Professional development

Overcome fear of public speaking with proper strategy

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For many people, the fear of public speaking ranks right up there with undergoing a root canal procedure or facing a tax audit.

That’s too bad. Eliminating your fear of speaking in public is not as difficult as you might think. Plus, the skills and confidence you gain are useful in today’s competitive, customer service-oriented marketplace.

Whole courses are devoted to public speaking. We can only touch on the fundamentals here. The rest is up to you. If you follow these tips, your speaking anxiety will diminish and you will be more confident in front of an audience. Indeed, you will actually enjoy speaking in public.

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Review your professional life to help improve satisfaction, performance

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Now that we’re about seven weeks into the new year, it’s a good time to take stock in where you are professionally. Review facets of your life to see if any tweaking is needed. Some areas to consider include:

Professional goals Review your life goals for this year. To what extent are you where you should be at this stage? Have you accomplished what you should have? Why, or why not? Don’t be too rough on yourself. There’s time to get back on track. Also, perhaps certain goals were too aggressive. Consider adjusting those goals.

Much like with a diet, your goals must be realistic. You should be commended for setting lofty goals, but make sure they are reasonable. Otherwise you’ll give up, and that’s worse than not trying at all.

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Tim Erway: How to succeed in your network marketing business

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During the Info-Marketing Blueprint conference last Friday, we were treated to some great advice and insight from Tim Erway, one of Mike Dillard’s colleagues at Magnetic Sponsoring. Tim spoke for an hour or so. By scribbling madly, I managed to record many of the points he offered that afternoon. The following is taken from my notes. While the sentences may not flow like perfect prose, I think you’ll still be able to glean the wisdom that Tim Erway offered.

We network marketers tend to undervalue ourselves, and refrain from bringing content to the marketplace because we feel it’s not worthy.

Not sure what to write about or produce? Ask yourself:
– What is your passion?
– What are you good at? How did you get good at it?

By learning, we are increasing our value. By putting that into practice, we are creating experience. We create value by implementing what we learned. “The more value we share, the wealthier we become,” he says.

Value of events like this one (Info-Marketing Blueprint): You meet people. Plus, you never know who you will be introduced to later. [From me: It’s a take on the old saying, “It’s not who you know, but who knows you.”]

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Adding to my collection of professional development materials

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Seasoned business people from all industries know that professional development never stops. You never know all; there’s always more to be gleaned from others in your field. Whether you are a network marketer, professional speaker, sales person…heck just about any position, you should be constantly in learning mode. Books and audio materials are popular platforms … Read more

How to give a presentation when disaster strikes

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It had to happen eventually. Until then I had no problems with my presentations; all came off without a hitch. As one who gives presentations frequently and who aspires to be a professional speaker, I know that I will experience a meltdown someday. That someday was this past Wednesday evening during a webinar I was hosting. Even though I trained myself for such an event, it still proved to be a challenging but instructional experience. It prompted me to put together some thoughts on how to give a presentation when disaster strikes.

The best time to plan for any disaster, of course, is during the quiet times. Now is the time to review the steps to take in the event you suffer a disaster during a business presentation. Play these steps over in your mind – visualize them – repeatedly. That will help ensure that when the inevitable occurs, you respond pretty much to script. You can expect some anxiety – the shock of the incident really hits you – but you can minimize its effects through proper response.

1. Maintain your composure. When something significant occurs – say, your computer crashes (like mine did) or the projector dies – it is a shock to your system. Part of you wants to panic. You realize the significance of what has happened and envision your presentation collapsing. It’s an embarrassing and humiliating moment. You are the presenter, after all, and those people are counting on you.

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