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If you’ve been thinking lately, “What am I, chopped liver?“, when seeing other people with less experience, talent, and iffy solutions than you getting sales and opportunities to speak, then you’re in the right place.
Because it’s time to emerge from obscurity and start making your mark.
I’ve given a lot of presentations in my day, like when I was doing my BComm at McGill University in my home town of Montreal, Canada (oui, je parle Francais, but with a really terrible accent because I’m Jewish, not French Canadian) or my MBA at York University, where I started the Schulich Toastmasters club (I was the president before becoming a member – a story for another day).
This continued in every job and business I’ve had, from working as a life insurance broker, personal trainer, business consultant, or assistant to a venture capitalist.
Back in 2005, when I started out as a life insurance broker, I was given a list to call and told “good luck!” It paid 100% commission so no skin off their backs, but that was no fun for me nor very effective.
I quickly moved to attending and presenting at networking events and service clubs. More people in less time. Genius! And, it was right up my alley – I’m a natural at talking too much!
But polite applause and fancy certificates like this one didn’t exactly pay the bills.
My goal was always to educate and give the best tips I could. Sounds like what you do, right?
It seems logical to believe if you just tell them what they want to know, they’ll sign up right there and then, but then they don’t.
And the nicer of a person you are, the more tips and ideas you want to give them. I call this being an “OVERDELIVERER*”.
You know the side effects of this affliction – you have more content than time to deliver it in.
Worse yet, you don’t have time to engage your audience and they start wondering if they can do it all, where do they start, how will they find the time, etc…, but you’re not even seeing the worried looks on their faces, because you’re trying to get through all your material in time.
But what’s happening is that they’re getting overwhelmed with info (and they’re probably bored if you’re hiding behind slides filled with lots of bulleted text), and they’re already overwhelmed enough as it is. Who isn’t nowadays?!
Seriously, think about the last time you signed up for a webinar – you had a problem, but instead of them giving you a simple solution (which is exactly what they had promised you), they explained how crazy complicated it was, and that it would cost $2K, take months to implement, and worse yet, take you a year to pay it off.
*Not an official term. Totally made up!
I get it. Presentations are super intimidating. You literally have people staring at you and judging you. It’s like being a lone gazelle on the Serengeti with a pack of hungry hyenas eyeing you.
So you do what any smart gazelle would do, you try to find a place where you can just blend in.
You give some good advice that’s doesn’t rock the boat. You make a PowerPoint slide deck that looks like all the slide decks that you’ve seen before. Then, you hide behind your slides or as a postage stamp in the corner as you deliver it.
You got through it (phewf) – your goal was achieved. But, was it? This won’t work to market your business.
HIDING in convention is the exact opposite of standing out. Your goal seems to be – be like everybody else, but just slightly better.
I’m going to say that that’s not going to cut it in today’s competitive online marketplace. Oy gevalt, no!
Nothing is more inspiring and life-changing than a passionate entrepreneur with an amazing idea and strong speaking skills (and nothing is more painful than a boring presenter who simply wants to get it over with).
INNOVATIVE IDEAS MAKE THE WORLD A BETTER PLACE!
But ideas alone aren’t persuasive. There always needs to be someone who champions that idea. That person needs to be you, but passion alone won’t produce the results you want.
There’s so much more than just confidence on game-day to convince someone to change what they’re doing now.
That’s why I decided to get certified as a World-Class Speaking Coach, so I could peel back the curtain for you and get your life-changing ideas into the marketplace in a much bigger way.
Because when you present in a way that’s engaging, impactful, and entertaining, you’ll help way more people than you are now.
You don’t need to deliver a boring PowerPoint presentation filled with bullets where you’re just a voice-over artist. That may be the norm nowadays, but you can be different.
You can help them have a transformation right there in the audience.
You can help them change their mindset about what’s getting in their way.
You can make them laugh, cry, and laugh again with your amazing storytelling.
You can be rave-worthy!
Julia Baum is a researcher here in beautiful Victoria, British Columbia, Canada, doing some truly amazing work. She’s not afraid of public speaking, as she’s a biology professor at UVic and does lots of talks to the scientific community.
But this was different – she wanted to talk to regular people about climate change at “Nerd Nite“, a global monthly event featuring scientific talks in a nighttime bar-like atmosphere.
She wanted us to care. I helped her to to see that her usual stats and pictures of globes wouldn’t cut it. She stepped out of her informational overdelivering comfort zone and into the world of storytelling. Magic happened and her ideas will live on inside of us.
*TFW = That feeling when, in case you don’t know.
Sign up now and get free instant access to video training, “What You Need to Become a Rave-Worthy Speaker“.