----------------------------- No Sweat Speaking(tm) Ezine ----------------------------- Speaking Tips for Greater Confidence, Skill, Influence & Profit ----------------------------------------------------------------- Volume 4, Number 8 October, 2005 ----------------------------------------------------------------- Allan Kaufman & Allan Misch, Editors, Allan and Allan, Inc. mailto:cust-serv@nosweatspeaking.com http://www.nosweatspeaking.com ----------------------------------------------------------------- This monthly newsletter is distributed by request only. If you want to stop it, you can find instructions at the end of the newsletter. (c) 2005 Allan And Allan, Inc. ----------------------------------------------------------------- Please send this Ezine to those you know who (1) need to give technical, sales, marketing, or management presentations; (2) are interested in developing or improving their presentation skills; (3) want to make money speaking and training; (4) need to improve their performance; or (5) have a fear of speaking or are nervous when they speak. This newsletter also is good for building relationships with your clients, customers, associates, and friends. Send this to them with a note that you're thinking about them. ----------------------------------------------------------------- *** Attention *** If you're receiving this issue from someone and would like to get your own complimentary newsletter plus TWO valuable BONUS reports, please visit... http://www.nosweatspeaking.com or... mailto:nssezine@nosweatspeaking.com?subject=Subscribe ----------------------------------------------------------------- PRIVACY STATEMENT: We absolutely will not share your address with anyone. Period! ----------------------------------------------------------------- "Learning to communicate is like taking out an insurance policy. You never know when you'll need it, but it's too late to take it out after you need it." Allan Kaufman as quoted in Baltimore Magazine ----------------------------------------------------------------- *********************** Check This Out! *********************** "Last year, I made a career change from engineering management to marketing at a new company. Public speaking and even presentations to small groups were my greatest fears and I had gone to great lengths to avoid them throughout my career. In my new company, public speaking was not something I could avoid and my speaking ability would be quickly tested. After a lot of research, I turned to Allan & Allan. Most other companies only offer skill training. What I needed was to overcome my life long fear of speaking in front of groups. The No Sweat Speaking system seemed illogical to me at first and I was skeptical. The great part about the system is that you don't have to understand it or believe that it will work. It just happens. Today I speak in front of groups, give media interviews and conduct training sessions on a routine basis. Not only is my speaking anxiety gone, but my skills continue to improve and I look forward to my next opportunity to speak. I give my highest recommendation for Allan and Allan's system. If it works for me, it can work for anyone." Thanks, Jim M. Connecticut --------------------------------- Is Speaking Fear Holding You Back, Costing You a Lot of Money? --------------------------------- Are you not getting the job you want or the promotion you deserve because you suffer from speaking anxiety? How much money, loss of opportunities, or damage to your reputation is this fear costing you? A whole lot. Let's be honest. If you have performance anxieties, you know you need to kill those butterflies in your stomach, but you're afraid to take the next step and/or you're not willing to invest in yourself to make it happen. One man just said to us that he knows he really needs us to coach him, but he thinks he can't afford to. What he can't afford to do is do nothing and continue NOT getting promoted and continue NOT seeking better job or business opportunities because he may have to speak in front of people. This is so sad. It's especially sad when that same person will take out a $20,000 car loan on a depreciating asset. Getting rid of your speaking anxieties and developing your speaking skills are appreciating assets. They increase your value. This means once you do it, you continue to reap the rewards. One promotion leads to another one and another one, but if you don't do what you need to do to get that first promotion, you can forget about it. You could be promoting your businesses and increasing your income by speaking to groups who need your products and services, but your speaking anxiety and other performance blocks are holding you back. Probably, you're reading our ezine because you have some speaking anxieties. If they're bad enough, don't you think it's time to do something about it and improve your self-confidence? How much is having a sense of confidence worth to you? Not just in your work and business life but also in your social life? Have you ever thought about being the life of the party? About being less shy? --------------- We Can Help You --------------- Using our No Sweat Speaking(tm) techniques, we provide personal coaching to help you get rid of your speaking anxieties in a relatively short period of time. Send us an email and tell us you want assistance. In the SUBJECT line of your email, put "I need speaking coaching." We will email you some questions to assess your situation and then send you a proposal as to how we can help you. It doesn't matter where you live as this can be done via email and phone consultations. mailto:allank@nosweatspeaking.com ----------------------------------------------------------------- In This Issue ----------------------------------------------------------------- 1. Featured Article 2. Presentation Skills Tip 3. Humor Tip 4. Dear Allan and Allan (Answers to Your Questions) ----------------------------------------------------------------- *** Attention Small Business Owners *** Here's one of the best websites on the Internet for small business marketing. We use this site and its great information as a resource. Get a free 24-page Marketing Plan Workbook. Visit... http://www.1shoppingcart.com/app/aftrack.asp?AFID=50478 ----------------------------------------------------------------- 1. Featured Article ----------------------------------------------------------------- **How to Stimulate and Captivate Your Audience with PowerPoint!** by Allan Misch How many times have you said to yourself, "Oh no, another boring, dull PowerPoint presentation?" You know, the kind that makes you fall asleep with slide after slide of never-ending bullet points, paragraphs of text, and capitalized text. Or do you sometimes feel like you're drowning in a sea of animated text slides that make you boiling mad? You've seen them, slides that have every animated text trick in the book -- fly- ins; zooms; and the hated typewriter animation, where every letter, of every word, of every line appears as if it was being typed (with an accompanying typewriter clicking sound). This one makes me want to have a major nervous breakdown rather than sit through the rest of the presentation! Are you tired of seeing the same old slides that have a poor, low-quality graphic thrown in that breaks up the monotony of the other text-intensive slides? Unfortunately for you, the graphic doesn't appear to have anything to do with the point of the slide, adds another distraction to the presentation, and makes you want to throw the laptop at the presenter. This doesn't have to be the way your audience feels about *your* PowerPoint presentation. You can join the small handful of business presenters who engage and galvanize their audience with vivid, easy-to-follow, eye-opening slide presentations. Each of their slides contains a main message; little or no bullet points or subtext; and sizzling, compelling graphics that illustrate the slide's point. You can have PowerPont slides like their's. Just be B-O-L-D. Here's how. B -- Begin by Designing Your Oral Presentation First, organize and outline your presentation. Your outline should have all the ideas and points for your presentation's opening, body, and close. Plan on having a slide for each idea and point. Then, on a blank page in Word, write a headline that describes each idea and point. Separate each headline by a hard return, so you have only 1 headline on each line. Save the Word file with an appropriate name such as WidgetSlideHeadlines.doc. The headlines will be the titles of your slides. Headlines should have a subjectand predicate. They should have from 2 to 14 words that fit on no more than 2 lines of 40-point text on your PowerPoint slide. For example, if you want to discuss the 5 benefits of your product, you probably would have a slide that's titled "Benefits." Now that's dull! Using the B-O-L-D approach, you would write an engaging headline: "5 reasons why the Apex widget will rack up your profits." (Don't put headlines within quotation marks unless you're using a quote as a headline.) Next... O -- Open Up PowerPoint and Create a Slide Template Avoid using the templates that come with PowerPoint. Most of them tempt you to create cookie-cutter type slides that wind up bullet-point- or text-intensive. Create a master slide with only a Title text placeholder. The text should be a sans serif font such as Arial or Verdona. The size should be 40 points. The color should be black. Delete the placeholder for bullet-point text. Avoid using headers, footers and logos on slides, unless it's company policy to include a company logo on each slide. You can save this template in your templates folder. Give it an appropriate name such as BoldPresentation.pot. Then... L -- Lay In Your Headlines and Create Your Speaker Notes From within Word, export the headlines file (WidgetSlideHeadlines.doc) to PowerPoint. PowerPoint will create a file with slides that have your headlines as titles. Next, open up your template file (BoldPresentation.pot) as a PowerPoint document. Copy the slides containing your headlines to the file created from the BoldPresentation.pot template. Name this PowerPoint file (for example, WidgetPresentation.ppt). If you don't want to go the importing route, you can open up the PowerPoint template as a document, switch to Outline view, and type your headlines there. Save the file. Then, switch to Notes view. Notes view shows a picture of the slide with your headline in the top portion of the page and room for notes in the bottom part of the page. Put all your text, notes, and bullet points in the bottom part of the page. Do this before you work on your slides. When you finish, you will have the notes and bullet points for your entire presentation. Be sure to save your file every few minutes. Now it's time to... D -- Design Your Slides with Riveting Graphics and Color Switch to Slide view. Find an appropriate picture, clip art or other graphic that illustrates the point of the slide, and place it on the slide. Make it big, covering the entire slide if possible. Vary the placement and color of the headline depending on the characteristics of the graphic. For example, if the graphic is light at the bottom and dark at the top, move the dark text to the bottom of the slide. You also can leave the headline at the top but change the color from black to white. If your graphic doesn't fill the entire slide, you can move it to one side. Then move your headline to the other side so it fills up several lines on one-third or half of the slide. Use different background colors on your slides. Use a background color on a slide that compliments the colors in your graphic and headline. Use the same background color for slides that cover a major point and another background color for slides that cover a different major point. If you need to include minimal text to compliment your graphic, create a text box with a sans serif font that's the same as or compliments your title text. The text size should be 32 points. After you design the slides, add a presentation title slide in front of your first slide. Then, make your slide transitions subtle and simple. Consider using a more dramatic transition, such as a Wheel or Wipe, when moving from your opening to your body and your body to your close. Use another transition when moving from the last slide of one major point to the first slide of another major point. Switch to Notes view. You now have a page with your finished slide at the top and your notes and bullet points at the bottom. Go to the header and footer of your Notes view and set up your header and footer if appropriate. Then, print the Notes pages for your speaker notes. You also can print them as handouts for your audience. If you want a different set of notes for your handout, copy the file, rename it, change the notes, then print it. Your audience will have copies of your outstanding slides and all the bullet points and text that you'd normally see on those dull, send-you- to-dreamland slides that you're used to seeing. So capture your audiences and be B-O-L-D. First, begin by designing your oral presentation. Then, open up PowerPoint and create a slide template. Next, lay in your headlines and create your speaker notes. Finally, design your slides with riveting graphics and color. Your PowerPoint presentations often spell the difference between failure and success. If you're tired of the same old humdrum slide shows, isn't it time you begin to stimulate and captivate your audiences with commanding PowerPoint presentations? Just be B-O-L-D. ----------------------------------------------------------------- "Keynote was a huge success! You were right about everything -- from bringing my introduction to adding humor. I ended up adding about 9 humorous things to my presentation -- I actually brought the house down with the expandable ball visual. Thanks for everything. You made all the difference." Best, Trish "In minutes you were able to do for the audience what some people have been trying to do for themselves for a lifetime. You two helped audience members get rid of the fear of public speaking right before my very eyes.... Any organization can benefit greatly by witnessing your seminar.... You two are a great team!" Craig Valentine Toastmasters International 1999 World Champion of Public Speaking ----------------------------------------------------------------- 2. Presentation Skills Tip ----------------------------------------------------------------- **Time Your Words and Maximize Your Use of Pauses** By Allan Kaufman Your timing while presentating is an art that you can learn by observing successful speakers and modeling their actions. When you speak before an audience, pay close attention to their reactions. Allow them time to take in and process your message. Sometimes, speakers love to hear themselves speak, so they go on and on without allowing their audiences to grasp and take in their messages. For example, when you tell a story or a joke, pause after the punch line to allow your audience to get the joke and laugh. If you do not pause, you "step" on your punch line and do not get the response that you desire. When you make a point, as another example, slow down, make the point, then pause for a second or two. This gives your audience time to consider your point. Often, less is more. So be cognizant of the timing of your words and maximize your use of pauses. ----------------------------------------------------------------- *** Great Speaking Resource *** Turn your speaking, training, or sales skills into cash. Check out a great professional speaking resource. We recommend it highly. Lots of great tips and tricks. Just click on or paste the URL into your browser. http://www.kickstartcart.com/app/aftrack.asp?AFID=50475&u=www.antion.com/public-speaking.htm ----------------------------------------------------------------- 3. Humor Tip ----------------------------------------------------------------- **Sources of Humor** by Allan Kaufman As part of our May, 2003 issue feature article: "How To Use Humor When You Think You're Not Funny," we included sources of humor. We reprint them here... Anything by Larry Wilde -- do a search on him. He's written more humor books than anyone, about 60 books. "The Official Wasp Joke Book," "The Official All America Joke Book," "The Ultimate Lawyers Joke Book," "More The Official Doctors Joke Book," "The Official Computer Freaks Joke Book," "The Official Golfers Joke Book," etc. These are paper back books. Then there is his "Library of Laughter" and his "Treasury of Laughter" hardback books. Jacob M Braude's "Complete Speaker's and Toastmaster's Library," eight small volumes. Jacob M. Braude's "Braude's Handbook of Stories for Toastmasters and Speakers" Jacob M. Braude's "Treasury of Wit and Humor" "1,497 Jokes, Stories & Anecdotes, A Speaker's Handbook" by Herbert V. Prochnow "Podium Humor" by James C. Humes Here are a few more: Herbert V. Prochnow & Herbert V. Prochnow, Jr.: "The Public Speaker's Treasure Chest" and "The Toastmaster's Treasure Chest." Here is a good joke link: http://www.jokesgalore.com/ ----- One of the jokes I found on this site: A 60-year-old man went to the doctor for a check-up. The doctor told him, "You're in terrific shape. There's nothing wrong with you. Why, you might live forever. You have the body of a 35 year old. By the way, how old was your father when he died?" The 60 year old responded, "Who said he was dead?" The doctor was surprised and asked, "How old is he and is he very active?" The 60 year old responded, "Well, he is 82 years old and he still goes skiing three times a season and surfing three times a week during the summer." The doctor couldn't believe it. "Well, how old was your grandfather when he died?" The 60 year old responded again, "Who said he was dead?" The doctor was astonished. He said, "You mean to tell me you are 60 years old and both your father and your grandfather are alive? Is your grandfather very active?" The 60 year old said, "He goes skiing at least once a season and surfing once a week during the summer. Not only that," said the patient, "my grandfather is 106 years old, and next week he is getting married again." The doctor said, "At 106 years old, why on earth would your grandfather want to get married?" His patient looked up at the doctor and said, "Who said he wanted to?" ----- Now all you have to do is take this joke, for example, and follow it with your point, which could be... "Sometimes, things aren't what they appear to be." or "We should try hard not to make assumptions." So start a humor library. Use humor in your presentations. To read our feature article on this subject: http://www.nosweatspeaking.com/ezine/back_issues-2003.html Select the May, 2003 issue. ----------------------------------------------------------------- **If You're Looking for a Home for Your Website, iPowerWeb Makes Website Hosting Simple!** We did a lot of research on Web hosting companies and compared many of them. We decided on iPowerWeb to host our website, and we made a good decision. iPowerWeb is rated #1 for affordable, high quality web hosting. You get an incredible 1,000 megs of space, 500 POP email accounts, 40 gigs of transfer, website builder, 24/7 customer support, free setup, marketing package, and much more... all for an incredible $7.95 per month! So if you're interested in establishing a presence on the Web for the first time, or if you want to change your Website hosting company because you're tired of getting ripped off, check out iPowerWeb. http://www.ipowerweb.com/cgi-bin/tracker/trackeraf.cgi?rid=afftrend ----------------------------------------------------------------- 4. Dear Allan and Allan (Answers to Your Questions) ----------------------------------------------------------------- Dear Allan and Allan, I'm a mid-level manager in my organization. I give frequent presentations and use PowerPoint. Recently, my boss hinted that my presentations need to be improved especially my presentation slides. I put all the pertinent information on my slides and print a copy of them for the meeting attendees. What more can I do? PowerPoint Perturbed. Dear PowerPoint Perturbed, Two issues might be causing your problem. First, your presentations may lack effective organizational structure. Ask yourself, "Can my presentations be understood without using PowerPoint?" If the answer is "No," your presentations need to be reorganized for clarity. Second, your PowerPoint slides probably need to be reworked. They probably contain too much text and bullet points. Research on multi-media learning by Richard E. Mayer of the University of California concludes that an audience's interest and learning is maximized by using less text with interesting, meaningful graphics. So refer to Allan Misch's feature article in this issue for an approach to creating effective PowerPoint presentations and handouts. Allan and Allan Submit questions to mailto:questions@nosweatspeaking.com. ----------------------------------------------------------------- *** Hot Internet Business Secrets *** Over 1,000+ PAGES of the Hottest, Proven Profitable Internet Business Secrets Broken down Into An EASY-TO-DUPLICATE System! We highly recommend checking out this site. 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