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If it goes well, they'll forget 90% of what you said.

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Even greatly, they see most of the message disappear because they don't control what

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gets remembered.

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So the question is, what's the one thing you want to be remembered for?

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In this episode, we unpack how you can identify your 1%, the one idea that really stands

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out and make sure that people remember you and act.

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And for this, unjoined by Andrea Patini, he's the author of the brand new book, Timeless

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Presenter.

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Any presentation for their matter should be built around one big idea.

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Your audience has a spam folder.

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What does that mean?

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When you speak in public, no one labels your message spam, at least they don't do it

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out loud.

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But it's very similar.

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If what you say is either irrelevant, if it's self-serving, then that's how people

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will receive it.

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And once they feel to you out, then it's very hard to get back in.

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So relevance is key in communication.

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And I would argue that having the ability to craft and deliver a message that's relevant

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to your audience is perhaps the most important principle in communication.

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It makes absolutely sense, right?

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We know email has a spam folder, but we also have a spam folder in our brains based on patterns

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of previous experience.

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So when a speaker starts with, hello, my name is, it's so nice to be here.

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I'm excited, la, la, la.

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From our pattern recognition, we probably know this is going to be spam because no great

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speaker was interesting things to say would start a presentation that way.

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When it comes to holding people's attention, what we need to understand is that we will

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never be able to do that if we start by introducing ourselves or if we start with the typical

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agenda, boring agenda slide.

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Instead of an agenda, for example, why don't you start with a promise?

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Don't start with an agenda.

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Start with a promise.

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It doesn't have to be complicated.

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A promise could be like in my case, it could be, okay, by the end of this presentation,

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depending on what the context is, by the end of this webinar, by the end of this meeting,

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by the end of this call, you'll have a very good understanding of how you can be more

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confident, credible, and convincing when communicating your ideas.

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And you also recommend potentially taking away the title slide, right?

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So no title slide, no agenda slide, show the promise and then get right into it.

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With the title slide, until a few months ago, I was always using the title slide as well.

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Then I had a session, I hosted Julian Treasure.

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His TED talks have been reviewed millions of times, and I hosted a session with him as

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a guest speaker, and that's why I noticed with him.

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He started straight into the meat of the conversation, no title slide, and I thought, okay, that's

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interesting.

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Sometimes there are very small things we can do, very simple things we can do that are

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just a little bit different from one 99.9% of people do, and since then, I started doing

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the same.

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No, no agenda.

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I will shamelessly copy that.

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I copied it too.

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So feel free.

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I'll show you the work as well.

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He's brilliant.

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All right.

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Next one.

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Find the 1% that matters.

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This one comes from Dunping, international bestselling author.

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He had a child with him on our show, and he told me that when he was at low school, he

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had a professor, and that professor always encouraged him and his classmates to try and

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understand the 1% of any topic, the 1%, and that professor said to them, if you can understand

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that 1%, if you can explain it clearly, then you understand the topic.

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If not, we need to go back to the drawing board.

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Now the reason why that's important for us is because your audience will remember one

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thing.

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A couple of days after your presentation, if it goes well, if it goes well, they'll forget

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90% of what you said.

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So you need to have clarity.

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First of all, for yourself, what's your 1%, what's the big idea behind your presentation?

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Any presentation for that matter should be built around one big idea.

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That's it.

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It doesn't mean that in a presentation, you should only say one thing, but everything

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you say should be built around that important idea.

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That's the 1%, the 1% can be seen as what's the big idea behind your presentation.

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If you're not clear about that, you can't expect the audience to have the clarity for

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you.

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Absolutely.

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Absolutely.

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Often describe it in a way that, let's say, you're leaving the room with a presentation

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was held and you're meeting a colleague and the whole way and the person says, hey,

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what did Andrea talk about?

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Now, what would that person say?

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Right?

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If she said, right?

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If you're not clear about it as the presenter, why would anyone else be clear about it?

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The audience is not going to do the hard work for you.

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All right.

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Next, what's your one word pitch?

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The one word pitch.

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Yes.

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This comes from Maurice Sachin, the co-founder of the ad agency Sachin and Sachin.

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And he said, he used to say that in a world where we've got short attention spans, the

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strongest message is just one word to be provocative.

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Of course, it's a provocative idea.

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He calls it the one word pitch and the goal, he said, is to link your idea, your message,

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your brand.

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Of course, it comes from an advertising perspective to just one word.

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And it should be one word that people can instantly associate with you.

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Now, for example, if you think about Google, then for most people, the word would be search.

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If you think about MasterCard, many people would associate it with priceless.

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Now, this is a good exercise because if you do it, what's my one word?

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It forces clarity.

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You need to make decisions.

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What do I include?

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What do I leave out?

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And you need to leave out many things because you just need to go down to one thing, one

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word.

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Now, the question worth reflecting on is if your audience could remember either just one

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word.

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But again, if we want to apply it in our world, present in public speaking, it's connected

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to the 1%.

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Yeah.

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Simplicity is so powerful, especially in public speaking, presentations, when we rely

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on people remembering things, rather than, let's say, sending the memo or an email, which

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of course can have many more words.

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So we want to work with biology when we present and not against biology and our biology

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says, make it super, super simple for me.

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If we overwhelm the audience with lots of information, just facts and figures, then we

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are fighting the brain.

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If we follow the typical approach from a slide design perspective, the typical death by

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PowerPoint with lots of text and bullet points, people can't read it at least at the

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same time.

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If you do that, you are fighting the brain.

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And if you fight the brain, your message is not going to land.

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You're not going to achieve your objective.

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Whatever that is, you're not going to sell the product.

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You're not going to motivate them.

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If you want them to do something, if you want them to take action, you will never be

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able to do that if you fight that brain.

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Don't fight the brain.

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I love that.

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That's such a good advice.

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Next, in public speaking, your weakness can be your strength.

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Yes, because there are some things that normally you would consider them as, you may consider

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them as weaknesses, but we can also flip the script and they can also be seen as strengths.

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Now, for example, I'm a non-native English speaker.

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Are you German?

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I'm German.

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I'm German, yes.

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I'm German, yes.

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I'm German, yes.

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For you, only that German people speak English in a much better way than Italians.

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I'm Italian, and I've been living in London for 15 years.

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And also in my world, I'm a presentation coach.

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I work with 99.9% of Italians.

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They're not Italians, they're English speaking, and I speak English as a second language.

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So that can be seen as a weakness, however, non-native speakers also tend to speak slower,

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which can be a strength, because if you do that, then you give your audience more time

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to absorb your key messages.

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That's one thing.

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Another example.

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If you are one of those, some speakers like to have a word-for-word script.

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Now, that can be seen sometimes as a weakness, because if you don't do it well, if you don't

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prepare well, you can come across as a little bit too rigid.

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At the same time, if you do it well, then people who like to have a script, they tend to

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prepare more.

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And preparation is key for effective communication.

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So that can be a strength as well.

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I love that.

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Next, clear is kind.

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Clear is kind.

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Yes, this comes from...

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So we are talking about ideas from my new book, Timeless Presenter.

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This comes from my previous book, or better yet.

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When I published my previous book, Confident Presenter, I published it with re-thinkpress.

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That's the publisher.

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And the founder of the publishing company, Lucy McCarrerhand, wrote a few books, one

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in particular, Book Builder.

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It's a book on how to build, to write a book.

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And there's a chapter, the state with me, the title of the chapter is Be Kind to Your

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Readers.

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Re-ver.

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Now, same thing.

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It's not just for writing, it's also for speaking, presenting, be kind to your audience.

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She says, for example, that if there is a short word and a long word, and both words

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mean the same thing, often the short word is more effective, punch a more concise

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in communication in the same way.

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If you can explain something to me, Oliver, in two sentences, if you can explain that concept

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to me in seven sentences, most likely the two sentence version is going to be more effective

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in communication.

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Now, we don't say inflated spherical object.

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We say bold.

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Now, often, often, we are not aware of it, but in our business communication, in our

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business presentations, we use language, which is the equivalent of inflated spherical object.

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Now, just say bold.

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Say bold.

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I love that.

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I think that is so true.

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And I love the kind.

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I think clarity is better than not clarity.

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That's obvious, right?

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But why is it kind?

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Because the opposite of kind is rude.

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So if you stuff your presentation with words that make very little sense with corporate

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jargon, with overloaded slides, you are unkind.

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You may even be rude because you refuse to do the hard work of figuring out what the

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clear message is, and you're just dumping that work on your audience.

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And of course, you're fighting the brain, as we said before.

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So I love that clear is kind.

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Now creativity needs structure that feels counter-intuitive.

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You must have a clear structure.

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And by the way, it doesn't have to be complicated.

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A very simple structure could be the classic three-act play.

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You have an introduction that tries and you want to try and catch the audience's attention.

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Then you communicate your three key messages.

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Again, you don't want to fight the brain.

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You don't want to give them a thousand things.

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Three things can be enough.

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And then a conclusion that makes it clear to them what your point was and why they should

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care about it.

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Intro, three key messages, a conclusion.

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That can be your simple structure.

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Now within that structure, depending on how much time you have, depending on the audience,

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depending on the needs, the context, then of course, you should include an element of

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flexibility, an element of creativity.

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If you don't do that, if you don't pay attention to the way you structure your presentations,

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you are making it hard for your audience to follow you, remember what you say, and do

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anything.

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Take action.

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And there should be the objective for most presentations.

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Yeah.

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Structure is such a game changer.

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I'm such a huge fan.

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I absolutely agree with you.

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The simple three-act structure, what, so what, now what?

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Excite, disturbed, sure.

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They're so powerful.

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And I think people stumble over structures that come out of entertainment, right?

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Sometimes you see script writers or people from the entertainment industry say, here's

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a great structure.

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This is what you should do in business, and it just doesn't translate well because it's

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too complicated.

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And at the end of the day, a 90-minute movie is very different from a five-minute presentation

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or 15-minute presentation, right?

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So it's just a different kind of project.

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And while these entertainment structures may be more sophisticated and good fun as

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well, they're often over-engineered for what we do in business.

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I couldn't agree more.

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Intro, three key messages, conclusion, it works all the time.

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There you go.

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Next, let your message breathe.

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Let your message breathe.

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Now the idea there is that you have to be able to cut what's not essential.

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Because if that's how you let your message breathe.

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If you cut the known essential, we always need to put ourselves in the audience issues.

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If everything is important, then nothing is important.

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And the mark of a great presenter is determined by their choices.

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Their choices, not about what they choose to include in their presentations, but what

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they choose not to include.

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It's much harder to make those decisions.

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If you do that, you let your message breathe.

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Again, we were talking about death by PowerPoint, even from a visual perspective.

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You want to have very simple slides, visual, one idea per slide, not two.

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If you have two ideas, two slides, slides are free.

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And if you do that, you let your message breathe.

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So it's really about this one is about respecting, again, being kind to your audience, respecting

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that time and attention.

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Absolutely.

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You have to respect the audience.

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You have to value that time and attention more than your own, totally unborked with that.

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You're also knowing that grown-ups don't use PowerPoint.

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This comes from someone I know, Lee Warren.

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Lee is a professional speaker on topics, on sales and communication.

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And he has a keynote talk that the title of that talk is grown-ups don't use PowerPoint.

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But there's a caveat because it's grown-ups don't use PowerPoint.dot.dot.

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And he told me, I had him on the ideas on stage podcast and he said, look, these three

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dots are important because what I mean, he doesn't mean, look, PowerPoint is not a problem.

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The problem is how we use it, we know that.

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His message is interesting though because he says, okay, grown-ups don't use PowerPoint

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instead.dot.dot, which means instead of, for example, understanding the audience,

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instead of preparing, instead of rehearsing.

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So again, it's not about, nothing against PowerPoint, it's about how we use it.

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To jump to PowerPoint, the moment we think we have to prepare a presentation, right?

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And what you and I always say is, hey, slides last, not first, right?

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Start with the outline, create this storyline, think about your key messages, all the things

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we talked about.

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And if you need slides to do that, great, do it.

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But don't start there.

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It's not the starting point and the presentation is not a take of slides, right?

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That is also, I think, important to take away that a presentation is how you move others

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to action.

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And one of the points you make in the book, and I'm paraphrasing, probably butchering

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the quote, but it's not how many people you reach, it's how many people you move to

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action.

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I borrowed this from Jacob Corley at the musician.

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I watched an interview where he said this, he said, it's not how many people are

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how many people have I reached, it's all the people that I reached, how many did I actually

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move?

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That counts.

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That's important.

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Even if it's just one, I'll give you just a very quick example here from my own experience.

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Once I was giving a webinar, I was about to give a webinar, and in the way I was there

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waiting in the waiting room, just one person.

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And it was just a few seconds before starting.

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It's not good.

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It's not good for just one person.

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I wanted to, I thought to myself, okay, is there a way here to maybe come up with an excuse?

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I really, I didn't want to present it just in front of one person.

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But in the end, again, you embrace this mindset, one is better than zero.

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I let him in.

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Now, randomly, this person was the head of LND for a relatively large company.

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We had a wonderful conversation, we connected, and long story short, he became, they became

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the client.

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Their webinar with just one person was worth several thousands of pounds or euros, but

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you all started with embracing this fact that it's not how many people have I reached.

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It's of the people that I reach, how many did they actually move, and one sometimes can

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be enough.

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90% of presentations are forgotten within a day, and even the best ideas get ignored.

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For the last 20 years, I felt hundreds of leaders prepare for stages like Ted and South

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by Southwest, and the difference is always the same.

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Top 1% communicators, they use a system, and this system is called the Perfect Presentation

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Planner.

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Download it now.

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It's free link in the description.

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The best speakers are in love with their audience.

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Yes.

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The, I've learned this from Andy Lopata, another professional speaker, and in a conversation

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he told me that he was invited at an event for a head dressing company, and he knew nothing

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about the industry, but instead of guessing what might resonate with that particular audience,

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he did something that very few people do, unless you are a very good speaker.

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He asked to speak to five people who would be in the audience, and he learned more about

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the industry, the challenges, he asked for some examples, and stories he included all

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of these things in his presentation.

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He created a talk that was 100% relevant to his audience.

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That's why I do believe that the best speakers are in love with the audience.

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Absolutely, we can all replicate this in any meeting, in any workshop, for instance,

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by asking in the first few minutes, hey, let's go round the table.

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I'd love to hear from each of you one thing you would like to get out of today, right?

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And then on the spot, yeah, of course, it's hard to adjust the workshop on the spot,

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but usually you kind of know what direction to take, but the fine tuning, that's where

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the beauty is, and then you can address your audience, and say, John, you know, I know

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this is a big topic for you, so, you know, and then you refer to what you're talking

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about.

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And this is, I think, a very simple way to fall in love with your audience, which is

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just a beautiful concept.

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I love these, Oliver, I do these all the time, I often ask with, okay, what would you like

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to get out of this session?

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And then, as you said, you have a plan, you are prepared, and it's not about changing

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the whole thing entirely, it's just a matter of, at key moments, if you are planning to

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say something, which is somehow connected to something that that person said at the

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very beginning, you go back to that comment, you go back to another comment, it can be as

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simple as that.

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Think like a journalist.

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Yes, now, I worked with team Rays, former New York Times journalist, and this is something

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I didn't know, I mean, intuitively we know it, but he told me that journalists, when they

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prepare a piece, an article, they always ask themselves, was the headline thought, the

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headline thought, which often that becomes the actual headline, the title of the article.

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I'll give you just another very quick example here.

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I was invited to give a number of workshops for a client.

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One of these workshops was on slide design, again, how to avoid death by power upon these

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kind of things.

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And the title they had suggested was something like slide design workshop, that's it.

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And then in the end, we came up with how to make your slides look less shit.

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And it's, I hope I can see this, I can see it, if you start, if you say, just the title,

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the headline thought, how to make your slides look less shit.

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I could see the people coming into the workshop, there were laughing, and they were just

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curious.

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Okay, I want to learn more here, to tell me more about how I can do that.

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And sometimes just, again, it's another small thing that we can do to create, to pick people's

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curiosity, just right from the start, even without saying anything.

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I would go to that.

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I think that it's a great title, and it also signals something, right, to everyone who's

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signed up for this or was signed up for this, but maybe not even voluntary.

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It suggests that this is going to be fun, this is going to be effective, and this is not

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going to be like a boring corporate training.

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So I love it, I love it.

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Next, the pause is the point.

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Posing, yeah, proposing is super important in public speaking.

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Now we have to have the courage to pose, because it can be uncomfortable if we're not used

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to it.

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There's a quote I love, Oliver, which is the silence is one of the most eloquent things

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in the world.

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And I love it, because again, it's counterintuitive.

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You've got silence, and you've got eloquence, which is all about speaking, but it's not,

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they are connecting.

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You can say a lot sometimes without saying anything.

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You can say a lot without saying anything.

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Also, what they say, for example, if you think of a music, they say that what matters

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in music is the space between the notes.

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It feels uncomfortable, but in communication, there's a paradox, the comfort paradox, which

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means that what's comfortable for you, as the presenter, is often not comfortable for

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the audience and vice versa.

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Never had this before, the comfort paradox, so if it's comfortable for me as a speaker,

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it's boring for the audience.

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It's not comfortable for the audience, and what's not, for example, if we take opposing,

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for many people opposing, is not comfortable, but it is comfortable for the audience.

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And again, we do it for them, we do it because it works for them.

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It works for them.

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And if we use the pause before we provide our key message, that is helpful for the audience

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to understand what's really important here, because it's a signal, right?

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If I speak very fast, I want to inject energy into my presentation, but then I slow

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down, and a pause, and make my point, people know what's important, right?

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And that's the beauty of the pause.

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Plus, it helps you get rid of these nasty filler words and phyllis sounds, so you know

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that as well.

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Yeah.

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Cool.

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The worst thing you can do is tell the audience something, it already knows.

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Ideally, you want to give your audience only what they need to know.

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It could be an insight, it could be a fresh connection, it could be a new angle of looking

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at things and leave out the rest, because the fastest way to lose an audience, to not

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grab their attention is to say what doesn't it seem?

404
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Yeah.

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And this is so common, right?

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And often people want to start, they have this instinct to start with all the things that

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the audience already knows, because at the end of my 30 minute presentation, I reach

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my conclusion, and that's going to be the new thing that haven't heard before.

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But of course, they're going to pay attention for 29 and a half minutes, hoping that the

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last few sentences will be a novelty for them, they'll just do something else, right?

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We're fighting the brain.

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It comes back to this, right?

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Don't fight the brain.

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A very simple way to improve most presentations is to take the last slide, make it the first.

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You move it from last to first, and instead of, as you said, background, background,

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background, and then the fresh insight, and then the important connection, start with

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that.

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And then if, if this time, maybe, just maybe a little bit of background, curiosity

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beats confidence.

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I love that one.

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Confidence should not be the starting point.

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Curiosity is a much better, much more effective starting point.

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When you do that, then confidence follows as a result.

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That's so good, because the lack of confidence, often the result of focusing too much on

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the self and not enough on the audience or the message, and curiosity just resolves

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this, right?

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It just means I follow this and see where it leads me, and as a byproduct, I don't really

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think about myself anymore.

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So getting out of your own head is often one of the best reframes or one of the best

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tactics we have to become confident in a high pressure, high stakes situation.

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This is also connected, Oliver, to something else I talk about in the book, which is the

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idea of look at that instead of look at me.

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In general, you communicate something, it's not look at me, look at me, that's what many

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people do.

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They're not aware of it, but the way we communicate, we do it this way.

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Look at me, look at me, look at me.

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It's look at that.

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And that is your idea, your constant important thing that you want to share.

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00:26:20.040 --> 00:26:24.120
When you do that, a couple of benefits.

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First of all, as you said, you ease the pressure on yourself, because you're not putting

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a spoiler on you, you're putting a spotlight on that, on your idea, and also your communication

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00:26:35.840 --> 00:26:38.440
becomes much more effective as a result.

443
00:26:38.440 --> 00:26:39.440
Perfect.

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00:26:39.440 --> 00:26:42.880
Content tends to fill the allotted time.

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Yeah.

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These comes from a very famous low, Parkinson's low, that tells us that work expands to

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feel the time available for its completion.

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So for example, if you give me 10 days to do something, I will take 10 days, most likely.

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If you give me half an hour, I will do the same thing in half an hour.

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Now it made me think, okay, but with presentations, it's very similar.

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Content expands to feel the allotted time.

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Now the allotted time often is either in many cases, 30 minutes an hour, that's the typical

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calendar invite.

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So now it's 30 minutes.

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If someone invites you to give a talk for 30 minutes for an hour, the typical approach

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is, okay, I'm going to prepare a presentation, which takes me 30 minutes to deliver.

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And now what to deliver.

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If you can share something in three minutes, then do it in three minutes.

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No one has ever complained if a meeting, a presentation, a call finishes a little bit

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early than planned.

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00:27:50.000 --> 00:27:56.240
Actually, the opposite, just a very quick example, all of that, Derek Sievers, the cofounder

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of CD, baby, great entrepreneur, he gave three TED talks and all of them are under three

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minutes.

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Now, if we think about TED talks, they are already challenging for many people because

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you need to respect a tight, deadly, you can't go above normally, it used to be 18 minutes,

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sometimes it changes.

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He decided to, he's always unconventional in everything he does.

468
00:28:21.840 --> 00:28:24.440
Also here, just less than three minutes.

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If you, we started by saying that if you can tell me something in two sentences versus

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seven sentences, the two sentence version is going to be more impactful in communication

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for something to consider.

472
00:28:34.600 --> 00:28:35.600
Yeah, absolutely.

473
00:28:35.600 --> 00:28:37.640
This is the final one.

474
00:28:37.640 --> 00:28:44.480
And before they want you to connect it to what we said, no one has ever complained if

475
00:28:44.480 --> 00:28:47.960
a meeting, a presentation finishes a little bit early than planned.

476
00:28:47.960 --> 00:28:51.040
So it's probably a good note for us to wrap this up.

477
00:28:51.040 --> 00:28:52.440
Andrew, this is so fun.

478
00:28:52.440 --> 00:28:56.480
Where can people find out more about you, the book, everything you're doing?

479
00:28:56.480 --> 00:28:57.480
Two key things.

480
00:28:57.480 --> 00:28:58.800
One is LinkedIn.

481
00:28:58.800 --> 00:28:59.800
You can find me.

482
00:28:59.800 --> 00:29:00.800
You can find me there.

483
00:29:00.800 --> 00:29:09.640
Andrea Patini also website ideas on stage.com slash UK because again, I run the UK

484
00:29:09.640 --> 00:29:10.640
operations.

485
00:29:10.640 --> 00:29:13.280
So timeless presenter, I've already read it.

486
00:29:13.280 --> 00:29:14.280
Check it out.

487
00:29:14.280 --> 00:29:17.120
It's fun if you're representing in business is really good guy to have and it's a quick

488
00:29:17.120 --> 00:29:18.120
fun read.

489
00:29:18.120 --> 00:29:20.360
So you can see there's lots of stories, lots of examples.

490
00:29:20.360 --> 00:29:23.960
And you know, it's written in quotes, which I love obviously because those are sticky,

491
00:29:23.960 --> 00:29:24.960
right?

492
00:29:24.960 --> 00:29:29.520
And there's so many quotes we went through in this last half hour that probably and certainly

493
00:29:29.520 --> 00:29:48.440
won't stick in my mind.