As a coach, whether you seek it out or not, sooner or later you’ll find yourself giving a presentation.

Doing presentations was actually how I got started into coaching - I’d do a free body language class every Friday.

As the number of people attending that free class grew, I started to offer paid coaching.

At the time, I never would’ve imagined my message would one day reach incredible people like you in over 80 countries around the world.

But when I started out, I’ll be honest — I was a pretty lame presenter.

I fell into these 4 costly mistakes coaches make in giving presentations that I had to learn the hard way:

1. You are not the rockstar.

Ever been listening to a presenter who blabbed on and on and on and on about themself and really played up how cool they are?

I don’t have to tell you, it gets boring fast and is a major turnoff.

Some do this totally unintentionally though - so make sure you go out of your way to really make it about your audience.

They are the rockstars, not you.

2. Don’t talk over their head

I get it, you’re trying to prove you’re smart enough to be worth their time listening to.

It’s a catch 22:

• You think, “If I talk simple, they’ll think I don’t know anything”

• When in reality, dazzling them with big fancy words just confuses them and they’ll tune out everything else.

If you want your audience to love what you teach, they have to understand it.

If you want the largest number of people to understand it, break down complicated concepts into simple steps.

Then crank up the simplicity even more. You’ll start to think “this is so simple, everyone must already know this”. I used to think that too.

Turns out, the things we know most - we assume other people understand it just as well as we do.

Most of the time, they don’t.

3. Don’t skip Q&A

Unless your specific speaking engagement prohibits Q&A (which is pretty rare), never skip Q&A.

It’s ok to hold off until Q&A time at the end, but make sure you tell everyone up front that there will be time for questions later.

This is the gold nugget moment though — not just for them, but for you too.

Hearing their questions will show you where you didn’t explain things well or what you missed, because they had to still ask a question about it.

You’ll pick up on these things and make future presentations even better.

And like icing on the cake, an open dialogue from Q&A builds trust and rapport with the audience that can’t be faked in any other way.

4. Don’t stare at the back wall

Maybe you’ve heard the advice before that if you’re nervous about standing in front of people, you should just stare at the back wall so you don’t have to see anyone’s faces.

Talk about crappy advice!

While this might make you feel better, it completely severs the connection you have with your audience.

Everyone can tell if you’re staring back there.. because nobody is that tall!

Then it just feels like you’re “data-dumping”.

Get caught data-dumping, and most will start to check out — they get the feeling you really don’t care about them individually.

Instead, literally choose a person in the audience to look at. If that feels weird, choose a section of people to look at.

All the people around there will feel like you’re looking right at them, and speaking right to them!

This is a massive rapport-builder with the audience.

Every 30 seconds(ish), pick a new spot in the audience to look.

Keep rotating where you look to ideally cover all the sections, then repeat!

So next time you find yourself doing a presentation, avoid these 4 mistakes and you’ll immediately be better than the vast majority of presenters out there.

Quote of the week:

Song of the week:

- Kirk