About this lesson
The starting point for every presentation and speech should be answering this question: What do you want your audience to do?
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I want to dive right in and give you a quick win, because your time is valuable.
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This is an advanced tip that's going to dramatically help all of your
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presentations and your speeches, and yet anyone can do it even a basic beginner.
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So what I have here are notes.
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Now the beauty of these notes, it's one page, large font.
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So I don't have to stop and put on my glasses when giving a presentation.
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But here's the advanced part.
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It's not just that it's one page, large font.
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It's that I have not just one page, not just two, but
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three identical sheets of notes that I place around
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the room when I'm giving a presentation.
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What this means is, I don't have to stand wedded behind a lectern or
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stand in one spot.
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I can walk around the room.
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And it appears as though I'm just speaking off the top of my head for an hour.
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And yet, I have no idea what I'm going to say next,
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I'm constantly referring to notes.
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But by having three sheets around the room, I make the whole thing look
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professional at ease and the audience feels like I'm just speaking to them.
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This is a simple tip, it costs the price of three sheets of paper.
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Stay tuned, there are a lot more advanced tips like this that anyone can do to
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become a great speaker.
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What do you want your audience to do?
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Before you start with the first slide, before you drink a whole bunch of coffee,
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so you can stay up late typing away at this 30 minute speech.
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Take a breath, calm down, sit back and
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just ask yourself, what is it I want my audience to do?
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Now, if you're going on a job interview and
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you're presenting to one prospective employer,
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the one thing you want that person to do is give you the job, hire you.
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If you are running for office, you want the audience to give you a vote or
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give you money.
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If you're speaking to a new business prospect, you want them to hire you or
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sign a contract.
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What is it you want your audience to do?
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Now this sounds basic and yet I see countless times with people of all varying
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degrees of success, skill, seniority, within the private sector,
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businesses, corporations, governments, all making the same mistake.
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Their first inclination is to just start gathering information.
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They get this big wheelbarrow and they go around the office gathering information.
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Smithers, give me all the files you have on the such and such project.
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Jane, give me all your slides that you did on this subject last week.
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I want to build that and they're going around the room with this wheelbarrow.
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And the data is gathering and it's stacking higher and higher, and higher.
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And before you know what you're just swimming in this sea of data, timeout.
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First thing you have to do is figure out in one sentence,
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what is it you want your audience to do?
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I want you to write it down.
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You need clarity on that, because if you don't know what it is you want them to do,
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there's no way you can convince them that.
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It's the old joke if you don't care where you're going,
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it doesn't matter what road you take.
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Write down the exact, specific thing you want your audience to do.
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That's the starting point for every speech.
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It's the starting point for every presentation.
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