5: Doomsday!

After all this practicing, the day is finally there. The day that you can take the stage and share your story with the world!!! Well… A part of it at least…

Chances are that your mind will start to play tricks on you and make you doubt everything you did so far and bring fears you thought you had under control. No worries, this is normal. As said before, over 75% of people are nervous of speaking in public and the other 25% is probably lying about it, but again, this doesn’t help you. This chapter will first go into these last-minute jitters, followed by some additional tips to help you get the most out of this experience!

Don't feel like reading? Check out the video at the bottom of this article!

Prepare for the day

In the morning, just before you head out to the location where you will be giving your presentation, there are a few things to remember. Most of these things I take care of a day in advance already, just in case something is missing or not working, making sure I have time to fix things before they add any stress to my already nerve-racking day.

First of all, dress the part. Get your clothing ready, ironed and all. The events I speak at are not black-tie events, so I can wear pretty much my everyday clothing. I will make sure I wear clean clothing and I always brush up my shoes a bit. Most likely there will be pictures, so at least make yourself presentable.

Tech Check is another thing that I do a day in advance. I make sure my laptop is working, fully charged and that I have a charger with me in my bag. If I have slides, I will make sure I have the correct version on my desktop for quick access and close all other apps, including turning off my notification. The same counts for my presentation clicker. I always have it with me, just in case, together with a set of spare batteries to be sure. Another very important thing is to make sure you have all the needed connections available and since I have a MacBook with USB-C connections only, this means taking a USB dongle with me as well.

Controlling your jitters

Again, being nervous is absolutely normal and there are several ways of keeping these under control.

The first thing that really helps me is by being early to the event. There is nothing more stressful than being rushed, so try to eliminate this by being early. This gives you time to do a few things that will help, and it also helps the host or organizer to not get stressed. Good to know is that events are often scheduled to the minute and for an organizer to know that their speakers are in time, will really help them in keeping their cortisol levels down. Being early is also good to enable you to do something that always seems to help me, go on stage before there is an audience. Get familiar with the stage and audience setup. Check where the audience is sitting, how the technology is organized and where you should be standing. Better to have this figured out ahead of time, compared to being surprised once you get on stage to present.

In case it is a bigger event, there is a good chance that there will be supporting staff, like sound people and photographers. If you want to have a nice picture of yourself on stage, talk to the photographer and ask if he can share a nice one with you. In general, they will love to do so when you are new to speaking. Just make sure you tag them if you share the picture on social media and give them the credit they deserve. When it comes to the people of the sound, they have a lot of experience with speakers, so talk to them. They might surprise you with some tips and tricks that helped other presenters as well.

I strongly advise against practicing your full slides again on the day itself unless you have a few hours to spent. Instead, focus on getting your opening and your goal into your head. You probably recognize that beginning something is pretty hard to do but soon after you will be flying through it? This happens with presenting as well. If you can get yourself started and you practiced your story well enough, you will just fly through it, so having your opening stuck in your head you will smoothen your startup and the rest will follow. If possible, practice your opening on stage without audience. Don’t worry about the people that work at the event, they are used to this.

Make sure you go to the toilet about 30 minutes before going on stage, even if you think you don’t have to. Nothing is worse than having to worry about that part of life if you are about to go on stage. Something I have never heard in any training or from any coach, if you are afraid of leakage, take some sanitary papers with you. For the guys among us, try them out a few times before to get used to the feeling and put your pride aside. Women know where to get them, probably have them in their purse, but for you guys, just go to the drugstore and get some.

I always experience restless legs just before going on stage and to cope with these, I will stand up a few minutes before I need to go on stage. This also helps me with my biggest fear, which is falling over due to legs that stop working while going on stage. I often combine this with getting my bottle of water and taking one last zip to water down my throat. If you have a bottle of water, don’t fear taking it with you on stage. It is really normal to get a dry mouth while talking, so good to have your throat moist with you. Just put it on the floor in front of you or on the table if there is one.

The last thing I would like to share is a little breathing exercise. No worries, it is not one of those woozy exercises. I hate those myself. Instead, it is very simple and very fast. For me it works best if I look up a bit, but other say they rather tilt their head down and close their eyes. Try it for yourself and see what works for you. What I do is simple. Take a normal breath, nothing special here. Follow it up with another, slightly slower breath and repeat that one more time, again a bit slower. Repeat as often as needed.

Just do it!

This is all that I can share with you to make it as smooth as possible, but now it is time to get on stage and just do it.

Try not to worry too much about stuttering, filler words and even forgetting your lines. It is your first time, so you are allowed to make mistakes. You didn’t walk at birth either, you learned it by falling and getting up again. Your audience will understand, and from experience I can say that they will respect you for taking on this challenge for the very first time.

For now, try to focus on the main items. Nail your opening, your story will follow on its own. Try to address your goals and try not to talk to fast. Anything else from this book that you are able to mix in are extra points but can be added next time as well.

Also, try to enjoy. Especially the applause at the end, you deserved it!

But don’t do this!

Making mistakes is not bad, just learn from them so you can do better next time, but there are a few things I want to point out to protect you from annoying your audience.

First of all, you are talking to your audience, so look at them. In general, if you have slides, these will be projected on a screen behind you, and you will get the urge to look at them. Try to ignore these urges. Doing it once or twice is ok, but keep it as short as possible. If you do not look at your audience, chances are good that they will not look at you either anymore. In short, you will lose them!

Another item to simply not do, and I mean NEVER DO THIS. Is using the laser pointer on your presentation clicker. Seriously, don’t do this unless you have a very nasty audience, and you want to irritate the [*beep*] out of them. Next to being irritating, to aim your laser at the right spot on your slides, you will need to look away from your audience, which we just discussed, is not a good thing. On top of this, if you need a laser light to point out some detail on your slide, maybe your slide wasn’t clear enough, which simply means you need to clean that stuff up. If there is a detail so important to point it out with a laser light, maybe it deserves a slide on its own or a larger space on the slide it is on now.

Where to go next?

Next up is the last and final step, which you can read all about in the article After the Show!

Check out the video for this article!