We're almost ready to start giving a presentation. But how do you start a presentation? This always feels awkward for so many people. My clients asked TJ, what's the best way to start a presentation? Should it be with a joke or a story? Don't put pressure on yourself to be extra funny.

If you're not a stand up comedian. You don't have to be overly dramatic. All you really have to do is one thing a little different from most speakers. Most speakers start off with. Good morning. My name is this.

My title is this today, I'm going to talk about X, Y and Z and blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. And everyone is saying this person hasn't really started yet. Let me check my email. Oh, there's a Groupon. That's what you don't want to do. All you really have to do is say something interesting to your audience.

Everyone's expecting you to talk about yourself. At that point, nobody cares about you just say something interesting and useful to your audience, you'd go back to the very first lecture in this course. And you'll notice right out of the gate, what did I do? I gave you three quick wins three quick tips on how you can be better with your presentation skills because I wanted to hook you, I wanted to show you, you're going to get value right away, you're not going to have to go through all the weeds and wait and dig and dig and dig before I give you value. I wanted to give you value right out of the gate. I didn't start off by Well, let me tell you about my illustrious 30 year career as a presentation coach and my number one USA Today best selling book secret to foolproof presentations, and presidents and prime ministers and Nobel Peace Prize winners.

I didn't start with any of that. Because frankly, I didn't think you cared at that point. Why should you here Here to build your presentation skills. So that's why I started off talking about three quick tips on how to improve your presentation skills. Now, I didn't get a chance to meet all of you individually. But I know by the basis of you having signed up paid for this course on presentation skills, you're interested in presentation skills, you're going to have to make some assumptions about your audience.

For me, it was pretty easy assumption for your audience, many times you can make a similar assumption about what is going to be most interesting to them. And just start with a story can be a great way of doing a question. Stating something that might get their attention doesn't have to be needlessly provocative. Basically, anything other than Good morning I'm happy to be here, blah, blah, blah, me, me, me, me, me. Talk about the audience. When you start do that.

And they'll pay attention To your next point and your next point and the next point