You’ve got to be in a resourceful state to present effectively.

Martin  0:10

Good afternoon, Mr. Cassell.

Jeremy  0:16

Hi there. How are you doing Martin?

Martin  0:18

I’m very well? Thank you. How are you?

Jeremy  0:21

Very well, indeed. It’s good to see you back.

Martin  0:23

It’s good to see you. We’ve just been covering how long it’s been since we actually saw each other. It’s been a long time.

Jeremy 0:24

Yes. It has been.  It has been a long time. Yeah.

Martin  0:25

It has been a long time. So Jeremy, thank you so much for agreeing to spend this time with me. I know you from, I think the last time we worked together was like 2008. Just before you published, was it your first book “Brilliant Selling.”?

Jeremy  0:27

That’s right

Martin  0:48

You were giving me the headline version of what’s been going on since then. So at that time, you were running a sales training company, publishing books, all those kinds of things and I understand since then, you are focused much more on presentation now. So that’s going to be the focus of what we talk about today. So yeah, thank you so much for agreeing to spend this time with me.

Martin  1:11

Fantastic. Okay, good. There are only four questions and we’re going to be focused on presentation today. So what I’m interested to know from you is, how you’re qualified to talk to us about presentation; who it is that you work with and how you win your customers; how you deliver value for your customers; how you feel about the whole idea of presenting and your recommendations for people who are investing in kind of their presentation skills in the current environment and the way presentations are being delivered. That’s going to keep us busy, probably for the next hour, hour and 15 minutes. How do you feel about that?

Jeremy  1:51

Sounds good. Always, always happy to talk about both myself and presenting, Martin.

How are you qualified to talk to us about presenting?

Martin  1:53

Okay, super cool. So the first question is then, how are you qualified to talk to us about presenting?

Jeremy  2:05

Yes, well, the simple answer to that I suppose is that I’m doing it all the time and I have done for the best part of 23 years I think, as a coach, consultant, and trainer so I’m doing it on a regular basis. It’s my micro niche. So I’m focusing and specialising in it, I’m creating content around it, for example, “The Leaders Guide to Presenting,” which we talked about just a second ago, which came out in 2018 and was business book of the year in the UK. So that’s got a lot of leverage. So I’m qualified to talk about it because I’m doing it a lot. I teach others how to do it. I coach leaders about how to present effectively, and it’s sort of semi-consumes my life. I’m looking at how the best presenters present, how they communicate information effectively and I’m sharing a lot of stuff on LinkedIn and like YouTube, and other, content platforms, so I can spread the word. So that’s probably the answer to your first question about how I’m qualified.

Martin  3:16

Okay, fantastic.

Jeremy  3:16

So the second question, who am I working with?

Martin  3:17

Whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa, we need to go slower than that or else we are going to be done in about four and a half minutes.

Martin  3:26

So the second, not the second question. So tell me how did you? Because when we did a little bit of work for you, I think back in 2008-2009, just before the launch of the books, so you can tell us about the books, what was that? It was a sales training consultancy that you were running, what was that called?

Jeremy  3:29

Oh Yeah, that was called “RTP, Release the Potential.”

Martin   3:30

Yes. Okay. Release the Potential.

Jeremy  3:31

Yeah. So , obviously, it’s been some time since we communicated. And so a variety of things have happened since then. I’ve morphed if you like from a generalist trainer and coach into focusing on three core areas really, presenting, influencing and selling. So it’s about 50%, on presenting 25% on influencing and 25% on selling. I set up Jeremy Jeremy Coaching in 2018 and our micro niche is C-suite individuals who want to deliver exceptional, high stakes presentation. But because I suppose at the heritage of the work I’ve done through the MALA group, which is based out of Cambridge University through RTP, and my own personal background, I get involved with other projects. For example, I’m working with a large French company at the moment, helping to develop their sales force of just under 400 and their sales leaders, so I’m getting involved with quite some big, meaty projects, but my bread and butter is working with senior people in businesses, who either want to get better at presenting internally or externally. Things like virtual town halls, pitches, things that are high stakes. So that’s how I’ve morphed. You’re right about the book, we ended up, Tom Bird and I, we ended up writing four books and I’ve got a couple of books in the pipeline as well for the next two or three years. But the latest one, “The Leaders Guide to Presenting” gives me a platform to be able to talk about this stuff, and gives me the credibility to be able to work with the senior individuals in business.

Martin  5:35

Fantastic. Okay, so you were just telling me how you wanted to be an actor until you were aged 21. That interests me because this is a recurring theme in these conversations. Like, I’ve spoken to people who were DJs for the longest time, and then stopped becoming DJs and went in to a career in marketing. I know people who are comedians, I know people … it seems like everyone in sales and marketing is a wanna-be entertainer on some level and it seems to me that they should all just then be presenters, you’ve gone, it seems to me, to the logical end of that journey. Does that make sense?

Jeremy  6:17

Yeah.

Martin  6:18

What do you think?

Jeremy  6:19

Yeah, well, I mean, you’re right. Up until 21, end of the last year at university, I wanted to be an actor and I took it quite seriously, I’ve never had any regrets, I wasn’t good enough, and I wouldn’t probably be able to make it, so I abandoned that and I went into teaching for a few years. Of course, there’s a performance element to teaching as well. So it’s an interesting point that you’re raising, very few people go into sales and marketing as a direct result of what they do in their formative years. I mean, I certainly had no plans of going into sales or marketing at university. So most, you’ve heard of the idea of the accidental salesman, and it’s one of those things that it’s not often the life choice, but it happens for a variety of different reasons. I think, if you’re selling, in the same way, as you talked about this DJ-ing, teaching and all this sort of thing, there is a performance element to it, you can’t get away from that.

So people who believe that they need to rely, for example, on the slides or the content, miss the point, if I wanted to send you some information, I could just send it to you via an email or some other communication platform quite easily and I can communicate information. The thing that the presenter is doing is obviously bringing in the emotions, the stories, the personality, and that’s critical in presenting. So whether you like it or not, you have to be able to perform well as a presenter. I remember when I was working, it comes to mind as I’m talking about this now, what comes to mind Martin is, when I was learning to become an NLP trainer, which was in 2005, the guy who took it, you should checkout Tad James, quite controversial guy, actually, it was over in the States, in LA. One of the things he said was you cannot have a bad day if you’re a trainer, you cannot have a bad day. What he meant by that was, you’ve got to always perform, because when you’re presenting or training or whatever it is. Is everything okay?

Martin  08:39

Yeah, so good. They can’t see me when you’re speaking. So I might duck around a bit. I’m trying to sort my technology a little bit, but I’m good, you’re good.

Jeremy  8:48

So if you’re presenting, training, whatever it is, a bit like a DJ, you can’t have a bad day, you’ve got to perform like an actor on stage. If you have a bad day on stage, and the director comes in, you might get fired. It’s the same with being a trainer. So I think there is a performance element to it there’s no question about that. You’ve got to, you’ve got to get up for it, you’ve got to be in a certain resourceful state to be able to present really effectively. So I think that it’s interesting, that a lot of people you’ve had on Talk Marketing, have some sort of link to performing.

Martin  9:24

It’s really interesting. I think the especially interesting thing is the teaching thing, because when I was running Effective Marketing I used to get involved with, I can’t remember what it was called, but it was a charity where business people would go into schools. It was amazing. I went to Portslade Community College, and I did it in the end like five or six times and it’s the five or six hardest days’ work I’ve ever done in my life. Essentially if you’re having an off day, if you are not engaging, and interesting, and entertaining those kids for that seven hour day, you’re dead, they’re gonna eat you alive. It’s the hardest audience you will ever face in your life. So I think teaching is a great platform for presenting, a great platform; because you just do it six hours a day. So if you believe what Malcolm Gladwell tells us, that you have to do something for 10,000 hours, four years of teaching will get you there, it absolutely will, in front of the harshest audiences on the planet. So that’s interesting. So how much of, Yes?

Jeremy  10:38

What I was gonna say, if you think about going back to school, and, everyone watching this, whatever they’re doing in business right now, whatever their role is, will have been at school at some point in their various different countries. I don’t know about you, but I could name on the fingers of one hand, how many decent teachers I had and the reality is that it may be different now, but a lot of teachers, I hope, there won’t be that many teachers watching this, I suspect, are not brilliant. They are subject matter experts, but they’re not brilliant at the positioning of it, the telling of the stories, the performance bit, the getting into a resourceful state, and really making it highly engaging for the audience, which in this case, is school kids.

So I think, I wouldn’t position myself as an exceptional teacher back then, because I just left the university a few years before then left. It definitely put me in a good position to go do what I did after that, which is be a salesman at L’Oreal as sales manager, head of training at L’Oreal and Pepsi, and then doing what I do now. I don’t regret those years at all and you’re right, there is definitely a performance element to it. There’s also an engagement element, you’ve got to engage kids and you’ve got to sell the why of history, chemistry, physics, math, whatever is interesting to them. I’ve got three kids, 14 to 19, they’re still in the education system and they still complain to me about boring lessons that they’ve had to put up with, either virtually or in person. So I don’t think things have changed that much.

Martin  12:19

No, and they’ve got all the technology now as well, haven’t they? I suppose it’s interesting. So how much of sales and marketing do you think is performative, how much of it is just a performance?

How much of sales and marketing is just performative?

Jeremy  12:35

Well, nowadays, the immediate thing that comes to mind is nowadays you’ve got to be authentic, have trust, basic vulnerability, if you believe the Lencioni stuff, the team working thing is really important, you’ve got to be yourself. So you’ve got to marry the performance elements of it, which is being up for it, if you’re doing sales and marketing, and I’m talking about sales here, really more than marketing properly. But if you’re in a position where you’re in front of clients, prospective clients, and trying to sell yourself, it’s a combination of probably being fairly high energy and performing well, so that you come across effectively, as well as all the other stuff, which is you got to know your product knowledge, you’ve also got to ensure that you are authentic, because people buy connection now, , in more than any other time, I think, especially because what’s happening with pandemic and so forth., business is personal. So you’ve got to connect with people. And that connection is really critical. So you can’t just perform without connecting. And actually performance done really well. It’s about engaging with your audience. So I think it’s a combination of a number of different factors.

Martin  13:50

Good. Right. So you’re saying you’ve got to be authentic. So two things come up for me, then, when you say that is, firstly, if I’m under pressure, to be authentic, can I be authentic? And secondly, what if I’m just a dick? , I mean, then I can’t be myself. I have to be, do you know what I mean? It’s like, I know that, that everyone says this, you have to be authentic, you have to have connection, you have to be yourself, you have to all these things, but quite often I see presenters aren’t that.

Jeremy  14:29

Yeah, and I think it’s. So, in the last whatever it is, 16-17 months, since my business sort of went like that because of obviously the fact that all my face to face stuff was canceled.  I’ve had lots of clients who’ve come to me and said, here’s the time to get good at presenting now. I want to rid myself of the demons and impostor syndrome and all that sort of stuff. But what at least three of them have said to me is, look Jeremy happy to work with you, or hire you as my coach, but my presentation and communication coach, but don’t For God’s sake turn me into some sort of perfect professional. , that’s what three people said that to me. In other words, the sort of recognition, , the recognition that they see that there is some sort of sense of sometimes presenters being too smooth, too perfect too professional. And actually, that’s not what people want. People want connection with the person.

So, , you really have got to be genuine, I think and probably when you’re under pressure, be even more genuine, , be open and honest and share stuff that you might not normally have shared. I think that’s one of the shifts that’s happened in the last few years personally, and it’s been accelerated by the pandemic, this requirement, just to be yourself. If people don’t like fair enough, , say, if you’re in a sales marketing role, they don’t like you, they’ll move on, and you’ll find out pretty quickly. But with most, whatever you’re selling, whether you’re self-employed, running a small business, running a tech company, whether you’re a big corporate or, , running for working for a medium sized business, , whatever role you’re in, I think that nowadays, the connection bit is really critical. Because if you think about it, tons of people who are subject matter experts,, there’s presenting, my god, there’s millions of companies, training companies offering presentation skills. So in my sphere, it’s not a really about it’s not necessarily about subject matter expertise.

Although I’ve written a book about it. It’s more about, does that suite the individual who’s likely to hire me on the coaching side of my business? Does he connect with me? Does he like me? So if I’m prepared to share stuff that allows him to think, Oh, this guy’s more than just some sort of professionaland also share vulnerability stuff, then there’s probably going to be a better, greater connection. And I mean, you’re an expert in marketing,Martin so you’ll know about this. And I know you wrote , you wrote a lot of good stuff. And you’ve still got a YouTube video, I think up on LinkedIn. In the last 12, 15, 16 months, since March last year, I really focused on LinkedIn as a way of as my marketing, basic marketing platform. And I can pretty much guarantee you, of my top 10 posts in the last 15 months, eight of them have been connection posts, my wedding because I got married for the first time in January this year, my mother’s 80th birthday. And that, , I scored a 100 in a cricket match, which is not bad at all, for someone at the age of 56, , various different things about my personal life, or about connecting with my audience. Those are the posts that attracted the most likes, comments, etc. So I think that’s a critical element, , subject matter expertise is almost a tick nowadays. Yeah. Okay, you’ve written a book, fair enough, so have tons of other people. But, , do I fancy working with this person? Do I fancy sharing issues that come up as a leader, , which is what you’re going to do, if you position yourself as a communication, presentation coach, there are still gonna be other stuff you’re gonna work with people on.

So I think that being real thing is critical. And the second part of your question, well, what happens if you’re dick? I like that question. You’ll be found out, basically. So that’s the simple answer to that I think, you’ll be found out and you won’t get clients, or you won’t keep them. So you’ll be found out, that, , that’s my view. And that’s the same with any, especially sales and marketing. I mean, if I look back on my first, I was a salesman for L’Oreal for three years. And there’s no question at all. I behaved like a dick for some of those times, , absolutely no question at all. So from 25 to 28, I got into sales from teaching and, , I didn’t know anything about sales just managed to brag my way into it effectively.

But for example, I remember selling, I worked for L’Oreal, biggest beauty Cosmetics Company in the world, and I was selling it to a hairdressing salon. And I went into a particular salon, Su Salon in Abergavenny, Wales, it was one of my territories. And it was close to the end of the second quarter and I sold her far too much permanent wave. And I was doing it for purely selfish reasons. I wanted to hit my target so I can make money. And because I was able to use certain linguistic techniques and closing techniques that you probably couldn’t get away with now, she bought far too much. Now, the reason I’m telling you the story is that she never paid a bill we sued her and she didn’t quite go out of business. But , I put her in, I behaved like a dick because I was purely focusing on me and what I wanted, soshe never bought from me again. And in the worst case scenario if she had, if there had been social media at that point, which there wasn’t that long time ago. , I would have been found out because that would be straight on social media. So I don’t think you can behave like that long term if you’re in sales and marketing, whether you’re self-employed or whether you’re working for a company, I think you’ve got to focus on being yourself. And if it’s not enough, then you’re gonna have to find something else to do probably.

Martin  20:27

Okay, good. All right. Cool. That’s really interesting. And I think you’re right. I think you’re right. I think what you were saying about speakers being too smooth. I don’t think people enjoy that. I think for me speakers, when they are pitching too hard, or it’s too obvious that it’s a pitch, I don’t think people enjoy that. So I think you’re right. I think if you stand up in front of a group of people, and you are a dick, they know you’re a dick almost immediately. I’m interested in LinkedIn because,

Jeremy  20:58

I can’t hear you.

Martin  20:59

You can’t hear me?

Hello, hello, hello.

Jeremy  21:29

Hi, there. I’m back.

Martin  21:30

You’re back. Okay, good.

Martin  21:33

I’ve got no idea. I mean, I was just off to look at my router.

Jeremy 21:42

I didn’t, my side. I was, I still was like, , my cameras still working. And then I just lost you.

Martin  21:50

Okay. All right. Well, let’s make hay while the sun shines. Okay.

Jeremy  21:57

You were saying? Okay, so yeah, I think that’s probably true. And you’re talking about? Yeah, if you pitch too hard, or whatever.

Martin  22:07

Yeah. Yeah. So people don’t enjoy that. And I think if you stand up in front of a group of people, and you are a dick, you get found out like really quickly, like they know immediately that you’re a dick so and what was the other thing?

How are you using LinkedIn to market yourself?

I’m interested in this LinkedIn thing, because you’re right, I did have a video ranking for a long time, it’s had a lot of hundreds of 1000s of views about how to use LinkedIn for marketing. I’ve got a course still that talks about that but I’ve not been, I mean, I’ve not been marketing anything for six years, I’ve literally come back to this in the last six months. I’m kind of astounded at the way LinkedIn has gone. Because I mean, for me, the posting was never the most exciting thing about LinkedIn. But if I look at what people are posting, you call them engagement posts. So you’re talking about like your wedding, or scoring, 100 in cricket, or doing whatever that was, it seems to be all of that and I haven’t tested it so I don’t know. Why I’m interested in it is if you call those engagement posts, when you sit down to write them, are you thinking, I’m going to share something, some vulnerability now, some authenticity, or if people are sitting down to do that, saying, I’m going to share something really authentic, then is it, at that point, authentic? Does it actually work? Is there a business benefit? Have you seen a business benefit to posting in that fashion? That’s what I’m interested to know.

Jeremy  23:31

Okay, so the honest answer is, I’m not and I don’t position myself as a LinkedIn marketing expert. I focused on it a lot since March 2020, or April 2020, since the pandemic properly hitting pay at least. And what I knew was that I had some level of control. So I decided to share a lot of stuff, a lot of the stuff that I do in terms of working with others, and what I picked up over the years in relation to presenting, selling and influencing I basically shared the content. I went from two and a half thousand contacts, to 5000 contacts. I get regularly, three to 6000 views of my posts, the ones that do well, and , anything from 30 to 100 comments, typically, they’ve got about 250 comments or something when I got married.

And someone told me, I can’t remember who it was Martin, but focus on 80-20 in the long term, the old adage. So 80% credible – 80% here’s what I do. Here’s some sharing of stuff that I think you’ll find interesting, so typically videos, articles, that sort of stuff, and 20% here’s some stuff I think you might be interested in. And what I try and do is link the post to something that they still might find interesting. So for example,I did, so a recent post, like what was it three weeks ago, my mother was,I went to her 80th birthday party. Because my dad asked me to deliver a speech, which I did. I did the A to Z of her life, and asked for assistant. And I got her brother to stand up and talk about my mum too. And it was a really emotional thing. John completely lost it, he was in tears. Everyone else was in tears. So I delivered. So my post was about what’s the place of emotion in presenting?

Martin 25:36

Cool okay.

Jeremy  25:39

So I linked something personal to something that I thought would be interesting to my followers, who are a whole band of different people I have accumulated over the years. And it worked, now, so I’ve got lots of good contacts. In your supplementary question, it hasn’t got any direct impact on business. I’ve won three coaches in the last nine months. These are pretty big hitting, for example, a new practice head at the top 20 law firm in the UK, who’s signed a six month contract to work with me. Three coaches who I’ve never met, who I have built a relationship with on LinkedIn, we then went to sort of direct mailing, spoke obviously, and they hired me, and that was because of my LinkedIn content. Right?

Who are your clients, how do you win them and how do you deliver value for them?

Martin  26:35

Okay, good. So that works. So you can start to see me being very personal and vulnerable on LinkedIn. Okay, so this is nice. This leads us beautifully then into kind of how you win your clients, who your clients are and how you deliver value for your clients.

Jeremy  26:52

Well, so my clients I’ve got, I really only work with big corporates and professional service firms. I do a very small amount of work with SMEs, but it’s about 5%.And the reason between you and me, why I do that, it’s because they pay more, it’s as simple as that, they’re more likely to pay. And it’s, , they’ve got budget. So those are my clients, the typical client that, I’ve got a sort of a pretty much, , your market, you understand what an avatar is, my perfect avatar, really right now is someone in a professional service firm, who is in transition into a more senior role. And that role requires them to communicate and present in a different way than they have done before. So that’s my sort of perfect avatar. And I’ve picked up probably four of those with top typical clients in the last, I don’t know, six months or so I only need about I need 12 coaching clients to make the coaching element of my business work well, so only 12, one step at one time.

So that’s who my clients are, C-suites, leaders and managers who have to communicate either internally or externally, via pitching,nowadays, virtual town halls, change management, staff training, anything like that, anything where there’s what I call a high stakes presentation witha lot riding on a presentation. So I worked with someone recently, on their first virtual Town Hall, to actually to both associates and then partners. And she had just become a leader of a big practice group worth 130 million. She was pretty young. And she had to get that right. Because whether you like it or not her team, she had about 100, about 60 partners coming on the first one, I think there were 120 Associates on the second one. Now they’re going to judge her whether she likes it or not. And part of the way you get judged as a leader is how you communicate effectively. So that was a good definition of a high stakes presentation.So that was,those are my clients. What was your follow up question?

Martin  28:59

How you win those clients?

Jeremy  29:00

Yeah, so how I win them is a combination of LinkedIn, personal referrals, and recommendations, building a really strong network. And a bit of, a little bit of Google ads, although I don’t do very much of that. And I put together something called design and deliver, which is a 18 videos on virtual presenting that I created in September last year, and I use Google ads for that. And I’ve got a couple of clients as a direct result from that. But it’s mainly to be honest, Martin, because I’ve been in the business. I’ve been in training and coaching for 20, what it is 23 years now. And I’ve got a wide network. And I keep in touch with the network effectively. And so and of course, , if you get into a big business, and you do well with someone and they like you then you’ve got a chance of getting into lots of strands of businesses. So my biggest client is Baker Mckenzie, which is the largest global law firm. And you can imagine, , with a business that’s worth almost 3 billion US, and whatever it is 104 offices, there are plenty of opportunities. So, the classic thing there is that, , I would go and deliver a presentation at a conference, which I get paid to do. So they get me paid work. And then I get contacted by lots of people. And I reach out to people who are in that audience. And I get further work as a result of delivering at that conference, whether it’s virtual, or face to face. So , I’ve got one in Salt Lake City booked in end of October this year. And, , so I get paid to do that, and all the consultancy and stuff required to deliver a three day partner conference, and then I’ll get more work for people hiring me on the back of delivering conference for them.

Martin  30:58

Yes. Okay, good. So then the last part of this part is how do you deliver value for them? And always, when it’s about presentations, so I’ve got a bit of a thing, my thing is that if you want to be successful in business, you have to be successful in your sales or marketing, but nobody wants to do it. No, really, nobody wants to do it, they really don’t want to do it. And but the thing with presentations is, really nobody wants to do it. Nobody wants to unless they’re like you and I, and they are performers, then nobody really wants to do it. So I’m imagining that’s where it starts is that they don’t actually want to be presenting. So well, the big question is, how do you deliver value for your customers? And the thing I’m interested in is like, and the other thing I’m interested in, so I’m going to make this a big thing. So you can talk a lot. But the other thing I’m interested in is, is there actual data about people who are good at presenting, doing better in their careers than people who aren’t? Because I’ve heard that, but I’ve haven’t seen actual any evidence of that.

Jeremy  32:10

I’ve heard that, I talked about it, but I haven’t got any evidence that I can point you towards straightaway. But I think you’re right. So I think, okay, this is quite a big question, isn’t it? And how do you deliver value? You partly deliver value in terms of the benefits that working with a senior individual, which is what I’m doing most of the time. So like head of sustainability, a couple of businesses, CEO of a company called Unifier, which is a big chemical distribution company, , managing partners, Chairmen, these sorts of people I’m working with, it’s partly value in the sense that if they didn’t believe there was value working for you, then they would they would sack you.Then so it’s partly personal benefits. And I’ll talk about a couple of things, personal benefits. So typically, now, you will be amazed by the number of people who get to very high positions in business, who still have imposter syndrome. In other words, they don’t believe they’re really competent enough to do their role, or who have real fears around presenting.

So it’s a residual thing, all the surveys, and this is evidence based, in the States or the UK, the fear of presenting is either the first or the second greatest fear behind snakes and death sometimes, but it’s a big, big fear. So if you can help rid someone of their fear of presenting, if they feel good about themselves when presenting, then that has a ricochet effect on the rest of their professional lives because they’ve got confidence. If you think about it, if you’re presenting, and you’re worried or anxious about yourself, or how you’re coming across, your focus is on you, isn’t it. Whereas if you are personally self-confident, and you’re in what I call a resourceful state, confident, calm, open, whatever it is, whatever state you want to be in, then you’re focusing on the audience and not you. So often, it’s probably the same with you when you’ve done trading stocks, or maybe you’ve been a trainer as well. And a communicator in your business. If you’re in a resourceful state, I sometimes if I’m delivering a 90 Minute Webinar, which I do every week, pretty much, to various different organisations. I’m not focused on anything in my head at all, apart from the content and the audience when I’m delivering. Because if you’re feeling resourceful, you’re focusing on them, because every presentation needs to be audience centric. So its additional confidence in that person, and that has a ricochet effect, I think.So if you’re feeling better about yourself, what I mean by ricochet effect is it has an impact on the rest of your professional life.

If you’re good at presenting, you maybe start getting better at one to one meeting or a better performance management and other things. I think if you get better at presenting, if you’re a leader, it improves your authenticity, which you’ve already touched on, and sorted out. And so you’ve got real personal benefits, but there’s also benefits to the business. So if you get good presenting, you’re more likely to win work. So I’m working with professional service firm partners often, so they are having to deal with clients, and win work, so they have to be rainmakers. They have to manage people lead, as well as doing all the technical stuff. So you’re right, they don’t want to be necessarily great at presenting, but they know that they have to do that in order to win business.

So part of value is winning more pictures. And so for example, I worked with a really fantastic law firm, called Densmore in the states last year, and the head of BD contacted me, we’ve met before from because we’ve worked with them in another law firm? And she said, “Can you work with this group?” And they’re pitching for some work for Microsoft. And I work with each of the individuals who were having to be part of the team. For memory, there were six or seven people. And I worked on their scripting, and then they’re rehearsing and their first piece of work, which they won, they won the mandate to work with Microsoft was worth 1.3 million. Well, am I going to be hired again, for that business? Yes. Because so I then ended up delivering a session to their partner retreat. So I had all their partners in front of me, , virtually, obviously, why? Because I helped them win a big piece of new work. So part of value is, , from business perspective is, can you help them win work, and if you do that, if you’re focusing on the presenting, the pitching elements of presenting.

And then the other thing is just, , from a firm perspective, as you get better engagement, , if you’ve got presenters who are more effective, law firms, architectural firms, surveying firms, accountancy firms do a lot of client webinars or client seminars. And if their presenters are crap, then they’re going to, they’re not going to come across effectively, and their clients are less likely to use them in the future. Whereas if the presenters on those clients seminars are quite exceptional, that rubs off in terms of what their clients think about them. So they’ll have prospects and clients in the audience. So they’ll retain their existing clients, that’s value, and they’ll help them win new clients. Because whether you like it or not, people, match the presenter with the content, , so if you’ve got a perfect scenario is great content, great presenter, bang, you’re going to get hired, you’re going to get clients rehiring you and so forth.

So that’s quite a long answer. But there are some real, you’ve got to focus in terms of value on impact on individual to make them feel more both competent and confident, and then impact on the business in a practical way, which is why I tend to focus on high stakes presentations and presentations that really matter. And then if they get great feedback, or win work, they’re going to recommend you. So I’m working with an architectural firm called PRP,I’m working with one of their practice heads. And the head of R&D now contacted me because they want to run a training for another 6 to 12 of their staff, because of the work I’ve done with the practice head and then recommended me internally.

Martin  38:50

Great answer, long answer. And what I’m saying is long answer, but what I’ve always said, No, but I asked you slightly longer.

Jeremy  38: 57

Okay, this is a long form thing. So you’re okay with a long answer.

Martin  39:00

I’m okay with long answers. I’m really okay with long answers. But what you’re saying about the fear of presenting, which is what I’m really, what I was kind of driving at, not like, people don’t want to be great presenters, of course, they want to be great presenters, but they don’t want to present in the first place. And what I’ve always told people and what I’ve always felt is that if you are nervous before you stand up in front of a group of people, you’ve got it completely wrong. It actually doesn’t have anything to do with you. It’s everything to do with the audience. And if you’re focused on the audience, then you can’t be nervous, , and it’s not even about the content, it’s always about the audience. So that’s nice to hear that confirmed from you. I’ve got a completely inappropriately titled presentation on presenting skills, it’s completely inappropriately titled. It’s present like a mother is what I say and that’s kind of what you have to do, I think is you have to own it, you have to be in charge, you have to be leading the pack. Because if you’re not someone else is going to take control and then you’re dead.

Jeremy  40:10

Yes. You are right. So, but it starts with you. So you’re right, you got to focus on the audience, it’s all about the audience. But it starts with you. Because if you’re not in a resourceful state, and you’re fearful, or anxious or worried or consumed by nerves, you’re not focused on the audience. So it’s got to start with you. You’ve got to take responsibility and be accountable for the fact that a margin doesn’t jump into your body before you’re about to present. You have got to find ways and that’s the stuff I share with people and teach them about how to get into a resourceful state.

Martin  40:41

Good. Okay, so I’m interested in this because I don’t know if you’ve ever seen me present. I love presenting. I absolutely love.

Jeremy  40:48

Yeah I absolutely remember. You are a good presenter. Yeah.

How much of presenting is natural and how much can be taught?

Martin  40:51

Thank you very much. That means a lot coming from you. I was just about to tell you that I’m a good presenter, but I don’t think I am in the sense of like, no law firm’s going to employ me to present, it would go horrible. But I’ve always enjoyed it. And so this is the question is how much of this is natural, because I’ve never attended a presenting course, no one’s ever spent a second, telling me how to present. I just got the opportunity to do it a bit, stole some things from other people, came up with some things of my own and it’s always worked. I’ve never, I bombed once I think in Chichester, breakfast meeting, there were 60 people there and I think they decided they didn’t want to see me before I even stood up. But anyway, that didn’t even bombed, it took them a long time to get warmed up. So how much of this is natural? And how much of this can be taught? And the challenging question because I really like to challenge people is if you’re teaching people, is it then authentic?

Jeremy  41:53

Yeah, that last point, yes. You can still be authentic, even though you’ve been taught something. Okay. But I take your basic point, for example, Gordon Brown was famously taught how to communicate more effectively and he came across as inauthentic. So it’s, , so there is always that issue around authenticity. I take the points about that. I think you’re raising a really interesting question. And what you said, as part of your preamble, that is critical, you said, and I quote you on this, I’ve always enjoyed it, I’ve always enjoyed presenting. Now, that’s where I want to get people to when I work with them that they end up enjoying it.

Because if you enjoy something, surprise, surprise, it’s going to go better, isn’t it? , you can’t, if you play tennis or golf or do any other pursuits, whatever, you’re not enjoying it, you’re not going to continue doing it for very long, , pretty obvious, isn’t it? So that’s where you got to get to. Now, let’s have a think about this. , let’s say someone comes, , my perfect scenario, my perfect avatar, someone has been promoted and now in a position of additional responsibility, managing, leading people there, they’re often because of their technical expertise, subject matter expertise they might be good at leading people they aren’t necessarily great presenters. And as I said, some people may or may position themselves initially as “I don’t enjoy it, I wish I wouldn’t have to do it.” A lot of professionals are like that, partly in some professional organizations, because there’s a high preponderance of introverts. So you’ve got like a, whereas you and I probably would describe I suspect, you would describe yourself as an extrovert, I describe myself as an extrovert Myers Briggs terminology. I mean, you’d probably be any, lots, lots and lots of professional service partners that are either introverts.

But as a coach, I have to work with certain presuppositions and those are guiding principles that allow me to do my job effectively. And one of them is that exceptional presenters are made not born. Because if I believed otherwise, I couldn’t be a coach could I Martin if you think about it? So if there is a certain number of people who for a variety of different reasons, enjoy presenting and are good at it for one of the reasons I was, was because I actually played from the age of nine to 21, every single year. So I was used to standing up on stage and performing. So there’s no question that helped me, rid myself of any residual fears I may have had about presenting. So that’s definitely contributed to me being able to present well. However, I strongly believe it’s all learnable so the reason I set up this business actually was because if you think about all the things you can teach someone who’s a manager or leader , time management skills, coaching skills, leadership skills, delegation, whatever it is, I firmly believe that business presenting is both the most important thing and the one where you can get biggest changes quickly.

So I work with numerous people who have changed the way they present, because they’ve got rid of their fear element. And also, changed the way they present in terms of their content, or their structure and all that sort of stuff. So I’m firmly in the camp of whilst you may be able to present well, because you’re because of your teaching background. And because of your performance background of some kind, or you want to be in the limelight, or you’re naturally an extrovert.It’s not just about that. I’ve seen tons of really good introverts present brilliantly. So I don’t believe that’s the case. So it’s a combination of getting into the right state, a resourceful state, having super content, and then communicating in the right way. And you can learn all those things, I strongly believe that. And of course, I’ve worked with lots of people who’ve got better and better and better. So I’ve got evidence, and anecdotally, that is the case.

And even if you look at some great, superbpresenters, communicators, let’s take an Obama, Obama or something, he’s a brilliant communicator, I think most people would agree with that. If you look at his trajectory from being the presidential candidate for the Democrats, through to the end of his two term presidency, he definitely improved. I mean, some of his presentations towards the end were absolutely outstanding, although his initial inauguration ceremony was great as well. So, but he definitely improved. And he was brilliant anyway, but he improved. And I’ve got numerous examples of that. And the beauty of what I do is, especially virtually nowadays, online stuff is that leaders can send me stuff which I can then review. So I can say to them, , if you sent me something, I’d say Martin, okay, here are the things I think you’re doing really well. And here are some things to work on. I did it just yesterday with a with a, someone sent me a link to a virtual Town Hall they’ve delivered and I went through it picked out the things I think work really effectively and the things that could improve on and the smaller things where , she then said, Okay, great, thanks for sharing.

And the critical final element before I comeback to you is, is the individual who is wanting to get better at presenting? Are they really up for it? Are they really motivated or engaged? So you could have put your hand up, someone could put the hand up and go, yeah, yeah, I have to hire you or my company wants me to get better. I’ve had a few of those. I’ve had, at least in the last three years of at least four people who I worked with, who weren’t up for it, they couldn’t give a shit really they weren’t really up to getting better. They didn’t buy into the fact that that their business had said you need to get better at this, or they didn’t buy into the fact that the why of presenting is really a really important part of leadership and communication. So the final element of it is, is that person highly motivated to want to improve? If they are, then that combination of , high motivation, and a skill that can be picked up and learned gradually means that you can get pretty huge improvements within six months.

Martin  48:42

Okay, good. And I’m with you. And I think, like people who are naturally good at it, I think its okay for you to be a presenting coach. And they’ll be born presenters because there are always going to be people who are much better technically at what they do, who need to present without so I don’t think that’s a moral question. I’m interested in you call it a resourceful state. , the book, is it Mihaly Csikszent mihalyi, I’ve never known how to pronounce his name.

Jeremy  49:14

He talks about the flow state.

Martin  49:17

The flow state. For me, when I’m presenting, that is absolutely, more than anything I’ve ever done in my life, my A-one state, that is when I am performing the best. I’m most awake, I’m most tuned in, I’m most engaged, I’m most happy. So that’s interesting. You call that a resourceful state.

Jeremy  49:38

Yes. So the idea of a resourceful state comes from NLP – Neuro Linguistic Programming. So, it’s about , sort of state, a state is a combination of our thoughts, our feelings, our emotions, how we’re feeling in our body, whatever. That’s a state. And in order to present well, you’ve got to be in a resourceful state. So take the flip side of it. If you’re anxious, nervous, fearful, worried, that’s an unresolvable state, isn’t it? Because it’s an impact directly in a negative way on the way you present. Whereas if you’re confident, calm, focused on the audience, whatever. Yeah, that’s a very different state. Yeah. And so that’s where you’ve got to, and some people could do that quite naturally, easily. So everyone can get into the flow state, children are in the flow state, often. You’re right, I’m exactly same as you.

If I’m delivering our webinar, which I do pretty much weekly. I go into that flow state. So the people who are around me, people who are helping me with Mentimeter, which is a bit of interactive engagement software that we typically use. Now, can we go yeah, that was great, well done Jeremy that was brilliant,I can’t believe you mentioned that and I go, did I mention it? Because I’m in such a flow state, I don’t even quite know what is going to come out of my mouth when I’m talking. Even though even if it’s really properly rehearsed, well, because I might just suddenly flip into another story or just dependent on what I think is appropriate in the moment.

And so you can get into , one of my good mates of mine, Chuck O’Neil Malarkey, I don’t know if you remember him. He was the guy who is Mike Meyers started the comedy story in Leicester Square. He was in partnership with Mike Meyers, his best friend, and he’s an improv expert, improvisation expert. And state for them is even more critical. , Whose Line Is It Anyway? , all those people?

Martin  51:28

Yes, yes. Yes.

Jeremy  51:29

So, improv, which he still does, he does it every Wednesday and Sunday, when everyone’s allowed to in Leicester Square. And, , improv, you’ve got to be in a really resourceful state. Because if you’re thinking, Oh, my God, I hope the audience don’t give me this as the cue or don’t set up that or, or in a worried state, no way, you can just be in the moment and make up a scene from scratch, based on the quick information that the audience give you. So it’s quite possible to get into a resourceful state, I work with people on how to do that.

How do you tech people to get into the resourceful state they need to be in to present effectively?

Martin  52:04

Okay, good. You don’t have to tell us how.

Jeremy  52:10

I can quite happily tell you how, if you think as of interest, I can give you some ideas.

Martin  52:15

I think it’s of interest, don’t people pay you hundreds of pounds an hour to tell them this stuff?

Jeremy  52:22

Yes. I’m quite sure that, on the basis I’m with you here, Martin, I’m happy to share content here, so that’s fine. There are a number of different things you can do. People who get into a flow state do this naturally, and it’s a variety of different things, I’m going to give you just a couple of ideas here. And tell me when you’ve had enough, the basis of a resourceful state is breathing. And if there was someone online now who’s anxious or nervous, I could pretty much guarantee the upper body breathing, their breathing from up here, you can even see them going like this sometimes.So you’ve got to get the diaphragmatic breathing, breathing from about a decent base. And that’s, I think that’s about 50% of it. Actually, if I’m breathing now,I’m accessing my diaphragmatic breathing other words breathing into my stomach area, the muscle under my stomach, breathing, breathing into my diaphragm, it’s very difficult for me to be fearful, nervous, stressed. Yeah. So you think anyone is in a stressful state, their upper body breathing. So the first thing is make sure people are breathing properly. So I teach people breathing patterns, like the Hawaiian breathing pattern, which is in for seven through the mouth, hold for seven out for seven, giving a , a roll with it. That’s so breathing is one.

A simple other thing is to look up. So I get people to look up right, if they’re right handed, look up left, if they’re left handed, this is about accessing cues of NLP. If you look up, and you can test this, anyone who is watching this as a video, you can test this, if you have got a worry or a thought and you look down, you’re accessing either internal thinking, or you’re going into your feeling state, and you get even more worried, which is why you get stressed, people are worried, people are depressed, people, they look down a lot. If you look up, right, you’re accessing the visual creative element of your brain, and you’re much less likely to feel fearful. So if you think about it, what a lot of people do when they’re presenting or just in the last five or 10 minutes while they’re presenting they look down to look if I’ve got a script here, it’s just a bit of paper. But if I’m looking down, am I like shit or am about to say, Oh my god. I’m looking down, I’m going to get myself into an un-resourceful state. You’ve done your prep by then. So I get people just to look up into the corner of the room. If they’re right handed look up, right. And just notice that they start feeling creative, imaginative, they’re looking forward to the future, whatever they’re not at, they’re not. They’re not fearful.

Another little technique is people who genuinely say I always get nervous, am a nervous presenter or an anxious or whatever.Anxiety and excitement are very close neighbors. So, if someone is, is nervous, I get them to go., so they get nervous I go, “Okay, what I want you to do is, the 10 minutes before your badge present, I want you to say, I’m excited, I’m excited. I’m excited. I’m excited. I’m excited.” And they move out because it’s so close, they end up feeling excited. And they’re actually telling their brain to feel excited rather than nervous because it’s so close together. So actually excited is like nerve. So that’s another thing you can do. Amy Cuddy, you come across Amy Cuddy, Martin?

Martin  55:50

No.

Jeremy  55:50

Okay, Amy Cuddy and power poses. So if you look up on TED Talks, Amy Cuddy TED Talks, is the most, I think it’s the second most popular TED talk after Ken Robinson. And she talks about, she’s a Harvard Leadership Professor, and she’s interested in, she’s a social anthropologist, and she’s interested in the leadership qualities in both animals and humans. And what she noticed was that, we know that if you start thinking anxiously that will create feelings of anxiety. But what she suggests was if you get into a strong body position, so she’s got like five different positions, which it’s difficult for me to illustrate precisely, if anyone wants to find out more, just go to Amy Cuddy, Ted Talks, there are five power poses that she gets into. And if you hold that, she’s done some, some primary research, if you hold that for two minutes, you are likely to increase testosterone and decreased cortisol in the body.And so you’re going to get into a much more resourceful state.

To look, those are four ways, there are plenty of others in which you could just teach people. And that’s what people pay me to do, partly to help them have a sequence. So they’ve got like half an hour before their presentation, they know what to do to ensure that when the lights go on, when they step on the stage, if they’re doing a keynote, or someone presses record, or the webinar starts, they start in a highly resourceful state, an upstate high energy bang! They go from start. And that’s really important, because so many presenters start really badly and leave the audience in the first five minutes. Yes, often because they’re in an unresolvable state, and not feeling good about themselves. And they’re trying to sort of get the audience to go please like me, please like me. Whereas the audience are thinking, fuck you!Just get on with the bloody content, I want to find out what you got to say. They’re not interested here in what you got to say they’re interested in, is this person going to help me, whatever the subject matter is? Sales, marketing, , some sort of internal change program, , a change in project, whatever it is, they’re not interested in you. They’re interested in the content.

Martin  58:07

Exactly. Okay. And this is what I’ve always thought. And so if I don’t have to, I’ve actually stolen that without even knowing it. I had a previous job to deliver a presentation called “I’m in the mood for selling”, which was all about getting people with their arms, stretching their heads up in the air and then hitting them with the Noland’s. See if I could get them dancing. So I stole that without knowing it. So if I’ve never had to do any of this stuff before, I’ve never felt anxious or worried or concerned, if I’ve never rehearsed, then I’m just lucky am I, but you can you teach people all this stuff?

Jeremy  58:43

Well, no, you’re not good. Because remember, your basic, what’s underpinning you is, is what you said, I’ve always enjoyed presenting. So that is your working principle. That’s your mindset with this. And that, yes, that’s going to, so that if you enjoy something, , it’s like, if I enjoy playing tennis, I’m going to go and play tennis more, I’m going to like to get better. , if I enjoy setting out setting up YouTube videos, I’m likely to do more of them. , if I do more interviews, I’m probably going to get better interviews, if I enjoy doing that. So that is your basic presupposition. So you’re lucky because your basic building block is in place. Most people I speak no, not mostly, that’s not fair. A lot of people I speak to don’t enjoy presenting. So they wish it was something they didn’t have to do, as you rightly pointed out earlier on. But if they get better at it, and they improve their competence, and they get better feedback, and their audience reaction is more favorable they’re going to start enjoying it more. And I’ve got plenty of people who’ve come back to me three months, six months, a year later, having started working and going, “you’re right, I now enjoy presenting.”

Martin  59:53

Yes

Jeremy  59:53

And of course I don’t say it to them something like a supplementary question which is, “so how is presenting to you now? It’s easy.” , straightforward. I’ve got no issues about it. I just I know how to do it. So the question is just then about structures, how do you build a presentation? How do you create messages, which is totally different. But you’ve got past that basic interference, which is, I feel shit about presenting, I’m not, or a classic one is, I’m not a good presenter. , I’ve got lots of skills, but I just can’t present. I’m not a natural presenter, all this sort of bollocks. And it is bollocks because it’s just a made up version of what you think is true about yourself. But the problem is that you then walk around believing is true. And that impacts on your ability to be able to deliver an effective presentation.

I mean, , I’ll just give you a simple example against me here. I have a pretty strong belief, I’m not very good at DIY. Partly because my dad was pretty ferocious with me when I was growing up. And he was good at pretty good at DIY, I couldn’t believe I wasn’t any good. My brother was really good. Actually, my son Ben’s a brilliant DIY guy. I’m not very good at DIY. Do you think I do lots of DIY around the house? No, I get someone else to do it, I have to pay other people and my wife is better than me at DIY, because I’m walking around with the belief I’m not very good at it. And actually, I do sort of I’m not as bad as I was 20 years ago, 30 years ago, but I still don’t believe I’m very good. So I’m not going to, I’m not going to go to IKEA and buy a bed that I have to put up myself. Because I’m walking around with a belief I’m not very good at it. I might go and buy it at IKEA but I’ll get some else put it up. Or my son Ben, who’s now 16, when we moved into this house that we’re in right now, he said that I wanted a bed, I said but where do you want it from, he said IKEA. We went to IKEA, which I didn’t enjoy for different reasons. But anyway, we bought the IKEA and he put it out. It took him about three and a half hours. He was brilliant at it because he puts everything out nice and neatly. And I said to him, , I looked at him in total amazement. But how do you do that? And he’s, it’s fun dad, I enjoyed it. So well, there we go. So you’re not gonna be putting up lots of IKEA beds, ? And, but if you can you see the obvious and basic links there. If you don’t think you’re good at something or you don’t enjoy it or whatever you’re not going to get better at it.

Martin  1:02:27

Yeah, I had relationship once that ended because I confessed that I wasn’t able to plumb a washing machine. It went from because I made some nice scrambled eggs, which were amazing. And then it went from that to you can’t plumb a washing machine. Okay, good. I just want to come back to the point you made earlier, which was about whether we are extroverts or introverts. The one time this was tested, I was at an event and there are about 40 people there. And it was like a presentation, it was an accelerated learning thing, like a really quick learning thing. And basically, we had to go around the room at one point and then say to each other, bump into each other and say to each other if we thought they were extrovert or introvert. And interestingly, the room was almost 50-50 split between people who’d seen me present and people who hadn’t, and nobody who had seen me, everyone who saw me present said I was an extrovert and everyone who hadn’t said I was an introvert. So I quite like that, , either I’m leading the room, or I’m not, definitely not because I was that arsehole kid at school that disrupted all the lessons and stuff. And I learned that lesson long and hard. Okay, good. I feel like we should talk about content. But I don’t know. Are you running a clock? Have you got any idea how long we’ve gone? No, I’m not just hang on one second, Martin. I’ve got to go and rescue my wife. Just hang on one second.

Martin  1:03:57

Okay.

Jeremy  1:04:10

My wife has just been locked out of the house for now. I just noticed that going like this at the window. Yeah, apparently, she claimed that she just wants to pick up the keys and lock the back door. Anyway.

Martin  1:04:22

Well, we definitely still started an hour and a half ago. But I think we probably chatted for 15 minutes before. So I’m interested, because I think the other way that I am lucky in this is that I really, I’m quite good at understanding things and translating them into ways that other people understand them. So I don’t know how I got to be good at this. But and I only think that I’m good at this because I’ve done it. I don’t know 1000s of times now where I’ve stood up in front of groups of people and said, if you thought about it like this, then you do better at it and I’m quite a conspiracy fan. And I do enjoy conspiracy. And I kind of share my knowledge in a conspiratorial sort of a way. So I’m a lecturer with the Digital Marketing Institute and essentially, the theme of my teaching then is this is how these corporations Facebook, Google, Twitter, whatever this is how they’re going to try and rob you of your money. And this is how you’re going to keep it and be more successful, more effective, which they really enjoy and they really have come to understand. How important is content? And how do you come up with content? And can you do this in like five minutes? Or do we need to schedule a part 2 where we do this at some point in the future?

How important is content in presentations?

Jeremy  1:05:41

Well, I’m with you, and you can edit some of the outcome, surely, we can do set up part 2.

Martin  1:05:48

We are not editing anything, Jeremy, nothing gets edited, everything goes in, even the bit where you rescued your wife.

Jeremy  1:06:00

Very well, content is important. So , what’s critical in the presentation is the presenter’s state and how the presenter behave. And then the content is equally important, because you could have an outstanding presenter, if the content is really poor, you’re not going to get traction, and you’re not going to get continuity, you’re not going to get people to buy. So you’ve got to get a combination of the two, , heart and mind, etc. So content is really important. And in presenting terms,what I tend to teach and suggest is less is more. So I’m a strong believer that less is more and a lot of presentations ifyou think about it either virtually or in person, what often can happen in presentation is that people get either bored, confused, or suffer from cognitive overload, boredom, confusion, or cognitive overload. It happens all the time. And the boredom and confusion, the boredom bit is about the presenter making sure that the audience is in a curious state. Because if there’s two states, the curious state, and the boredom state, and you’re trying to get them to be curious, so I teach people about things like a spy, which we’ll talk about a bit more in a minute.

But one of the big issues in terms of content is cognitive overload. In other words, in a short period of time, so 20 minute presentation, an hour, whatever it is you got, a big mistake is to try and pack too much content into a presentation.And the reason it’s important, the reason that’s so critical is the seven plus or minus two rule. So you may or may not have come across this, but there’s a chap called Wilson who wrote a paper in 1956, called the seven plus or minus two rule. And what he postulated in that paper was in a short period of time, any presentations are short, isn’t it? 20 minutes, 15 minutes an hour max, probably, most people cannot take in more than five to nine key points. So if you want to be memorable, you’ve got five to nine key points. And if you think about any presentation, you’ve seen recently, Martin, I suspect, if it was over a week old, you can’t remember more than two or 3%, of whatever you watched. So what people do is they pack content in rather than focusing on who’s in the audience, what do they want, what’s important to them, what content is going to be useful in this situation, and then what I do is I reduce it down so it’s just key messages. And all I say to my, to my coaches and people on training courses is if you can utilize the power of three even better. So you’ll sure come across the power of three, , most people remember things in threes, the number, the magic number, , location, location, location, it’s the NHS, it’s, , most set a lot of sales and marketing, you’re worth it.

I’m loving it, all these sorts of things are constructed in threes, because it’s the most memorable way of capturing information. So if you can stand up and say, look, whatever the subject matter is, there are three core areas I’m going to focus on, you can then go into side alleys on those three core areas, the audience will love you and is much more likely to be memorable. So for example, I created I’ve written a book called CQ Modern Influencing, and it’s about three elements of influencing, confidence, credibility, connection, three C’s, and people remember, it is easy. And I can talk about that for an hour. And what I want you to remember is the three C’s, confidence, credibility connection, and then some elements linked to that. So the short answer to that question is less is more, reduce your content and focus on the key stuff that you want to be able to communicate to the audience, the audience have always got a chance to ask you for additional information if they want it.

Martin  1:10:07

Yes. Okay, good. And I think, , bullet points, everyone hates bullet points. And I think, a strong pitch unless it is a pitch presentation, I’ve properly got in a mood when I’ve realized that a presentation is just a pitch, they want me to buy something. Okay, cool. I think we’ve done our time today. So I’m not concerned about I mean, I think if you’re happy to come back and talk to us more about content in the future, that’d be really cool. I’m kind of also interested in the NLP element and how you weave that in and how effective that might be. So if you are interested to come back in the future, I’d be really interested to have that conversation

Jeremy  1:10:51

There might be a part 2 Martin.

Martin  1:10:53

There might be a part 2, there’s a number of Part 2s coming down the track actually already. So it seems like an hour and 15 minutes isn’t long enough for everyone to get everything out that they’re good at. There’s a whole other question that we haven’t got to yet, which is kind of recommendations for the current situation. Do we do that in part two? Or do we do that now? How long does it take you to answer that question?

Jeremy  1:10:17

What’s the question?

What is your recommendation for anyone who is presenting in the current situation?

Martin  1:10:19

The question is the current situation, the pandemic, the lockdowns, all of this stuff, the pressures that businesses are under, , how do people go? What’s your recommendation for how people conduct themselves how they engage? Like, if there’s just presentations, that’s fine. Like, clearly the whole medium of presentations has changed. If that’s how they conduct their business, then that’s also fine. I’m interested to know what you think.

Jeremy  1:10:48

Well, , my view of that is fairly straightforward. I think we are globally, especially in certain types of professions as well, entering into a completely new orbit. And we’re entering into some what most people described as a hybrid working existence. So part of this part home. And so my view is that if you’re a business professional, or you’re in sales, or if you’re working for large corporates and SMEs, or medium sized business, if you have interactions with clients, with decision makers, and your part of your role is influencing, and let’s face it, most roles are about influencing, you’ve got to get really good at both virtual presenting and virtual influencing and in person influencing and presenting. And so that includes both selling and presenting or pitching, because it’s going to be both from now on. So like I’ve just said, I’ve got this gig in October in Salt Lake City. But that’s the only in person gig I’ve got this year. It’ll happen more next year, no doubt, but I’m working on the presupposition that I’ll be working virtually and in person, and the decision makers who will give me work will decide whether is it more appropriate to do it virtually or in person. And I think that applies to lots of situations. So my view of things is, we’re not going to go back to the way it was before, as in business conducted face to face exclusively, it’s going to be a lot around, , getting the balance between virtual and in person. And you’ve got to get really good at both. So that’s my simple answer to that.

And, , in terms of what I can offer around that I’ve got, I’ve created this thing called design and deliver which is an 18-video program that can help you maneuver, and upscale around all aspects of virtual presenting, so 18, three to five minute videos with lots of reads and learning resources behind it. So you can find out more about that at jeremyJeremycoaching.com. Of course you can hire me, or you can come along, I do sorts of public trainings as well for various different organizations where there’s no cost where I’m just putting myself out there from time to time to about one of those every quarter. So a variety of different ways of working with me. Whenever anyone sees this, whether it’s in 2021, or much later than that, I probably still doing the same thing for the next five or six years I suspect before I hang out, my presenting boots. So in answer to your question, I think it’s about getting really good at this new world, this new hybrid world and just accepting  that is going to be the future for a lot of people. Not everyone of course, but a lot of people in business, you’ve got to get really good at selling, influencing, presenting in a new hybrid world.

Martin  1:14:53

Good. And you slip that little pitch in beautifully like a speaking professional.

Martin  1:15:05

Jeremy, I have thoroughly enjoyed this. I knew I would. I hope you’ve enjoyed it also, I think there is probably a part 2 in this I think. So if you think there is, I mean, I’m interested in the NLP thing. I’m interested in, we haven’t really covered the online thing. And I’m interested in the content thing. So maybe in two or three months’ time, you’ll be happy to come back and do this again. I think this has been hugely interesting for me, and I hope it’s gonna be really interesting and useful for the people who pick this up. Thank you so much for your time, man.

Jeremy  1:15:40

Thanks a lot for inviting me along to talk marketing. It’s been a pleasure. Thanks, Martin.

Martin  1:15:43

Thank you very much. Cheers Jeremy bye.

Jeremy  1:15:46

Cheers.

Martin  1:15:50

Love that man.

Jeremy  1:15:50

Right.

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