160 Michael Davis: How to Improve Your Business Story Telling

Learning from Smart People

In this episode we learn how to improve your business story telling. Michael Davis joins Rob Oliver on the Learning from Smart People Podcast. A former financial planner, Michael learned a great deal about the power of presentations through his own mistakes. He believes that great speakers are not born, they are made. His current work is helping people overcome their fear, anxiety and negative experiences to become confident and influential speakers.

Here are several of the topics covered as Michael Davis and Rob Oliver talk about how to improve your business story telling on this episode of Learning from Smart People:

· Michael’s backstory of selling insurance and doing workshops and presentations (poorly enough that his boss told him “Fix it or else!”)
· Beware of the “lunch buffet affect” (a.k.a. giving your audience too much to handle)
· You must begin with the end in mind. What do you want your audience to think, feel, or do differently?
· Stories are the critical piece of all presentations
· There is no one way to do something effectively
· The five stages of a memorable story, from Michael’s perspective
· All great stories are about transformation. You need to include the way this impacts your life moving forward.
· There are several different types of stories that you can tell
· You cannot be both the hero and the guide in your story
· People can relate to stories in which there is a struggle. That is part of being human.
· When presenting virtually, you cannot treat the camera just like it is a live audience
· Virtual presentations require a whole “stew” of experiences
· You can start building rapport with your audience before your presentation starts
· Look for “chat box extroverts”
· Utilize as much of the technology as you can: chat box, poles, breakout rooms, etc.
· One of your goals is to make the audience feel like they were part of an experience
· Audiences don’t need information, they can look that up, they need to hear your perspective and experience… Your story!
· There is a difference between talking a lot and being a good communicator
· Extroverts need to be thoughtful before they verbalize
· Introverts need the courage to share their valuable thoughts

You can find out more about Michael Douglas through his virtual business card, website and social media links:

Virtual Business Card: http://inphone.co/speakingcpr
Website: http://SpeakingCPR.com
Twitter: http://twitter.com/SpeakingCPR
Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/SpeakingCPR/
LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/michaeldavisspeakingcpr/

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