Critiques From Others

If you’ve done what I’ve asked you’ve actually rehearsed your financial presentation on video and you’ve done it to the point where you like it and you think this is how I want to come across and this is by substance this is my style.

That’s great.

I want to suggest one other thing to you.

Share this with other people on your team.

Head of Investor Relations.

CEO if you’re not the CEO.

Anyone else who has a stake in this presentation and in your message share it with him and get feedback from them.

Here’s the significant point in so many organizational structures the whole focus and what people call the presentation is the PowerPoint slide the PowerPoint slides are not the presentation you are the presentation the words out of your mouth or the presentation.

If you spend all of your time typing emailing back and forth a deck.

Trust me you’ll be up till 2:00 in the morning.

Before that 8 a.m. speech and you’ll never have once practice you’ll never get familiar with it you’ll never actually try it out.

I would firmly recommend that at some point you go from having people look at your deck to actually watching a video of you.

Now traditionally this was impossible to do it was cumbersome to hire a TV crew shoot it put it on VHS or DVR it was cumbersome these days.

Talk to your own cell phone and email it to your staff.

You can do it right away now.

Most people don’t do this.

Most people don’t like to do this but this will dramatically dramatically improve your financial presentations and help you really get the best out of all the minds in your organization.

But at some point set a deadline and it may be just 24 hours before the speech is to be given but put a deadline until people.

We’re not changing the deck anymore.

You’re going to have to now critique me.

Speaking it.

Here’s the video.

Your critiques are going to be about what I say how I say it not continuing to futz with the PowerPoint deck.

It’s hard thing to do.

Certainly if you’re a CEO you’re in a position demanding.

That’s simply the way it’s going to happen.

You might not be able to mandate a lot of things but you can decide exactly how you want to present.

And for everyone else.

Try it at least send the video.

Even if they’re still critiquing your PowerPoint send them the video of your practice speech and get feedback on that financial presentation not just the deck.