Table of Contents
Praise for Pretty Good Presentation
TJ Walker takes the fear factor out of speaking to the media and live audiences and clearly explains the secrets of great communicators like Reagan and Clinton. The best part is, what he teaches you really works when you put it to practice.
Hakan Lindskog
TimeLife
TJs latest book is chock full of helpful hints that will help anyone who reads it!
David Winters
Wintergreen Funds
TJ Walker is the leading media trainer in the world.
Stu Miller
Producer, Viacom TV
TJ Walkers single-minded devotion to presentation training has made him the #1 expert for executives seeking guidance on speaking to the public and media.
Bob Bowdon
Anchor/Reporter, Bloomberg TV
Over the years Ive been a fan of TJ Walker and his rigorous approach to media training. TJ is clearly a veteran of the broadcast and print interview world and his tips are well worth reading. I know Ive learned some new strategies.
Edward Aloysius Moed
Peppercom, Inc.
TJ Walker was able to help my entire team operate more efficiently [and] maximize their message penetration to their audience.
Michael Gallant
EMC
To Leah Lagos, who accepted my pretty good
marriage proposal presentation.
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
I would like to acknowledge my mother Patti for all she did to nurture, aid, and promote my life and career over her lifetime. She died unexpectedly in March 2010, and I will forever remember the fantastic thank you speech she delivered to family and friends at her 75th birthday party just months before her death. She was my number one fan and supporter for 47 years and will be sorely missed by me and everyone who knew her.
Id also like to thank all of the day-in and day-out contributions from my team at Media Training Worldwide and TJ Walker Speaking: Kris Gentile, Mike Bako and Jennifer Wallerstein. They turn work into fun each day and together we help the world speak a little better.
My friends who are always there for me, thanks. Rich Gladstone, Joe McHugh, and Bob Bowdon, you have put up with me for decades and there is no reprieve in sight.
Thanks also to my fiance and soon-to-be wife Dr. Leah Lagos for all of her time, love and joy you bring to my life.
INTRODUCTION HOW TO GIVE A PRETTY GOOD PUBLICATION
Shortly after my book TJ Walkers Secret to Foolproof Presentations went to number one on the USA Today bestseller list, I received a call from an editor. Hey TJ, congrats on the book; but what about all the people who dont want to give a Foolproof Presentation?
What on earth did that mean? I responded, What?
She responded, Well, your book talks about how to give a foolproof presentation; and it seems like all the books on speaking want to show readers how to get a standing ovation, give an exceptional presentation, or an insanely great presentation. What about the 99 percent of the world who dont want to be the next Tony Robbins? What about the people who either dont like giving presentations or fear public speaking and just want to get through the darn thing? What about all the people who just want to give a pretty good presentation, but not one that will set the world on fire? Dont they have a right to get what they want?
And thats how this book was born.
If you want to become the next Bill Clinton, Ronald Reagan, Barack Obama, or Winston Churchill, then this book is not for you (because there are already a gazillion books written for you). If there is nothing you would rather do than deliver a PowerPoint to 1,000 people, give a toast to a wedding party of 500, or do a live interview on CNN, then this book is not for you (although I understand where youre coming from, because youre just like me). This book is written for normal peopleand I readily admit Im not one. I was the nerdy, dweeby junior high school student council president who loved giving speeches in front of 1,200 students at age 13.
Im not going to waste your time giving you lengthy and difficult exercises designed to make you the next king of the motivational speaking circuit, as seen on late night infomercials. Instead, Im going to give you the fastest, shortest, simplest ways of giving a pretty good presentation. Period.
I work with thousands of businesspeople, political leaders, United Nations officials, and beauty queens from six continents every year; and they have varying skills and goals when it comes to their speaking abilities. Everything Im going to share with you is based on real-world experience helping people just like you, most of whom were sent to my presentation workshops reluctantly, usually by a boss who believed in them and wanted to help them gain skills needed to advance to the next part of their careers.
While there are a million different kinds of speakers and speaking situations in the world, I boil everything down into three main categories. First, there are the truly awful speakers who do boring data dumps. No one in the audience remembers anything from the message or the speaker other than that the speaker was boring and perhaps seemed nervous. This is the widest variety of all presenters in the world.
Second, there is the category of truly outstanding speakers. Whether it is someone on the international level like a Steve Jobs in business or Tony Blair in politics, these people have the ability to make any presentation truly memorable, engaging, interesting, and useful, and convey confidence, warmth, and likeability in the process. At the local level, your own mayor or head of the chamber of commerce may be like this. This is a small group of people, typically less than 1 percent of all speakers.
There is also a third group of people. These individuals are able to speak much better than the first group, but not nearly as well as the second group. They come across as professional, competent, and understandable, and can get to their points in a concise manner and have their points remembered. No one was ever moved to tears after listening to someone in this third group give a presentation; no one ever fell asleep while they were presenting, either. Members of this third group dont spend days preparing and rehearsing their speech the way Ronald Reagan did or the way Steve Jobs does, because they have too many other demands on their time at work and home. Giving a spellbinding speech simply isnt a top priority in their life. However, they are willing to spend anywhere from five minutes to one hour preparing their speeches; they know they have to in order to get what they want done for their career and in life. They want to eliminate the pain of giving an awful presentation, and avoid having to spend dozens of hours rehearsing. Members of this third group simply want to give a pretty good presentationand they do it, every time.
If you want to be a member of the third groupthe category of speakers who can give a pretty good presentationthen this book is for you. I promise that if you follow the simple and straightforward lessons I have laid out for you, you will consistently be a pretty good presenter. You will never fail to get a promotion or win a new client just because your presentation skills are considered substandard. You will never have to spend another sleepless night before a big speech worrying that you will bomb, because you will know that it will no longer be possible for you to bomb.
