Making a Presentation Interesting

00:01 So how do you keep your speech from being boring? Because, let's face it, the vast majority of presentations in the world are deadly dull, and they're boring.

00:12 Now, I hear my clients say that all the time, and yet they stand up, and they give boring speeches.

00:17 Why is that? It's because we feel like a speech is really about telling people everything we know, every fact, every bullet point, every number on a particular subject that has occurred in the last quarter or the last year.

00:31 If that is your assumption going into a speech, you are by definition going to be a failure. That's not what a speech is about.

00:41 If you want to be an effective speaker, if you want to not be boring, you have to use editorial judgment.

00:47 You have to look at all the things you could say and figure out what are truly the handful of most important ideas, important to me, but also important to this audience.

00:58 And now, how can I flesh it out? How can I make it more memorable? How can I give examples? And most important, how can I tell stories to make these ideas come alive? If you do that, you will not be boring.

01:14 If you let somebody just start piecing together bullet points on a PowerPoint slide deck for you, you are going to be boring.