The first minute of a presentation should bring the room onto the same page or, at the very least, establish something more interesting than doomscrolling through Twitter. You can establish a few things in the first minute of any presentation.

1. Who you are and why you are there.
2. The dynamic that establishes that the audience is the customer – establish gratitude and why they are there (and will get out of it) – Note: This dynamic should remain throughout the presentation
3. Set the baseline and context for the remaining part of the presentation.

If you want to brush up on your presentation skills, I highly recommend the following:

• The Secret Structure of Great Talks by Nancy Duarte/TedX; Type: Video
• Presentation Zen by Garr Reynolds; Type: Video
• Think Faster, Talk Smarter by Matt Abrahams; Type Book
• Resonate: Present Visual Stories that Transform Audiences by Nancy Duarte; Type: Book
• What’s Your Story? by Craig Wortman; Type: Book

There are so many presentation mistakes that can happen. In my experience, I had the slides on an auto-timer somehow (flipping one slide to the next every 15 seconds), rendering my clicker thingy useless, and it felt like I was wrestling a bear on stage. My talk track and slides were out of sync the entire presentation. At one point, I even said, “This is just like my nightmare last night…(looked down)…except I have clothes on…so that’s good.” So believe me when I say this: if you present – know your content because you never know what can happen. Do not read your slides, and don’t make people read lengthy ones, either. If you need help, please pick up any book from Garr Reynolds or Nancy Duarte.

Learning: If you are assigned to present to others (and need a slide deck), know your slides and content well enough not to read off them.

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Does this resonate with you? Have you ever fallen asleep at a presentation (or wish you had)? If so, we’d love to hear from you.