At some point in your life, you're probably gonna
to be asked to give a presentation.
And this could be a great opportunity
for you, but only if you prepare correctly.
Otherwise, it's an opportunity for failure.
Even if you are a great speaker,
even if you're charismatic and confident
and you're able to walk up on a stage
without as one Cards Against Humanity card put it,
"Peeing a little bit."
Your presentation can still fall flat
on its face and bore your audience to tears,
if it's founded on a poor idea or structured in a bad way.
Fortunately, communicating your ideas to an audience
in a way that's persuasive and exciting
is a skill that you can learn and get better at.
So today, I want to share four big ideas
that you can use to start crafting
and delivering better presentations.
And speaking of skills that you can learn,
this video is sponsored by Skillshare.
Skillshare is an online learning community
with over 15,000 courses you can take
in a ton of different topics.
Including, graphic design, web development, business skills,
and, of course, presentation skills.
And I'm gonna talk about them a little bit more
near the end of the video and also recommend
a couple of courses that you might want to take
if you want to improve your presentation skills.
But first, let's get into the tips.
Starting with, the absolute most important element
of any presentation that you're ever going to give
which is, the idea.
The underlying idea or concept that you're trying
to communicate with your audience
is the beating heart of your presentation.
As Chris Anderson, the Curator of TED, puts it:
"Your number one mission as a speaker
"is to take something that matters deeply to you
"and to rebuild it inside the minds of your listeners."
And that's what communication is all about.
Taking your ideas and sharing them
with people who are willing to listen.
And when it comes to presentations
its especially important to highlight this.
Because a lot of people are concerned
with how they're gonna look or how they're gonna sound
on stage and they don't give as much thought
to the substance and the meaning
of the idea that they're communicating.
But in truth, the substance of that idea matters
so much more than how you look while you're delivering it.
So before you ever step on a stage,
understand all the details of your idea,
understand why your audience should learn about this idea,
and make sure that each part of your presentation
relates that idea and supports it.
So, once you've nailed down the idea
behind your presentation it's time
to start looking at some tactics
that you can use to make that presentation more compelling.
And the first one I'm gonna talk about is, storytelling.
The human brain is fundamentally wired
to be drawn in be a good story.
And storytelling is probably the mode
of communication that we're most receptive to.
Also, telling a story is a great way
to add emotion to your talk.
And that's especially useful when your idea
isn't all that emotional fundamentally.
For instance, back when the movie Prometheus was about
to come out, the marketing team put out this fake
2023 TEDTalk where the CEO of Weyland Industries,
Peter Weyland comes out and he gives this talk
about human progression and it's a pretty
self-aggrandizing talk, that's basically meant to build
up him and his company in the eyes of the audience.
But he starts out his talk with a story
about the titan, Prometheus, stealing fire
from the gods and giving it to humanity
as their first piece of true technology.
And he gets into these ugly and kinda disgusting details
about the punishment the the gods used
on Prometheus after he did this.
And while, this isn't all that related
to the progress of technology, it's a great way
to add some visceral emotion and imagery
to the talk that's otherwise kinda sterile.
Now, if you're gonna add a story to your talk,
you need to know the elements of great storytelling.
And there a three main elements I want to talk about here.
Number one, any good story needs
to have a character the audience can empathize with.
And here I want to note that personal stories
can be especially effective at forging a connection
between you and your audience especially if that
story shows a little bit of vulnerability on your part.
You also need a conflict or some sort of problem.
Basically the thing that makes your audience
curious and interested in the story.
And finally, you need a satisfying conclusion
that ties back into your idea.
And on a related note, you've probably heard
that telling a story can be a great way
to open a presentation or speech.
And this is true but there's a catch.
As the author, Michael Port, puts it in his book,
"Steal the Show", "If you're opening a with a story,
"it had better be a great story.
"Otherwise, open with note that's
"intellectually or philosophically important.
"Often, when a speaker starts with a story,
"many in the audience think, Oh boy, here comes another one
"of those dull opening stories..."
In other words, we're all pretty jaded when it comes
to the typical way that people structure their talks.
After all, most of us have sat
in school from anywhere between 18 to 30 years.
So, we've sat through a lot of presentations
and we've seen it all.
So, if you're using an opening story as a crutch,
people are gonna catch on right away
and it's gonna hurt you.
Now in addition to storytelling,
another tactic you can use to connect with your audience,
is to use analogies and metaphors,
to essentially meet your audience where they are.
Using an analogy is a great way to explain something
in terms that your audience is gonna easily understand.
And a really good example of this comes from the movie
The Big Short, which is one of my favorite recent films.
Now, in case your unfamiliar with this movie,
it's basically a story of how the
great financial crash of 2008 happened.
And in telling that story, the movie tries
to explain the inner-workings of some of the
outright fraudulent financial inventions
that helped to cause it.
One of those inventions, is called a
Collateralized Debt Obligation or a CDO.
But, instead of trying to straight-up explain
this purposely complicated financial instrument,
they create an analogy that's much easier to understand.
After Ryan Gosling's character introduces the concept,
the camera pans over to Anthony Bourdain, the famous chef.
And then he creates a story about how he bought fish on
Friday but then three days later its getting kind of rotten
but instead of throwing it away he just throws it
into a stew and calls it something new.
And that creates a much easier to understand picture
of how a CDO works and its much more emotionally visceral
as well since most people have smelled rotten fish
but don't even know what a CDO is.
Also, analogies and metaphors can give you access
to yet another tool for connecting
with your audience, and that is humor.
And one of the masters at using this type
of humor that I think you should study is, John Oliver.
Even though his show covers topics that are
objectively boring like the federal budget,
gerrymandering, and the IRS, millions of people
still tune in to watch it because John
is an expert at using analogies to tie-in
those boring topics to things that are funnier.
For example, in one episode he takes the IRS' practice
of literally hanging up on its own customers
which they call a Courtesy Disconnect, and ties it
to other things whose names hide their true meaning.
Like then Care Bears, who are still vicious bears.
And if you could learn to do this as well,
especially in a way that connects
with your specific audience, you're gonna gain their trust
and keep them much more engaged
throughout the entirety of your presentation.
The last tactic I want to talk about today,
is Audience Interaction.
Because if you can take your audience
and get them actively involved in the presentation,
then you can improve that presentation by a huge margin.
And to explain how to do this,
I want to tell you a story about my own life.
So back in 2012 when I was still a college senior,
I flew to New York City for a conference called, Blog World.
I was a blogger at the time, I was pretty small,
and I had a lot of heroes that were gonna be there,
who I really wanted to see.
So, on the second day of the conference,
my friend, Alex and I went to go see one
of our favorite bloggers give a talk.
But we couldn't get into the room because it was
standing-room only and there were so many people packed in
that there were literally people
in the hallway trying to hear what he had to say.
So, instead of getting into the mosh pit ourselves,
my friend Alex says, "Hey. Let's go see this guy,
"Marcus Sheridan, instead."
And we go into his room, it's much less packed,
and it turns out that Marcus is a pool salesman.
So I'm thinking, this guy probably
doesn't have a whole lot for me.
But, by the end of his speech,
I was convinced that Marcus was hands-down
the best presenter at the entire conference.
And the reason for this, was that Marcus was
an expert at audience interaction.
And more importantly, he made his audience feel special.
My most intense memory from the presentation,
is when he put up a slide on the projector
that just said, "October 10th, 2008"
and underneath there was the number, "7,882."
Then he asked the audience,
"Does anybody know what this number means?
"And why it relates to this date?"
And because I had been taking economics class,
I raised my hand and I said, "I think that's the number
"the Dow Jones fell to on October 2008
"during the stock market crash."
Which was the right answer and Marcus came over and said,
"My man! This guy know what's up."
And he made me feel so special that I had absolute
rapt attention for the rest of the entire presentation.
And I loved it.
Now, Marcus is a great speaker across the board.
He's got a lot of energy, he's really engaging,
and he has a lot of practice doing this type
of audience interaction.
But still, if you could learn to do this,
you're gonna have a lot more success
in your own presentations.
But I do want to give you a couple of warnings.
Number one, don't start your presentation
off with audience interaction because it can backfire.
Remember, when you get up on that stage,
you haven't made your first impression yet,
so your audience is still naturally a bit skeptical
you have to build their trust first.
Secondly, you need to have a plan
for what your going to do if your audience
doesn't answer your question you expect,
or if they don't answer at all.
Now, these are certainly not the only tactics you can use
to craft a great presentation.
And I think if you want to get better, you should go out,
and learn from as many sources as you possibly can.
And make them diverse, don't just watch other speakers,
watch TV shows, watch movies, watch advertisements.
Because these are all forms of communication,
they all have information you can glean
and adapt into your own style.
Additionally, there is a lot to be learned
from taking actual planned out courses
from an expert instructor.
And one great place to find those courses
is over on Skillshare.
Skillshare has a ton of courses you can take
in many, many different topics.
But the ones that I want to focus
on here are the courses in presentation skills and design.
For instance, one of my favorites
on the platform is a course called,
Presentation Essentials by Simon Sinek.
And if you're not familiar with Simon Sinek,
He gave my favorite TED Talk of all time
on a concept called, Start With Why.
And his course over on Skillshare
is an excellent supplement to this video.
And if you want to improve your presentation skills,
it would be a great idea to go take it.
You'll also find courses on how to nail your delivery,
on visual storytelling, and on crafting slides that rock,
in addition to many, many other topics.
Plans on Skillshare can be had
for as low as 10 bucks a month but if you'd like
to start learning today at absolutely no cost,
you can get a two-month free trial
by using the link in the description down below,
and using the code, ovation, when you sign up.
I want to once again thank Skillshare
for sponsoring this video it really helps
to support this channel.
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