Scott Schwertly's book, How to be a Presentation God, is a must read for anyone who ever has to give a presentation. I do not care if it is your first presentation or you 10,000th. You need to read this book.
I have been speaking since the age of 15 - I just turned 50 - and I found this book added deep focus to the pieces of speaking that I have picked up intuitively through trial and error over the 35 years. It added some new tools to my toolbox for crafting presentations. These tips could help you avoid taking the long hard road and improve your craft early on in the practice.
Truth be told, my speaking experience and refinement over thirty-five has gotten me to a place where I end up leaving about 70% of the presentations I attend as a listener. I usually leave within the first five minutes. Right at the outset you get all the vibes you need to make a darned good assessment of whether or not the person your are listening to has any passion, any skill, and can give you any ROI. If I feel I could get all of the above at Google in five minutes, then I am out of there. I have books to write and a family to live and play with before I die. I don't need another bad presentation.
That being said, I wish everyone of those presenters I had walked out on had given me their cards because I would give them a link to this book and tell them that they could step up their engagement with the community by giving this book a serious read. Scott, you ROCK!
Our culture has accepted presentations as a valuable form of communication. But, they have not given enough education toward accomplishing this with any real success. Scott not only reminds us of the tools we need to research, develop, and deliver an awesome presentation, but he reminds us of the things he cannot give us. He cannot give us a passionate fire about the topic and he cannot make us extraordinary people. This we must come to terms with on our own. So get busy on your personality while you are preparing to give your presentation.
The first major fact that he drops in your lap about your presentation is that it takes about seven seconds for folks to make a decision about whether or not you will be worth their while to engage with in your presentation (this gets at what I said about leaving within the first five minutes). The second fact is that a presentation is all about perception. Not only the perception of the crowd listening, but also about your perception of the needs of those folks listening. If you are not up their pulling in data from how the crowd is reacting while your are jabbering on, then you are not flexible enough to provide a fluid presentation that meets the needs of the people who have come to allow you to serve them.
Make your topic and your presentation EXCELLENT. Raise your EXPECTATIONS. Deliver STORIES not data. Do not be TRENDY. Research how peoples' brains LEARN. Research how peoples' ears HEAR. Live the fullness of the content of your presentation with ALL of yourself - heart, mind, and body. Don't WASTE their time. These are just a few of the awesome tags he throws into the mix of content in the book.
The rest of the book is a broad and thoughtful expose on content, design, and delivery. Get these three things into your head as the process guides toward making your presentation robust, not flashy. He lays out powerful tools for each of the three portions of the process. You will hear about styles, methods, procedures, and suggestions that the best of the best have used over and over again after countless failures at other attempts. Take a lesson from Scott. The stuff he has written about is the cream of the crop. He will help you build, clarify, brainstorm, outline, drill, perfect, individualize, and experience the whole process of presentation crafting from beginning to end.
I love all of the insight he sneaks into the text and all of the website options he puts forth. I am all over the internet looking for ideas and I have to say that the content Scott puts out there is new, vital, and rich in nutrients. If you ever have to do, or ever have done a presentation, you need to go online or to Borders and get this book. It is perfect. And, Scott has thrown in enough of his personality in the writing that it is edgy, challenging and dead-on honest. I read the book on the flight to Yosemite and never lost interest. He is a Master!
Order book HERE - http://presentationgod.com/go/index.html
View Michael Hyatt's Vid with Scott HERE - http://michaelhyatt.com/an-interview-with-scott-schwertly.html
I have been speaking since the age of 15 - I just turned 50 - and I found this book added deep focus to the pieces of speaking that I have picked up intuitively through trial and error over the 35 years. It added some new tools to my toolbox for crafting presentations. These tips could help you avoid taking the long hard road and improve your craft early on in the practice.
Truth be told, my speaking experience and refinement over thirty-five has gotten me to a place where I end up leaving about 70% of the presentations I attend as a listener. I usually leave within the first five minutes. Right at the outset you get all the vibes you need to make a darned good assessment of whether or not the person your are listening to has any passion, any skill, and can give you any ROI. If I feel I could get all of the above at Google in five minutes, then I am out of there. I have books to write and a family to live and play with before I die. I don't need another bad presentation.
That being said, I wish everyone of those presenters I had walked out on had given me their cards because I would give them a link to this book and tell them that they could step up their engagement with the community by giving this book a serious read. Scott, you ROCK!
Our culture has accepted presentations as a valuable form of communication. But, they have not given enough education toward accomplishing this with any real success. Scott not only reminds us of the tools we need to research, develop, and deliver an awesome presentation, but he reminds us of the things he cannot give us. He cannot give us a passionate fire about the topic and he cannot make us extraordinary people. This we must come to terms with on our own. So get busy on your personality while you are preparing to give your presentation.
The first major fact that he drops in your lap about your presentation is that it takes about seven seconds for folks to make a decision about whether or not you will be worth their while to engage with in your presentation (this gets at what I said about leaving within the first five minutes). The second fact is that a presentation is all about perception. Not only the perception of the crowd listening, but also about your perception of the needs of those folks listening. If you are not up their pulling in data from how the crowd is reacting while your are jabbering on, then you are not flexible enough to provide a fluid presentation that meets the needs of the people who have come to allow you to serve them.
Make your topic and your presentation EXCELLENT. Raise your EXPECTATIONS. Deliver STORIES not data. Do not be TRENDY. Research how peoples' brains LEARN. Research how peoples' ears HEAR. Live the fullness of the content of your presentation with ALL of yourself - heart, mind, and body. Don't WASTE their time. These are just a few of the awesome tags he throws into the mix of content in the book.
The rest of the book is a broad and thoughtful expose on content, design, and delivery. Get these three things into your head as the process guides toward making your presentation robust, not flashy. He lays out powerful tools for each of the three portions of the process. You will hear about styles, methods, procedures, and suggestions that the best of the best have used over and over again after countless failures at other attempts. Take a lesson from Scott. The stuff he has written about is the cream of the crop. He will help you build, clarify, brainstorm, outline, drill, perfect, individualize, and experience the whole process of presentation crafting from beginning to end.
I love all of the insight he sneaks into the text and all of the website options he puts forth. I am all over the internet looking for ideas and I have to say that the content Scott puts out there is new, vital, and rich in nutrients. If you ever have to do, or ever have done a presentation, you need to go online or to Borders and get this book. It is perfect. And, Scott has thrown in enough of his personality in the writing that it is edgy, challenging and dead-on honest. I read the book on the flight to Yosemite and never lost interest. He is a Master!
Order book HERE - http://presentationgod.com/go/index.html
View Michael Hyatt's Vid with Scott HERE - http://michaelhyatt.com/an-interview-with-scott-schwertly.html
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