Be yourself!

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

This is a very short, but probably the most important article I will ever write and you will ever read! Be yourself!

If you read my blog post "My first presentation...", you know that my first experience ended up with me deleting my complete presentation the evening before I needed to go on stage. Some might call this the stupidest thing I could have done, but I did it with good reasons!

I asked my coworkers for advice and this changed my storyline and the words I was going to use in a way that it was not my story anymore and there were words in there I never heard about before. In short, it was not MY story anymore.

Out of all the tips and tricks I received, and believe me, there were 100's of them... There is 1 tip I ignored while that was the most valuable one. Be yourself...

Over the years, I did many more presentations and each presentation I did, I started to make it more and more my own presentation and my own story and for the last few years, I am simply being myself.

I stumble upon my words, I tend to forget my planned text and add stuff I didn't prepare for and I seem to be a bit nervous when on stage. What strengthens the feeling of being nervous is that I make some jokes about it as well and call out my mistakes, making a bit of a fool out of myself and yet, year after year, my presentations get the best scores. There are other presenters on our events as well, practiced to the bone! Perfect voice and gesture usage, slick slidedecks with the coolest transitions and perfect stories, and yet, that guy that is loosing his text or is a bit nervous runs off with the first price and there is only one reason for that. I am being myself.

Recently I have been diving into this and asking people around me why they feel that the presenters like me are the better ones and the answers come down to simply "they are being themselves". Fun to watch with little jokes and honesty in there and they feel like there is an actual human standing on stage, not a fully trained sales person or robot.

So again, whatever you do and whatever you say, just make sure it is you who is on that stage and it is your story you are telling... Be yourself!

Check out the video about this article!