Your Public Speaking Mentor

Must I REALLY explain this one? Actually, it seems so! It sounds like such a simple concept, but I have seen presenters walk to the stage completely stone-faced, and then try to warm up the audience with a joke.

Your presentation doesn’t begin when you open your mouth, it begins the second you become visible to your audience. Before you even make it all the way to the stage much of your audience has already taken a good look at your face. They have already passed an initial judgment on you.

If your objective is to win your audience over, a smile will help make that happen. Be warm with your audience; show them that you’re sincerely happy to be there with them.

Being Sensational

So, what’s the lesson? Smile!

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Always comport yourself as if the most important person in your life’s watching you, because they may just be doing so!

I’ve often been told that so and so had been in the audience, after I’ve delivered a talk or a presentation. I’ve learned to comport myself as if the most important person in the world’s watching From Stage Fright To Spotlight me at all times, and I learned this lesson in Thunder Bay, Ontario, back in the early 1980’s.

I was on the road with the band, and three of us headed to a Laundromat, to get our laundry done. We were always joking around, and making fun of ourselves, whether on the stage, or off the stage. The Laundromat was mostly empty, with the exception of the three of us, and one older man, who was sitting alone at the other end of the room, engrossed in his book.

We were all wearing our band jackets, with the name of the band, “Midnite Sun,” emblazoned on the back, and with our individual names on the shoulders. We were goofing around, and making fun of each other, as was usually the case. Then I decided to give our agent a call from the pay phone, because we’d had a cancellation for the following week, and he was working on finding a replacement gig. Continue reading →

If you have something to say, say it! Don’t ever let someone else silence your voice. Tell your story, share your dreams and sing your song. The world needs what you carry inside you, and you have the opportunity to change lives with your words.

At every opportunity, take the stage, grab the Spotlight, and tell the world who you are, and what you believe in. Your wisdom could be the catalyst that ignites the fire within someone else, and this someone else could go on to change the world.

Remember, stories are meant to be told. The world is listening; all you have to do is speak!

Get IMMEDIATE FREE ACCESS to 4 Hours of Intensive Training Videos, Deliver High-impact Presentations and Influence & Inspire Any Audience When Public Speaking…all starting right now! Get you free public speaking video here.

Because of all the years I’ve spent speaking and performing, I’ve learned a lot of lessons about what to do to stand out from the crowd. One of those lessons is to stick around, after the show or presentation is over.

When we were on the road with the band, I noticed that many other bands would completely leave the place right after they finished performing, or even step out when they were on their breaks. Our band never did that. We always made ourselves available to the crowd. We didn’t do this as some sort of strategy, we simply enjoyed the attention. People would flock around us!

Continue reading →

Knowing all the “rules” that are laid out in this book, as well as in many other great books about public speaking, is critically important. It’s important to know these rules, in order for you to follow them, but also in order for you to break them!

Someone who has no training or knowledge about how to speak in public effectively will likely break every rule there is, and their presentation will be a mess. However, every now and then, we see amazing speakers who seem to break the rules so effectively that they make a huge impression.

At a conference in Atlanta, Georgia, I witnessed a speaker who looked so unpolished, and looked so rough around the edges, that my first impression was, “Who the heck is this character, and what’s he doing on the stage?” His mastery of the stage was quickly apparent when he began to speak, however. This guy was brilliant, but he broke the rules of stage etiquette regularly, and that’s what made him unique and memorable. He was foul- Continue reading →

How you’re introduced to an audience is the first step to being sensational on the stage. The introduction is a critical point in your presentation, because it’s your audience’s first exposure to you. You want it to be perfect! Don’t waste this precious opportunity, an opportunity that lets you paint a picture in your audience’s mind about who you are. Leaving your introduction to the discretion of the Master of Ceremonies isn’t going to give you the powerful opening you need. Unfortunately, many speakers omit this important step.

To write an effective introduction, spare the audience from having to endure a long and painful list of your accomplishments. They don’t really care about what you’ve done that much. It’s always best to keep your introduction short, sweet, and powerful. Include only the information that’s really From Stage Fright To Spotlight important to your audience, and use your introduction as a mood-setter. Continue reading →

About two weeks before writing this chapter, my step-son, Daniel, told me he was giving a presentation in one of his university courses. He told me he was planning on starting with a joke, because he was taught to begin presentations that way. Not by me, he wasn’t!

The joke he planned to open with was lame, not at all funny, and very old. Is there a worse way to begin a presentation? Probably, but I’ve never seen it.

Unless you’re a comedian, jokes have no place in presentations, or speaking gigs. Now, before you humorists get all up in arms, let me explain my reasoning. A joke and a humorous anecdote aren’t the same things. Continue reading →