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Presentation Basics VIP - Commentary

Hello this is AJ. Welcome to the commentary for ‘Presentation Basics’. So these are indeed the basics, the basics of giving a presentation, the core, the fundamentals. If you just follow those do’s and don’ts that I taught in the video you will do quite well with your presentations.

Now, of course, I know that for most people nervousness is a major issue when giving a speech, especially if you have to stand up in front of a group. It can feel quite scary for a while in the beginning for the first several speeches and I don’t have a perfect cure for that because, honestly, I think there’s always going to be a little bit of nervousness, but I’ve found that the first cure for that nervousness is just, knowing your topic very well.

So in the beginning before a speech I would practice it constantly for at least a week beforehand, sometimes two weeks beforehand and, again, when I say practice I do not mean memorize. Memorized speeches are horrible. Never, never, never memorize a speech; however, you can practice it and by practice it I mean you just talk, talk, talk about the topic. Talk in the mirror. Pace around. Walk around you living room and talk about it. Talk to yourself in the bathroom. Talk to yourself in the shower. Just constantly be giving your presentation talking about the topic or topics and by doing that all the time you really become more and more secure. You feel more secure. You feel more confident because you’re just so used to talking about it.

Here’s another great thing, another reason why this is so important. See, if you try to memorize a speech you’re going to feel more nervous not less nervous. I promise you it will make you feel super nervous. The reason is if you’re trying to memorize every word of a speech well, number one, of course, it is boring and it’s a stupid thing to do so don’t do it. But in addition to that, in addition to it being boring and stupid it also will make you feel so much more nervous because if you’re trying to memorize it then that means you might possibly forget, right, especially when you’re standing on that stage and you’re really nervous facing all those people and suddenly you can’t remember what’s the next word, what’s the next sentence. I tried to memorize it all. I tried to memorize every bit of this speech and oh, my God, I can’t remember any of it ah!

Isn’t that the ultimate fear of any public speaker that you forget your speech while you’re standing there in front of 30 people, 100 people, your boss, whatever, right? That’s the nightmare, the terror. Well, if you try to memorize a speech that fear is going to be in your head I promise you and it is likely that you will forget something. The problem is if it’s a memorized speech if you forget something then you don’t know what to do next, you kind of panic. On the other hand when you just prepare by just talking about the topic, just chatting to yourself about the topic and just trying to remember the major points and each time you practice it might be different.

You practice it one time and you might say it one way and then the next time you practice it just spontaneously you end up saying it another way and then the next time you practice it it sounds a little bit different again. You keep talking about the main points, the same topic, but every time it’s different. It sounds different. You might use different emotion. You might move differently. You’re using different words somewhat each time.

See, what you’re doing in that process, number one, you’re reminding yourself again and again and again of the main points, what’s the most important part, but the other thing you’re doing is you’re teaching yourself to be more flexible. You’re teaching yourself to improvise a little bit, right? Like if the topic you’re talking about is, I don’t know, emotions “What are the three ways to increase you’re emotions” as long you remember the three major points you might explain each of those points quite differently each time. In fact, as you practice you may even try different methods, different stories, different ways of explaining it.

So you might explain it one way and then the next day you’re like ah, that was okay. I’m going to try explaining it in a different way and then every time you explain it somewhat differently. It’s just a little different each time. It feels a little different and so you’re giving yourself a lot of options and you’re teaching yourself to just think quickly about the topic, to just speak in a free conversational way, which is so easy when you think about it. If you’re just talking to your best friend you don’t need to plan it. You don’t need to memorize anything you just talk to them, so that’s what you want to do when you stand in front of a huge group too.

So when you practice in this way by just chatting to yourself without notes or with only just listing the major topics that’s all, then when you stand in front of a group if you forget one point it doesn’t matter because you’re so used to just talking about it in a very free natural way that you’ll just improvise, you’ll talk about it in another way. You forget one story it doesn’t matter because you’ve already practiced it and you can just think of another story and you’ll just tell the other story.

This has happened to me many times. I mean I’ll do sometimes four or five hour seminars or even we’ll do seminars that are two days long or three days long. Now, there’s no way I could memorize all of that information and I don’t, but I know the main points. I know the main topics. I’ve talked about them and practiced them so much that I can easily, easily, easily, easily talk for hours and hours and hours about those topics.

In fact, I prefer to be organized and to prepare, but if necessary I could just walk into a room with 500 people and I could talk to them for four or five hours about learning English or teaching English or a topic like that, just because I know the topic so well. So that’s why the cure to nervousness is just knowing your topic so, so well and being able to talk about it in a very free way not in a memorized way, not in a very formal way, but just to be able to chat about your topic. You should be able to just talk and talk and talk about your topic to your best friend without really hardly thinking. It should just be so easy to do.

Once you can do that your nervousness will drop a lot. I’m not saying it will disappear because it won’t in the beginning, but it will go down a lot and then when you get in front of the group you’ll start talking to them, you see that they’re responding to you, that they’re positive, it’s going well, then you’ll get that energy from the group which is great and everything will go well.

In fact, there’s a kind of positive feedback loop that happens in presentations. What’s a positive feedback loop? A loop is a circle. What it means is that if you are interesting and energetic and natural your audience then will respond in a positive way. They’ll become more energetic, more interested and you then as the speaker you’ll feel that they are more interested.

You’ll feel their energy and that will increase your own energy as you’re standing in front of the group and you’ll feel stronger and more confident and more energized and because you feel stronger, more confident and more energized the audience will feel that and it’s back and forth, back and forth. It gets better, better, better. It’s that upward spiral we talk about a lot and that’s what you want to create and you create that by knowing your topic very, very well, by practicing it in a natural way, not memorizing and by following the do’s and the don’ts that I taught you in the video. It’s that simple really.

Then the great news is if you do a lot of presentations, the more you do the less nervous you are. So the first time you still might be nervous. You’ll feel better, but at the end of it it will go well, I promise you it will and then you’ll feel a little more confident and you’ll be like hey, that went well. That was kind of fun. Then the next time you’ll feel less nervous and then the next time less nervous, until eventually you’ll start feeling excited instead of nervous. This is the process that I have followed. When I first started doing speeches I was nervous. Now I’m excited. Now I love it. I’m really, really excited before I give a speech. I’m not nervous and you’ll also reach that as well.

So I think as you can see, once again in this VIP Program with Effortless English, I am encouraging you to be different, to break out of the normal pattern, the normal way that things are done, because the normal safe way of doing a speech is to write it and then stand behind a podium and read it to your audience. You know, maybe read it skillfully with some emotion and some planned movements, but still that’s the normal way.

I mean the President of the United States that’s all he does. People talk about the President being a good speaker, but I disagree. I think he’s a terrible speaker. What does he do? He’s not a speaker he’s a reader. He has a teleprompter, which is a little video screen and it’s under the camera and he just reads it. He reads it with fake emotion. That’s not a speaker. That’s not real communication it’s fake. It doesn’t really inspire people. It doesn’t really communicate well. But great speakers if you see them live and you’re in a room with them they’re electric. There’s just an incredible energy and power that comes from them and the audience feels it and the audience has a kind of electricity, this kind of energy that goes to the audience and it builds and gets stronger and stronger. That is great speaking.

Tony Robbins is the best example of that that I’ve ever seen. He’s an amazing, amazing speaker, but I’ve seen a lot of others. David Wolf is a fantastic public speaker. There are lots of different ones. They’re not all you know super energized, running around yelling and crazy, but they all have just some incredible emotional power. They all follow the do’s and don’ts that I taught you in the video. They’re all very natural. They’re not reading from a teleprompter. They’re not reading from a piece of paper and they are not reciting a memorized speech.

So it takes a little bit of courage to be different, right? It’s safe. It feels safe to write out your speech and then just read it to the group or to have a handful of note cards and just kind of, you know, read through your outline. It feels safe to put up a slide and then just read the slide. It’s easy, right? Yeah, it’s easy for you as the speaker, but it’s terrible for your audience. So to do it the way I taught you in the video I know that for some people it can feel a little scary because you have to be yourself.

Here’s what it really is about. It’s about standing up there and really just being you, not trying to be some super authority and pretend like you’re this incredibly super intellectual person or you’re like super important, whatever, not hiding behind notes and a podium and slides, but just stand there and talk to people. Be real with people. Be a real human being. Communicate to them in a natural, real human way with real human emotions, with real physical movements, with real eye contact. I mean treat them like real people. Talk to them the way you would talk to your best friend. That’s what I’m saying, basically.

Now, of course, when I’m talking to 500 people I’m doing my best to give them all the energy I can so I’m much more energetic than I would be with just my best friend, but when I talk to my best friend about something I’m excited about I’ll talk to her and I’ll be moving my arms. I talk in basically the same way that I talk to a group of 500 people.

The only difference, as I mentioned, is that feedback loop, that upward spiral.

The only difference is that when I talk to 500 people I feel all of their energy, 500 people.

So then I start getting more energy and they get more energy and so I am like super energized. It feels fantastic and it’s a lot of fun. It’s fun for the audience because they have a great experience and its fun for me because I have a great experience. I love connecting with that. I love it. That’s why I enjoy it. That’s why I do it.

I basically make no money from my presentations. Sometimes I lose money, but I do it anyway because I just love connecting with people like that. I love doing it. It feels great.

It feels great for me and it feels great when I see that people in the audience are really happy and having a great experience and really learning something too. It’s a magical thing when you do it well. So that’s why it’s important and that’s why I really want you to make an effort and follows those do’s and don’ts, even if you’re doing a technical presentation.

Because I know some people say yes, AJ, but I have to give a presentation to scientists so I can’t do that. It’s like no, bullshit, yes you can. You can talk to them like a human being. I mean you should be interested in your topic, right? Even if you’re giving a very technical topic presentation you should still be interested in it. You should know it very well. You should be able to talk about it in an interesting way, in a natural way, the same as if you were sitting there talking to a colleague that you were sharing this exciting information to. Well, you do the same thing with a large group.

So you get the idea, right? All right, I hope so. So what I would like you to do this month is to do some presentations. Your homework is to get out there and make presentations.

There’s only one way to get better at this and that’s to do it. You gotta do it. You gotta try these things I’m teaching you. You gotta practice them, practice them. Practice them at home in your living room, in your bathroom, in your shower, whatever and then the final step is you do have to stand in front of a group and do this. So what I want you to do is get out there and start making some presentations.

You could join a Toastmasters group, that’s a public speaking group and they have clubs all over the world, in different cities around the world. Get on the Internet and look up Toastmasters, you might have a group in your city. If not I’m sure that somewhere in your town there is some kind of public speaking group. I encourage you to go there and to join and to just make a few speeches. Or you could sign up with a speaking bureau and offer to give public speeches about whatever topic you’re interested in. You just sign up. You tell people what your topic is and you tell them you’ll do it for free or if they need to pay you. You get on a list and then groups will invite you to come make a speech.

Or, if you like, you could make a video like a YouTube video and do a presentation about something following what I taught you in this video this month trying to follow those principles. That’s good too and I would like you to do it, but it’s not the same as standing in front of a group, as you know. Because when you’re just talking to a camera you might feel a little nervous because you know a lot of people might see it, but there’s a different energy when you’re in a room with people.

I mean, this is still why I do it. Like I love making these videos for you VIPs, it’s fantastic.

I love doing it. I love connecting with you in that way, but the reason I still go to different countries and teach classes and do seminars and make speeches is because I miss the personal contact of being in a room with real people. It’s different. It’s a different level of energy, much, much more intense and I love it.

So make a video and share it with us, a presentation about any topic you want yes, but especially get out there and teach a class or make a presentation to a group of people and start practicing these do’s and these don’ts. I promise you you’ll get better and better and I’m guessing you’ll really start to enjoy making presentations in the future.

Have a great day. See you again, bye-bye.