If You Are In a Hurry To Find An Answer To a Specific Question, Start Here

This is the frequently asked question portion of my course. If you simply look at the titles of each one of the videos and blog posts, you will know exactly what they are about. I try to make each video as short as possible and focused a hundred percent on answering just one question per video or blog column. I apologize in advance as some of this is going to duplicate other aspects of the course. There is simply no other way I could do this and make it easy for you to access it.

So if you see that the title is a subject that you don’t care about or that you learned everything you needed to from another entire section of the course, my advice is to just to skip them or fast forward through it. If you do not have time to go through the entire course and you have a few questions, this section is designed to save you time so that you can click right on the question that is burning away at you and you need it answered.

So I am politely and respectfully asking you, do not give me low ratings on this course because you say there is some duplication. I am giving you a really long course with 550 lectures and there are trade offs with everything. I am trying to give you more and more and give answers to all of your questions so that is why you may see some duplication here. Thank you.

How Do I Pick a Topic for a Presentation

How do I pick a topic to speak on or to present on? Quite often in the business world, it is sort of thrust upon you. If you are the vice president for the sales of your company, you are going to have to give a presentation over the sales of the past quarter to the Board of Directors. So in many aspects of our lives, it is simply thrust upon us.

However, many times, you do have a choice. If you are asked to speak to a civic organization, my advice for you is to pick something that you already have an interest in. It doesn’t mean that you cannot dig deeper and find out more information, but I want you to find a subject that you really find interesting. A subject that you think the audience will find interesting as well.

Then, you need to focus on just a handful of important points. Especially, when there is a personal connection to it. It can’t just be like a book report. Everybody has access to the internet which is why they do not just need pure facts. There has to be some opinion, some perspective, and some analysis or some insight delivered with the presentation.

So pick something where you can add to the facts as they are. Do that, and you will undoubtedly deliver a great presentation.

Should I Use PowerPoint

Should I use PowerPoint in my presentation? That is a question that I get all the time, and quite often the follow up to that is, “I don’t like it and everyone I know hates it so I probably should not use it, right?” or, “I don’t need Powerpoint, therefore I shouldn’t use it, right?”.

There are lots of assumptions in those questions, so let me unpack it. First of all, the only reason to use PowerPoint is that there is some image that you can show to your audience on a screen that will make your idea more understandable to them and more memorable to them. If you have images that you can show to your audience that accomplish those two things, then you should use PowerPoint. It has nothing to do with whether you need it.

A good speaker never needs PowerPoint. The PowerPoint is not for the speaker. The PowerPoint is for the audience. So those are the questions you need to ask. Do I have the images that will make my presentation come alive, my ideas more understandable, interesting, and memorable to the audience? If they do, use it. If not, do not use it. It is that simple.

Is It a Good Idea to Use Animation and Special Effects

Is it a good idea to use animation, video, and special effects in your presentation? The answer is that it depends. If you are in the business of making commercials for companies or making animation, by all means, demonstrate that you are actually good at what you do through examples.

For most business people, however, or most people in the government or civil lines, I do not recommend that they spend a lot of time creating animations and videos for their presentations. The reason is that it is very time consuming especially considering that your time is finite. The time you spend freaking out over the little special effects fluttering across the screen is time you are not going to spend rehearsing your presentation and making it interesting.

So when I look at the cost benefit analysis, it is typically never worth it. Because your audience is not going to be that impressed by seeing lots of special effects on a screen if you are giving a PowerPoint presentation because people are used to seeing all kinds of fancy Hollywood special effects on screens these days, but they will be impressed if you can actually speak to them in an interesting and compelling manner which is memorable to them.

So that is why I do not recommend you to spend time on animation, videos, and special effects or at least not until you are certain that you are great at speaking even if you did not have any of that stuff.