Chris Stoikos is a serial entrepreneur and chief executive officer of Dollar Beard Club. He is the archetypal “mover and shaker” with a number of entrepreneurial credits to his name. His true genius lies in the ability to creatively market and commercialize products, and in building and maintaining teams of experts to run businesses independently. Despite his youth, Chris brings a practical knowledge of business in tandem with a firm grasp of market psychology for a younger and “hipper” consumer base.

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She lives on the Upper East Side by way of New Jersey. She is a writer, a yogi, and a self-proclaimed Francophile. She is currently working on a collection of essays, as well as contributing to various publications about beauty, sex, dating, and relationships. Maria has written for Refinery29, The Lily, and PopSugar, and has been profiled by Domino. In her spare time, Maria enjoys tending to her indoor plants, taking baths in clawfoot tubs, and smashing the patriarchy.

Introducing, Maria Del Russo:

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Shama Hyder has spoken on stages across the world and has been named among the nations top entrepreneurs. Today, she’ll step off the stage and give us a glimpse into the mind of the “millennial master.”

She is a visionary strategist for the digital age, a web and TV personality, a bestselling author, and the award-winning CEO of The Marketing Zen Group – a global marketing firm. She has aptly been dubbed the “Zen Master of Marketing” by Entrepreneur Magazine and the “Millennial Master of the Universe” by FastCompany.com. Shama has also been honored at both the White House and The United Nations as one of the top 100 young entrepreneurs in the country, and been listed as one of the top 30 under 30 movers and shakers by both Forbes and Inc magazines.

Hear what she has to say for yourself:

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Neil Patel is the co-founder of Crazy Egg, Hello Bar and KISSmetrics. He helps companies like Amazon, NBC, GM, HP and Viacom grow their revenue. The Wall Street Journal calls him a top influencer on the web and Entrepreneur Magazine says he created one of the 100 most brilliant companies in the world. He was recognized as a top 100 entrepreneur under the age of 30 by President Obama and one of the top 100 entrepreneurs under the age of 35 by the United Nations. Neil has also been awarded Congressional Recognition from the United States House of Representatives.

Without further ado, meet Neil:

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Ryan Holiday is a strategist and writer. He dropped out of college at nineteen to apprentice under Robert Greene, author of The 48 Laws of Power, and later served as the director of marketing for American Apparel. His company, Brass Check, has advised clients like Google, TASER, and Complex, as well as many prominent bestselling authors. Holiday has written four previous books, most recently The Obstacle Is the Way, which has been translated into seventeen languages and has a cult following among NFL coaches, world-class athletes, TV personalities, political leaders, and others around the world. He lives on a small ranch outside Austin, Texas.

But enough of us talking, we’ll let you see for your self where he stands:

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1. Neglecting to identify your audience to tailor your content

One of the gravest sins of any presenter is to think that they can create one presentation for any audience. Before delivering any presentation, it’s important to know your audiences’ wants, needs, and potential pain points. The more you prepare your content based on your audience, the better it arms you with leverage to persuade them.

Solution: You can determine who your audience is by asking your event organizer or meeting coordinator the following questions:

• Who is going to be in the crowd?
• When and where are you presenting?
• What’s the main thing the audience desires from you?
• What experiences can you share that would resonate with your audience?
• What do you have to say to positively challenge the audience’s way of thinking?

2. Delivering data that isn’t relatable to the audience

Jargon, acronyms, and data dumping: the fast track to overwhelming your audience and bringing on a snoozefest. When giving presentations, always ask, “so what” after delivering a data point. Why does this data matter to the audience? Can we humanize this data to become more relatable? For example, when the Apple iPod came out, Steve Jobs listed all the specs and storage space info for the engineers in the room. The engineers were amazed but it really didn’t move the marketers. It wasn’t until he announced the amount of songs the iPod could hold that the room truly came alive with excitement. By highlighting specs of the device by conveying the possibilities, Jobs knew that he could enchant everyone in the room.

Solution: It’s important to understand who your audience is when delivering data points. Once you know who your audience is, find ways to make your points interesting by explaining how this data impacts them. You can do this by:

• Translating the impact of the data in a way that’s relevant to the audience (see iPod example)
• Giving an analogy (it’s X miles, that’s like going to Los Angeles to New York City X times and back)
• Breaking down the data metric (it costs X, which means if you save X amount of dollars you can buy this product in X amount of time).

3. Reading off your slides

This is self-explanatory: you don’t know your material and you have to rely on your slides. The minimal damage is that your audience loses faith in your competency of your information. The worst is that if the slides don’t work due to a technical malfunction the show doesn’t happen. Great presenters always make sure the show goes on.

Advice: Be so prepared that you don’t need your slides.

4. Using verbal disfluencies like “umm”, “aah”, and “you know what I’m saying”

It is very frustrating when you hear a presenter trip over their words constantly with verbal tics. The “umm” or “aah” grates against your ears after hearing it over and over and begins distracting you from hearing the presenter’s message.

Advice: Record yourself when you rehearse. You’ll be able to catch your verbal disfluencies much easier and see which parts of your presentation trip you up.

5. Ignoring the room structure in which you’re presenting

Have you ever designed a presentation that looked strange due to the projector in the room? Ever present in a room that’s totally different from what you’re expecting? Both of these scenarios can throw even the most seasoned presenter off her game.

Advice: Try to get a look at the room beforehand or get information on the room layout. Knowing ahead if you’re presenting in a conference room, on a stage, or dinner-style can help you plan ahead on how you want to pace the room and engage with the audience. If you’re able, test out the equipment beforehand! Keep in mind that if anything goes wrong with the presentation and you can’t go on, it’s still your fault.

6. Losing control over your tone

Presenters that cannot control their energy level might make the audience feel like they are either indifferent about the subject or that they are disingenuous. If you’ve ever heard a presenter who was speeding, monotone, or dragging on, you know what we’re talking about.

Advice: Record and watch yourself present. At the parts you feel like you’re speeding up, breathe and input pauses. To the audience this can seem like you are emphasizing certain points of your content. If you are too slow and monotone, speed up and raise your voice slightly when emphasizing critical points in your presentation. This all of course takes practice and heavy self-awareness. The usual gut check is if you can stand watching your own recorded presentations. In our 10 commandments of presentations, we always encourage presenters never to give a presentation they wouldn’t want to deliver themselves.

7. Conveying insincere body language

Crossing legs. Lack of eye contact. No smile. Closed arms. All these things make you appear either disingenuous to the audience or extremely nervous. Regardless, the minimal result is distraction.

Advice: Get a friend or test audience to watch you practice a presentation. Give them criteria to judge your body language. Did you smile? Did you have an open posture? How about maintaining eye contact? Body language can never be underestimated in giving great presentations and it’s a critical factor in winning the trust of others. See here for our blog on five tips for good body language.

8. Forgetting your presentation’s focus and structure

A presentation that has a clear big idea and structure helps guide the audience.

Advice: Mind map your presentation. Identifying your central argument, your call to action, main takeaways, and your opener helps you write your presentation with the end in mind. Check this post out here on the Big Fish Presentation mind map presentation process. It can be used for any type of presentation!

9. Opening your presentation without a relevant attention-getter

Opening your presentation powerfully is a great way to hook your audience, facilitate bonding, and build rapport. While we recommend working with your presentation opener last, we strongly suggest you put significant time into its development as it’s your presentation’s first impression.

Advice: We find that there are five typical ways you can open your presenter. Choose the opener that resonates best with your audience based on the information you gathered about them. Our rule of thumb on this? When in doubt, tell a story.

10. Forgetting the call to action

It’s truly a sad thing when you experience a great presentation and have no clear next steps from the presenter. If consider yourself a great speaker, but frequently neglect telling your audience the next step, we’ve got news for you: you’re still a rookie.

Advice: Always have a call to action in your presentation that moves your audience beyond your presentation. We discuss the three different types of call to actions in our Slideshare, The Importance of A Call to Action: the demand, offer, and the ask.

11. Exceeding your allotted time

Going over your time can say many things about a presenter. Are they underprepared? Are they overloading the audience with information? Or are they simply blind to the audience cues of fidgeting? Either way, you can tell that neither answer leads to positive impressions. Always rehearse and work towards delivering your presentation underneath your allotted time (I find 5-10 minutes early works). On game day, you’re more likely able to recover from distractions, extra requested content and/or tangents if you’re prepared to deliver your presentation in a shorter amount of time than expected.

Advice: Keep things short. No one is going to get mad if you finish your talk early as long as you delivered on what you came to do. It’s better if audiences want more of you, than less of you.

Now your on the road to presenting like a pro! Do you have any thoughts about rookie mistakes presenters commonly make? Let us know in the comments! And don’t forget to subscribe to our blog to keep posted for our future writings on all things presentations.

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TED Talk of the Week is a series that allows us to explore strengths found in speeches covering a number of topics.

We listen, we learn, we grow.

The Speaker

Chancelier “Xero” Skidmore is an Executive Director of Forward Arts with over 15 years of experience as a trained teaching-artist, facilitator, curriculum writer, and youth worker. As a spoken word artist, Chancelier has been ranked twice among the top five slam poets in the United States and in October of 2013, he ranked 1st at the Individual World Poetry Slam Festival.

The Topic

“Why Artists Love Change”

According to Chancelier Skidmore, to live is to change. In this talk, Skidmore uses his skills as a talented slam poet to illustrate the relationship between art, change, and society.

Who Should Watch and Why

This speech is for anyone interested in slam poetry, art’s influence in society, or the nature of change within humanity.

Strengths of the Presentation

Skidmore begins his talk with one of his slam poems. The cold open into that piece is exciting and enticing, and the rhythm keeps the audience interested. He uses strong imagery and fervent emotion to hold the audience throughout the entire poem, and each sentence drips with sincerity.

Furthermore, his ability to use storytelling within the poem crafts a narrative that intrigues the listener, but is still relevant to the topic. This allows for a seamless transition into the presentation portion of his talk.

After finishing his poem, Skidmore shifts gears, adopting a more relaxed tone and sprinkling in humor as a new tool to captivate his audience. Though his subject matter was complex and intangible – change as it relates to art and human nature – he is able to masterfully articulate with no visual aides.

With only his words to guide the audience, he expertly explains the science behind change and conflict. He then moves the audience to explore how we can relate our own human chemistry to the relationship between art, change, and society. His words color the stage, inspiring the audience in a logical, yet creative way.

By the end of the presentation, Skidmore gracefully falls back into the rhythm heard in his poem. He artfully crafts the entire talk to be two interdependent parts – the poem and the presentation — that eventually meld into one.

Takeaways

• Using an art form like poetry to spice up your presentation is a creative way to get your audience interested from the beginning.
• Successful storytelling can make a conceptual topic relatable.
• Sometimes, strong and powerful words can paint a better picture than any photograph could.
• Thinking of your presentation as an art form in itself can give way to a masterpiece.

We’re so excited to hear from Chancelier “Xero” Skidmore at Assembly Required: Masters of the Story on November 10. As an award-winning poet, Skidmore has proven his mastery of storytelling. We encourage everyone to attend Assembly Required to hear from Chancelier and other speakers who have mastered the art of the story.

Tickets are available now! Get yours today here and keep being inspired.

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(Okay, we’re done with the Beyonce puns.)

We’re living in a crazy world right now. From political unrest to unnerving natural disasters, the past year has rocked our society to the brink and back. But there’s still one shining light that we can all take comfort in – Beyonce and her amazing music.

Jon Youshaei is the Head of Creator Product Marketing at Youtube, speaker at Assembly Required: Masters of the Story, and unashamed Beyonce superfan. He recently talked about Beyonce and her talent of staying ahead of the creative curve in his keynote speech, Beyonce’s Bizarre Secret to Creativity.

In his speech, Jon reveals that many of Beyonce’s most famous dances… aren’t actually hers.

He shows the audience that the dances from songs like Single Ladies, Run the World, and Hold Up are drawn from other artists around the globe. While this fact may shatter the hearts of Beyonce fans everywhere, Youshaei gently explains that this isn’t necessarily a problem.

Beyonce is just one of many artists who “copy with taste”. Using YouTube as her research data bank, she tastefully gathers inspiration from every corner of the world, tending to them in her memory bank and cultivating them into her own brand.

This “copy with taste” technique certainly isn’t new. In fact, Youshaei points out that geniuses tend to cluster in the same time or era for a reason. Think of Plato, Socrates, and Pericles or Da Vinci, Michaelangelo, and Donatello. Virality is a natural byproduct of inspiration, so when great artists are gathered together, borrowing is bound to occur.

Like Plato, Michaelangelo, and even Shakespeare, Beyonce is just one example of an artist drawing inspiration from those around them. As Youshaei puts it, innovation occurs after adaptation and elevation of what we see around us.

And herein lies the beauty of this keynote speech.

The message of this speech is simple: use your resources to elevate your art. But, Youshaei uses such a unique and universally relatable topic – Beyonce – to voice this message. He hooks his audience by name-dropping Beyonce, then elaborates with humor and stage presence until the final point of inspiration.

Just as Beyonce uses other artists to elevate and adapt her own art, so does Youshaei. In this speech, he uses Beyonce’s own creative process as a platform to elevate his own inspirational message.

Youshaei certainly proved his amazing skills as an orator and marketer. With a little help from Beyonce, he crafted a captivating and compelling keynote with a strong final message: be better.

“If Beyonce is the Beyonce of her time, who will be the you of your time?”

We’re so excited to hear from Jon Youshaei at Assembly Required: Masters of the Story on November 10!

At this event, he’ll be speaking about how things go viral. With his experience as Youtube’s Creator Product Marketing and his extensive knowledge on Beyonce, we know this speech will leave us Crazy in Love with Youshaei. (We couldn’t resist one last pun!)

Interested in Assembly Required: Masters of the Story? Youshaei is one of many amazing speakers, all mastered storytellers in their fields. For more information, please visit assemblyrequiredla.com.

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The Speaker

Chetan Bhatt is a sociologist, professor, and human rights activist. He teaches at the London School of Economics and Political Science, where he leads LSE Human Rights. His concentrations include nationalism, religious extremism and violence, social theory, and terrorism studies.

The Topic

“Chetan Bhatt: Dare to refuse the origin myths that claim who you are.”

In today’s society, there’s an extraordinary emphasis on knowing where exactly you’re “from.” Everyone has a place of origin, whether that’s your or your ancestor’s birth place. But, in Chetan Bhatt’s talk, he explains that claiming an identity from your past can actually be counterintuitive. He challenges listeners to put aside emphasis on cultural backgrounds for the sake of advancement into the future.

Who Should Watch and Why

This speech is great for two kinds of people:

• Anyone grappling with their sense of cultural identity, and
• Anyone looking to broaden their worldly perspective.

Tensions are high in today’s political landscape. More often than not, we get swept away with details about the past, shining negative light on perceived flaws and mistakes. But Bhett argues that it’s not our literal or metaphysical past we should worry ourselves about; instead, we need to look to better ourselves in the future.

“It’s not where they are from. It’s where they are going.”

-Chetan Bhatt

Strengths of the Presentation

• This talk toed the line between informational and relatable nicely. The speech was crafted as a personal story but hit some serious points that drove his topic home.
• Bhatt used storytelling in a refreshing way. Not only did he go over some classic myths, but he used current stories to debunk those myths, adding to the narrative element.
• The speech was relaxed and humorous, but above all, it was also inspiring. He encourages the audience with a call to action: build your future, don’t focus on the past.

Takeaways

• Storytelling can be a refreshing way to captivate an audience, even for a political topic.
• If your message is strong enough, you can still be funny and relaxed while also being inspirational.

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On August 26, Manoj Vasudevan became the 2017 Toastmasters International World Champion of Public Speaking with his speech “Pull Less, Bend More“. In it, he tells a captivating story of how he overcame marital issues with sage advice from his mother. With metaphors, imagery, and real-world lessons, this simple seven-minute speech is truly enchanting.

At a Glance:

The Speaker
Manoj Vasudevan is a world-renowned leadership coach and management consultant who has worked with many major multinational companies in Asia, Australia, North America, and Europe. As CEO of Thought Expression, a communication management organization, Vasudevan has coached executives, celebrities, bureaucrats, UN diplomats, and many other influencers.

The Topic
“Pull Less, Bend More”

When a relationship falls through in our lives, we are usually quick to blame the other party. But, in Manoj Vasudevan’s speech, he encourages other to heed the advice his mother once gave to him: pull less and bend more. When we learn to give, rather than expect to take, conflicts between individuals, groups, and even countries can dissolve into harmony. 

Who Should Watch and Why
Everyone should watch this speech for the sake of its topic. It’s a universally relatable point of discussion with valuable and easily-applicable advice.

This speech is also extremely pertinent to anyone interested in giving speeches. This speech earned Vasudevan the title of Public Speaking World Champion, so watching and studying this speech could be great research for anyone looking to improve their own public speaking skills.

Strengths of the Presentation
This speech won first place in the 2017 Toastmasters International World Championship of Public Speaking, so it’s safe to say the presentation was very strong. But Vasudevan has been cited with a few specific details that make his speech-giving so riveting:

• He immediately hooks the audience. He starts off strong, catches the viewers with humor, and then follows the rhythm of the speech, connecting it all with sincerity. The stronger your first impression, the easier it will be to keep attention.
• He uses short but effective sentences to spread his message. Each sentence can be spoken within a breath, and the words filling each sentence are rich with imagery and emotion. The concise sentences weave together beautifully to make an overarching metaphor of Cupid’s bow, pulling and bending, working together to rekindle his relationship.
• Vasudevan uses his body language to really push the story forward. From his hand motions to the positioning of his body in context with the audience, each movement he makes is deliberate and makes the audience more inclined to trust what he has to say. Vasudevan even says that the smile he gives the audience before the speech was planned.

• Finally, one of his biggest strengths is the format of his speech. This speech has been planned, rehearsed, and meticulously picked at in order to achieve perfection. But most importantly — it doesn’t sound like it had been planned. Vasudevan flowed through the speech like it was a direct conversation. Rather than a cookie-cutter lecture spoken to a mass audience, each sentence seems perfectly crafted to you, the listener.

Takeaways

• Get the audience interested fast. Humor and sincerity can work together to gain that attention and trust.
• Use short and active sentences. Clear and concise language makes for easier understanding from your audience.
• Body language matters as much as your script. The audience can subconsciously pick up on even the smallest body movements, so make sure you’re communicating positively. Smiles and eye contact go a long way.
• Make it a conversation. Even if the audience is saying nothing, the flow should sound like a conversation. Allow your speech to feel like a personal invitation for each listener to participate. It locks in their attention while validating what you have to say.

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