PowerPoint

Adapt while you’re waiting for your next speaking gig…

- Joel Heffner

Conferences and meetings are being canceled or postponed. True.

But that doesn’t mean you shouldn’t continue to work…on your PowerPoint slides.

You don’t have to be a PowerPoint MVP to create slides of the highest quality. All you have to do is find places that already have great slides and adapt them!

One way to create better slides is to use some of the templates that are available from Indezine and SlideModel.

And remember…PowerPoint is not just for presentation slides. You can use them to create ebooks and infographics for Twitter, Facebook, or Instagram. For example, the original for this slide comes from SlideModel’s duotone-gradients template. All I added was the word!

What can you adapt?

Public Speaking: The Best Way to Help Yourself

- Joel Heffner

If you search for “public speaking” on Google, you come up mostly with information about the dreaded fear of public speaking. The real problem is not the fear of speaking it is the ability to speak in public effectively.

Speaking at meetings or conferences is probably the best way to skyrocket your career because so few others want to do it or can do it effectively!

So, how do you become a better public speaker? Here are some tips:

  1. You must be able to write down what you want to get across on one Post It. Doing this will make you focus on what’s important.
  2. Create an outline of what is important. Eliminate what isn’t important.
  3. Consider different ways of getting the points across. You may want to use stories, statistics, quotes, graphics/pictures, videos, and more.
  4. Stories work best! People remember a stories best.
  5. If you use PowerPoint, make sure you are looking at the Post It sheet to keep you on track. Incidentally, giving away your PowerPoint slides as a handout doesn’t make sense. If the slides make sense without you, they didn’t need you to speak. If the slides don’t make sense without you, it silly to give it away.
  6. Always provide a handout…either digital or on paper. Regardless of how good a speaker you are, the audience will forget most of what you said…quickly. Handouts are the best way to help them remember.

Need help? Please contact me.

Collect Now, Use Later

- Joel Heffner

Whether you are an assistant football coach at a high school or a junior executive hoping to climb the corporate ladder…or anyone in between…it’s a good idea to start collecting information that you may use someday during a PowerPoint presentation. The more slides you have, the easier it will be to combine them into a stellar presentation. You can collect photos you take or inspirational quotes…either that you think of yourself or the words of others. When it comes to collecting quotes, Tom Peters, is the best. When he presents he uses a vast number of quotes from people. Here’s just one of his slides…

Follow advice from the Boy Scouts and “Be Prepared.” You never know when you may be asked to make the presentation of your life. Have the slides in advance and be ready.

Sometimes, your best presentation can be your worst…

- Joel Heffner

It was a very hot day.

The room was not air conditioned.

The audience was made up of very important people.

My team consisted of four speakers. Each of us was given about 20 minutes to speak. I deliberately went last. As the other speakers were speaking I was looking at the audience. Some were on the verge of failing off their chairs because they were dozing off. Some were looking at their watches. None were paying much attention to the speakers. And then it was my turn to speak.

A colleague was switching PowerPoint files when I told him to shut the projector off.

I started by telling them that I was going to summarize what I was going to say in two minutes or less and provide a handout with the details. Everyone perked up. I spoke. I stopped. I gave out the handout.

Several people told me that mine was the best presentation of the day.

Sometimes, you have to adjust your presentation to the day. Sometimes, your worst presentation (according to the speaking gods) can turn out to be your best presentation.

Your Photos vs. Stock Photos

- Joel Heffner

You can buy or download free photos of everything…almost. If you are a speaker and use photos during your talk it is easy to search for ‘just the right photo’ for your PowerPoint slide. It makes sense…or does it. Actually, I don’t think so.

I’d rather use a photo that I have taken over a stock photo every time. Here’s an example.

There are thousands of photos of Pugs online. If I were speaking about Pugs, I would only use one like this. Why? I can talk about this one on a very personal level. Camille posed for this photo. She lived with my family. You may notice that the photo isn’t perfect. Her tail is partially covered by the greenery. A “professional” photographer would have Photoshopped it out. Would a perfect photo that I couldn’t talk about personally be better than Camille. Never!

Whenever possible, use your own photo…so you can make it personal.