Hooks

So we’ve gone through the dos and don’ts of giving a presentation.

The last point I shared thing you should do is to engage the audience at the beginning with a hook.

Why am I doing this with my finger.

Because this is a hook.

This is a hook this shape.

We use it when we go fishing.

We use it when we hang up our clothes.

We can imagine grabbing the audience with that right at the beginning and making them focus on us.

We use a hook to attract the attention of the audience at the beginning of a presentation.

Pretty simple.

But how do we do that.

What kind of hooks are there.

Well there are many but I want to talk about three and these three are very easy to do.

Very easy.

And I will teach you how to do them now.

OK.

Start with a rhetorical question.

What is a rhetorical question.

A rhetorical question is a question that doesn’t need to be answered.

Doesn’t need to be answered.

That’s a rhetorical question.

Why would we use a rhetorical question.

I see that’s a rhetorical question I asked.

Why would we use a rhetorical question.

Did you watching this go Oh I know.

No you didn’t.

But you might have been thinking about the answer.

That is why we use rhetorical questions.

Have you ever wondered why people use rhetorical questions.

There is another a rhetorical question gets the audience to start thinking about the topic.

It’s a great way to start a presentation.

And one really really simple honestly very simple beginning that you can use for pretty much any topic is to start with.

Have you ever.

Have you ever.

Have you ever wondered.

And then you can say something about your topic.

That’s a pretty generic one.

Pretty generic but it works.

Have you ever wondered.

Let’s say my topic is about Mars.

Have you ever wondered what it would would be like to live on Mars.

Ever wondered what it would be like to live on Mars.

Nobody in the audience needs to say oh yes yes yes.

I’ve wondered.

Hello.

Meet me.

Can I answer.

No.

It’s to get the audience to start thinking OK.

So that is one way to begin a presentation and we can do a couple others we could say have.

Have you ever wished Have you ever wished you could live 500 years.

Whatever the topic is it’s not so important what the question is.

It’s got to be pretty open.

Generally make people think.

But you can use Have you ever wished.

Have you ever wondered you’d say what’s the most what’s the most important thing.

You know that nobody taught you what’s the most important thing that you know or the most important thing you know that nobody taught you.

Now again you don’t have to answer that because you’re in a room maybe full of people.

If that’s an interview that maybe you have to answer it maybe it’s not rhetorical but you don’t have to go like this.

You should just be thinking about it.

And it’s very effective.

I’m making you consider this topic.

Now I’m going to start talking about maybe something profound that I’ve learned through my life experience deep and meaningful.

Maybe I’m going to talk about how our experiences teach us profound and meaningful things.

So this is one type.

This is one type of hook.

Let’s go on to the next.

OK.

The next type of hook is what I call making it personal.

There’s something about humanity called empathy.

And this is a kind of ability to feel how others feel especially for those who we have some real personal connection with.

For those who we actually meet face to face to be honest if you hear about something terrible happening to somebody you’ve never met or know nothing about.

You probably think well that’s sad but it might not completely ruin your day.

But when you hear about something bad that’s happened to somebody you’ve met before you will naturally probably go and can’t believe that happened.

And it might ruin your day.

What’s the difference.

Well there’s a connection there.

There’s a natural empathy that comes out more strongly when we see people face to face when we actually know people.

We have a real connection with them.

So if there’s a person there in front of me giving a presentation I naturally want to be connected with them.

And the more they talk about themselves maybe the more empathy I will have with them.

If they tell me why they care about a topic it’s almost like they’re taking me with them because I’m interested in them right.

Because of empathy and they explain why they’re interested in this topic.

Now I’m interested in the topic kind of through them.

It’s a weird thing but if you watch a lot of presentations especially good presentations you’ll see that you’ll see the person the presenter first share a little story a tiny little story to explain a little bit of background o you NDE to talk a little bit about why they care about that thing maybe or talk about how they first got interested in that.

Why are they’re passionate about this topic that they’re sharing.

Basically basically here are some ways we can do that.

Well when I was about 7 when I was about 7 OK.

And maybe we’re talking about maybe my presentation is about Mars like I said before when I was about 7 my father took me outside and I saw that he had brought a telescope home.

Wow.

A telescope a telescope is something you use to see far away.

And he said Son look through this.

And I did.

And I saw a little blue orange disk and I couldn’t believe that with my own eyes I could see another planet.

I could even see little little lines on the surface of the planet.

And from that point I’ve been fascinated by Mars had been fascinated by the idea of going there.

Do you care already.

Do you feel like wow I could be interested in Mars now because it’s kind of happening through me right now.

One reason is because humans are naturally interested in stories but the other is because because of empathy here are some other ways we could we could begin.

Let me tell you.

Let me tell you about how I first got involved with finance finance is a very boring field so maybe I’m going to talk about finance and I tell you a little story about how I first got interested in this and why it’s important to me this field about money.

Some people some people think it’s boring.

Some people think it’s interesting.

I think it can be interesting.

But if we first care about the story then we’ll maybe start caring about finance maybe maybe about three years ago I went I went on a trip to Ethiopia and on that trip blah blah blah something happened.

And that’s the thing that maybe got me started on this big project that I’m doing whatever it happens to be.

OK.

So I start a little story.

This is a great way to connect with your audience.

This is type 2.

When it comes to making hooks.

Now let’s go on and talk about the last type of hook.

So the last type of hook is also a way to interact with the audience.

And I want to sort of connect these two points together.

I said I was going to talk about how you could interact with the audience and one way to do that is also a way to do a hook.

This is to get a show of hands.

This is a little bit of what we would call audience participation.

Audience Power Dissipation you want to get the audience to do something.

And by doing that by getting them to do something they’re now part of your presentation.

They’re now with you.

They’re a piece of it.

Before it was just you standing up there giving the presentation.

Now it’s you and them together in a way because they’ve done something to contribute to it and they feel now a little bit maybe a little bit responsible for it.

Oh I’m part of this thing.

So how can we get people to put their hands up.

Well we can just say hands up after a question for example who here doesn’t own a smartphone.

Hands up hands.

Hands up.

Who doesn’t own a smartphone.

Hands up.

This is not rhetorical.

This is a real question.

But I want the person who doesn’t have one to put their hand up.

And so maybe I don’t know if it’s an audience of 200 people one or two people might not have a smartphone maybe.

So two people put their hands up and I say you should always say something about the result because you have the best perspective or view of the audience.

I mean that physically I mean physically from where you’re standing you can see the audience better than anyone else.

So you have the best perspective.

OK.

So we could say just by show of hands who here doesn’t have a smartphone.

Two people put their hands up.

Oh that’s what I thought.

That’s what I thought to people about to.

So my guess was about right.

I guessed most people would not put their hands up because most people have a smartphone.

OK.

So you should report the results if it’s about 50 percent you can say OK about about half of you half of you about half of you don’t.

OK just by a show of hands.

This is another expression just by a show of hands who here I know that doesn’t look like it but that’s an R there who here would like to live to be more than 100 who here would like to live to be more than a hundred.

Oh wow.

OK.

About a third of you would like to live to be more than 100.

OK.

So we can judge the results a little bit.

Give everybody a feeling for their level of participation and then go on and talk about the actual thing whatever it is we’re going to talk about.

So these are the three types of hooks that I think are the most useful and probably are the most common.

Making it personal.

Asking for a show of hands and asking a rhetorical question if you know how to use these well you can always get your presentation.

Started off the right way.