March 13, 2024 • 17 mins
Giving a presentation can be a nerve-wracking experience. Some people love it, some people hate it. But Julia Landauer, a 2-time TEDx speaker and almost-10-year veteran professional keynote speaker, believes that everyone can be a great public speaker. In this episode of If I’m Honest, Julia shares how she got started in the keynote speaking industry and why she decided to build it into a career after college. She then shares 6 tips about how to give a great presentation, including what mindset to have, how to develop slides, and how to recover from mistakes.
You can watch Julia’s speaker highlight reel here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QewwMKPO4jE
Interested in having Julia speak at your event? Please visit https://julialandauer.com/speaking
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Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:04):
Hello everybody, and welcome back to another episode of If
I'm Honest with Julia Landauer. I hope you've had a
good week so far. I have had a very hectic
two weeks. It started in Charlotte, and then I was
in New York, and then I was back in Charlotte,
and then I was in Las Vegas and then New
Jersey and then drove down to Charlotte with Ben and
if I might go on a tangent briefly, nine and
(00:25):
a half hours on the road is rough, and throughout
the entirety of the journey, I wish I could have
air dropped episode thirty two of If I'm Honest, which
is driving tips from Race car Driver, because some of
these people on the road needed some help, especially when
it came to moving over to the right lane. But anyway,
I digress. The reason I was in Vegas the other
(00:46):
week was because I was giving a keynote discussion, which
was super fun. It was a smaller audience of sixty people.
It was in a conference room. I got to be
very close and in the faces of the audience members,
and after I gave the discussion, I started talking with
a few of the attendees, and one of them made
the point that she was really excited to see that
I seem so comfortable on stage and that she has
(01:08):
a harder time giving presentations. And I realized in that
moment that public speaking is definitely a very polarizing experience.
Some people, you know, like myself, we get adrenaline, we
get the excitement, we love the interactions with the audience,
and other people have a really hard time. And I
do want to make a little side note that I
(01:29):
personally believe that giving a public discussion should be a
little nerve racking because you are bringing people together, You're
getting up on stage, you're commanding an audience's attention, and
you want it to be worthwhile for everyone, And so
of course you're going to be a little nervous, and
being nervous shows that you care about that. So don't
let being nervous make you feel like you're not going
(01:51):
to do a good job. I get nervous before every keynote.
I have to do deep breathing like it's totally normal.
But anyway, I also think that everyone and anyone can
be a really good public speaker with the right guidance
and the right work and the right mindset, and I
think that's something that's not discussed enough when thinking about
giving presentations or keynotes or whatever it is. And so
(02:14):
I wanted to take this episode to share a brief
history of my journey as a keynote speaker and to
give six tips that I have for how to give
a really great presentation. For those of you who don't know,
I stumbled into being a keynote speaker because I was
asked to give a Stanford TEDx talk when I was
a junior in college. And fun story, I actually had
(02:37):
to decline the invitation my junior year because the weekend
that the X Stanford event was happening was the same
weekend as the live reunion filming for Survivor, which I
was on that season, so I had to be in
LA for that. But luckily Stanford asked me again my
senior year to give the talk and they told me
they wanted it to be about racing and being a
(02:59):
woman in a male dominated space and that was the prompt.
So I got to do that, and then I left
college with this very polished video of me taking an
audience through a narrative journey and making three points and
delivering it well. And I knew that keynote speaking could
be an actual career, and I knew that it would
grant me the freedom and flexibility to continue pursuing racing
(03:22):
and to be on the road a lot, and to
push sponsorship. So I made my first pitch to a
women's leadership conference to be one of their speakers in
twenty fifteen, and episode three of If I'm Honest with
Julia Landauer is called Taylor Swift taught me to know
my value, and I go through how I pitched myself
for this conference and the very candid feedback I asked for.
(03:44):
So that's really helpful if you're looking to pitch yourself
and knowing your value. But I did that, and then
since then I have been developing a keynote speaking career.
I have been doing this for ten years now, and
it involves constant and ongoing fine tune. You know, as
I experience new things, I have new stories and experiences
to share as an audience. Or sometimes I get tired
(04:07):
of giving a certain story, or sometimes I realize that
I'm not doing a punchy enough job, Like even in
Las Vegas. One of the points I made and one
of the themes I discussed, I didn't feel like it
really was a huge value add to the keynote, so
I've decided that I'm not going to present it like
that moving forward. So it's all about iterating and trying
new things and constantly evolving as a speaker. And that's
(04:29):
if you're doing it professionally, right. But I've been able
to really learn a lot of cool tricks, tips, things
that have made speaking a lot easier, and I wanted
to share that with you guys. And I will preface
this by saying that my keynotes typically fall under the
motivational and inspirational umbrella, so I will come in and
(04:51):
be relatable to most audiences. I talk about a lot
of different life themes, and I do understand that a
lot of people have to give a presentation that's more
topic specific or more technical or educational. But my hope
and expectation is that this advice will be applicable to
other types of talks as well. Here are my six
tips for how to give a great presentation. The most
(05:14):
helpful tip that I learned for how to give a
great presentation was to think of the presentation as having
a conversation with the audience rather than giving a speech
to an audience, and that means making eye contact with people.
It means reacting to the audience and to their reactions.
It means bringing your personality on stage and welcoming your
mannerisms and your speech patterns. This humanizes the whole experience
(05:38):
for everyone, and it brings the speaker and the audience
onto a more level playing field, which will resonate so
much deeper with an audience. It also takes some pressure
off because we all know how to have a conversation.
We're not necessarily saying we're an authority figure, but we're
sharing our perspective and sharing our points or hoping to educate,
(05:59):
and a conversation is a great way to do that.
The second tip that I have for how to give
a great presentation is to write out everything that you
want to say and anchor your discussion in personal stories
and experiences. I kid you not. When I first got
asked to give a forty five minute keynote, I had
no idea how many stories I should tell or what
(06:21):
the flow should be because I had never given a
monologue for forty five minutes. My TEDx talk was three stories.
It was supposed to be twelve minutes, but it ended
up being eight minutes because I spoke really quickly because
I was nervous. But I didn't have any idea, and
so I talked with my client about what themes they
wanted and what their hope was for the discussion. And
(06:42):
then I had to think about what stories make sense,
What stories can I tell around taking ownership, What stories
can I tell around perseverance, What stories can I tell
about building relationships? And then I had to flesh out
the stories, and I had to make them relatable. And
I think it's really important to stay away from generalizations
or cliches. I think there's a misconception that if we
(07:04):
say something general, it'll be more relatable, Like what doesn't
kill you makes you stronger? Right? Like, yeah, we all
know that, but there's nothing really moving about that. Right.
What was it that you went through? What were you
feeling that was so challenging but didn't quite kill you? You know,
what was your thought process, how were you overcoming it,
What did you decide to do, What was the consequence
(07:27):
of what you chose? Telling these specific stories really give
some the audience something to reach on to, and it's
always fine to bring in data or research or you know,
other thing that's not your own, as long as you
give credit, but to be specific, to be anecdotal. What
I have found is that as a race car driver,
so few people know what it's like to go race
car driving. My experiences, in terms of how I learned them,
(07:50):
are very niche and specific. But I share what the
emotions are, I share what my thought process was. I
share the little details about the environment or what I
was thinking about, and that is what people relate to.
And we have so much more in common with people
than we have differences. And so if you're able to
tell those specific stories that aren't generalizations, that bring in
(08:12):
some specific points, that's going to resonate so much deeper
with your audience. The third tip that I have, which
is somewhat related to these stories you're telling, is to
be intentional about the narrative flow. And this was something
that my speaking coach for Ted Ex Stanford Bronwyn Sagline
Belly of Bronwin Communications, really drove home for me. She
(08:35):
was sure to emphasize the importance of just like any story,
any movie, any book, we need to have the hook
that gets the audience excited, and then we need to
have a methodical progression of thoughts and discussions that's easy
for an audience to follow. And we need some drama,
We need that pinnacle of oh no, what's going to happen?
(08:56):
And then we need the resolution and the finale that
brings it all together. And so giving a keynote presentation
or any kind of presentation is a condensed version of that.
You need to have those same points. You need to
be able to bring in the audience, And so thinking
about how you do that, whether it's the specific story
you tell, whether it's the method in which you deliver
(09:17):
the story, if it's your body language, if it's visuals
that you use. Really thinking about what makes a good
story and bringing in those elements. I will bring your
attention also to the transitions. I think it's really easy
to have abrupt transitions if you're going from one theme
to another. So, when thinking about how you want to
(09:38):
tell your story, what would allow you to have easy segues,
What would allow you to kind of hold the audience's
hand through the discussion so that they can follow along
and that each next step of your presentation makes sense.
The last point that I want to make about the
narrative flow is that it's important to know who your
audience is. I mean this partially and terms of demographics, ages, backgrounds, professions,
(10:04):
professional levels, what they're at in a company. Know who
the audience is, and then be intentional about how you
deliver points. You know, you don't want to labor a
point over and over again. Just make your point and
trust that the audience will know what you're trying to say,
and that puts it on you to articulate it well.
And if you do that, your audience will understand, so
(10:24):
give them the benefit of the doubt. The fourth tip
that I have for how to give a great presentation
revolves around the physical presentation slides themselves. So I'm a
big believer in less is more, and I think that
a presentation unless you have to go through very technical
graphs or something. But if you're not doing that, the
slides of a presentation should be there for a few reasons.
(10:47):
One to give your audience something to anchor onto and
something to reference, to break up the flow and to
help with with what you're saying. But then it's also
there to help you know where you're going in your presentation.
There are some people who can memorize everything, but that
is not most of us. And so if we can
use keywords or specific images or photos from our own
(11:09):
experiences that signal to us, Okay, this is the story
you're going to tell, then that helps and it gives
the audience something to look at. For example, while a
lot of my keynote discussions are rude around specific themes
that I label, my whole ten to fifteen minute introduction
is not. And so I know the flow of my
introduction based on the photos that I use, and I
(11:30):
know that when a certain picture of my car pops up,
that's when I talk about X, and when a certain
picture of me training pops up, that's when I talk
about why. And so it helps me know where I'm
going without having to reference notes. And this goes back
to doing the thorough work of writing out everything you
want to say so that you know the story ahead
of time. The fifth tip for how to give a
(11:51):
great presentation is so so important, and it is to
practice out loud a lot. I have been telling some
of these stories for ten years and I still practice
my full keynote through one to three times before any
given keynote. Sometimes it's just not right right, and sometimes
I switch up to the order I curate all my
(12:12):
keynotes to be specifically what the client wants, and so
it means reordering some of the stories. Maybe it means
driving home different points. And I practice all the time,
and it's important because it's very different to walk through
a keynote silently than it is to actually say it
out loud and to hear what it sounds like and
to hear what it's like to go from one theme
(12:33):
to another, and to know what it's like to stand
up and to give the keynote instead of sitting down.
If you're going to be wearing heels, practice in the
heels so you know what it's like to walk around.
If you get a distraction that pops up, continue doing
your keynote because you will have distractions from the audience
at times, and so really practicing that and making sure
that you know exactly what you want to say, making
(12:54):
sure that each section flows smoothly, and if it doesn't
work on it, you don't have to be married to
your first draft of a presentation. I'll write out a
new section for a keynote and a new theme and
I'll think that this is the best thing ever, and
I'll write out my points and then i'll, you know,
work it, and then I'll get up and practice it,
and I'll realize this is not punchy, or this is
(13:16):
not carrying the same meaning, or this doesn't flow very well,
and it's okay, and you move on and you try
other stuff. I don't do this anymore. But something I
did initially was I recorded myself when I was practicing,
and I recorded both on video and just audio. When
I recorded on video, it allowed me to see what
my body language was doing, It allowed me to see
(13:37):
what I was doing with my hands, if I was
doing anything fidgety. And I recorded on audio to see
if my story was compelling enough for me to want
to keep listening to it. So all of these things
can be really helpful. And I can't emphasize the enough
that you can never be too prepared for these things,
and especially if you're changing up your discussions, practicing and
(14:00):
making sure that you're proud of yourself and you're happy
with it, because at the end of the day, it's
a reflection of you. And I know that sounds like
a lot of pressure, but if you put the work in,
it should be doable. Now that I've put all this
pressure on you, let me take some of this pressure
off with my sixth tip, which is to remember that
the audience does not know all of the points that
(14:21):
you're going to be trying to make, and so they
don't know what you will include, what you won't include.
They don't know what your flow is supposed to be like.
They don't know what stories you're going to tell, which
means that if you make a mistake, you're the only
person that knows. And it is really important to remember that,
and to remember that whatever you missed or if you
didn't make a point, it probably won't mess up your
(14:43):
whole presentation. It's important to keep going. They won't know.
And even if you make a mistake that's more obvious,
like if you stumble words or if you start talking
about something then the wrong slide pops up. Make a
joke out of it. This last keynote, when I was
in Vegas, I thought I was going to open it
up to Q and A, and I forgot that I
had added a summary slide, and so I started saying,
(15:05):
you know, I've been talking for a long time now,
I want to open it up to Q and A.
And I clicked the clicker and I realize I have
all my bullet points, and I was like, oh wait,
never mind, I totally lied to you. I actually want
to recap everything I just said, and then I'll open
it up to Q and A. And the audience chuckles,
and I show that I have personality, and we go
through the summary and then I open it up to
Q and A. So there's no problem if you just
(15:27):
brush it off and move on. We are all human.
Everyone in the audience wants you to do well. Everyone
in the audience wants to take something away from your discussion.
Most people in the audience probably feel like they could
not do what you were doing, and so remembering that
we all are doing our best and that it's challenging
and that it's okay to make some mistakes just takes
(15:48):
a lot of pressure off. And so i'd like to
reiterate this point, even though I said earlier not to
reiterate points if your audience doesn't need it. But remember
that your audience doesn't know what you're going to deliver,
and so only you can make it obvious if you've
forgotten something or made a mistake and you can usually
weave it in later. So to go over these six
tips for how to give a great presentation. The first
(16:11):
is to think of it as a conversation rather than
giving a speech. The second is to write out everything
that you want to say and anchor your discussion in
personal stories and experiences. The third is to be intentional
about the narrative flow and the transitions. The fourth is
to have simple presentations that help guide the audience but
don't overwhelm the audience. The fifth is to practice a lot,
(16:33):
and you can never practice too much. And the sixth
is to remember that the audience doesn't know what you're
going to present, so you can very easily move on
from mistakes. Friends, that wraps up this episode. I hope
that it was valuable to you. I hope that something
here is something that you can take away for a
future presentation. I would also love to know if you
(16:53):
have tips for how to give a good presentation. I'm
always trying to learn, so feel free to send a
DM or leave or review and a comment. And if
you like this episode, I hope you'll share it with
someone that you care about. I hope that you will
rate the podcast, and as always, thank you for letting
me be honest with you and I look forward to
seeing you next week.
Hello everybody, and welcome back to another episode of If
I'm Honest with Julia Landauer. I hope you've had a
good week so far. I have had a very hectic
two weeks. It started in Charlotte, and then I was
in New York, and then I was back in Charlotte,
and then I was in Las Vegas and then New
Jersey and then drove down to Charlotte with Ben and
if I might go on a tangent briefly, nine and
(00:25):
a half hours on the road is rough, and throughout
the entirety of the journey, I wish I could have
air dropped episode thirty two of If I'm Honest, which
is driving tips from Race car Driver, because some of
these people on the road needed some help, especially when
it came to moving over to the right lane. But anyway,
I digress. The reason I was in Vegas the other
(00:46):
week was because I was giving a keynote discussion, which
was super fun. It was a smaller audience of sixty people.
It was in a conference room. I got to be
very close and in the faces of the audience members,
and after I gave the discussion, I started talking with
a few of the attendees, and one of them made
the point that she was really excited to see that
I seem so comfortable on stage and that she has
(01:08):
a harder time giving presentations. And I realized in that
moment that public speaking is definitely a very polarizing experience.
Some people, you know, like myself, we get adrenaline, we
get the excitement, we love the interactions with the audience,
and other people have a really hard time. And I
do want to make a little side note that I
(01:29):
personally believe that giving a public discussion should be a
little nerve racking because you are bringing people together, You're
getting up on stage, you're commanding an audience's attention, and
you want it to be worthwhile for everyone, And so
of course you're going to be a little nervous, and
being nervous shows that you care about that. So don't
let being nervous make you feel like you're not going
(01:51):
to do a good job. I get nervous before every keynote.
I have to do deep breathing like it's totally normal.
But anyway, I also think that everyone and anyone can
be a really good public speaker with the right guidance
and the right work and the right mindset, and I
think that's something that's not discussed enough when thinking about
giving presentations or keynotes or whatever it is. And so
(02:14):
I wanted to take this episode to share a brief
history of my journey as a keynote speaker and to
give six tips that I have for how to give
a really great presentation. For those of you who don't know,
I stumbled into being a keynote speaker because I was
asked to give a Stanford TEDx talk when I was
a junior in college. And fun story, I actually had
(02:37):
to decline the invitation my junior year because the weekend
that the X Stanford event was happening was the same
weekend as the live reunion filming for Survivor, which I
was on that season, so I had to be in
LA for that. But luckily Stanford asked me again my
senior year to give the talk and they told me
they wanted it to be about racing and being a
(02:59):
woman in a male dominated space and that was the prompt.
So I got to do that, and then I left
college with this very polished video of me taking an
audience through a narrative journey and making three points and
delivering it well. And I knew that keynote speaking could
be an actual career, and I knew that it would
grant me the freedom and flexibility to continue pursuing racing
(03:22):
and to be on the road a lot, and to
push sponsorship. So I made my first pitch to a
women's leadership conference to be one of their speakers in
twenty fifteen, and episode three of If I'm Honest with
Julia Landauer is called Taylor Swift taught me to know
my value, and I go through how I pitched myself
for this conference and the very candid feedback I asked for.
(03:44):
So that's really helpful if you're looking to pitch yourself
and knowing your value. But I did that, and then
since then I have been developing a keynote speaking career.
I have been doing this for ten years now, and
it involves constant and ongoing fine tune. You know, as
I experience new things, I have new stories and experiences
to share as an audience. Or sometimes I get tired
(04:07):
of giving a certain story, or sometimes I realize that
I'm not doing a punchy enough job, Like even in
Las Vegas. One of the points I made and one
of the themes I discussed, I didn't feel like it
really was a huge value add to the keynote, so
I've decided that I'm not going to present it like
that moving forward. So it's all about iterating and trying
new things and constantly evolving as a speaker. And that's
(04:29):
if you're doing it professionally, right. But I've been able
to really learn a lot of cool tricks, tips, things
that have made speaking a lot easier, and I wanted
to share that with you guys. And I will preface
this by saying that my keynotes typically fall under the
motivational and inspirational umbrella, so I will come in and
(04:51):
be relatable to most audiences. I talk about a lot
of different life themes, and I do understand that a
lot of people have to give a presentation that's more
topic specific or more technical or educational. But my hope
and expectation is that this advice will be applicable to
other types of talks as well. Here are my six
tips for how to give a great presentation. The most
(05:14):
helpful tip that I learned for how to give a
great presentation was to think of the presentation as having
a conversation with the audience rather than giving a speech
to an audience, and that means making eye contact with people.
It means reacting to the audience and to their reactions.
It means bringing your personality on stage and welcoming your
mannerisms and your speech patterns. This humanizes the whole experience
(05:38):
for everyone, and it brings the speaker and the audience
onto a more level playing field, which will resonate so
much deeper with an audience. It also takes some pressure
off because we all know how to have a conversation.
We're not necessarily saying we're an authority figure, but we're
sharing our perspective and sharing our points or hoping to educate,
(05:59):
and a conversation is a great way to do that.
The second tip that I have for how to give
a great presentation is to write out everything that you
want to say and anchor your discussion in personal stories
and experiences. I kid you not. When I first got
asked to give a forty five minute keynote, I had
no idea how many stories I should tell or what
(06:21):
the flow should be because I had never given a
monologue for forty five minutes. My TEDx talk was three stories.
It was supposed to be twelve minutes, but it ended
up being eight minutes because I spoke really quickly because
I was nervous. But I didn't have any idea, and
so I talked with my client about what themes they
wanted and what their hope was for the discussion. And
(06:42):
then I had to think about what stories make sense,
What stories can I tell around taking ownership, What stories
can I tell around perseverance, What stories can I tell
about building relationships? And then I had to flesh out
the stories, and I had to make them relatable. And
I think it's really important to stay away from generalizations
or cliches. I think there's a misconception that if we
(07:04):
say something general, it'll be more relatable, Like what doesn't
kill you makes you stronger? Right? Like, yeah, we all
know that, but there's nothing really moving about that. Right.
What was it that you went through? What were you
feeling that was so challenging but didn't quite kill you? You know,
what was your thought process, how were you overcoming it,
What did you decide to do, What was the consequence
(07:27):
of what you chose? Telling these specific stories really give
some the audience something to reach on to, and it's
always fine to bring in data or research or you know,
other thing that's not your own, as long as you
give credit, but to be specific, to be anecdotal. What
I have found is that as a race car driver,
so few people know what it's like to go race
car driving. My experiences, in terms of how I learned them,
(07:50):
are very niche and specific. But I share what the
emotions are, I share what my thought process was. I
share the little details about the environment or what I
was thinking about, and that is what people relate to.
And we have so much more in common with people
than we have differences. And so if you're able to
tell those specific stories that aren't generalizations, that bring in
(08:12):
some specific points, that's going to resonate so much deeper
with your audience. The third tip that I have, which
is somewhat related to these stories you're telling, is to
be intentional about the narrative flow. And this was something
that my speaking coach for Ted Ex Stanford Bronwyn Sagline
Belly of Bronwin Communications, really drove home for me. She
(08:35):
was sure to emphasize the importance of just like any story,
any movie, any book, we need to have the hook
that gets the audience excited, and then we need to
have a methodical progression of thoughts and discussions that's easy
for an audience to follow. And we need some drama,
We need that pinnacle of oh no, what's going to happen?
(08:56):
And then we need the resolution and the finale that
brings it all together. And so giving a keynote presentation
or any kind of presentation is a condensed version of that.
You need to have those same points. You need to
be able to bring in the audience, And so thinking
about how you do that, whether it's the specific story
you tell, whether it's the method in which you deliver
(09:17):
the story, if it's your body language, if it's visuals
that you use. Really thinking about what makes a good
story and bringing in those elements. I will bring your
attention also to the transitions. I think it's really easy
to have abrupt transitions if you're going from one theme
to another. So, when thinking about how you want to
(09:38):
tell your story, what would allow you to have easy segues,
What would allow you to kind of hold the audience's
hand through the discussion so that they can follow along
and that each next step of your presentation makes sense.
The last point that I want to make about the
narrative flow is that it's important to know who your
audience is. I mean this partially and terms of demographics, ages, backgrounds, professions,
(10:04):
professional levels, what they're at in a company. Know who
the audience is, and then be intentional about how you
deliver points. You know, you don't want to labor a
point over and over again. Just make your point and
trust that the audience will know what you're trying to say,
and that puts it on you to articulate it well.
And if you do that, your audience will understand, so
(10:24):
give them the benefit of the doubt. The fourth tip
that I have for how to give a great presentation
revolves around the physical presentation slides themselves. So I'm a
big believer in less is more, and I think that
a presentation unless you have to go through very technical
graphs or something. But if you're not doing that, the
slides of a presentation should be there for a few reasons.
(10:47):
One to give your audience something to anchor onto and
something to reference, to break up the flow and to
help with with what you're saying. But then it's also
there to help you know where you're going in your presentation.
There are some people who can memorize everything, but that
is not most of us. And so if we can
use keywords or specific images or photos from our own
(11:09):
experiences that signal to us, Okay, this is the story
you're going to tell, then that helps and it gives
the audience something to look at. For example, while a
lot of my keynote discussions are rude around specific themes
that I label, my whole ten to fifteen minute introduction
is not. And so I know the flow of my
introduction based on the photos that I use, and I
(11:30):
know that when a certain picture of my car pops up,
that's when I talk about X, and when a certain
picture of me training pops up, that's when I talk
about why. And so it helps me know where I'm
going without having to reference notes. And this goes back
to doing the thorough work of writing out everything you
want to say so that you know the story ahead
of time. The fifth tip for how to give a
(11:51):
great presentation is so so important, and it is to
practice out loud a lot. I have been telling some
of these stories for ten years and I still practice
my full keynote through one to three times before any
given keynote. Sometimes it's just not right right, and sometimes
I switch up to the order I curate all my
(12:12):
keynotes to be specifically what the client wants, and so
it means reordering some of the stories. Maybe it means
driving home different points. And I practice all the time,
and it's important because it's very different to walk through
a keynote silently than it is to actually say it
out loud and to hear what it sounds like and
to hear what it's like to go from one theme
(12:33):
to another, and to know what it's like to stand
up and to give the keynote instead of sitting down.
If you're going to be wearing heels, practice in the
heels so you know what it's like to walk around.
If you get a distraction that pops up, continue doing
your keynote because you will have distractions from the audience
at times, and so really practicing that and making sure
that you know exactly what you want to say, making
(12:54):
sure that each section flows smoothly, and if it doesn't
work on it, you don't have to be married to
your first draft of a presentation. I'll write out a
new section for a keynote and a new theme and
I'll think that this is the best thing ever, and
I'll write out my points and then i'll, you know,
work it, and then I'll get up and practice it,
and I'll realize this is not punchy, or this is
(13:16):
not carrying the same meaning, or this doesn't flow very well,
and it's okay, and you move on and you try
other stuff. I don't do this anymore. But something I
did initially was I recorded myself when I was practicing,
and I recorded both on video and just audio. When
I recorded on video, it allowed me to see what
my body language was doing, It allowed me to see
(13:37):
what I was doing with my hands, if I was
doing anything fidgety. And I recorded on audio to see
if my story was compelling enough for me to want
to keep listening to it. So all of these things
can be really helpful. And I can't emphasize the enough
that you can never be too prepared for these things,
and especially if you're changing up your discussions, practicing and
(14:00):
making sure that you're proud of yourself and you're happy
with it, because at the end of the day, it's
a reflection of you. And I know that sounds like
a lot of pressure, but if you put the work in,
it should be doable. Now that I've put all this
pressure on you, let me take some of this pressure
off with my sixth tip, which is to remember that
the audience does not know all of the points that
(14:21):
you're going to be trying to make, and so they
don't know what you will include, what you won't include.
They don't know what your flow is supposed to be like.
They don't know what stories you're going to tell, which
means that if you make a mistake, you're the only
person that knows. And it is really important to remember that,
and to remember that whatever you missed or if you
didn't make a point, it probably won't mess up your
(14:43):
whole presentation. It's important to keep going. They won't know.
And even if you make a mistake that's more obvious,
like if you stumble words or if you start talking
about something then the wrong slide pops up. Make a
joke out of it. This last keynote, when I was
in Vegas, I thought I was going to open it
up to Q and A, and I forgot that I
had added a summary slide, and so I started saying,
(15:05):
you know, I've been talking for a long time now,
I want to open it up to Q and A.
And I clicked the clicker and I realize I have
all my bullet points, and I was like, oh wait,
never mind, I totally lied to you. I actually want
to recap everything I just said, and then I'll open
it up to Q and A. And the audience chuckles,
and I show that I have personality, and we go
through the summary and then I open it up to
Q and A. So there's no problem if you just
(15:27):
brush it off and move on. We are all human.
Everyone in the audience wants you to do well. Everyone
in the audience wants to take something away from your discussion.
Most people in the audience probably feel like they could
not do what you were doing, and so remembering that
we all are doing our best and that it's challenging
and that it's okay to make some mistakes just takes
(15:48):
a lot of pressure off. And so i'd like to
reiterate this point, even though I said earlier not to
reiterate points if your audience doesn't need it. But remember
that your audience doesn't know what you're going to deliver,
and so only you can make it obvious if you've
forgotten something or made a mistake and you can usually
weave it in later. So to go over these six
tips for how to give a great presentation. The first
(16:11):
is to think of it as a conversation rather than
giving a speech. The second is to write out everything
that you want to say and anchor your discussion in
personal stories and experiences. The third is to be intentional
about the narrative flow and the transitions. The fourth is
to have simple presentations that help guide the audience but
don't overwhelm the audience. The fifth is to practice a lot,
(16:33):
and you can never practice too much. And the sixth
is to remember that the audience doesn't know what you're
going to present, so you can very easily move on
from mistakes. Friends, that wraps up this episode. I hope
that it was valuable to you. I hope that something
here is something that you can take away for a
future presentation. I would also love to know if you
(16:53):
have tips for how to give a good presentation. I'm
always trying to learn, so feel free to send a
DM or leave or review and a comment. And if
you like this episode, I hope you'll share it with
someone that you care about. I hope that you will
rate the podcast, and as always, thank you for letting
me be honest with you and I look forward to
seeing you next week.
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