788 – Presentations as smooth as silk: Tom talks Practice Methods

Episode 788 – Practice Methods
[00:00:08] Welcome to Screw the Commute. The entrepreneurial podcast dedicated to getting you out of the car and into the money, with your host, lifelong entrepreneur and multimillionaire, Tom Antion.

[00:00:24] Hey everybody, it's Tom here with episode 788 of Screw the Commute podcast. Today, I'm going to talk about presentation practice methods. It turns out this week is going to be about presentations, maybe a little bit next week too. We'll see. But these methods will keep you on track even if an earthquake happens during your presentation. All right. And it's not the old Toastmasters. Watch yourself in the mirror stuff. These are pro level techniques. Not hard, but these are what the pros do so that they hit a home run every time and clear at the end. I'm going to have a genius technique for you that virtually no presenters or even pro speakers know well, unless I've trained them. All right. This is episode 788 is Today and episode 787 was a bunch of attention gaining devices so that you can just roll through a presentation and people are like, Wow, it's over already. The time just flew by and makes you look like a superstar. And then Episode 786 was How to Bomb Proof your presentation. So you never, ever, ever have one where people are like, Oh man, that was a waste. All right. So any time you want to get to a back episode, you go to screwthecommute.com. slash, episode number. Bomb proofing was 786. Attention getting devices was 787. And I think you're going to want to keep track of these presentations.

[00:01:53] And all of them are excerpted from my classic book written in the 90s, I might add. But still, the same techniques I use today is Wake Them Up Business presentations and you can find it at ScrewtheCommute.com/wakebook get the e-book version. It's a little bit updated and you can have it immediately. All right, let's see. Grab a copy of my automation e-book while you're at it and screwthecommute.com/automatefree and follow me at tiktok.com/@digitalmultimillionaire on TikTok. All right, let's get going here. Practice, practice, practice. All right. Guess a lot of people think, oh, well, I can just wing it. Well, maybe you can sometimes. But if you want consistent high level results, that can change the course of your career. And you don't want bombs that make you look like an idiot. Right. And and maybe you better pay some attention to practicing your presentations. The pro speaker way, the wake them up way. All right. First technique. I mean, this is the number one way that pros practice to be able to deliver their talks with zero or limited notes and it's called bits, chunks and series. Those are like synonyms, this technique. I mean, I'm telling you, it's going to serve you for years to come. I mean, what you do is you take a small part of your presentation, maybe a couple of minutes worth, and you practice it out loud.

[00:03:26] It must be out loud. You just can't do it in your head because your lips don't always go where your mind's telling them to. You must do this out loud. Okay, Here are the parameters that make this work. You're going to practice this small section. Well, listen to this, folks. 30 to 50 times out loud. I'll get to that 30 to 50 times in a minute. Remember out loud. All right. But you do it while you're doing something else. Like taking a shower, driving in your car, but don't wreck, please. All right. Combing your hair anywhere and any time that you're doing something else. Now, I wouldn't do it in the mall in front of people. They'll think you're a little mental. I mean, a lot of people think I'm that even on stage. But. But do it while you're doing something else. This is a critical part of this out loud. And while you're doing something else now, you're not going to memorize this short segment word for word. Now, let me give you one parameter, one exception to that. If you're doing a government or legal speech where each word has to be cleared by your legal team. You do not want to memorize speeches word for word unless each word is a legal thing. Okay, But hardly any of us get into those situations.

[00:05:00] Now, why don't you want to memorize it? Because as soon as you mess up one word, you go blank. I've seen it over and over with toastmaster types, so no memorization. You just want to get the main points out of this short segment. Now, what's the idea behind this? Why does it work so well? Distractions come up in a presentation? Always. Yes. I want you to address big distractions. Distractions. Because if you don't, everyone else will be paying attention to the distraction and not to you. The beauty of this bits, chunks and series techniques is that you can take a sidebar to address the distraction and come right back to your chunk. That's because you've practiced with other things going on. Another big benefit of practicing while doing something else is when you are on stage, your mouth can spit out the words while you are paying attention to the audience reaction to your words. That way you can adjust your presentation to get the best reaction from the audience. You can even cut a segment short if you see the audience isn't taking it so well. This is totally opposite of the inexperienced presenter who's going to force feed. All right. To the audience what they prepared. Regardless of the way the audience is receiving the information, this kind of presenter probably doesn't even realize how poorly they're doing because they haven't practiced enough and they are totally focused on themselves getting the words out rather than what they're saying.

[00:06:50] Is it being received well by the audience? The next question I get is Tom. How many times should I practice these chunks? Well, don't freak out. I just mentioned it to you. I tell them a bare minimum of 30 to 50 times for each chunk and it's like, Oh, Tom, I don't have time for that. Okay, I'll take home all the money because I've been on stages with loads of big shot speakers that refuse to do this, and I took home all the money and they wish and they wonder what hit them because they're too damn lazy to practice. So if you want to be a hundred times better than your colleagues and so that you get the raise and promotion. Then practice the Dorothy. All right. Now it's your choice. I mean, you can be a boring, sleepy time presenter or a fireball on stage. It all comes down to this practice. Plus, remember, you're doing these practice sessions while you're doing something else, so you really aren't taking too much extra time to do them. And then the question is why so many Tom? What do you really need this many? A really crazy interesting thing occurs when you practice a segment so many times. Let's say you only practice ten times to the audience.

[00:08:11] It sounds like you are memorizing. Once you hit that 30 to 50 time practice mark. Literally, folks, I'm not woo woo, but a magical thing happens. Your chunk starts to sound conversational and natural, which totally endears you to the audience rather than them feeling like you're just delivering another dog and pony show. All right. Next topic is the use of a mirror. So many old school public speaking instructors tell you to practice in front of a mirror. This is terrible advice. Doing this means you are focusing on yourself rather than the audience. So forget the mirror. A better way to practice is to put stuffed animals or pillows or whatever you have and spread them around your living room or office. Deliver your chunks when you're practicing and make eye contact with your fake audience. This totally reinforces you concentrating on them instead of you. Well, and that's going to get you a lot further ahead and make you an infinitely better presenter than those narcissistic types that only want to make themselves look good. Now, with all that being said, I do want you to see yourself presenting. But do it with a video camera or cell phone and do it while you're practicing. It's even better if you're in front of a live group. So tape yourself practicing and then when you're done practicing, carefully review your video. I don't want you mixing up, practicing and reviewing your performance.

[00:10:01] Those are two different things. I don't want you to do anything that while you're on stage or you're practicing, distracts you from concentrating on the audience. They're the ones that make you a superstar anyway. Watch for annoying gestures when you're watching the video, time misalignment. You you you want to do some of your practice sessions in your actual presentation clothes. You would be surprised how many women and men presenters have spent fortunes on. I mean, we're talking sometimes thousands of dollars for perfectly fitted suits. Until presentation day when the microphone transmitter packs are clipped to their belts or skirts and makes the front of their suits pull like they just got them at discount stores. Right. So. So use in some cases and some times don't do it every time, but use your actual presentation clothes and find out any problems you have with it when it comes to microphones or stretches or squeaking shoes. I mean, there's all kinds of things I've seen. All right, Now I want you to listen. Like if you're practicing a story, you're telling. Does it make sense if no one knows the story? I mean, show the recording to others who don't know the story and see if they understand what you're trying to say? Or maybe you took too many words to get to the gist of the story.

[00:11:38] In other words, these recordings are your chance to improve yourself and you want a real pain in the neck pro technique. Here it is. Record yourself doing a story. Preferably in front of a live audience where you can't stop and start over. You just got to go. Have the recording transcribed. And when I say transcribed, I mean every syllable that comes out of your mouth needs to be put on paper. Every, um. Uh, repeated sentence, words and sentences out of order. Transcribe it all and look at it. And my prediction after seeing hundreds of these transcriptions, you will be freaked out at what you actually said as opposed to what you meant to say. This realization will put you on the road to being a pro because you will start improving these stories and bits and chunks to the pro level in pretty short order. So transcribe your stuff and record the practice sessions and live talks. All right. Now I mentioned this in the last session. You should have and practice three lengths of your stories so you can use them on interviews and in speeches, even if your time gets cut. And speaking of time getting cut, here's your genius technique that I promised you. Though and then Wake Him up Book is full of these, by the way. Genius technique. Here it is. Have a quotation ready that makes the same point as one of your stories.

[00:13:20] So this alone could knock off four minutes of your presentation and you didn't even break a sweat and you don't think your time gets cut? It will get cut. All right. So here's one last pro technique. You have already thought out what you will cut out of your presentation so that you can cruise right along again without breaking a sweat. The worst thing you can do is just talk faster to get it all in. The audience won't absorb it and you'll look pretty stupid. And if you see things are running late, I mean, depending on your situation, you discuss with the meeting planner before you go on. All right. You can see I'm not I'm not going to get my full time in. So what of my things that you want me to cover? Should we cut? Where's the main. The main ones you want me to keep. So you put it on them to make a decision? They're cutting your time and they can't expect you to get everything in. So what priority do they want to put on it? See, that gets it off of your back onto theirs. All right. So there you go. That's something pros have to think about. All right. So I hope these presentation tips help you. They could turn your business around if you're doing presentations to promote your business and if you're doing them for pay.

[00:14:37] You'll reach the pro level. If you start using these things and really improve, improve, improve and quit trying to wing it. All right. Now I look like I'm winging it on stage, but I've done these things for hundreds and hundreds and hundreds of times and checked and watched myself on video, watched the audience, got the reactions and improved, improved, improved to where I haven't done a speech in the last 20 years with less than $100,000 at the back of the room, some of them a quarter of a million. All right. So this can be enormously profitable and important to your career and and to promote your business. And if you just want to get paid to speak, use these techniques and you'll be on your way. And if you want help with this, I have a pro speaking mentor program specifically. I believe it's screwthecommute.com/prospeaking and it's included if you're in my Internet marketing mentor program which you still have to market yourself as a speaker, whether you're great on stage or not. Okay. So that's my story and I'm sticking to it. GreatInternetmarketingtraining.com for my mentor program. And I think it's screwthecommute.com/prospeaking for if just if you just want the pro speaking program. All right. That's my story and I'm sticking to it. Go out there and wow them.