My youngest son, Drew, participated in the State championship for high school entrepreneurial challenge. He had to prepare a presentation and deliver it in front of a group of judges.
He nailed it, took first place, and is going to Chicago to compete in nationals.
Young “Drewski” had me watch his presentation after he had practiced it multiple times. He knew better than to show me a half-assed effort.
Because there was a time limit, he set a timer and kept track of how long each section took. If he went over his allotted time, he knew that he needed to tighten up parts of the presentation or cut them out completely.
He was so well rehearsed that I only had the following suggestions.
- Cut out redundancy. You want to make your core point multiple times during your presentation, but you want to say it in different ways.
- Change the order of the slides so it flows in a logical progression and ends with a bang. For example, he started talking about a promotion he and his team conducted, then told the overall results of the project, but then went back to talking about another promotion. So I had him group all the promotions together and then end with the final results.
- Incorporate stronger body language. Drew tended to shift his body weight and clasp his hands below his waist. Unclasping his hands and keeping them above his belt line exudes confidence.
Profit Activator: Re-read this DEEmail, select one lesson, and incorporate it into your next presentation.
By the way, there are lots of lessons, and some are less obvious than others.
Kick butt, make mucho DEEnero!
Dave “On To Nationals!” Dee
