We’re sharing our top 5 presentation tips to help you deliver a great live stream.
Find Paul’s channel: https://www.youtube.com/user/TrueNorf
Timestamps:
00:00 Start
1:45 Know your content
7:25 Warm up
12:09 Get excited
15:54 Know your 60
21:05 Wonder Woman and Buzz Lightyear
5 Tips to Present Like a Pro – Presentation tips to deliver a great live stream – Video Transcript
Sara: And we’re live. Hello. Hello, and welcome to the live stream. Whether you are joining live with us now, or if you’re catching us on the replay, we’re really glad to have you here. I’m Sara Nguyen, and Paul here, my friend, Paul, and we are talking about an exciting topic today.
We’re talking about how can you present on a live stream and look really pro. Paul, for those of you who have never met Paul before, he has a great channel where he talks about communication techniques, presentation skills, and confidence mastery.
I thought it was only fitting to bring him on board today, so that all about, you know, top five tips to help you present like a pro particularly on a live stream. Thanks so much for joining us today, Paul. Really glad to have you here.
Paul: You know I am so stoked to be here. I really am. Sara, thanks for having me on your channel.
Sara: Let’s get right into it, you know, because it’s all about giving people amazing content. Let’s get right into the five tips. And whether you are watching live with us now and on the chat, please feel free to drop questions that you may have.
Or if you’re watching the replay, any questions that you have, and we will answer them either at the end of the live stream or out in the comments. Engage, ask questions, and we’ll be happy to answer them. Tip number one, first tip to presenting more like a pro. What’s your tip?
Paul: Oh, wow. First thing that you need to know is your content. And so I’ll tell you a story. I was working with a company and had to present, and then I think I was presenting to about 250 people. Okay. This was up in Sweden and it was, it was great fun.
But looking at the screen, the screen was massive. Sorry. It was, uh, it was 11 metres wide, which is about 36 feet and four metres high beautiful, beautiful, crisp screen. The first present that gets up, he does his thing. The second presenter gets up, she does her thing and it’s my turn to present.
I get up on stage. I looked in the preview monitor and they weren’t my slides. I literally, I said to everyone, just a moment, I just need to get my slides teed up, shouted over to the it guy who was just over to my left and said, sorry, these are not my slides.
Could you put them up please? And he said, yeah, that’s fine. I’ve got my slides up whilst he was doing that I just got started anyway so, you know, good morning, good afternoon. My name’s Paul Milford, the company I worked for… yada yada yada got into it.
And then probably about, maybe about five minutes in three to five minutes in literally the screen behind me went black. And I could, I could see it out of the corner of my peripheral vision, that my slides weren’t being projected. Bear in mind, I’m onstage.
Okay. I’m, I’m up high, there’s 250 people out in the audience. And I can only see maybe the first couple of rows. Couldn’t see anyone at the back. And the slides go black. What do you do? I’ve seen this so many times before. It’s a presenter’s nightmare.
They, they, they, they look behind them. They can’t see the slides and they just stop. And they’re almost like kind of rabbit in headlights. They stop. Hang on my slides are not here, like why aren’t my slides— and they start to panic. But because I knew, because I knew my content, I knew what I was talking about and I just kept going.
I almost said, Oh, okay. The slides not there. Let me, let me just continue. Let me paint you a picture. Out of the corner of my left eye. I could see the IT guy frantically trying to figure some stuff out. He was unplugging things, plugging things back in, turning things on and off. And eventually my slides came back up and when they did I got to a point saying, Oh, right. Okay. What I was talking about was, was, was this bit, so quickly recapped.
And then about three minutes after that, everything went black again. And I’m like, hang on a minute. What’s going on? Why, why? Again, the IT guy was turning stuff on pulling, pulling stuff in and out. Got my slides back up.
The total number of crashes that happened on the presentation software that we were using happened to me four times, four times during, during my 25 minutes. And we finished up, uh, got climbed off stage, had had a conversation with some people, got some water, some coffee.
And the CEO of the company came up to me and said, ‘Look, Paul, I’m really sorry that the presentation software that we were using crashed on you. I’m, I’m really so sorry’. But he did say, and the next breath, ‘it was fortunate that it happened to you because, because I’ve seen you present so many times, I know that you would just kind of just make this thing happen’.
And it was only because I knew my content. And he actually said, ‘if it was anyone else, if it was any one of our other delegates, they would have crashed and burned, but you just carried on you really, and his words, you really are a pro’. The first thing that you have to know, I cannot stress it enough is your content.
Practice, your content. Do it in front of a mirror if you have to. If you have a cat do it in front of the cat, if you’ve got any stuffed toys, do it and stand in front of your stuffed toys. Even your pop vinyls, right.
Just present in front of your pop vinyls ’cause it’s only when you speak the words out, do you actually think, Oh, actually that’s a really good phrase. I’ll pocket that one. Or actually, that phrase is terrible. I need to fix that. Know your content. I cannot stress that enough.
Sara: Absolutely agree. And I think like one of the challenges with live or even presenting in front of a live audience is that things are pretty much going to go wrong. But if you know your content like you did, then you can keep rolling with it. Like even for me with tutorials and the training that I do live, like stuff goes wrong all the time.
The other day, you know, the camera went wonky, missing those, the time I was missing a scene and one of the images that I was going to display was missing and I was just like, Oh, okay, we’re just going to keep going on. And to be honest, I think you, as a presenter feels, it’s much worse than it is, but the audience is kind of just like, you know, they don’t notice as much as you do as the presenters. Knowing your content,
and we’re not saying like, you know, you obviously had a, a presentation where it made sense for you to memorise a lot of it, know it in and out. I’m not saying you have to be completely scripted, but I think, you know, practicing it and knowing it definitely makes for better presentations and live streams better than winging it.
Because imagine if you had not prepared and you were going to wing it, you would have tanked. You would have just been like, ‘Hey, I’m going to exit the thing now bye.’ Like, you would not survive it at all.
Paul: It would not have gone well. And, and the other thing is you’d be remembered for that. You’d be remembered for not knowing your stuff. And it’s, it’s always the case. You are the storyteller. People want to hear you, your perspective about telling the story. The slides are always there to support your story. Never the other way round.
Sara: Definitely. Tip number two that we have is to warm up. Tell us about this tip, Paul.
Paul: Okay. Right. When you’re getting ready to present, you’ve got to warm up. A little bit like exercise as to not as to not to do yourself an injury, you would always stretch. You would always warm-up, right? Because if you don’t, you will end up with either pulling a muscle or, or doing something that’s catastrophic.
It’s exactly the same thing with your presentations. Warm up your voice. Now I am not a singer by any stretch of imagination, I’m not even going to do this. I’m only going to explain what I would do. There were three ways to warm up your voice.
One of the ways is just doing, is just speaking. Just having a relatively simple conversation for about 30 minutes, and that’s probably enough to get your larynx nie and warm. Second thing to do is to sing.
Now, if you, if you, if you are a singer or you know of any professional singers, they will always warm their voice and they’ll perform scales. And they’ll go from the lowest. One of the things they do is go from the lowest point in their register, all the way to the, to the top and then back down again.
And they’ll do that a few times to warm their larynx, to gently stretch it. When they really are belting out that top note, they’re not going to cause the larynx an injury.
The other thing, the other thing that you can do to warm your voice is, is obviously to speak to sing, and then the, the other thing that you can do is, is simply just sort of just, just breathing exercises to get your larynx nice and warm. The other thing that you have to do as well is make sure that you’re drinking water.
Yeah. As, as humans, we need water to sustain ourselves, everything does. And if you know that you’re giving a presentation, say nine o’clock in the morning, start sipping water at seven o’clock in the morning, because it takes about two hours for our bodies to be fully hydrated.
The larynx is one of the, the organs that gets the hydration last, it will be the bigger organs, the major organs that will get it first, so about two hours dependent on how you’re built and all the rest of it, but it takes about two hours for the larynx to get hydrated.
I knew that I was going to be on today. And I started to sipping water at about 7:15 this morning. And so my voice is nice and warm. That’s one thing that you’ve got to do is, yeah, right. The other thing that you’ve gotta do is you’ve, you’ve got to, you’ve got to warm your face as well.
Right. And, and I, I often I often do this obviously behind closed doors, but I’m going to do this live with you now, just to give you an example. Warm your face, as you’ve warmed your voice and you’ve done scales, you’ve spoken, you’ve sung all those sorts of things.
Warm your face as well. One of the things that you want to do is literally poke your tongue out like that, right? Poke your tongue out as far as you can, perform contortions on your face, like sort of get your face really nice and warm because that’s going to pump blood into your face.
That’s also going to increase your level of testosterone, which is the dominance hormone. And it’s going to decrease the level of cortisol, which is the stress hormone. All of these things will help get you aligned, ready, absolutely on point to deliver your best.
Be it in-person presentation, be it live stream, be it, whatever it is, but all of the subtle things will get you ready to deliver a knockout punch when you come to present.
Sara: And can I also say like, in terms of these things that you’re talking about, massaging, you know, working your voice muscles, stretching out everything, like this is, these are the things that actors do performers do as well. Like, you know, walking around doing weird stuff, but they’re doing this deliberately so that they can, as you’ve said, deliver on point so that everything, nothing stiff, they deliver really clearly.
And it’s the same for you on your, you know, your presentation and it’s the same for a live stream as well. These are really great things that, I do some of them, I should probably do more of them. And it’s, amazing tips. I really liked the drink water one.
And I really liked the working your face muscles because I am constantly coughing during a livestream probably because I haven’t drank enough water prior, so, wow. Yeah. Let’s get into tip number three, which is get excited. Let’s let’s talk about what you mean by tip number three, get excited.
Paul: Wow. Before I present, be it in-person, be it live, even be it remotely a little bit like this, there’s always a mantra that’s going on through your head. And a typical mantra is if you know that you’re going to be presenting to, let’s take my example of Sweden. If I know that I’m presenting to 250 delegates, then that mantra could be, hang on a minute, I’ve never presented to 250 people before I’m starting to get nervous.
And then, as that feeling of nervousness comes up, then you’re actually going to push the level of cortisol, the stress hormone up in your body. And that’s where things start to close up and you start to become really tight and you start to panic and you’re not thinking straight. And all of all of these catastrophic looking things will start to go on.
When you go on stage, you get stage fright and you panic, and you’re looking around like, please, ground open up take me now, I’m done with this. Whereas if you, if you tell yourself, actually I’m starting to feel excited. But hang on, Paul. You’ve just said nervousness, I can associate with nervousness.
I don’t associate with, with excitement. The reason is the feeling of nervousness and the feeling of excitement are broadly the same. If you tell yourself you’re going to be nervous, then you’ll become nervous. But if you trick yourself by saying, actually this is excitement, that is a whole different mindset altogether.
And if you start to tell yourself this is excitement what happens? Physiologically cortisol starts to plummet and testosterone starts to increase, which is where you want to be, right? You want to have testosterone as high as possible and cortisol as low as possible.
When you’re on stage, every piece of preparation that you’ve done before, you’ve done your warm-up, you’ve drank water, your voice is warm, you’re stretched. You’re ready to go. When you get on stage, you’re on point, you know exactly what’s going on.
Your, the way that you’re thinking is really clear and that you’re able to deliver your presentation in a fantastic way. That’s what I mean by tell yourself it’s excitement. How that positive mantra going on in your head.
Sara: I think like a massive part of presenting, a massive part of live streaming is like this mindset, right? I think particularly if you’re new to it, it feels, it can feel intimidating. It can feel scary. It’s like, Oh my goodness, I’m streaming and people are going to watch me.
And that’s one way of approaching it. That is probably not conducive to helping you. Whereas, as you said, if you flip the script and he’s like this, this is exciting. You know, I’m presenting this amazing content that I’ve worked on, you know, I’ve got someone here to present with me and we’re going to do a great job.
You know, things may happen and that’s just part of it, but we’re excited. We’re going to do a great job and it’s completely different to, Oh my goodness. I’m presenting with Paul and I don’t know how things are going to go and what if something goes wrong?
And then just having yourself in a spin. I definitely think like getting excited, flipping the script in that mindset thing is a massive part. And one that people underestimate of how powerful it really is to helping you have a great live stream, a great presentation.
Absolutely, absolutely love that tip. Let’s get into tip number four. Know your 60. What does this mean, Paul? Know your 60?
Paul: Know your 60. Know your 60. This is a rule that I have never, ever broken. And the reason is, so you’ve done all your preparation. You’ve warmed up, you know, your content as you get up on. Let me take the, let me take the Sweden example.
When you walk up those steps and you’re on stage and you’re looking out, you can only see the first row of people. You can’t see anyone else at the back. You realise, hang on, there are 250 people in here listening to what I’m going to say first, how do I open?
How do you open? Know your 60 is to know your introduction, know your first 60 seconds and know your first 60 seconds almost verbatim. It will be like some sort of salutation, you’ll say your name, your title, then you’ll probably maybe go off into what your content is going to be.
Here is an example. I know it’s evening for you, right? You are currently 11 hours ahead of where I am. It’s quarter past eight for you at the moment, just for some context, right?
It might be something like good evening, Sara. My name is Norf. I am from London. Today, we are here to talk about my top favourite five tips to get you ready for any online presentation. Be it in-person be it online and also the same things apply if you are in a live stream.
That was just a very quick example of obviously saying, good morning, you are my audience at the moment. Here is what I’m going to talk about and let’s get into it. Those, those are, that is a really great recipe to get you ready or anyone else ready for that matter for any presentation, know your introduction.
And if your introduction is there with your name and address it, you’re almost on autopilot. You get up there, you speak out your first 60, that will give your brain a chance to go, right?
Where am I going next? And if you can give yourself the best possible start, set yourself up for success, then once you’re into that off you go, the rest will just be plain sailing.
Sara: I totally agree. On my live streams, like I open it pretty much the same way. My 60 seconds, the only thing that really changes is the introduction of the actual topic. For me, my first 60 will be hello and welcome whether you’re live watching the replay— so addressing people watching it later, today in this video, we’re talking about, you know, your top presentation tips, please whether you’re here or on the replay, ask questions, leave comments.
I’d love to hear from you. Let’s get into the content. It’s always that same formula. And I may switch things here and there, but in my brain, like it’s the same recipe, it’s the same format. And that way, you know, as soon as the go live happens, and I know, you know, this is the first 60, and then after that’s done, we can get into the rest of it.
Absolutely know your first 60. Would you recommend that people script it or write bullet points? Or how would you recommend people structure their first 60 seconds?
Paul: That’s a, that’s a great question, Sara. For me, I would probably script it. Literally get pen and paper. Don’t type it out. There’s a, there’s a thing that happens when you, when you connect, picking up at some sort of write and implement like a pencil, a piece of paper, and you’re physically writing it down.
There’s a, there’s a kind of psychological connection that happens when you, when you write these things down. I would, I would write out what your first 60 could be. Some salutation, good morning, good afternoon, welcome people in. Thank them for their time.
You’ll say your name, your title, and maybe just give people just a very high-level insight into what they’re going to receive today. Once you’ve done that at that point, speak it out. ‘Cause it’s only when you speak it out, do you breathe words, you breathe life into the words and you lift them off the page as it were.
And when you speak these things out, you’ll then hear, actually that’s a really good stuff. That’s great. And then you choose to build on that or it might be, yeah, I don’t quite like that. I might do some refining and I’ll just adjust that. I’ll change that word for this word or whatever.
And then once you’re happy with it, and for me, as my example, it takes me maybe sort of three or four times to get something crystallized and it’s ready. Once I’ve got it, crystallized it’s in here. And then just randomly, I might be going from upstairs to downstairs or downstairs to upstairs in the house.
And I might just go through it in my head and I might just speak it out under my breath. And that helps that phrase get into my head. And then I can almost pull it out like a deck of cards and say, right, good morning, good afternoon. My name is Norf.
I am from London. Today, we’re here to talk about… And that’s it off you go. And the more you speak it out, the more it’s going to be in your head and you can pull it out at any time. That would be my recommendation. Pen, paper, pencil, paper, write it down, refine it, speak it out. And off you go.
Sara: Fantastic. Now let’s bring tip number five. Wonder Woman and Buzz Lightyear. What are we talking about here?
Paul: All right. I’ve kind of paraphrased this. There’s a lady called Amy Cuddy that has done some great research on something called power posing. Power posing? What’s a power pose? This is the thing that ties back to remember the reference that I gave you with regard to testosterone and cortisol.
Yes. She talks about physiologically configuring your body for success. If I say to you Wonder Woman, what, what does, what does that, what image drops into your mindset?
Sara: Well, the two that I’ve got at the back at the moment, like these power shield, or the one where she’s got the whip. Just these powerful, like stances.
Paul: Powerful stances agreed. Now we did try this. For those of you live, and for those of you on the replay as well, we did try this before we went live and my head gets cut off, but you know what you’ve seen my face. You can almost imagine what it looks like, but this is what Amy Cuddy talks about.
She talks about power posing. Obviously don’t do this during your live stream or on stage. This is something that you do beforehand to prepare. Just by way of example, she says, for two minutes, you perform one of these, I think there’s five power poses, and I’m just going to show you one of them.
And it relates directly to Wonder Woman and Buzz Lightyear. Wonder Woman, if you think of Linda Carter, when, when she was, when she played wonder woman, she used to stand up and she would stand, I am still here, she used to stand like this, right?
Buzz Lightyear does the same as well. Right? You can see he’s got this great great smile like he’s like, right? And he stands like this. For two minutes, this is where you need to stand up somewhere private or somewhere public, it’s totally up to you and you perform this power pose either like this or like this, but you literally stand for two minutes and get yourself configured, physiologically to have more testosterone in your body and less cortisol.
Rather than saying, and it’s a little bit long-winded to say, ‘well, maybe you should look at doing Amy Cuddy’s power posing and like check out her research.’ for me, it was just a lot easier to tie that research into two people. You either do the Wonder Woman or you do the Buzz Lightyear. You choose.
Sara: Absolutely amazing tips. That essentially wraps up our five tips. Let’s, let’s run through them really quickly to rehash what they were. Tip number one was to know your content. And you talked about, you know, the experience that you had, where you were on stage and the slides crash, but you were still okay because you knew your content and you’re still able to get through that and you did a phenomenal job either way.
Very important, know your content, know it better. Don’t rely on slides, you know, have them there as prompts, but be able to do it without any prompts. You talked about warming up, so lots of warmup exercises. We’re gonna run through them quickly what they were.
Paul: I knew you’d say that. Yeah. Okay. Warm-up, you’ve got to warm up your voice. Okay. Performance scales, you can sing in the shower, sing in the car, get your voice nice and warm. You can just have conversations for about 30 minutes also, but get your larynx nice and warm.
Make sure that it’s, it’s soothed with water as well, but don’t, don’t push your voice, just warm it up. A little bit like you’re doing any exercise, you do always warm up. As not to cause yourself an injury.
Warm your face as well, and that will be things like poking your tongue out and, you know, putting your face into different contortions. I was going to say contortations, but that’s not a word. We’ve just made a word up now. But just contort your face. You’re pumping blood into your face and you’re not causing your face an injury.
I’ll give you an example. Maybe poke your tongue out, or like do things like this, but like a pirate. Warm, warm up your voice, warm up your face. Those are two key things that I cannot stress enough.
Sara: And tip number three was to get excited. And it’s definitely a mindset, you know, a thing where it’s, you know, instead of feeling nervous and being afraid, like flip the script, and it’s all about putting excitement into it, as opposed to letting the nervousness and the fear run that.
And then you talked about knowing your 60. Knowing that first introduction, what you’re going to say, how it’s going to run. The rest of the livestream presentation can go smoothly. And then you talked about the upstanding poses with Wonder Woman and Buzz Lightyear.
These are phenomenal phenomenal tips. I’m so excited. I’m just going to jump to the comments quickly. Neel’s world. Hi, thanks for being here, says, ‘I get nervous sometimes.’ I get nervous sometimes too. And I think it’s something that you learn to manage over time and it doesn’t impact you as much as it does in the beginning.
I think like feeling nervous and feeling afraid is something that for me you get better at managing. It doesn’t, for me, it hasn’t ever gone away. It’s just being able to manage it better. I feel, I feel you Neel. Activate LA. Hi. Thanks for being here. Good to see you here.
Activate LA says, ‘Great advice. Know your first 60 seconds’. That’s a powerful one, you know, and I think people definitely underestimate the power of that first 60 and how, how that structure just sets you up for successful whole presentation, or live stream. Pete Johns great to have you here. Hello! Thanks for being here.
Pete John says, ‘These tips are outstanding and that one is upstanding.’ about the Wonder Woman and Buzz Lightyear. He says, ‘I could listen to Paul talk all day. We’ll definitely be checking out his channel’. Well, you know, Paul, that you used to do voiceovers and you’re actually like, you have training in this whole speaking things. Will you just do an ASMR and just be like one, two, three, four.
Paul: I should do that. I should, I should try ASMR. But I know, I think I might be a bit too loud for that. We’ll see. We’ll see. We’ll see.
Sara: Thank you so much, Paul, for joining us today. Absolutely stoked and you know, so much value. I know exactly where people can go to find you. But in case you don’t know where to find Paul, his channel is True North and I’ve got it on the screen now.
Thanks, everyone for either, you know, being live with us now and being amazing. Thank you, Paul, for joining us here today. That’s essentially some helpful tips and so excited. Thanks, everyone. And we’ll see you in the next live stream. Bye for now.
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