take notes like maybe on little cards of kind of all the main
ideas you want to talk about. You might take notes about certain statistics or research
that you want to mention. You might write down a basic outline, a basic idea of the
stories you want to talk about. Don’t write them out word for word, but just make notes.
Make an outline.

Now, probably you’re having to do this in English -- that’s why you’re listening to this --
and that makes it even more scary because you’re probably worried about your
pronunciation or your English skills. Don’t worry about it. I mean your English skills are
as good as they are. You’re trying to make them better in the long-term, but in short-
term just don’t worry about it. You might make mistakes with English.

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I make mistakes with English. I’m teaching English to groups, 300-500 people, and I’ll
make a grammar mistake sometimes. So what? Who cares? It doesn’t matter. What is
important is the information, the stories, the data, that you speak in a confident way.
That’s what you have to focus on. Don’t even think about grammar.

So, after you make your notes the main preparation will be just talking about your
subject. You’ll just start standing up in your room alone and you’ll just start telling the
stories. You’ll tell one story to yourself as you walk around the room and then you’ll tell
another one. You’ll give some facts and some ideas and then you’ll tell them to take
certain actions. So, basically, you’re practicing your speech, but you’re not doing it word
for word. Every time you practice it will be just a little different. You might use a little bit
different wording. You might do the order a little bit differently.

The point is you’re just getting used to talking about it. Talk to your friends. Talk to your
coworkers about the subject as much as you can. Talk to family members. Just get used
to talk about it, talking about, talking about it so that it’s really natural to tell these stories
and to give this information and to tell people to take certain actions and to talk about
the benefits. Get constantly talking about it. After a while you’ll get used to it. It will all be
in your head. It will be easy for you to tell the stories. It will be easy for you to give the
information.

The next step then will be to give that information in a powerful and interesting way and
that’s more about your emotion. Now, this is where you can use the same exact
technique I taught you in the interview commentary. That’s that anchoring, that peak
emotion lesson I gave you of how to use music and strong movements and strong
emotion to create a very strong confident feeling in yourself. Well, guess what? You can
do the exact same thing before you give a speech.

Again, you should practice it at home first. So you could put on that music, get really
excited, get really confident feeling. Change your body, your posture, your facial
expressions, how you move, make all of it very strong, very powerful. Exaggerate it,
make it stronger than normal. Then when you’re feeling that way, start talking about
your subject again walking around your room. You could even talk to the mirror, but
being very strong, very confident and very powerfully emotional in a positive way.

Then just get used to doing that again and again. Several days you keep doing that,
practicing it, practicing it, practicing it, so now you’re telling the stories and giving the
information while you have this feeling of confidence, while you have this feeling of
strength and power. The more you do it you start anchoring, connecting those feelings

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to the subject and to the act of speaking so it becomes more and more easy to do, less
and less scary.

Finally -- step three of your preparation -- you’ll actually try to practice the entire speech.
So now it’s going to be more organized. You’ll follow that formula maybe of telling a
story, an analogy or a direct story and then giving some supporting information and then
telling them the action they should take. You should do this because…and the
‘because’ part is the benefit. Tell them the benefit -- because if you do this your teaching
will be better, because if you do this we’ll make a lot of money, whatever.

So story, then the data, then the action they should take and then the benefit of taking
that action. You could have several of those little units if it’s a longer speech. If it’s a
shorter speech or a presentation it might just be one of those, one story, a couple things
of information, one action and one benefit.

So you’ll practice that entire speech, the entire thing and, again, first you’re going to get
yourself very confident, very strong and very powerful. Super exaggerate this. It has to
be much stronger than normal. Because in the real situation you’re going to feel some
nervousness and so it’s not going to be quite as strong, so you have to make it much
stronger when you practice.

So, again, you get in that strong, powerful emotional state then you practice your
speech. You can use notes or not use notes, it’s up to you, but do not read your
presentation. So after you practice this in that peak emotional state, that strong,
confident emotional state many times over several days, you should be quite ready and
you should be ready to give your presentation in a confident way.

Just before your presentation you want to be in a strong, confident emotional state,
right? You want to be feeling good and strong, so if you need to go to the bathroom or
go outside somewhere private and jump around. If you have an iPod or some music
play your favorite song that makes you really excited and strong. Kind of review in your
head, imagine that you’re giving the speech. Get yourself really, really powerful then go
back into the room and then give your speech. One last thing about this is that the more
speeches you give, obviously, the more comfortable you will become.

So, even when you do all of these things I just said, your first speech you know you’re
probably going to be kind of nervous, but you’ll still do a good job. You’ll do a good job.
Then after you do that first one though, you’ll sit down. Maybe you’ll be shaking a little

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bit and then you’ll realize well, that wasn’t so bad. It actually went pretty well. It wasn’t a
disaster.

Well, if you can, try to get another opportunity as soon as possible to do another
speech. You might even join a group, a class, a course, a club, that’s focused on giving
public speeches. That’s the way you really practice this. There’s an international group
called Toast Masters. They’re a public speaking group. They practice speeches and
they’re international. They’re all over the world in lots of different countries.

They’re not my favorite group, honestly. They’re a little old fashioned in some of the
ways they do things, a little too formal, but that’s a small criticism. In general, they’re a
nice group and they give you a lot of opportunities to practice making speeches and the
more you practice, the more you do, the easier they become.

An excellent course that I recommend that you’re going to have to pay for, but it’s still
excellent is the Dale Carnegie Public Speaking Course. They are also international, I
believe. I’m not such which countries they’re in, but they’re in a lot of countries. That is a
truly excellent public speaking course. If you have a chance, an opportunity to take that
course, do it. It was the first speaking course I ever took and it really helped me a lot.

Other than that you could always start your own little club in your house for public
speaking. You and some friends or you and some coworkers or you could do it at your
job, start a little public speaking club. Then just every week you get together and
everybody makes a three or four minute speech.
Whatever you do just practice, practice, practice. It does get easier and eventually you
will enjoy it. So talk about it a lot then practice it in that kind of strong emotional state.
Then practice the whole thing while you’re feeling very strong and powerful and then
just before the speech get in that powerful emotional state again and then do your
speech. That’s it, quite simple. Not necessarily easy, but it is simple.

So get out there and do it and whatever happens do it again, do it again, do it again.
That repetition will really help. By being a good, you don’t have to be great, but just
being a good public speaker, a good presenter you really will help your career a lot.
Because people who are good presenters, people who are good speakers usually do
well in their career.

You know they get noticed. Bosses notice them. The boss’ boss notices them. You
make a lot of connections that way and people begin to see you as an expert in your
area because you’re good a presenting, because you’re good at speaking, so this is a

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very important skill to develop. Even if you’re afraid, work at it. Work hard at it because
this will help you so much in the long-term.

Okay, that’s all. See you next time, bye-bye.

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