Category Archives: Preparation
How to write Presentations in five steps: my TRAIN Framework
When most people sit down and write presentations, their thought process is:
How do I get all of the information that’s inside my brain, and stuff it in the brain of my audience??
Not only is this a colossal waste of time, it’s also a colossal waste of opportunity.
Instead, I present to you TRAIN: a frame work that walks you through how to write presentations that don’t take you forever, engage your audience and actually drive them to action. I lay it out in this video…
Genuinely the funniest moment of my life (up until that point)
I’m 13 years old, I’m on the couch at home, and I am HORIZONTAL with laughter. Laughing so hard I’m crying. Laughing so hard I can barely breathe.
On the screen, a man with glasses is leaping about, saying things like, “can you imagine the sheer joy of an empty bin in your kitchen, a new fresh bin liner in the swing top bin? It’d be like a bin in heaven, wouldn’t it?”
What i don’t know at that tender age is that, for the first time in my life, I’m watching observational stand-up comedy.
I love it more than I’ve loved almost anything else I’ve ever seen.
The routine was by Ben Elton on his show The Man From Auntie. It’s still on Youtube (and still holds up) on re-watch, I was once again crying laughing. His delivery! The physical stuff! The fact that he seamlessly brings the point back to politics at the end! How you can hear people SCREAMING in the audience!] And while, yes, I was being introduced to Ben Elton and to stand up in general, what I was more specifically being introduced to was one of my favourite concepts in comedy AND presentations, which is…
When you’re an expert at something, you ruin it for everyone
Reading the spines of the CDs in Mike’s bedroom, the thrill of anticipation I’d been feeling slid, instead, into confusion.
He and I had been dating for a couple of weeks. In London terms — certainly, in the mid-2000’s — that meant a lot more than it does these days. I often joke that when I lived in the UK, rather than dating, it was more like we had arranged matches — except, instead of the matches being made by your parents, they’re made by booze. You’d get drunk and then wake up in a relationship.
The getting drunk that Mike and I had done happened at a new bands live showcase. Like most of the people I dated when I worked in radio, he was in the music industry. An A&R Scout, it was his job first to go out to gigs every night looking for new bands to sign, and then to have opinions on the records being recorded for release. I was a radio DJ at a well-respected indie station. I liked him for his trifecta of being charming, funny and hot, but I can’t say I wasn’t also romanced by the idea of us being a junior-level, music industry power couple.
The first time I picked him up from his house before a gig, I was excited to look through his CD collection. Would we like the same bands? Would I learn from him about new bands I’d soon love? Would I find any guilty pleasures?? It was often my favourite part of any new relationship.
But as I flipped through the titles and artists, I was…
Why the first 30 secs & the last 2 mins of anything are the most important parts (aka how to rescue a very public disaster)
Standing in the booth, looking out at the ten people awkwardly dancing in a space that was built for 400, I felt sick.
I’m about to tell you one of the most important pieces of information I know. Then I’m going to tell you the rest of that story in order to prove it’s true and to help you hold it in your brain (because that’s what storytelling does!).
Here’s the fact:
The most important parts of any talk, blog, presentation or podcast is…
If the “END OF THE DECADE LET’S REVIEW AND PLAN!!” messages are bumming you out
This one might not apply to you. Or it might land right where you need it to.
You know everyone online at the moment is all, “OMG END OF A DECADE LET’S REVIEW THE LAST AND MAKE GOALS FOR THE NEXT!!!”?
If you love that stuff — as I have sometimes (and as my pile of completed yearcompasses will prove) — then awesome. Get on with your bad self.
But if, every time you read something like that, it makes your stomach tighten a little…
– maybe because you don’t think you have time to do that
– maybe because you don’t feel you achieved enough or have changed enough in ten years
– maybe because you’re currently in survival mode and have zero capacity for reflection or planning
…then I just want to remind you that…
How to promote yourself without feeling gross; How to stop drowning in your to-do list
If I might briefly be not very British or Canadian, I got to give some REALLY good advice last week. Some of my favourite questions to answer, in my monthly live Advice column, Yes Yes Questions.
Q1: What is the art of writing posts to promote yourself on social media without feeling like a self-obsessed narcissist and annoying everyone you know?
i LOVE this question. Because so many people…
If you feel like everyone else is doing their lives just a little bit better than you are, you may need this
It’s mid-April. Over a quarter of the year in. What goals did you have? Anywhere close? So much time has passed and you haven’t done nearly enough towards them, have you?
Did you even get around to making any goals?
I didn’t. I printed out my YearCompass, over several days in January and Feb I got about…
Need to convince someone of something? Here’s how to READ THEIR MIND (by Chris from TellPeople)
Ever felt like you’re explaining something that – to you – seems so obvious, but the person you need to convince just isn’t getting it?
Recently, I was asked to run a workshop on buyer empathy (aka how to understand what your potential client wants), so I turned to get some help from my (very, very smart)(he’s been a lawyer representing Wall Street companies and indigenous rights) friend Chris from TellPeople.
Then, I asked him to share some of his smarts with you! Here’s what he has to say about how to READ MINDS (or at least, have a good guess at what’s inside them):
Make sense of your audience
When you’re trying to convince someone of something – whether it’s a potential client to hire you, or a family member to please stop doing that annoying thing they keep doing – do you ever wonder what’s going through their mind while they read your writing or listen to you talk?
What about when you’re talking to a group of people – how do you keep track of what all those people are thinking?
The truth is: you can’t know what anyone else is thinking about what you’re saying.
But – while you can’t read peoples’ minds, there is one thing you know for sure about every person you talk to. Actually, it’s the only thing you know for sure.
Can you guess?
Other…
That Time I Cried On Stage (and how I dealt).
The first few times I practised the story, I totally fell apart. Alone in my apartment, I couldn’t speak for sobbing. A few months ago, I took a course with my storytelling teacher, Sage Tyrtle. Our final class was a live show, where we would each tell the story we’d been working on. Except… I…
WDS: Five Storytelling Lessons from Coaching the Attendee Storytellers at World Domination Summit
I stood up, feeling the fizz of excitement under my skin, and started looking around the empty lobby of the conference hall. It was evening. I knew that most people had left, but I needed to be certain.
Yep, I was definitely alone.
I walked to the space where there were no chairs. Then, silently and frantically, I began leaping up and down, alternately punching my fists in the air, before ending on a little stationary run.
It was Saturday night, and I had just finished coaching the Attendee Storytellers for World Domination Summit.
WDS is a conference where, once a year, several thousand do-gooders descend on Portland, to get inspired and try and figure out how to make the world a better place. Along with TED-style informative and inspiring speakers, every year, they have a number of “Attendee Stories” on the main stage – where people from the audience can apply to get up and have a go themselves.
I told a story a few years ago – you can hear it here – and, since then, I’ve become the Official Storytelling Coach for World Domination Summit. Which sounds like loads of fun – and is – until you know that I have just one afternoon to help all the storytellers get their 20 or 30 minute stories down to one minute.
One.
Tiny.
Minute.
It’s brutal but, every year, I do it – and, every year, the challenge makes me feel high as a kite afterwards. Hence the silent, solo leaping around.
Here are five things I learned from coaching this year’s attendee storytellers at World Domination Summit