Tips

1. Prepare a talk for half the time allotted. You’ll start late, people will laugh at your jokes, you’ll take longer. I’m serious, for a 10 minute talk, prepare 5 minutes worth.
2. Prep time – for each one minute on stage, you need one hour of prep. Yep, for a 10 minute, talk, that’s 10 hours of prep. This includes thinking, research, rehearsing, preparing slides, etc.
3. Be focused (of course) – people can pick up generally one big idea and maybe three key actions or sub-ideas from even an hour long talk. My advice is to learn from Martin Luther King Jr – pick one thing and say it over and over again.
4. Give the audience something. Give them a tool, something to do for homework, some sort of behaviour change, a challenge or a group to join. This is your connection between the talk and the reality of life after the talk.
5. Connect. Do something early on, in the first minute preferably to get a response from the audience. I often ask if anyone has had any crazy ideas recently and that always gets a lot of hands up. Then the audience and I both relax a little. Another great way to do this is to talk to people in the audience before hand. It’s good to be able to say “I was just chatting to Sanjay and he said…”
6. Don’t read. Slides are not for reading. If they are, stand up, say you’ll send everyone a copy of this slides to read and sit down…
7. Give them your email address or phone number to contact you. They’ve given you their time, open up and make friends. I get maybe one call from 100 people in an audience and it’s always worthwhile.
8. Get feedback. Make your next talk better than the last. Feedback from yourself, and from others. Video yourself as well.
9. Practice. Do the talk in front of a mirror, into a camera, live on Ustream, to friends. I try and do a talk at least 5 times before I do it for real.
10. Here is a quick outline that can form the basis of most talks.

Presentation Outline

1. Pre-frame – this is something you say right away to set the scene and establish the expectation of the talk. It’s like a teasing elevator pitch. “Good morning everyone, this is going to be a great ten minutes and by the end you’ll all feel like laser beam focused entrepreneurs.” Thanks to Toby Travanner for teaching me this.
2. Introduction – introduce your talk, yourself, your background. Be brief, I’ve gone too far on this before…
3. The overall point. The one thing you really, really want to get across.
4. The first example to reinforce the main point.
5. Link it back to the main point again.
6. The second example to reinforce the main point.
7. Link it back to the main point again.
8. The third example to reinforce the main point.
9. Link it back to the main point again.
10. Go over the main point again.
11. Give them something (see above).
12. Let them contact you.
13. Thank them
14. Q&A or bow and walk off stage to applause.

I hope that helps. If you have any more to add, or feedback, add them as comments below or contact me.

It can be difficult to remain focused when you’re constantly online running a web business. The lure of the internet is very tempting and just a minute checking an auction on eBay can turn into an hour of researching Wedgewood tableware you saw in an auction earlier and thought your Mum might like for her birthday…. to be fair it is fast approaching….I wonder what payment methods rosesonly.com take…I should go to their website…

See how easy it can be to get distracted?

Darren’s top tips are:

1. Know and identify your goals, and know them on a big picture scale. Periodically write down your new goals and assess the previous goals.

2. Boundaries and boundaries around the core talks that are going to take you closer to your goals. You need to put boundaries around core tasks and set aside time to achieve these.

3. The other type of boundary and this is involves creating boundaries around the distractions. If it’s not a core task, create a small space in your day to do those things which are good but which also can be distractions.

But he warns of the dangers of stretching yourself too far. The above chart shows a tipping point where busyness can lead to less productivity. Be careful not to burn yourself out!

Ok, now back to the task at hand!