Successful presentation template - podcast summary

My takeouts from amazing Mixergy interview (from 2013) with Hugh Culver.

The website they are talking about is not alive anymore, but it has been archived. The page with useful resources (tools, videos, PDFs, book recommendations, etc.) is available here.

Hugh Culver's youtube channel is also worth checking out. It is full with short videos on speaking, presentations, business growth, etc. 

So, on presentation ...

Presentation should start with a problem

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You have to tell the audience the problem that you know that they have. Everybody has a problem. If you’re speaking to an audience of entrepreneurs, they’ve got problems around profit, net returns, staffing, technology, overwhelm, doubt, self-confidence. [...]

They need to know in the first three minutes that you understand them. [...]

You need to start with a story or statistics or an example that makes the audience lean in and say to themselves, “Wow, he really knows me. That’s exactly what I’m going through.”

Then you tell your story

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Then you go into your story, and your story is how you’ve been there, you’ve had that problem, and ideally the story should be from when I had it to now I don’t have it.

Ideally it should be, “I had that problem, and now I’ve come up with some insights, and I don’t have it as much anymore, so I’m not as overwhelmed. My profit is better. I’ve had these client breakthroughs. I’ve solved this issue around technology.”

Then you move into the solution overview

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And the solutions is, first of all, “Let me give you an overview. Let me give you some context. There’s a better way to run your business. This is the way you should think about business. Here’s the metaphor. Here’s the analogy I use.” It’s an overview.

Then you go into your lessons (story - lesson - application)

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Then you go into your lessons, and the lesson, or the points, you want to share with them would follow this formula: story, lesson, application. So you say, “Let me tell you a story.” You tell them a little vignette, a little client story, something that happened, and then you say, “This is what I learned.” That’s lesson number one. Then you say, “Here’s how you apply it. Let me give you examples.”

Now you go back to the problem

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Now you go back to the problem. So now you mention the problem again. You remind them of why this is so important. You remind them of where they don’t want to go back to.

You give them another problem example, you challenge them to start applying the lesson and notice the difference. You talk about the first steps they need to make.

Wrap it up