Time to Show Off!

This week is typically all about getting ready for that final presentation. You’re going to be talking to a wide range of people from executives and non-technical folk to experts in your field so it can be really difficult to strike the right balance in what you talk about.

That’s why I’ve written this week’s letter and I can guarantee that incorporating even a few of these tips will elevate your presentation to the next level.

P.S. These really aren’t as serious as people make them out to be so don’t stress too much. Your team already knows all the work you’ve done and even if you don’t give the best presentation, your work is still going to be meaningful. It’s just that a great presentation opens the doors to conversations with other teams and managers so I wanna help you do your best.

Invite People!!

Before I get into how to make your presentation awesome, I wanna say that once you’re confident in your presentation, you should invite anyone you’ve met over the summer that isn’t in your team. This could be your mentor, someone from a team you shadowed, a manager of a team you’re interested in, and really anyone that you’d like to see your work.

One summer I even invited an intern from the marketing department who I had a looong convo with about Apple’s presentations and Steve Jobs’ use of unusual but memorable words (‘the iMac screams’). I incorporated some of the things we discussed and I wanted to get his opinion on how the actual presenting went.

Alright, onto the tips…

On the Screen

Let’s start with how to make your slides burrow themselves into the brains of your viewers.

(A lot of this is going to go against what we learned in high school but from personal experience, these tips create much more memorability)

Don’t bury the lead.

We all know that we should craft a story with our presentations, right? And that’s really good advice because it instantly gives them a structure (what, how, why, so what, etc.) but the fault in the logic is that when you’re telling a story to your friends, you already have their attention. That’s not the case here. So instead of a story, treat this like a YouTube video: hook your audience from the start.

Put your greatest achievements on the first page. Just imagine how much more likely people are to pay attention when the first thing you say is “I created a marketing campaign that got us 600% more impressions” or “I built a tool that saved us $100,000” vs “This summer, I worked with with the payments platform team…”

Once you have their attention, then you can talk about what the problem is and how you implemented your solution, etc.

Titles

You can take the previous idea and apply it to every single slide too. What’s the first thing people see on every page? The title.

So why would you want to waste that prime real-estate with something as boring and uninformative as “problem statement”. Instead, put the main point of that slide right there in the title (ex. “we’re losing $100k a year”). And I know, the first time I did this, it felt dumb cause it seemed like I was just giving the audience the gravy at the start and so now they might tune out for the rest of the slide.

But that’s kind of where you get into the conflict between are you there to give them information or get their attention. Subtle difference but coming from a giving mindset will always make your presentations more natural and inviting. Think of it this way, if someone isn’t going to pay you much attention anyways, wouldn’t you at least want them to remember some key points?

Simplicity

You want to bring any topic you’re talking about down to the lowest common denominator in your audience. Anything you do in a workplace will have a real-world similarity that you can use as a metaphor to make it easy enough for non-technical people to understand. But once you set up your project on an even playing field, feel free to throw in some technical terms and details to help the experienced understand exactly what you did.

This is very tough, there’s no doubt about it but if you can do it successfully, it can widen the reach of your presentation quite a bit. I would say when you can, showing a demo and contextualizing numbers can make it much easier for someone on the outside to quickly get a grasp.

A Thousand Words

Don’t write a paragraph when a picture can get across the same info.

I could fill up a whole slide with all the learnings and insights from this image or I could just put this up and clearly show how people with lower household income are utilizing charity at a lower rate.

When it comes to words you do have, the fewer the better. Use meaningful and memorable ones and keep your text as short as you can while still effectively delivering your message.

On the Stage

I also want to talk about the act of presenting and how to keep your audience hooked onto every word you’re saying.

Energy

No one wants to listen to someone that is low energy and reading off the slides. Make yourself stand out by bringing a ton of energy into your presentation and being very interested in your slides.

A few things you can do to get yourself into this state are jump around and get moving before you start presenting, and try to talk in a louder voice and project with your chest out when you start. Know your presentation down pat and take pauses as you go through the slides.

High energy shouldn’t mean nervousness and speeding through your presentation, it means excitement and having a magnetic presence.

Body Language

Two main things here that help me a lot.

One, when you’re talking to the crowd, we scan and move our eyes around a lot cause we want everyone to feel spoken to. But a better method is to look at one people at a time for a few seconds and speak only to them. Then, you move onto another person and do the same and keep repeating. This will increase the connection the listener and those around them feel towards you and your presentation.

Two, use your hands to emphasize your points. Don’t just keep them at your side or resting on the laptop. Actively use them to point and underline key things you’re saying and exaggerate it. I think our brains amplify every action we do in front of an audience more than reality so going over the top (from our perspective) with anything on stage will only seem more than normal for the audience.

That’s it for week 9. You’ve got this presentation in the bag, don’t even worry about it, just get out there and share what you did and learned. I’m super confident that these tips will make you stand out so give them a shot and send me a reply with how it went!

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