Franklin Covey Company 0 Earnings Call

Welcome everybody. Thank you so much for being here. We have a full room, and the number is growing. Thank you for taking this time to spend this next hour with me. I want this to be worth your time, impactful, taking away great nuggets. We have a resource for you as well, related to this topic. My name is Darren. I am an executive coach and senior leadership consultant with FranklinCovey. Hey, Charlie. Good to see you, my friend.

Hello. Yeah. Familiar faces. Been with FranklinCovey going on 5 years.

I'm just so excited to take you through this experience here as you take some nuggets. Some of you are coming for different reasons, by really trying to learn, and then get those nuggets about how do you strengthen your presence as a presenter. Some of you might be evaluating this experience as well. This is a full day, or even a 2-day content area. This is all about how to present information clearly, connect with your audience, and move to action. There's going to be moments where I want you to drop a thought in the chat, give a reaction based on what you see here. We want to make sure that we get through much of what I have planned, and also create space for any questions that you might have. Okay? Without further ado, drop some hearts, some celebrations, if you are ready to go.

I hope everybody is doing well. Thank you, Rebecca. Yes. All right. Some of you are new to FranklinCovey, and some I'm familiar with, and I see some existing partners as well. Whether you're new or whether you're an existing partner, one thing that we know, organizations, we have access to the same data. Technology management systems, for sure. Tools that once differentiating companies are now widely available and is replicated as well. When strategies fail, it's not because of the plan or the technology, it's because of human capability. That is where FranklinCovey really steps in. We give strategy the human edge.

Over the past 40 years, we have invested over $200 million in research and development on the best ways for individuals, teams, and organizations to achieve greatness in however you define it. We're proud to say that we have impacted over 30 million leaders around the world and over 160 companies. Our goal is to drive impact at scale across the organization. You have different types of learning libraries that exist. That's great. We have consulting organizations that create high impact and strategy. Where we sit is right in that middle, uniquely positioned to support the best of both. Driving impact at scale through unique offerings that differentiate us as a performance partner as well. Now, how do we do this? We think about how do we drive performance in leader capability, a high-trust culture, and execution excellence.

Right at the bottom of that screen, you're going to see different examples of proven results. If you're curious about any of those, we'll be able to provide you with case studies. Okay? Without further ado, let's lean into why you're here. As we think about presentations, presentation is a moment where something is either won or it's lost. That can be in a decision, a deal, getting alignment on a priority. When those moments miss the mark, it's rarely because our thinking is wrong. It's because the message didn't land. Presenting for Impact is designed to close that gap. When we think about the age that we're in, the age of AI, only human insight can bring the context and relevance that is going to drive meaningful action.

Some of these challenges might resonate with you when it comes down to presentations. Sometimes it can feel like an information dump. Have you ever been in that meeting where it's like, "Why are we even here? Where are we going with this topic? What is the goal?" Sometimes it could be a lack of a clear direction. We all are talented people, for sure. Even no matter how talented we are, sometimes we may struggle to show up confidently when the stakes are high. Presenting for Impact gives a flexible and repeatable process to develop, design, and deliver that works for any presentation. When we think about the impact in the organization, it's real. Faster decisions, stronger alignment, and presenters who show up with the credibility that their ideas deserve.

This is going to be relevant for you, whether you're a frontline leader all the way up to the senior leader as well. The tools are designed to help you present clarity, build the connection, so that you can deliver results. Now, we all have different feelings, attitudes towards presentations. When someone inevitably says, "Angela, you got to present to the board." Immediately, there's going to be some emotions that come up. I'm going to show you a moving image, and I want you to think about which image resonates with you the most when you're given that presentation that you have to give. Some of you may feel like A. Now they say a picture's worth a thousand words. True, especially when it's moving. Some of you may feel like B. You might feel like C.

Lastly, some of you may feel like D. All right. We see all four. I want you to drop in the chat really quickly, which one resonates with you, the primary feeling that comes up for you when you have to give a presentation. A lot of Cs. Yes. I wish I would have done the poll because I really would be able to see, but it looks like C is the Lanisha, yeah, the mixed bag for sure. Definitely, when I think about A, when let's say, power goes out. I'm like, "Everything is fine." I have to go on my phone, and continue going, for sure. I think about B. When I see B, it's our opportunity to showcase what we know. When you're presenting something, you're excited about it, hopefully, and passionate about it.

A lot of people put C, even when I think about C, it's a problem that needs to be solved. We want to make sure we cross our T's, dot our I's. D, inevitable. The emotions get us on that rollercoaster, depending upon who is in that room, the energy level goes up and down. We can be all of these in one presentation. Hey, let's humanize it. We're human. I think at the end of this, we want to leave an impact for sure. We do tend to be a little harder on ourselves. When we think about all of the mindsets, even though one of the photos may resonate with you, one of these mindsets might resonate with you. When we think about giving presentations, this might get in the way of us presenting well.

In our time, we want to address some of these thoughts in our session. The goal of an entire session, especially in our next hour, is give you some nuggets that'll help you build your skills and confidence so that you can deliver engaging presentations that will inspire your audience to action. First, before we get into it, we need to define a presentation. Really quickly, in the chat, what is a word that you would use to define a presentation? How do you define it? Let's get some thoughts there. Words by association. Doesn't have to be a clean definition. Educational, yes. Informative. It's a speech. Yes. I see a story. Oh, we're going to get there. A clear message. Yes. Opportunity to get buy-in. Very important. We want to ground ourselves in a definition that's going to challenge how we think about presentations.

I want you to consider this definition. Presentation is a story about the value of your idea, product, or service. By seeing this definition, really quickly in the chat, how does this challenge your perspective? I put a blind break right there. How does this challenge how you look at a presentation, given this definition? What stands out to you here? Let's drop that in the chat. The story side of it, for sure. Yeah. Anybody else? The value. If you think about when you're presenting something, Kirsten is not going to go into a meeting and say, "Hey, everybody, I have a low-value idea I want to present to y'all." No one is thinking that. Anything that you're presenting, there's some intent. There's a possibility. There's some excitement behind the thing.

Even when you think about you trying to get buy-in, there's something that needs to be shared for people to say, "Yes." Our job as presenters is to help people change the way they look at things, and thus their attitudes and behaviors. Because between information and action is a mindset shift. When we think about making that shift for individuals, we want to ground it in two classic principles that underline all effective communication. That's clarity and connection. Okay. When these are imbalanced, there's implications to your audience and the success of your presentation. If you don't have connection or clarity, you're going to lose your audience. They'll be confused and disengaged. If you have clarity without connection, you can inform your audience, and they might understand the content, but they won't care.

If you have connection but not clarity, then we amuse the audience. They enjoy their time for sure, but they leave without fully understanding the information and what you want them to do with it. We want to inspire. We truly inspire when we bring both of these together. The audience understands your message, they feel something about it, and they feel compelled to act, hence in changing how they think and what they do. All right. With those principles, we have our three-step process where we develop a powerful story, we design the experience using clear and appealing visuals that support the message, and also we deliver the presentation authentically and make it engaging. Each part of this process, we have practices that will help you in each part. Okay. I'm going to give you really quick snippets of things that you can do, and it'll be tactical things to consider.

I want you to have your notepad open, have your Word document open, because it'll be quick activities that you'll be able to use. Okay. Lance, we won't be sending the slides, but I encourage you, if there's something that stands out to you, take that screenshot if you need. It won't be on every slide, but it might be particular ones that might be very beneficial for you. Okay. All right. To make this very practical, we have an hour, and here's the thing. In an hour, you're going to create a presentation and present it. Y'all ready? I'm joking, y'all. We won't put you in breakout groups, I promise. I promise. I want you to think about something really quick, like something that's coming up.

Yes, Maria, the recording will be shared. It might be a meeting that you have coming up. I had someone in one session, they used a business proposal. They got denied, and he wanted to do a second run with it. They used our full day and two-day session to redo it, which is really great. Whatever you pick anything. Okay? Just make sure it's meaningful for you. Don't worry about writing a topic. You don't have the presentation planner. Just pick a topic that you want to experiment and do a fast, quick write with. All right? Okay. Let's go into the first piece of this, which is develop your story.

When we start with develop the story, before we even open our presentation software, I don't know about you all, but I had a habit of whenever I started presentations, I just opened the deck and just start typing in there, and adding images. That's what we typically do. We go straight to the PowerPoint. We go straight to outlining. Even faster, we drop the content right in the slides. That's not wrong, but that comes from a common but limiting mindset, is that my presentation is the information I need to share. We commonly think about presentations as I'm informing. Not wrong, but we don't want to limit our perspective here, especially if we want to become more effective. We need to shift the mindset. Remember, our job is to help people change the way they look at things, and thus their attitudes or behaviors.

If we want them to think differently, we have to put some care and attention into creating a story that your audience wants to hear. If we're able to make this shift, think about this shift, how does this impact how you're thinking about the presentation already? Drop that in the chat. Just this simple shift, that my presentation is the story my audience wants to hear. How are you thinking differently already? Drop that in the chat. Okay. Yes. Think about the limiting mindset we center ourselves. I need to share this information. Have you ever at any point just dumped. There's a lot of points that you want to make. You want to get through each bullet point, for sure. All right. The effective mindset allows us to think about the information more intentionally because it's not from your lens, it's from theirs.

I want to share with you a story, because that's an important piece of this. If we walk through key points, that's an agenda, not a presentation. We want to invite our audience to share. We have this little felt mouse. How much would you pay for this mouse? Drop a number in the chat. It's a little felt mouse. You see it's almost the size of a penny. $2, $1. Okay, $20. Okay. Yeah. All right. Let me give you a story around this. This mouse is a part of a project. It's called the Significant Objects Project. It was an experiment to measure the power of stories. It was purchased for $0.50, and then they relisted it for sale with a story about how the mouse brings good luck.

Now, what it got sold next, it sold for $62 as a result of the story. All right. That is 124 times the original cost, my friends. That same experiment was done with hundreds of objects. In the first round, all of the objects from a thrift store were purchased for $129, and all of them were sold for over $3,600. Think about why did that happen? If we think about that aspect of storytelling, stories make objects and ideas more valuable. Make it memorable and meaningful. People may forget details, but they remember stories. Have you ever been talking to a friend, I'll give you an example, where someone had a real juicy story, and you were just locked in. You're like, "Wait, what happened? Who said what? What did they do next? What do you need from me?

You need me to say yes? Okay, I got you." Right? The story was so good, and you were so bought and locked into the journey, that it was easy for you to say yes at the end of that. That is the power. Yeah. Nora says, "Spill the tea." For sure. Sometimes it's piping hot. I want you to start to consider how can you use stories to make your ideas more valuable and compelling. Yeah. Here are the practices. We want to apply these three as you think about even your story and your topic that you are working on in this hour. Make your audience the main character, set the stakes, and structure the journey. Practice one, centering the audience. Every story starts out the same way. There's a character that wants something, but something is in their way.

When you think about your topic that you're doing for our time today, I want you to imagine your audience as the main character, you're going to ask yourself three but powerful questions. Simple but powerful. What do they want more than anything as it relates to your topic? What's in their way, and how will your message help them overcome it? The first two questions will help you understand your audience's challenge or the goal. The third question helps you position your message so it resonates with your audience. Thinking through these questions helps us shift our thinking for what we want to say to what the audience needs to hear. It helps with building empathy and relevance and a stronger connection that we need.

To continue that thought and put centering the audience, we also want to consider what does your audience need to do, know, and feel? Classic framework that's going to work with any type of communication. As you think about what you want your audience to do, know, and feel, you see in parentheses future state. As a result of their time with you, what do you want them to do? What action are you looking for them to take? Is it to approve something? Is it to comply with the process? Is it to stop doing something? Is it to purchase something? Whatever that might be. What do they need to know about the topic? What information do they need? How do you want them to feel? What is the emotion that you want to inspire?

I want you to think about this trio as your compass to guide the design of your presentation, how you develop the story, and most importantly, how you deliver it. The knowing and the feeling will create the mindset shifts to get to the doing. To be able to create that shift, yes, we start with the future. We also have to put some thought as to what the current state is. What are they currently doing in related to the topic? What do they currently know about it? How do they currently feel? What are their preferences? What are their priorities? If you don't know the answers to these questions, think about this as an assessment. This is where we start to uncover the gap. It is your goal to close that gap in information.

Maybe it might be some information that inspires the feeling so that people will act. I want you to think about that moment even after our time. Leverage those questions to understand the audience. You're not completing this section, but I want you to start to consider that. Answer those questions in your mind. What do you want them to do, know, and feel? I'm going to give you one minute of a fast write. One minute of a fast write. Okay. The answers to these questions, what do they want more than anything? What's in their way? How will your message help them overcome it? What do you want them to do, know, and feel in the future and current state? Just take one minute. As you all do that, I see some action in the chat. Sarah, yours stood out to me.

What if my audience may not want what you're presenting? Yes. This is where that deeper reflection comes into play because there's the want, you might be able to talk about the value. The value that you believe exists has to translate. When it comes down to what they want, that's very surface, right? They're thinking about the immediate impact, but what we want to communicate is true value that's there. Everybody wants to understand the WIIFM. Anybody know what that stand for? Drop that in the chat. The WIIFM. Now, it's not always easy to find what that is. There we go. What's in it for me? If you're having a challenge, this is where the time and energy has to be put into it. If we cannot clearly articulate what's in it for the person, we're not ready to have the presentation yet.

Okay? Keep that in mind. That might mean that we have to partner with folks to help challenge our thinking, but we need to speak in terms of value. All right. There's definitely time after our time today where you can go back and think about those questions, okay? Next part, setting the stakes. Okay. When we talk about setting the stakes, this is about the what's in it for them, really. This is a great segue. Why should they listen to your message? How can you help them? I'll give you an example. Let's say you have to present a new initiative to your leadership and ask them for resources. Hey, it might be, hey, you want to bring Presenting for Impact to your organization, you need the resources to be able to do that.

We want to put the leadership, those that are approving, in the main character place. What is our purpose? How are we helping them? As we get clear on the purpose, we are presenting what we call the story synopsis. Here's a useful format for it. We're saying your presentation will help whoever your audience is with whatever challenge or goal by whatever solution that you have. Okay. You see the example here. Now, if we don't make this clear for ourselves and also be able to articulate it for the audience, then this person might go into the presentation thinking their goal was to demonstrate how much they need additional resources, right? If they just went that, asking for money, without talking about the value that it is for them, then it's likely that they can get a no. All right. I want you to think about this sentence as your promise to your audience.

It is going to show that you understand what they need and what you can offer them. All right. We have practice three, which is structure the journey. There's many ways to structure the body of your presentation. I want to offer you a couple of different suggestions. Feel free to take a picture here. The three big ideas is the most classic version. Okay. The reason why the three big ideas, we actually lean into that when I actually do the full session and our presentation planner is designed for the three big ideas because it's the most beginner-friendly, and it's adaptable and flexible for any form of presentation. People remember things in threes. It's more memorable, it's effective, and it's more satisfying than any other number. Okay. I want you to think about whatever your topic is.

One of these might resonate more. The three big ideas is something that you can't fail with. It is pretty classic as well. As you think about the three big ideas, we won't have time for you all to flesh those out, but I want you to consider, and feel free to write this note down, is the brainstorming aspect of this. All right? What's very important as you're developing your message is to have that stream of consciousness that's there. Okay. When I say stream of consciousness, we have our best ideas after the presentation. You ever find that? "I should have said this. I should have added this as well." The brainstorm is really just to put everything out there.

We're not trying to evaluate or filter, but we want to take stock of anything that can be in support of your story synopsis. Once you have all of those ideas, we want to group them into three areas based on the themes, connections, and commonalities. Okay? It's almost like you have three main ideas, and these are all sources of information. All of the ideas might not make the presentation. That's totally okay. But in order to effectively evaluate, we need to assess anything that is in support for you to then start to evaluate a little later. Okay? When we have all of our ideas, we then start to structure it in state, support, and signal. All right? This is going to be the format as you're making your key points.

To state the key point, that is in a brief sentence, that main idea. We support it with evidence, data, stories, anecdotes. I'm going to talk about that in a second on how we can incorporate the stories. The final piece is the signal. Think about this as the transition and how it might sound. It may sound like, "Now that I laid out the vision for this plan, let's talk about the budget." It signals that we're shifting to the next bucket of ideas. Okay? State, support, and signal. Make that note. As you build out your presentation, we're taking people on a journey. Any journey, there can be scenic stops along, and this is where stories really come into play. All right, I'm going to play this next video.

It's from a storytelling expert, Matt Dicks, on how we can find and use smaller stories in your presentation.

I am often hired by companies because they need a story to tell. One of my favorite stories is about this scientist named John. John and four other scientists were going to a conference to give talks and get leads to sell their products. They hired me to help them. John's company sells 18 different specialized tubes, so customers can pick the one they need, and it is ready to go right away. It costs more, but it is much less of a hassle. His competition all manufacture one tube that needs to be retrofitted for different purposes. John goes into the conference. He doesn't present any data about any product or why it is the best around. Instead, he talks about grocery shopping. He explains how each member of his family has wildly different requests. Every Saturday morning, he makes a totally ridiculous shopping list and trudges to the store.

The worst part, he says, is the apples. His family cannot agree on apples. His daughter wants Red Delicious. His son wants Cosmic Crisp. His wife always needs four to six different types of apples based upon what she is making. He has to bring a Sharpie and label all the plastic bags. It takes him 15 minutes just to get the apples. He tells that story on stage. He tells the audience, "Our company is like me. I believe my family deserves all the apples, so I am willing to spend the time to make sure they get exactly what they want. Our competitors say, 'Here is a McIntosh. It does not matter if you want to make juice or pie. It does not matter what taste you prefer. You get a McIntosh and nothing else.

Make it work.' Our company believes you should get all the apples." That is all he does. Steps off the stage, no data. At first, the marketing director is angry with me. I sent a scientist to a conference. He did not present science. It is the first time that has happened. Later, we learn that John generated more leads than the other four scientists combined, all because he told a story. People forget stuff all the time. They remember stories. If stories are so powerful, how can you find one for your presentation? Search back through your life for something that matches the theme, meaning, or message of your presentation. When I was asking John about this, he was telling me about all the choices his company offers. As soon as I heard the word choice, I knew what the theme was.

I said, "John, where in your life outside of work does choice play a role for you?" Once you have your story, decide where it fits into your presentation. Are you trying to build connection with your audience, draw attention to a particular theme, or bring life to a data point? Knowing what the story is for can help you put it in the right spot. You might be thinking, Matt, this all sounds great. I do not have any interesting stories. You do, I promise. It can take some digging to find one that works. When you do, when a story from your life neatly fits into your presentation, that is when you can really transform your audience's thinking.

Every time someone from that conference goes to the grocery store and they stand in front of the apples, they're going to think about John and John's company, and it's going to be in a positive light.

Right. To put this into practice, let's say we're giving a presentation of a new initiative to change how people on your team is doing their daily work. We anticipate resistance. When you think about what is the main theme of this scenario, just drop a single word. What is the main theme of this scenario? Connection. Change. All right. Motivation. All right. Here's what we're thinking about. Whatever the main theme is, we want to think about what is a story that comes to life for you, that resonates with you. Let's say if persuasion or even change is the theme, we want to think about when was change present in your life? When have you been impacted by change? When have you grown as a result of change? When did you get on the other side of change and was able to celebrate, right.

These themes start to connect to different stories, whether that's in work or even outside of work. It gives us an opportunity to humanize change in general. Someone mentioned persuasion or influence. What is a moment where influence was present, when you were able to do it, when you felt influence, when it yielded a really great result, when you witnessed influence in an audience, whatever that might be. That's where we start to be very creative and see the opportunities where stories can be integrated within your structure as well. Okay. Now, one thing I want you to consider is how could you use AI? All right. We might not have time to do it now, but I want to highlight that, hey, we want to use AI as a development partner.

Not use it to build your message and your story, but use it to challenge your story. When you start to flesh out the journey and those key points, leverage AI as a development partner. Ask it to play your audience. Highlight whatever biases, what's missing from your presentation as well. Okay. All right. Let me get to the next piece. We really focus on the meat of it, and the structure, and the journey, but there is the intro and conclusion. As you think about your introduction, you want to consider what's in it for them if they act on it, and what's at risk if they ignore your message. Now, there can be a story that's in your introduction as well. Keep in mind that you have your story synopsis that you can share at the beginning as well.

We want to include these questions, the answers or perspectives of these questions, to give you a very impactful introduction. As you think about the close, we restate your purpose or promise, reiterate key points, and invite your audience to action. This first part, develop the story. We see the mindset shifts that we're trying to make with the practices. I see the questions regarding the presentation planner. On the slide that you saw, I pulled it from the full-day session. The planner is for the full-day and two-day session, where it's like a multiple-pacing, and people are working through it throughout the entire thing. But we don't have it for our time here today. That's for if we have the larger session and those that attend those. I want to thank you all for that question, and that curiosity as well.

All right. Let's go to the next part. Design the experience. This is about bringing your presentation to life with clear and appealing visuals and engaging design. Our limiting mindset. Visuals help me remember my points. I want you to keep in mind, we're not centering you. We're centering your audience. The visuals help support the story, and the story is for your audience. When we have this mindset, we can design more effectively, and I'll give you just a few examples here. Let's say this text. All right. This explains a photograph of Earth taken by an astronaut from the surface of the moon. It's descriptive, right? It doesn't have that emotional impact, like this.

When we think about our imagery, this is going to apply whether you want the audience to have an emotional experience by viewing a powerful photo like this, or you're explaining a new work process. All right. We all inevitably have an org chart, right? We're better with this. I don't see this often. I want you to consider, the words can describe the information accurately, but we're thinking about people following it. All right. As we think about our visuals, we want to leverage the template, create slides, and plan for the experience. I'm really going to lean into practice two about creating the slides. I'm going to show you one, and there's going to be a lot that's wrong with it, of course. I want you to drop what annoys you about this one slide.

I know, Mary, the way your face turned. There is a lot going on. You all have had experience with a lot of different type slides like this, right? Too much text, too much going on, no flow. Right. The photo is squished. We don't have to be a designer to know that this is too busy, and you don't have to be a designer to simplify it either. All right. The key piece to all of our visuals is simplification. This next video is going to give you some insight as to how to design effective slides for your presentation.

Long ago, when I was working as an analyst, I was asked to give a presentation. I made a set of slides and I talked for about half an hour. I thought it went pretty well. Afterward, the client said, "I understood what you're trying to say, but through irritation." He told my boss, "Please don't delegate presentations to him ever." It was a humbling moment that I didn't want to repeat. It started me on a journey to learn everything I could about presenting. Along the way, I made a presentation called "Death by PowerPoint." It's been viewed about 18 million times because it was about a crime we've all experienced. Every day, people kill each other, or at least put each other to sleep, with bad presentations. There's too much text, confusing structure, and worst of all, terrible visuals.

I'm not a graphic designer myself. You probably aren't either. That's okay. The big secret to designing visuals as a non-designer is that nobody cares if it's beautiful. They care if it's clear. What you realize is that this simple cup is also beautiful. It has the beauty of something perfectly designed for its task. That is the kind of beauty your presentation should have. How do you make your presentation beautifully clear? Make sure each slide includes a single main idea. Get rid of anything that isn't supporting that main idea. Ask yourself, "What can I delete? What can I make smaller? What can I gray out?" You don't need advanced design skills to hit the delete button to simplify everything as much as possible. It turns out, when there's space on your slides, there's space for your audience to think.

Remember the client who said I should never give another presentation again? Five years later, he hired me to help him develop a presentation. If I can come that far, so can you.

All right. Donald finishes, "That AI." None of our videos are AI, FYI. Just real great quality here. It's a whole production, y'all. How can you make your presentation beautifully clear? The whole idea, one slide, one idea. Okay. There's still going to be a lot that you may want to put on a slide. This is easier said than done, especially if you have ideas that you feel as though are equally important. How do you decide what needs to show up on a slide? Okay. Remember that the information, your slides are in service of your story. Each slide should move your story forward. For every slide, I want you to ask yourself, "What is the main point of this slide?" The header, the biggest thing, might be the most important thing, for sure.

Anything else on a slide will support whatever that main idea. If you're able to do that'll create what we call a hierarchy on your slides. That is the intentional arrangement of text and visuals so that the audience can instantly see what's most important, support it, and also what supports it, but also what order to read it in. I'll give you an example. All right. When you see this, you may not know where's the main point. Where do your eyes go? It is not easy to focus. Okay. Remember, we want to center the audience. If we think about the element of hierarchy, we are playing with font sizes, and then it's a first level, second level, third level.

It also helps as people are thinking about the flow and following you as a presenter and while they're looking at the content. Okay. When you're designing slides, of course, we have choices on what we're going to put on those. Many of you have a combination, or you might lean one way or another with text, images, and data. I'm going to give you quick examples. With text with slides, we want to be very intentional, okay. How many of you have seen this before? Yeah. I've seen a lot. All right. It makes me think about food. I'm from New Orleans, we do love seasoning on our food for sure. If you ever were seasoning your food and you just sprinkle just too much, just that extra pinch, it just overpowers the entire food. This is just too much.

We want to be able to simplify for the audience, and it can create just a better experience. I want you to consider how we design it. It's either they can be distracted by the visuals, or they can lean and engage with you because you are the presentation. The visuals help support you and your message. Okay. Slides with images. Keep in mind the importance of simplicity. We don't need to put every image we have on one slide. If a picture's worth a thousand words, what happens if we put five of them on it? I want you to consider, what would you do to even improve this slide here? The thing to note is that if you have a lot of images, that's fine. Just have more slides. I promise you, PowerPoint or whatever your tool is, it's not going to say you're limited on amount of slides that you can have.

Just add additional slides if the photos are really important for you. You can use a totally different image to refocus. If you think about this slide here, this really focuses the business. All right. They do heating and cooling, they're showing them doing their jobs. Really, they want their audience to contract with them. All right. One powerful image is better than five or six that are just okay. If you notice, the words on the slide has changed from, we specialize in home heating and cooling, which centers the business, to centering the audience. How do we want you to feel as a part of the services that you're rendering from us? Okay. What we find, especially today, slides with data.

We are in a very data-informed, data-heavy, data-rich environment now. How many of you have seen this slide before? Yeah. Here, we don't want our audience to be confused as to what's the most important piece of data that we want them to lead with. We want to think about the chart that would help you with that message. Okay? Keep that in mind. The other thing to note, and I'll give you an example here, when it comes down to this profit and loss statement, the chart, which would be the line chart here, helps us focus in. What are the most important takeaways that we need to have from that data?

Also, I want you to consider, as an individual activity that you can do after, if you have some data in support of your message, leverage AI, your internal AI, not public AI tools. Let me make that clear. You can partner with it to help you identify what might be the most effective visual to help support a point. With data comes storytelling, I'm going to give you an example of how we want to make data come to life. All right? I want you to imagine that we're experiencing high employee turnover. We want to call our leaders' attention to an increase in employee satisfaction. I could say for sure, the new employee culture initiative was a success. Our employee satisfaction scores increased by 12%, and 80% of program participants felt a stronger connection with their colleagues than before the program.

That's great to be able to say, numbers on the chart doesn't have emotional resonance. All right? They don't make us care. It's the story. I want you to imagine what might be the story that I could pair with this. Employees love the new gardening club. I snapped this photo of them growing peas, just last week, one of the participants told me that she was going to reach out to a colleague in a program to get lunch and talk about mentorship. When you think about this, they're not just growing vegetables, they're cultivating relationships. Think about how that lands differently, especially when you're trying to get more resources for employee engagement. What if you're not using slides? Many different ways that can exist. Okay, keep that in mind. We're not just talking about slides, but handouts, demonstrations, videos.

As you think about your experience, we want to consider the modality, whether it's in-person, virtual, or even hybrid, and what might be the things that you do to ensure that the audience is engaged throughout. Engagement just doesn't happen in the beginning or right in the middle. Think about as a constant motion, because we can lose people really quickly, for sure. One way to keep people engaged is how we handle questions. Right? I want you to consider when you have the questions, we want to plan for them in advance. Decide on when you take them. Some people take it throughout. Some people take it throughout particular points, or they might do it at the end. How do we respond thoughtfully? Pausing, making sure we've heard the question, restate it to clarify it, and also so that everybody else have heard it.

Also, if we don't know, it's okay to say we don't know, but offer to find out. What might be the specific date that you're going to follow up with them on an answer. Okay. When we think about being caught off guard, for sure, someone is inevitably going to ask that question that we don't want them to ask. When it comes down to your presentation, what do you dread that the audience is going to ask? For whatever that is, I want you to note, what are all those questions, right? Just put that as a side, as a task for yourself. What are all the questions that you hope the audience do not ask, or you might be uncomfortable answering? Okay. We went through shifting the mindset. You have some tactical things to consider in as you design the experience.

The last piece is about delivering the presentation with authenticity. I want you to consider how you show up, how you feel about the qualities of a good presenter, and what's the difference between what we call a spotlight speaker and a lighthouse speaker. I want to say, I think it was Donald. Just FYI, Donald, this is not an AI video. Okay. There you go. One of my earliest memories of public speaking was losing in a spelling contest.

I lost on the word magazine. Magazine. How could I have gotten that wrong? I'm still embarrassed by it. For you, it might be stumbling over your words in a show and tell, blanking during a book report, or confidently giving the wrong answer in front of everyone. We've all got a moment, and those moments stick with us. They teach us that public speaking is about being perfect, about not messing up, about looking smart and polished. Here's the thing. You may remember the word you missed, but nobody else does. I've determined there are 2 types of speakers. There are spotlight speakers and lighthouse speakers. Spotlight speakers focus on how they look, how they sound, and whether people like them.

Lighthouse speakers focus on what their audience needs and whether they're contributing something valuable or helping solve the problem. When you're a lighthouse speaker, you make a bigger impact, and you're less nervous because it's not about being perfect. It's about guiding the audience to where they want to go. If a spotlight asks, "What does everyone think of me?" A lighthouse asks, "What does everyone need from me?" To be a lighthouse speaker when you deliver your presentation, here's what I recommend. First, follow a map instead of a script. A spotlight speaker stays perfectly on script to appear highly polished. A lighthouse speaker follows a map. They hit their points, but they care more about taking their audience on a journey than using the exact right words. Next, skip the interactive gimmicks.

A spotlight speaker might have everyone repeat back, "Good morn at the start of their presentation to assert a sense of control. A lighthouse speaker gets attention naturally by delivering high-value information. Finally, make it about them, not about you. A spotlight speaker showcases their resume and credentials to make themselves seem impressive. A lighthouse speaker shares relevant stories that resonate rather than a personal highlight reel. When you're focused on them, the presentation stops being about whether you sound smart and starts being about whether they leave with something useful. If you want to be a great presenter, start with one question: Where am I shining my light?

Right. The limiting mindset, I need to have certain qualities to be a good presenter. People feel as though they have to be charismatic and bubbly and outgoing, and all of these things, and no, we don't. We already have what we need to be great presenters. This is why we focus on how do we connect authentically, right? Manage stress, rehearse with purpose. Connect authentically. This is about speaking naturally and with conviction. How would someone know that you care about something? Lean into your strengths. Now, what do we mean by strengths? Some people use humor, right? Some people are very sincere. Some people have a very calm and centering presence as well. Lean into the natural abilities. Let your passion shine through. Again, how would someone know that you care about the topic?

Being present with the audience and not stuck in our head or memorizing a script, but also when we engage our audiences, everything that we've already talked about so far. The ways that we can connect, we use our voice, our face, our gestures. There's no one way, but the insight I'll give to you is this is the natural flow of things. We're not trying to be someone that we're not, right? We're not trying to perform in a way that doesn't feel authentic to us. We want to be in a space where we can show up as our best self, however that shows up for you, and that comes with the rehearsing with purpose as well, okay? Now, the managing stress is real, okay? People fear public speaking more than they fear disasters, enclosed spaces, needles, or even flying. All right. The thing I want you to consider, we call it name it, tame it, reframe it.

Feel free to write that down. I'm going to show you two slides so you can take a picture of the activity. The name it, and we say complete the name it column. We don't have the participant guide. I want you to imagine that you had this fancy dancy guide and you were writing in it. What is the anxious thought that you have? I know I still struggle, even though I'm on a call with over 200 people, still struggle with imposter syndrome. I was very nervous right before you all came in, right? Naming the thing is very important, but taming it is what is behind it. I'm nervous because I really want to leave a great impression.

I really want you to take away something of value. Reframing it is, this is my opportunity to impact lives of other people. Right? That name it, tame it, reframe it is actually proven to mitigate the impact of anxiety and fear in the moment of presentations as well. All right. I want you to consider, you can do that for yourself as well. All right. The last piece of rehearsing with purpose. This can look a number of different ways. We're practicing in front of a camera, mirror, of course, recording ourselves, getting feedback, and practicing with friends and coworkers. Okay? All right. My friends, we went through a lot. Each step of the process. Now, here's where I condensed 2 days for you all into one hour.

I want you to consider how much you're able to take away from our time today, and drop that in the chat really quickly. Give me your big takeaway. How are you leaving here thinking differently as you start to inspire your audience to action? Let's drop a quick thought in the chat. Okay. Cleaner presentation. Thanks, Donna. All right. Yes. Yeah. Imagine, you all have one hour. Imagine a day or two with this energy. We would have a good time. We want to give you something to take away here, and Sunika is going to drop a resource in the chat for you, which is going to be reflective of much of what we talked about today. It's, "Putting the Audience First: How Great Presenters Drive Action." She just dropped it in there. All right. That is our gift to you.

Feel free, you can share that with whoever, right? It's a resource for yourself, with your teams. Now, I do recognize some people are coming in with different intentions, whether it's reviewing the content or even taking it for yourself. I love that. Some of you might have, you want an opportunity to talk about how this might impact how you develop emerging leaders to communicate with impact or even lead organizational change. Our conversation today helps with these organizational initiatives. We're going to launch a poll. If anyone wants to connect to talk about those things, just respond to that. Also, what I dropped in the chat, I'm a firm believer we are put in each other's pathway for a reason.

I like to say I've had opportunity to meet over 100,000 leaders over my time, and you all are added to my journey there. If you're on LinkedIn, feel free to connect with me, okay? I will stay on. We have five minutes remaining, if someone has any questions. I did see a question earlier. Someone asked, what if the presentation is, you're giving it to your audience. I did see that earlier, I want to put a thought there. When you are thinking about your audience, right, the presentation is really the story, right? If there's deeper information that is needed, it also can be an appendix.

I'm a firm believer that if someone doesn't attend your presentation and you provide the slides, and they know exactly everything that you talked about and what you meant and how they should feel, then that was a report. That's a file. We might as well just cancel the presentation, right? You want that time to be very valuable, right? I don't want to be able to feel and take away everything by me not going, because that takes away the magic that you bring, and you bringing this story to life. The story doesn't come to life by just sending the presentation there. It comes to life because you are the differentiator. You are the magic that gets to the results, okay? All right. I'm on for four more minutes in case anyone wants to stay on. Thank you all so much.

I hope you all have a fabulous weekend. I hope to see some of you all in some other capacity. I'm going to stay on for a few minutes in case anyone has any other questions. All right. Thank you. Thank you all so much. All right. Thank you, Darren. Yeah, of course. I don't think we have any more questions. I'll go ahead and close this out. All right. Thank you all so much.