197: Structuring Your Presentations for Maximum Impact

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John DiJulius is considered “The Authority” on customer experience.  His keynote presentations have motivated and inspired audiences from Entrepreneurs Organization, YPO, Nestle and Marriott to Chick-Fil-A and many more.  His real life stories are lessons long remembered by attendees.  Learn more about John and how to book him for your next event at:  https://johndijulius.com/

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Transcript:

Denise Thompson (00:01.577)
Welcome back, revolutionaries, to another episode of the Customer Service Revolution Podcast with John DiJulius. I’m Denise Thompson, managing partner for the DiJulius Group. Welcome back. John, good to see you.

John DiJulius (00:16.034)
Great to see you, Denise.

Denise Thompson (00:18.421)
John has been speaking all over the country. You’ve been pretty busy the past couple of months here. All over the world. this is true, world. Global, global he is, folks.

John DiJulius (00:24.632)
World, world.

Yeah. Global. I am global. This, this, this time. This month.

Denise Thompson (00:35.509)
Would you say speaking is one of your favorite things to do? Favorite part of your job? Yeah, what do you like about it?

John DiJulius (00:39.565)
Yeah

John DiJulius (00:44.463)
almost everything.

The actual onstage energy, audience, transformation, the epiphanies when you nail it, you see the…

Vanity, instant reaction you get right after or during, it’s just so rewarding and, you know, I always say this, where I feel like I, when I feel like I crushed it.

the audience makes it, right? So, you know, because if the audience is engaged and I’m not, if the audience wants to be there, if the audience really gets it, you know, I don’t know how much that’s me or them, but when they’re, have a really great attitude and hungry, that makes the presenter better because like, if they laugh at something you said, or, you know, you can tell that they really enjoyed something, you’re kind of like, oh, you like that? Wait till I give you the next one.

Denise Thompson (01:56.107)
Thank

John DiJulius (01:57.058)
versus the opposite can happen where you get crickets or not the reaction you were expecting and you’re like, you might not like this next one then. So, you know, I just think it’s all the instant gratification, but you you did a job well done.

Denise Thompson (02:06.217)
Thank

Denise Thompson (02:16.875)
Do have a favorite joke of yours, icebreaker story that you like to tell?

John DiJulius (02:23.246)
Well, the Johnny Pian in the Pool story I’ve used, that, you know, I don’t know if we need to explain it or give a link to it, but that was key in my early days because I didn’t have an icebreaker. didn’t know you were supposed to have an icebreaker. So when I would start speaking, I would just come out and just start telling people.

whatever I was telling them, you know, gotta be better at customer service and here’s how and this, blah, blah, blah. And always what seemed to be five, 10 minutes into it, I would just have people staring at me like you are right now. And I would know if I was telling them something that was like so stupid that that everyone knows or they were spellbound with my, you know, great.

content and I would you know remember kind of panicking you know not knowing where I was with you know affirmation of them so taking classes and and Researching and seeing great speakers that was you know having seeing how people came out and open with a compelling ice-breaking story, and then I had one that I realized and so

It just did so much. It literally was an icebreaker. It was self-deprecating. It was funny. It was unexpected. You did not see where I was going with it. And then people were rolling. And I was able to draw it to, you know, later on. It just wasn’t, you know, getting up there saying, you know, a rabbi, a priest walk into a bar and you tell a funny story for no reason other than it’d be funny. It had a reason.

of what my presentation was. when I, you know, the first few times I did it, I was like, yes, they like me, they’re laughing, they’re engaged. And then it would, you know, the laughter, which may have been three to five seconds, I was able to think, all right, where am I going next? And adjust.

John DiJulius (04:47.818)
I don’t know, it just gave me so much confidence that, you know, they related to me and it just was everything to me.

Denise Thompson (05:01.151)
So it sounds like the icebreaker is one of the most important parts of a presentation, would you say?

John DiJulius (05:08.716)
Yeah, it’s hard to actually say, but yes, we have five elements of a presentation. so, whether you’re trying to be a better presenter in the corporate world, or you want to do it as a career, you really break your presentation down into five elements. And the first thing is the icebreaker. And we can go back through it. And then the second part,

is setting the stage. The third part is demonstrating proof of concept and it’s just not my opinion that you should do this. Let me show you who has done what I’m telling you to do and the results, the case studies. The fourth part is like now the call to action. And then the last part, the fifth part is the close, the strong close, the motivational close.

to get up and go do this now and that you want to run out of the room, you know, the training and do something about it. And I actually think, I don’t know, it’s hard to say if it’s what’s most important because of all you do is have a great icebreaker and, know, but you got no content to follow it up. But I do believe at least in my experience,

myself and in watching other speakers that aren’t aren’t there yet.

we tend to discount the opening and the closing. And so, while I didn’t have a great opening initially, I’m sure no one does, and I would just get into it and say, this is why you gotta be better at customer experiences, because the companies sell more, you retain more, blah, blah, blah, charge more. So I struggled with that until I had an icebreaker. But then for the longest time,

John DiJulius (07:16.014)
I would, you know, it might have been time management and it might have been a lack of a strong close, but I would realize I was at my time. And wherever I was in my presentation, I’d be like, out of time, gotta go. And it was just such an abrupt non-closure. So having a structure of those things, now you can work on, you know, each of them and

you gauge yourself and know that if this is a 30 minute presentation, a 45 minute presentation, an eight hour workshop, you have to build in each. And if you’re getting near the end, you have to get to the call to action. And some of these things are only two, three minutes and you have to have the strong close.

Denise Thompson (08:09.597)
You customize all the presentations that you give. Do you go through this process then with each presentation?

John DiJulius (08:17.218)
So, you know, there’s pros and cons. Well, I pros and cons, but there’s, if you’re a professional presenter, and maybe in the corporate world, you’re doing the same presentation. You know, if you’re HR, you’re doing orientation or recruiting or, you know. But I do believe in corporate world, you sometimes are, or a lot of times, just getting up there and you have to give something completely different than you did last week or last month.

Sales is probably similar, you know, and stuff. I know there’s a lot of similarities, but sometimes you have to just get up and rally the troops. And no matter what, you gotta use that format. Now when you’re doing the same presentation, whether it’s in the corporate world, that you’re always gonna be selling investors, selling, trying to sell closed clients, recruiting employees.

onboarding and whatever that may mean and it’s going to be a similar presentation every time. Well then you structure that. My presentations are always structured with that. The customization comes in in between of, all right, is this a business to business or a business to consumer type of business or audience I’m speaking to? Take out these examples, load in these examples. And then also

When you have examples, I always have external examples, right? This is what the greats do. And then I, you know, with a customization, that’s gonna be the same every time where the customization comes in. How does this apply to your brand and land it in your parking lot in a bricks and mortar or call center or a manufacturer or a professional services? You always have to bring it back.

to them.

Denise Thompson (10:15.627)
How long does it take to create a presentation? Approximate, say a one hour presentation.

John DiJulius (10:24.558)
Again, if this is the first time you’re doing it from scratch,

And you want it to be great, I mean, it should take you 10 times that easily. Today, I have the luxury of, we just have so many presentations and workshops and our 10 commandment methodology that I can draw and all. So I save, best practice, you’re, probably for anyone, is I save every presentation I’ve ever done. Couple reasons.

company might be bringing me back the second time this year, or the second time in five years. And I want to go back to that and see what examples I used and not use them again and not use the same icebreaker and not use the same motivational clothes and not use the same snow white story and jokes and examples. So you always want that. But I also, when I’m speaking, I’m like, you know,

You know, I have a good example that I want to use for this company. I know I’ve used it before in a similar industry. I can go pull up that healthcare industry presentation and grab that example. And now I don’t have to re-emit the slides. But if it’s the first time, it should be, you know, 10 times. And longer presentations are unfortunately easier because

you have time, it’s the shorter ones. And I forget if it was Abraham Lincoln or whoever famously said, if I would have had more time, I would have wrote you a shorter letter, right? My hardest presentation that took me three months was my TEDx talk that was 10 minutes. If I would have had an hour, I wouldn’t have had to work that hard because if you stumble, I know I’m gonna make my point in a little bit, I’m gonna, you know, but.

John DiJulius (12:29.848)
When you only have three, six, 10 minutes, you have to nail every second of it. And you have to pick and choose and how to articulate that, you know, exactly how you can articulate it without, you know, word salad and all those things.

Denise Thompson (12:49.779)
All right, we will be right back after this.

Denise Thompson (13:04.853)
So John, what’s the best advice you ever got when you decided to become a speaker?

John DiJulius (13:12.846)
I’m gonna answer it a few ways, a few times. So I remember the first speaker I ever saw was David Wagner in the beauty industry, owns Jude, wrote the book, Life as a Daymaker, and I was just in awe of him. I didn’t have a lot of experience of seeing enough speakers. I remember when I started to speak, I used to use David Wagner stories, way too many.

David Wagner talks about, David Wagner talks about, and then I met him, where literally after he spoke, I was fanboying him and we were crossing the street in downtown Cincinnati, and I just mentioned, I speak too, and if I had a dollar for every time I mention your name in one of my presentations, because I always wanted to give him the credit, because it wasn’t my stories, and he just said to me, do what Lou Holtz told me, tweak it and make it your own.

And I wasn’t sure if he was telling me to stop using his material. And so I thought about it and thought about it and I realized it was so profound. The stories I was using about David happened to David in a hotel happened to me in a different environment. And I didn’t have to use David’s story. And then when you own the story and it’s yours. so making…

converting these aha moments into where that happened to me. And then the other one was with Jack Mackey, who we know, a professional speaker. I was speaking in Chicago at the National Restaurant Association, a good, you know, in the 90s. And to show you my importance, Colin Powell,

was on at 1 p.m. on Mainstage and I was on at 8 a.m. in a breakout, which is the way it should have been. But luckily for me, Jack Mackey was in the audience, which made me a little nervous. He was a professional speaker who I had spoken with at a conference a year or two earlier. at that time, we’re friendly and we knew each other. But I was a little nervous I had a professional speaker in the audience.

John DiJulius (15:35.854)
And so after I felt like I really crushed it and so I was looking for validation and Jack came up and compromised. said, Jack, no really, how did I do? And I’m sure I just wanted him to say amazing. And he said, really? And as soon he said, really? I was like, no, not really, don’t tell me that. And he said, your presentation’s really good. He goes, he goes, you’re opening, just open with your story.

Mitch’s story, and this is what I remember him saying. I’m sure it might have been different words. He goes, don’t come out and thank, like I had just done, the emcee for introducing me. And don’t tell the audience how honored and flattered you are to be there. A, everyone does that. B, no one in the audience feels better and is like, he’s so flattered that he’s speaking to me.

He says, just come out mid-story. And then that’s what I remember hearing. And I thought about it and it changed everything. I used to come out and say, oh, thank you, Denise. And it’s such an honor to be in front of such an impressive group. Yada, da, da. And then, you know, which was, you know, felt like 30 seconds, a minute. And then I finally get into my opening of, which was my Johnny Pien in the pool story, which, you know, if you want to provide a link. if someone hasn’t heard that.

So as a result of Jack’s thing, and again, this changed everything with A, having a great icebreaker, but B, the way Jack told me to do it. So how I took it is I would tell the person introducing me, hey, Denise, before we get up there, Denise, you’re gonna introduce me. I’m not gonna come out from back of stage. I’m not gonna walk on stage. If you need a hug now, I’ll give it to you. Just introduce me and just walk off, which was unusual.

And then, know, unless it’s a huge event, 500 more, 1,000 people, I don’t do this. But if it’s less than 500, then I will start in the back of the room, and when they say, please welcome John DiJulius, I start walking up as the audience applause starts saying, I just start talking, and I’m mid-story.

Denise Thompson (17:57.963)
Thank watching.

John DiJulius (17:59.22)
As I’m walking, I say, was February 1998, I was in Orlando, Florida. And so, to what Jack said, first, you don’t know where I am. You just hear me on the speaker, so you’re spitting and looking, and I’m weaving through the tables, the audience. So that’s off the hook. But also, it was February 1998, I was in Orlando, Florida. Is it kind of, back then at least, was a bizarre way, like what is he doing?

And then I worked my way to the stage and it’s all choreographed now because I’ve done it so many times. But what I was doing was buying 30 more seconds of your attention. You’re like, this is bizarre. Where’s he gone? What’s February 1998? What’s in Orlando, Florida? then like I said, it’s a really good story that then builds me credibility.

and humanizes me, but it was such a great way to just come out of the gates strong versus the, thank you, Denise, I appreciate that, and it’s such an honor to be in front of you. You guys are such a great audience and good looking too, right? So those two are probably two of my favorite advices that really helped my career.

Denise Thompson (19:19.079)
You use slides when you present. know some people don’t, and I know some of us don’t use them well, meaning some of us guilty myself. Too many bullets maybe use them as a script. What are your recommendations for using slides as well as you do?

John DiJulius (19:37.048)
So first off, you don’t have to have slides. I do. But if you think of great presenters, to me, whenever I ask when we do presentation skills classes, whenever I ask who make the best presenters,

It’s always the same answers.

It’s not all, but great CEOs, Steve Jobs of the world, Howard Schultz’s, Walt Disney, whomever. Politicians, not all, but politicians historically are great, great at captivating audiences. Coaches, right? And comedians, and they all are trying to…

get everyone to hear their story, hear their vision, rally the audience, the group, the team, the country, whatever. But one of the examples in there is have you ever seen a comedian use PowerPoint? No, the answer is no. But they still do an incredible job of which we need to get to is the power of storytelling.

So, now if you are gonna use and you choose to use slides, there’s some great stuff out there. Really bad PowerPoint by Seth Godin and there’s all these videos and stuff. And I remember I read Seth Godin’s, because I did what everyone did in the early days, my PowerPoint was all bullet points and just one word. would, my bullet point might just be Denise and that would tell me to tell the story about Denise. And the next bullet point would be Eric and the next bullet point would be

John DiJulius (21:26.498)
Disney or whatever and it was just my script and I was so proud of that and then when I read Seth Godin’s What really bad PowerPoint he said all of that words Words that mean nothing to the audience. It just means something to you and I was you know So mad and said he was wrong and then I started at that time I was you know speaking more so I got to see real professionals and

and speakers who weren’t, were up there, you totally could tell the difference. And then I actually saw Seth going back then, speak, and he spoke about it, and I went up to him, said, but what if, what if I don’t remember the fourth bullet point on that, you know, that I’m supposed to say? goes, so what? The audience doesn’t know that you forgot to tell the story about Denise. But his real message was, show a picture, show a picture of Denise, show a picture of

Disney, show a picture of the war monument or whatever it is that you’re showing. So like in the icebreaker where I talk about Johnny Pien in a pool at Port Orleans, I don’t know what my bullet point would have been. Johnny Pien in a pool maybe, right? Which also lets a cat out of the back. I got an image of a Port Orleans swimming pool. Because that’s where it happened.

So you should never have more than six words, you should never have bullet points, unless it’s a quote or something, and always replace it with a visual. So it enhances, so they see what you’re talking about, but if the slide is just there for you, it’s distracting from the thing. And don’t have anything appear before you need it, and that’s a big mistake.

So you might have, let’s say, four things that come up on this slide that you want to talk about, but I’m talking about the first thing. Even if it’s for pictures. Because now you’re looking at picture two, three, and four, or bullet two, three, and four, but I’m talking about one, and you’re wondering why I have a picture of a pool at Disney, or you’re wondering why I have a picture of a soldier.

John DiJulius (23:45.324)
And you’re not listening to what I’m saying now, so have your visuals come up when you’re going to talk about them and not before.

Denise Thompson (23:55.817)
You mentioned storytelling, and for me, that’s a favorite. When you have a speaker that’s a great storyteller, that’s what you remember. It’s not, you know, sometimes there are great little ah-has, but when they’re put together in a story, that’s what I think attracts us to, not just the person speaking, but it helps us remember what it was that they taught us.

John DiJulius (24:20.066)
Yeah, yeah. you know, first I say, in my opinion,

there’s three types of speakers, presenters, whether they’re professional or they’re not. You still fall into this one of the categories.

educators, entertainers, and the combination. And the combination’s the best. But if an audience has to choose between an educator, someone who’s just giving you content, or an entertainer, what do you think they would prefer?

Denise Thompson (24:59.189)
Well, I’ve seen the scores and I know how well the entertainers do.

John DiJulius (25:01.187)
Yeah.

Yeah, yeah. But truth be told, that’s kind of not the best use of your time, Yeah, laughing and feeling good and being inspired, but you really, what good is it without the content that you need to go back and do those things better? But if you’re an educator who’s the lecturer,

behind the podium that the professor in college type that we think about, people are looking at their watch and they’re zoning out. And to me, it’s my criticism of the Catholic Church of every time I go and they’re doing the whatever from the 1600s, I’m just thinking, oh my God, I have to get home and cut the lawn. And who am I kidding? I haven’t cut the lawn in a while. But all the errands I need to run and I’m not listening.

Right? So you want to be an educator, entertainer, which really comes into storytelling. And Mickey Williams, a great presenter and storyteller, she said at one of our customer service revolution conferences, data tells, stories sell. And that’s so true. So you need data. Hey, listen, 62 % of time if you, you know,

drop the ball on a customer and make it right, they’ll be more loyal than had you not dropped the ball. That’s the data. Now tell the story of a client that happened to us 28 years ago that we got color on her blouse and she called and we sent her a check for the blouse and a gift card for inconvenience and didn’t squabble with her a year later.

John DiJulius (26:57.678)
We not only retained her, but she referred 18 new customers. Usually tell that story a lot better, but the ah-ha to that was the $250, the blouse cost me to refund her. Where could I spend that and get 18 new customers? So in marketing, so I tell everyone to get.

color on everyone’s clothes, right? And so that story is more impactful and rememberable than that. 63 % of the time, if you make it right, a situation, make a brilliant comeback. it’s those. if you want to be a great presenter, you work on storytelling. And if you’re a great storyteller, it’ll just change. You’ll have everyone in the palm of your hand.

Now, the secret to storytelling, this is how every one of my presentations, and this is kind of how the structure is facilitated, the five elements of a great speech. So let’s take away the icebreaker and strong close, which is one in five. The middle one, setting the stage, proof of concept, contact, content, and then call it.

Denise Thompson (28:14.997)
Can you?

to stop you for just a second because something happened with the recording. So if you could just go back to that part of the story just before that.

John DiJulius (28:28.302)
Do know where? Which part?

Denise Thompson (28:33.641)
You were saying… Being a great…

John DiJulius (28:41.464)
Did I get through the data tells and story sells? And then I started going to now, if you want to be a great presenter, just be a great storyteller. Start there. We ready?

Denise Thompson (28:46.635)
Yep.

Denise Thompson (28:52.715)
Yes. Ready.

John DiJulius (28:58.382)
But the bottom line to really simplify everything, if you want to be a great presenter or a much better presenter than you are, learn storytelling. It is that simple. so, storytelling has three components that make a great story, a great movie, a great book, a great presentation. Every Disney, every great movie in the world has this.

A villain, a victim, and a hero. And a villain is what’s wrong in the world, in your industry, in your company, in society. Whatever you’re talking about, that we need to galvanize the audience, your team, whoever you’re speaking to, your listeners around to slay the Darth Vader of the world. The victim…

is not only the person that is being victimized, but it’s also the domino effect. So let’s go with a simple topic, living a healthier lifestyle. The villain is one of many things. It’s the fast food companies, it’s the…

food manufacturers that put all the crap in preservatives. It might be your lifestyle that you travel all the time and you work 100 hours a week and you know, it’s all of those things. That’s the villain. The victim, the consequences is that you’re not in the best shape of your life, that you’re not the best version of yourself.

You’re out of shape, overweight, lack of energy, gonna die sooner, you know, all that. So obviously the victim is the person who’s not eating or in the best shape of their life, but it’s the domino effect of their family, of their coworkers, of anyone that’s dependent on them, because if you’re not the best version of yourself, you know, you’re not gonna be there for your kids, clients, community, blah, blah. And the hero,

John DiJulius (31:18.688)
is never the speaker, it’s the solution, it’s the proof, concept, buy these milkshakes, buy this protein powder, know, whatever, follow this methodology. The hero is the audience, the listener, that if they do this, once they do this, and you know they’re gonna do this, they’re the hero because they’re gonna be more productive, more happy, more…

healthier, more, less depressed. Kids are better relationship with their kids. Their clients are gonna be more successful. Their employees are gonna reach more success. it’s the villain, victim, and hero. so that really goes with our five stages. Icebreaker sets kinda up, but now when you get into stage two,

element is setting the stage. That’s really who’s the villain. And every presentation I’ve ever done always comes out with what’s wrong with customer service in the world today and how it’s affecting your company, how it’s affecting companies, how it’s affecting people, how isolation and loneliness and frustration, and then you get the proof of concept. But let me tell you, the companies that do this better, they are more successful, that don’t have to compete on price.

aren’t laying off that all the bad things that don’t have brand tiers are the ones that do this, this, and this, and this. And here’s what they’re doing. They are more profitable, more this, higher retention, yada, yada, and then the hero is you could be the hero by following this methodology. Run out and get this book. Attend the Customer Experience Executive Academy. Whatever that may be.

But all of that is in the storytelling. All of that has to be storytelling. that, you watch any, whoever your favorite presenter may be, and we have so many, we have the TikTok and YouTubes, I always say someone who wants to be a better presenter, besides taking our class, you have such an advantage that I didn’t have when I started nearly 30 years ago, is you have the internet.

John DiJulius (33:40.782)
Go watch the top 10 TED Talks of all time. Regardless of their topic, the topic may have nothing to do with what you’re interested in, but you’re gonna see great presenters. You’re gonna see someone, know, David Wagner, who I talked about, he is totally different than me. 100 % different than me. He’s very calm.

He’s a monotone in a way, which works for him.

But he does two things masterfully that I don’t, and I try to as a result. He pauses after all his a-has to let it set in, and he repeats himself. I think Simon Sinek does this too. He’ll repeat the point he just made. So I want to learn from that, even though his style isn’t mine, I have to work in pauses.

repeat some good points before I jump on to the next thing that I want to tell you and you settled in. But then there’s high energy, there’s low energy. Why did they open with that? Why did they come out mid-story? Why did they have that, follow that? And you just learn styles that are more for you. Seeing Tom Peters and Jimmy Valvano speak.

25, 30 years ago gave me the permission of that’s the style I can own. It’s more suited for me than a David Wagner. I did try to speak like David Wagner because I thought that’s the way you had it. I just failed miserably. But once I saw Tom Peters and Jimmy Valvano speak and they had so much energy and they were running around, they were yelling, it gave me permission that, I didn’t know I was allowed to do that. And that really unleashed my style. Now,

John DiJulius (35:43.37)
As you may recall, I hired Patricia Fripp as a speaking coach. Great, great speakers, speaking coach. And I remember she watched a bunch of my videos before coming to work with me. And she said, John, you’re loud. And I said, yes, I am. I was really proud of it. And she was, like, you know, I mean, I’ve…

I pop microphones, literally pop a microphone, right? And so I thought she was complimenting me. I’m like, yeah, isn’t that cool? And she said, you know what? Being loud is all the time. I’m like, you know what? And I’m thinking attention getting. And she says, it’s the same as monotone.

thought about it, I’m like, my god, if I’m always yelling after a certain, you’re gonna get adjusted to that and it’s just gonna be monotone and me yelling the whole time. So she said, listen, that’s your style, that’s great, but when you want to make your point, stop, pause, and say it quietly.

And that’s when you’ll catch, she said, I run around. The two things she said, you are loud all the time and you never stop pacing. And again, I was like, yeah, isn’t that great? And she said, no. She said, it’s your style, great, but work in, going a little quieter and maybe stop pacing when you make the point. And that’ll catch people’s attention. Like, why did he stop? And why can’t I hear him as easy anymore?

You know, those are the things. But the storytelling, villain, victim, and hero are just essential.

Denise Thompson (37:38.217)
You have learned a lot from a lot of different speakers and coaches over the years. And I know you train people now in presentation skills. And I’ll make sure I put that in our show notes. That’s coming up June 10th and 11th. We also teach it in our customer experience academy and employee experience academy. They have to present each quarter. One of the things people struggle with, I know, is

just the fear of public speaking. So maybe they aren’t someone who gets up on a stage regularly like you do, but they have to present to the board. They have to sell their ideas. Maybe they’re even a salesperson and they have to sell their proposal. The president.

John DiJulius (38:22.572)
Yeah, I think everyone Everyone presents every day. It doesn’t have to be in front of an arena of people. I think presentation skills is the key differentiator, whether it’s one-on-one, one-on-three, you know, that’s presenting. But go ahead, I’m sorry, you were headed somewhere.

Denise Thompson (38:42.613)
How do you get over the fear?

John DiJulius (38:45.39)
All right, so a couple things. One, my greatest strength is I never had fear, but it was also my greatest weakness because I didn’t prepare as much in the beginning, because I didn’t have fear. So I remember I took this presentation skills class 30 years ago in Minneapolis for Aveda when I was presenting for them. I thought it was so stupid that I had to attend this class. It’s like, I know this all. It was one of the…

best classes and immediately after that I got to see whenever I saw someone speak I could tell who hasn’t gone through a presentation skills class because they didn’t have an icebreaker. They were random. You know they were word salad. They weren’t storytelling you know blah blah blah. Their slides sucked. But I remember one day it was like let’s say it was a week long class. One day we were you know I made some friends with people in the class and

They weren’t good presenters. They probably never presented since that. It just wasn’t for them professionally. They never became professional speakers like some of the people in that class were there for. But we were going out and we went out to dinner, me and these two other people. And then after dinner, I’m like, where do you guys wanna go now? And they were like, well, we have to go back to our rooms and rehearse for our…

five minute presentation tomorrow on whatever it was. And I made fun of them. I’m like, really? You have to go rehearse to speak for five minutes? And so I didn’t rehearse. And then the next day we all did our presentations and I scored the lowest. And they outscored me. And they were really bad. Like they never presented again.

But I wasn’t prepared, I just got up and thought I could wing it. so I can’t really talk to as much about the nervousness other than this. If you don’t know your content, which, you know, I didn’t know my content, you’re gonna be more nervous. The more you present, rehearse, write it down, I think writing is, I think the two best things to becoming a presenter, besides taking a class, the two best keys to

John DiJulius (41:02.766)
becoming a better presenter. And I actually think they’re equal. I wouldn’t say one’s better. It’s gonna sound crazy. One is present, right? Present, present, present. To the Rotary Club, to your dog, to your staff. Present, present, present. But I actually think equal is write Write it. Because every time I have an idea, the first time, I just say, I’m hot about this. And I present it. It’s word salad. It’s too long. It’s choppy.

I get the gist across, the audience probably gets it and it’s probably an aha, but then I’ll go write an article on it and I’ll clean it up and concise it and shorten it and the next time I present it, oh my God, it’s so much more powerful than the word salad I did. So you gotta be prepared, you gotta know your content, you gotta prepare. So back in the 90s, I owned the…

I still own the salons, but when the salons were popular, I had to go on TV a lot. We used to do makeovers. And I didn’t, I wasn’t, I did hair, but I wasn’t, that wasn’t my forte. And I loved going on TV, but I wasn’t prepared because I was like, Stacy, my wife was the guru.

But back then they wanted a guy, which was totally wrong, but we weren’t gonna turn down the opportunity. So I’d say, I’ll do it, and I sucked because I didn’t know what I was talking about. So I don’t know if I ever could have in that topic, but you better know what you’re talking about, you better prepare it. It goes back to your earlier questions, how much you need to prepare. You need to prepare less when you’re redoing the content, right?

So one of my other epiphanies is in 1999, I won the Entrepreneur of the Year in Cleveland and got to go to the National Award Show for Ernst & Young and see all these amazing speakers. It probably the first time I saw like just Stephen Covey, Guy Kawasaki, just a bunch of, and Guy Kawasaki just was like at that time, was the best speaker I’d ever saw.

John DiJulius (43:26.562)
He was hilarious and he great content. And I was like, my God, like this guy is amazing. So I waited in line with 300 people and when I finally got there, I’m like, I’m a speaker too. How are you so good? Like every word he said was perfect, was on point. And he just looked at me and he says, I do this presentation 300 times a year. Like it’s like a friend sitcom rerun.

People laugh at the same point. People cheer up at the same point. And so that, you know, repetitiveness really takes away any anxiety you can have.

Denise Thompson (44:09.663)
The presentation skills class, how many of the people in there are people who want to become professional speaker like you versus they’re presenting to their team?

John DiJulius (44:22.83)
I think, I’m gonna venture to say it’s usually 20 % are people who want a career in speaking and 80 % are people in the corporate world that want to get significantly better because you’re not gonna, you you have to sell your audience, employees, clients on your vision and rally them around and so, you know.

So that’s why, know, back to like, every time I speak to new employees at John Roberts Spa, I always tell them why we started the company 32 years ago. Because the industry was not known for good customer service, good employee experience, benefits, and something that didn’t give back to the community. And great, talented hairdressers that worked with Stacey were quitting to go get real jobs. And…

Stacey would tell me, because she worked in the salons, you know, when I was a UPS driver and we’d just got married, how a client came in today that didn’t like the color of her hair and her boss threw her out. You know, hey, you paid for it, get the hell out of here. And, you know, so she was always telling me about how really talented hairdressers who love doing hair would quit and go get a real job and…

the customer service was horrible and all these things wrong with the industry. And that’s why we opened John Roberts to be different. So there was the villain, the victim, and that John Roberts and you, new employee, are gonna be the hero because we are building something different. So that goes back to the story telling.

Denise Thompson (46:06.261)
Great. Can people in a two-day class really make that much progress? Can you in two days become a better speaker, truly?

John DiJulius (46:17.262)
Oh yeah, I mean, like I said, one of the best things I ever took was that class that I was forced to take 30 years ago with Aveda. I thought it was so stupid. I thought it was stupid because I had no fear of getting in front of people, which I thought was the only thing you needed to speak. And even back then, you if you gave me an audience of five people, I was like, come on, are you kidding me? And I had no energy, I didn’t want to do it.

I wanted a stadium, but I realized that that is one twentieth the fear or not fear of speaking. The content, the storytelling, the structure, the icebreaker, the motivational close, the storytelling versus just data was all the other things that I didn’t know. So, you know, the way we do it is,

Day one, have to do each, it’s actually a three day course. And day one, you do each of the elements individually. So Denise, get up and do your two to three minute icebreaker. And we all go around the room and it’s like America’s Got Talent. Everyone in the room says, yeah, Denise, could have, you kind of lost me on that.

you know, kind of, you know, I’m not sure what you meant by that, and you know, that didn’t tie in. That was very good. And then, you know, you come up again after, and then you do the setting, the stage. You do all five elements individually on day one, get feedback, and then day two and three, each person gets up and does a 20 and 30 minute speech with all five elements together. And so you get to do it twice.

once individually with feedback and then once revised and they blend in. But you’re getting feedback and as you’ve known this from your own experience, when I can really see that someone’s becoming a better presenter, not only what they’re doing on stage, it’s the advice they’re giving the other presenters. And they’re saying, hey, Denise, you gave too many details or you didn’t give enough details.

John DiJulius (48:40.094)
something that they were weak at, but now they’re seeing it when they do other things. So that’s really the beauty of

Denise Thompson (48:48.627)
If there is one thing, one piece of advice you could give people that they could start working on right away to be a better speaker, what would it be?

John DiJulius (48:58.13)
It probably goes back to, you know, one, it’s not gonna be one piece. One, always write notes and quotes and I love that and put it in thing and then, you know, think about how you can work that in. Then write, write, write it out, write a blog, write, you know, for yourself, write your speech, outline what, if you were to teach anyone on whatever your expertise is, what are the five, six, eight structural points, and then just present it.

present it, present it, present it, over and over again, and they ask people for critical feedback. Thank God people were honest with me and didn’t tell that was really good. The Jack Mackey example, right? Yeah, that’s a good job. No, no, really, what could I have done? Really? Yeah, really. Would you pay for that speech? Would you pay to attend that? I think there’s two things.

you could possibly do in a presentation. One, tell the audience something they’ve never heard of before. I don’t know how much there is left of that. The second one is tell them in a way they’ve never heard it said that way.

Denise Thompson (50:17.867)
Great advice. Thank you. And if you’re interested in becoming a better speaker, please take a look at our presentation skills class. You’ll find a link to that in the show notes, or you can visit thedijuliusgroup.com under trainings, presentation skills. And that’s a wrap. Thanks, John.

John DiJulius (50:20.515)
Thank you.

John DiJulius (50:36.386)
Thank you!