175 – You’ve Been Asked to Speak at an Event. Now What?

Gift biz unwrapped episode 175 congratulations.

You've been asked to speak at a local organization that you

know will give you great visibility for your business.

You accepted immediately.

You are so psyched to do the presentation.

Now it's time to put it together.

You're staring at a white piece of paper.

How in the world do you get this done?

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Here is your host gift biz gal,

Sue moon Heights.

This summer For me has been one of my pager presentation

creation. The cycle of my businesses seems to be more than

in the front of the year.

I'm going out to trade shows,

yes, but I'm not doing as much speaking as I do

the back half of the year.

Also with the introduction of my new book,

it's gotten me there opportunity to get onto new stages so

that enhances the number of presentations that I'm going to be

doing. And while I have a couple of standard presentations that

I do over and over,

a lot of these are audience specific,

so they need to be tweaked or adjusted or in some

cases totally recreated if I'm teaching something.

So again,

this summer I've been creating presentations like crazy and I've gotten

it down to a system which makes it,

I won't say effortless,

but it makes it much more comfortable,

not totally freaky,

like, Oh my gosh,

what am I going to say?

But it's a nice system and I know a lot of

you now are getting on stages and starting to speak,

so I thought you'd be interested in knowing my process.

My goal is to just make it easier for you to

say yes when an opportunity to speak comes up.

And then secondly,

when you get to that point where it's time to figure

out what it's going to look like and what you're going

to say,

you have a process that you can follow.

I've also summarized this whole process for you in a download

that you can grab at gift biz,

unwrapped.com forward slash presentation creation.

So let's get into this.

First off,

why would you want to speak in the first place?

For a lot of people getting up in front,

even doing your elevator pitch makes you really nervous and you

know your heart starts beating fast and you,

you like lose your whole mind in terms of what you're

going to say.

So why would you put yourself in a position where you

would have these nerves and anxiety?

Well, I have to tell you that speaking in front of

new groups or even within your local community,

maybe it's the chamber of commerce who you've been with forever

gives you an opportunity to showcase yourself.

Not only you as a person,

but expertise that people who have been around you for months

may not even know you have.

It identifies you as an authority in your field and it

gives you visibility and potentially new opportunities because you never know

who is listening,

who has other opportunities for you to speak or needs your

services or your expertise that you're presenting.

So if you're on the other side of this podcast and

listening and saying,

no, this episode isn't for me.

I'm never going to speak.

Please stay with me because you'll see that in the end.

It doesn't have to be so anxiety ridden here.

I'm not talking about when you're at a meeting and you're

going to stand up and do your 22nd or 32nd elevator

speech, which I like to call an introduction message.

By the way,

I'm talking about a time when you're going to be speaking

with a group of people to share expertise you have based

on your experiences,

your business knowledge,

et cetera.

It's an opportunity for you to showcase yourself and also provide,

and this is key,

provide the audience with some type of new knowledge or learning.

That's the whole goal.

That's the reason why whoever is putting on the event has

invited you to speak and I definitely want you to grab

that download because then you'll have it available if and when

the opportunity arises.

Let's talk really quickly about when this presentation creation is applicable

and when it isn't.

Have you ever listened to a presentation which you walk away

and it's like,

well, that was a total waste of time.

You weren't entertained,

you didn't learn anything new and it just seemed to be

a little slot for someone to get up and talk a

lot about nothing.

That is not how you want to present yourself.

You want to take advantage of this opportunity to demonstrate what

you know that then leads to an advantage for the audience.

Now, it might be as simple as being entertaining.

You might be getting up to speak because you're going to

be providing some levity with you know,

within an event or,

and this is more of what I'm speaking about.

You are there and meant to share your knowledge.

Share your experience again for the gain of the listener.

Okay. Are you ready?

Let's dive into my presentation creation process.

It all starts with five questions and this is laying the

groundwork in setting the stage,

if you will,

to what you're going to be putting in your presentation you

want, whatever you're talking about,

to be resonating with the audience,

for them to get value from what you're speaking on.

Here are the five questions that I always answer before I

start preparing any presentation.

Number one,

what is the purpose of the gathering?

In other words,

who are all the people coming together and what is the

common theme?

I talk about chamber of commerce meetings quite a bit,

so of course those are small businesses coming together,

but let's say you're going to do a presentation for the

local Botanic gardens.

Their common theme is that they're all into gardening,

outdoor and nature as a commonality.

It's good to know what they have in common and how

people are coming together as you start preparing your presentation.

Question number two,

who is in the audience?

What is the makeup of people?

Are they all moms?

Are they all from a certain area?

Some of this spins off.

The first question because maybe they're all gardeners for example,

but who are you specifically going to be talking to by

age, gender,

education level,

interest level.

You want to make sure you have a feel so that

you can prepare and talk about things that are going to

resonate with them or talk about your topic and tweak it

so that they can relate.

Question number three,

what have you been asked to talk about?

If this is a teaching situation,

you've probably been assigned or already asked to speak on a

specific topic so you already know what you're going to talk

about, but if someone has just been very general and said,

Oh, I would love for you to speak at our next

event, narrow in with the event organizer,

specifically what your topic is going to be and a note

here for every presentation.

Don't try to throw everything in the soup.

If you will,

take a very simple important topic that is going to be

helpful to the audience and then do a deep dive into

that topic.

That's how you're able to give value to an audience.

Many people will get up and present and see it as

a great opportunity to explain to the audience every single thing

that they know and do and it ends up being a

very bland presentation because they're hitting just top points of so

many topics.

Instead, pick one topic that relates to your audience and then

take a deep dive and provide them with some nugget that

they're going to take away that will really be helpful for

them because then they're going to remember you and then can

find out all the other things that you offer.

Question number four,

how much time do you have?

You don't want to be in the middle of your presentation

and then already seen the signals that it's time to wrap

up when some of your best content is still to come,

so make sure you know what your time limits are and

make your presentation less than the amount of time you have,

which allows you to be able to talk on the fly.

If someone asks a question in the middle of your presentation

or you decide to leave Q and a to the end.

Question number five is what is the desired outcome of your

talk? Why are you taking the time to put all of

this together to present?

What is your goal and what do you want the audience's

takeaway goal to be?

What should they now know,

be able to do or do better or in a different

way? Once they've heard you speak,

this is the most important point and this is how you

will have impact as a speaker.

So let me say this one again.

What should your audience now know,

be able to do or do better or in a different

way once they have heard you speak?

Okay, those are the five questions you want to ask before

we get into presentation development.

These questions again,

what is the purpose of the gathering?

Who's in the audience?

What have you been asked to speak about?

How much time do you have and what is the desired

outcome of your talk both for yourself and for the listener?

Now it's time to move on to presentation development.

I take this in three different steps.

What you're going to need is a blank piece of paper

and a pen,

and then also whatever software you're going to be using to

create your presentation.

I do most of mine on PowerPoint,

but there are other presentation programs out there,

so obviously whatever it is that you're using.

Step number one is take your piece of paper that's white

right now and you are going to fill it with all

of your goodness.

The way to start is to create an outline of your

presentation on this paper.

Yes, of course you can use a word document or pages

if you're on a Mac.

I'm just telling you my process and I find it a

lot easier for me to think of all my ideas and

figure everything out on a blank piece of paper.

A standard presentation should include at least seven elements.

Let me review what those are.

Your introduction of the topic,

introduction of yourself,

and mind you.

This should be brief and dependent on who the audience is.

Obviously, if you've seen them for a long time,

you're not going to have to do a whole background if

they're a cold audience.

You've never met before.

You need to establish a level of credibility,

but you want to keep this tight.

You don't want to go on and on about yourself.

Number three,

why should they listen?

What is that result that you're providing?

That's why you needed to figure that out when you were

doing your background research.

Number four,

you get into the content and this is the largest part.

We're going to talk about this more in the next step

five our conclusions and next steps,

so that's where you're wrapping up the presentation.

Then you summarize the result so you remind them what they've

learned through your talk and then finally you open it up

to Q.

And. A.

So if you need to just write down these seven sections

on your piece of paper as the start of your outline.

Truth told,

I usually need two pieces of paper,

but you get my point here.

This outline begins to provide some structure for your presentation and

as we move along,

these sections will get filled in.

Step number two to presentation development is content creation.

Now the content is the major portion of your presentation.

This is where you're delivering your knowledge and your expertise and

it's also the longest part of the outline.

The biggest part you'll want to have based on your topic

three overall concepts.

Remember I was saying earlier,

you don't want to overwhelm your audience with tons of information,

just like throwing confetti out of the audience,

little bits and pieces here and there.

You want to narrow in and give depth and value within

your overall topic,

and you do that by breaking that up into really three

major points.

Three seems to be the magic number.

Then under each of those points,

you'll fill in the topic with details,

so this could be facts,

stories, which absolutely,

if there's a story that you can use that demonstrates your

point, you absolutely want to use it.

People can relate to stories so much more.

They might see themselves in a story and as humans we're

all interested in stories,

so the value of stories can not be underestimated and then

also demonstrations.

Perhaps that's what you need again,

to get to the final result that you're looking for with

the audience next week.

As a matter of fact,

I'm doing a presentation on Facebook live.

My goal is to get everybody to understand the platform and

be able to use,

and of course I'm trying to convince them that they should

as well,

right? But part of that presentation is going to be actually

going on live.

I don't know.

We have 150 people in the room or something like that

and I from stage am going to show them exactly how

I do it and so they'll see a demonstration in person

of how easy it is.

So demonstrations,

stories to back up.

All of your facts are great facts as the 100% detail

of your presentation,

unless it's a scientific presentation to a board in a medical

facility or something,

just stating facts is not the way to go.

So stories and demonstrations to support the three overall topics that

then support your primary topic of your speech.

Remember at this point you're still in outline form,

so you're not having to fill in all the words that

you're going to say.

It's just the overall information.

Now I realize I'm giving you a lot of steps and

a lot of points,

so I just want to remind you once again that this

is all written down on a download that you can grab

at gift biz,

unwrapped.com forward slash presentation creation.

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for more information Now to step three under presentation development.

Now it's time to take everything you have on paper or

in your word doc or wherever and transfer it over to

your presentation software.

I personally like PowerPoint for this,

but there are others out there,

so whichever is your preference.

Now it's time to do.

Open up that program on your computer and we're going to

start transferring over your outline,

what you've put on paper into presentation form.

One of the things that I like about PowerPoint that I'm

pretty sure you can do in all different presentation software programs

is create themed slides.

In other words,

you set up a background if you will,

of your presentation.

That then is the graphics and the branding for every single

slide, so you don't have to go in and put yellow

boxes, logos,

you know,

whatever it is in every slide individually,

it's already set up as a format,

so having one master slide for your presentation is the way

to go.

For sure.

A lot of people will have one master slide that they

use for every single presentation that they do.

It helps to reinforce your brand and when people see these

presentations, if you have the same style and the same visuals,

they're going to automatically know that that's from you.

Plus, honestly,

I don't really care for the styles that are set up

within the software programs.

Everybody uses them so you don't come off as professional as

if you make one for yourself.

Now, how do you do that?

Super easy.

Just Google it for your master slide.

Make sure to include your name,

email, logo or some identifying piece of information on each and

every slide that then reverts back to you and your business.

Now at this point you're not going to just start from

the beginning,

go to the end and write your whole presentation or transfer

it all at this point.

But what you're doing is again putting the outline into,

I'm just going to keep calling it PowerPoint cause that's what

I use.

So for example,

I might say introduction slide and then about me slide and

then you know,

go down your outline accordingly.

For each of your three sections,

you probably will have a title slide and then you know

you're going to have,

I don't know,

two, three,

five slides under each of those sections.

So just put in blank pages at this point and when

you're done with this part,

you'll then have a presentation of 40 50 slides,

whatever it is that then now you're going to start adding

detail to the way you add detail is in the note

portion of each slide.

Now this is going to be somewhat of an individual case.

I am not one to put in every single word.

In other words,

to actually write out my whole talk word for word,

I don't do well with that.

It feels very confining.

I like to ad lib but have my point there.

So for each slide in my note section,

I'll have the key points that I want to say for

each slide.

Now, sometimes I do want to be be very specific word

for word.

At that point I would put in all the detail.

So here is then where you'll go back,

you have blank slides,

you have empty note sections and you start filling in all

of the content.

Some of it was probably on your outline already,

but here's where you get to a more detailed level of

the contents and the overall presentation detail.

You'll get to some slides where you don't have all of

the graphics yet.

You only know what you want to say on that slide.

That's okay.

Fill in your words or your key points.

Like in the way I just described how I do it.

And if you have an idea of what you want the

graphic to be,

girl sitting on bench group working on a computer,

children playing,

I don't know what put that idea in like just as

a um,

text box in where the slide will be and you can

go and fill in all of your images later.

With regard to images,

what I like to do is select images that also relate

to an event overall.

For example,

last month I did a presentation and the overall theme of

the conference was summer camp and I forget which presentation topic

it was.

I want to say social media strategy,

you know,

content posting strategy.

Because I did two presentations,

I forget which one it was,

but the theming for my imagery for that presentation was all

ice cream.

Oh. It was such a beautiful presentation with all the colors

and everything,

but I was able to work all my points out with

images that related to ice cream,

which goes along with camping,

if you will.

So if there's a way for you to do that,

customize it and add some excitement and interest to your pictures

that keeps your audience watching.

They want to see what type of an image is coming

up next and they'll be curious about how you're relating the

content to whatever photos you're showing.

It also helps drive home the message because you're showing them

and introducing words against a graphic in a little bit of

a different way than they are expecting.

This portion will take the most time finding your graphics,

wording, all your slides,

creating the full flow of the presentation,

but it can also be a really fun time because you

can go in and tweak things.

You can move slides around and what you end up with

at the very end is your full presentation,

but you're not done here.

Now you want to add transitions by transitions.

What I mean is if you have a page where you

have a few bullet points,

maybe you bring those in one at a time,

maybe some of your slides you fade in or fade out.

There's lots of opportunity for transitions.

However, don't go transition crazy.

You don't want transitions on every single slide and you don't

want it to be more about the transitions than the point

that you're trying to relay.

So a transition should actually enhance,

make greater emphasize the topic and the point that you're trying

to get across at that time.

So adding in all of these transitions would be the last

thing you do for your PowerPoint presentation.

As you're working through this step of transferring everything over into

your PowerPoint presentation,

I have eight points that I want to talk you through

to make sure that your presentation is as powerful as it

can possibly be.

Number one,

please do not have slides that are just full of words.

It's boring and your audience will fall asleep.

I'm quite sure everyone has experienced this.

Someone gets up to do a presentation and all they do

is read the exact same words that are on a slide.

That is not the way to do a presentation.

What you do.

It doesn't mean you can't have words on the slide,

but what you do is you have bullet points with summary

words and you talk to those words and along with the

words then are interesting graphics or a picture that represents the

concept and don't feel like you always have to have words

on every single slide.

Either a picture can demonstrate your point and you can talk

to the picture.

Number two,

use stories.

Again to demonstrate the point.

I talked about that a little earlier so I don't think

I have to repeat myself here.

Number three involve the audience.

You can do this by asking questions,

having people raise their hand if they agree with what you're

saying or include them in pictures.

If this is a group that you are familiar with already

and you have photos of them,

include some people in the audience that gets everyone saying,

Oh boy,

wait a minute.

Does she have a picture of me too?

Number four,

keep the slides moving unless you are putting something up on

the screen where people need to jot down all the notes

or it's something where you really need those words laid out.

Every single one of them on the screen.

Keep the slides moving one after another.

Don't just sit on a slide for four or five minutes

for example.

I'm not sure what the right time frame is,

but certainly no more than 30 seconds to a minute max.

I'm pulling that out of there,

but something like that.

You just want to keep your presentation flowing forward again,

because your responsibility is to make sure that you keep your

audience engaged.

Number five,

again, make sure that you have your company logo or name

on the bottom of all of the slides.

If you're sharing this presentation with people later,

you know how things are,

things get printed out.

Certain pages get capped.

Others don't.

If you only have your contact information on like the title

slide in the very last slide,

those may not be the pages that are going to be

retained. So that's why you want to have it every single

slide. Point six utilized transitions for interest.

We've already talked about that.

Seven, explain how they can get in touch with you afterwards.

You might have contact information on your slide,

but if you talked about a specific topic that you train

on or course that you have,

make sure to include the way to be able to access

that program.

Learn more from you about the topic that you just presented

or direct them to your blog,

your podcast,

your product.

Don't leave them in the dark because you're missing out on

a great opportunity.

And finally,

0.8 have a one sheet takeaway that includes a summary of

what you've talked about,

potentially steps of how to do whatever it is you're teaching

them to do and include your contact information.

So don't just put it on your slide,

but then also have some type of a physical takeaway that

they can use again so that they can get in touch

with you later.

To summarize this section,

tips for presentation creation.

Don't have slides,

just full of words.

Use stories,

get your audience involved,

keep the slides moving.

Make sure to include your company logo in name on all

of your slides.

Utilize transitions,

explain how they can get in touch with you afterwards and

create a one sheet.

Now we get to the final point,

which is probably the big elephant in the room for a

lot of people and that is,

I can make that presentation behind the scenes,

but when I actually have to go and deliver it,

that's where I feel I'm weaker.

That's what scares me.

That's where I'm so worried I'm going to fall on my

face and just not do well.

If that's you,

I have to start out by saying you're not alone.

I do not know one speaker who ever isn't a little

bit anxious before they go on stage,

but you can use that to your benefit.

You can use that as motivation.

Your, you know,

your adrenaline starts going.

It gives you the excitement that you need to be lively

and to relay information to your audience in the best way

possible. But I also have three concrete tips for you when

you're actually on stage and presenting.

The first is practice,

practice, practice.

You don't want to be reading from your notes if in

any way possible.

Now obviously if you're nervous and you're anxious,

use that as a backup,

but you want to know your presentations so well.

You could say it in your sleep.

You can say it when you're unconscious and the you want

to do that is you're able to just go off the

cuff and also interject your personality so much easier when you

already know what you're talking about.

You know what comes first,

you know what comes next,

and so you're able to get way more comfortable and like

I just said,

interject your personality and your style.

It also helps you when you know your content that well,

not to speak monotone because you're really focusing on the words

you're saying and you're not really focusing on the message.

You're just trying to get that content out there and it's

all monotone like that,

and again,

that's a fear factor kicking in,

but when you know your content really,

really, really well,

that starts to go away.

Practice, practice,

practice number two,

the very hardest thing are those first words.

You get introduced.

You walk on stage,

you look out at the audience and it's go time for

you. No,

exactly what you're going to say when you get started.

Repeat the first line,

second line of your presentation over and over and over and

over again so that when you actually are up there,

you will remember what you're supposed to say.

And once you get started,

once you're actually talking and you get into the groove of

the presentation,

everything from there will flow so much smoother,

still nervous,

still worried about whether you could actually do this.

I want to give you my biggest tip of how to

present and get the nerves calm down.

And this all has to do with mindset,

which I get can be the hardest thing of all.

But your audience is here not to watch you in terms

of what you're wearing and how you're relaying your words and

all of that.

They're there to understand what you know that's going to help

them, what's in it for them.

And when you focus on making sure that you can deliver

that, that your audience understands what you're talking about,

that you're giving them the steps or the stories or the

concepts that's going to bring them to the result that they're

listening to you for.

And you're focusing again on them.

Understanding and learning the information,

which is an outward focus versus how you're presenting it.

How you look that magically and I'm really serious,

magically makes you forget about all the things that you've been

thinking about and looking at.

When you turn your mind in words,

the point is make sure you're focusing outward to your audience,

not inward to yourself.

Remember it's all about them,

not there.

You have it now.

You should be completely prepared for that opportunity.

When someone asks you to speak on stage,

we've covered why this is great for you and your business.

We've talked about the questions to lay the groundwork.

We've gone through presentation development both in draft form and bringing

it into your presentation software.

We've talked about tips for presentation creation and also tips to

prepare yourself.

So psychologically you are ready to go on stage.

All this information may be something that you need right away,

maybe something that you won't need until your business is a

little further along.

Either way.

Again, grab that download gift biz on rapt.com

forward slash presentation creation.

I also forgot to mention to you,

but in that download our resources to get graphics.

I know that's always a concern for people.

You know,

where am I going to find these pictures?

So there's a whole list of them included in this download

and when you do create your new presentation,

let me know.

I'll be so excited to hear what you think of the

process and hear what your topic is and learn all about

your presentation.

Maybe I can even attend.

You can reach out to me at SU at gift biz,

unwrapped.com or join our Facebook group if you haven't already.

That would be gift biz breeze where you can join in

with other makers just like you for support,

motivation and comradery.

Finally, Mark your calendars or subscribe to the show if you

haven't already.

Next week I have a guest you do not want to

miss. You may know her by name,

Susan Rowan.

If you don't,

I bet you know her from her book,

a 25 year old best seller that she has built her

career around how to work a room that's all coming up

next week.

Catchy. Then are you discouraged because your business is not performing

as you had envisioned?

Are you stuck and confused about how to turn things around?

Sue's new best selling book is structured to help you identify

where the holes are in your business and show you exactly

how to fix them.

You'll learn from Sue and owners just like you who are

seeing real growth and are living their dream maker to master

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