How To Prepare For A Speech Like A Top 1% CEO

You have a presentation or speech coming up and you don't want to be nervous. You want to do your best. You're about to learn a step-by-step process that I guide my own clients through to make sure when they present, when they're on stage, they do their best. And by the way, if you don't know who I am, my name is Yaser Khan. I've coached more than 30,000 leaders across the world to be better communicators. Now, this is my exact process. Let's say you have about two weeks to your next presentation. The first thing that I will do is I will not wait till the night before. What I will do is I will prepare the material. So this could be a slide deck. This could be what you actually want to say. Now in about 70% of the speeches that my clients do, they actually have no slides. meaning they're just up on stage and they deliver a speech or they're speaking off the top of their head. So I have to prepare them for that. But in the 30% of cases where you do have slides, this would be the period where you prepare those slides. What's going on there? What do we say? Okay. So what you would do first a very rough draft. Throw everything on the slides. Put it on there. Whatever bullet points you want. It doesn't have to look pretty. What you don't want to do is put things on the slide and immediately start polishing it up. Don't do it. Leave it in a very rough form. This is going to be your rough draft. Okay. So now you have either a document. This could be a written document. It could be a Google doc. Whatever you prefer. I always tell my clients to write it down. Something about writing it down with your hands. It just makes it easier to remember. or you can go to Google Docs and you can prepare all of your slide information, whichever type of presentation you have. So, first you put all the material together. Now, what people typically do, they will do this the night before the presentation and the next day they'll just presented, which is why the slides look terrible. They have no idea what they're saying. Remember, when you are preparing the material, you're preparing it with a logical, constructive mind, right? You're not doing it with a creative

mind. What you are going to do now, this is step two. You are now going to brainstorm out loud. What do I mean brainstorm out loud? Typically, when you will write your speech or structure your speech, you will write it and it sounds like written word. Which is why you hear a lot of people when they present on stage or when they deliver a speech, it doesn't sound conversational, it sounds performative, it sounds like they memorized written word and now they're saying it off the top of their head. So you want to brainstorm out loud. So let's say you have slide one, slide two, slide three, slide four, slide five, slide six, slide seven. I don't know why we got a triangle in there, but let's just suppose that's the case. All right. What you are going to do is just in this form, you're going to flip through your presentation and you will say it out loud. So [snorts] today we will talk about XYZ. Here's the agenda. Point number one, point number two. You're just going to say it and fully expect that it's not going to sound good. You're going to sound like you're tumbling and finding your words because you don't quite know your sequence, right? So you are rehearsing while you do it. But here's the thing. As you say the words out loud, what is going to happen is you're going to think, you know what, slide number three should come after slide number six. This doesn't really fit where it is now. I should probably change that. Or the way I said slide number six, why am I erasing all this random? Just go with me here. The way I'm saying slide number six, this doesn't sound particularly good. I should change this and change the wordings behind it. So the more times you say it out loud, you will start brainstorming and you will start editing it. So you don't want to edit the document directly. You want to prepare the draft. Then you want to say the words out loud and in saying the words out loud, you will then know what to go back to the slides, document, what to change. You see what I'm saying? So, you want to brainstorm it out loud. Hear how it sounds. Feel the transitions. Does this make sense when it goes to here to here? Do I know the right words to go from 3 to point 4? Maybe this sequence does not really make sense. So, you say it out loud and you're going to find the right sequence, the right words. And then you go back

and you edit the rough draft. So, you do this one time, two time, three time. What's going to happen? And this is very fascinating. While you are brainstorming out loud and you're editing it, you're going to do two things at the same time. One, you are going to come up with a polished draft because you have said the words out loud. You have found the mistakes. weird transitions and then you can go back and fix them. And at the same time, because you've said the words out loud, you've also rehearsed. So in this process, you've gotten familiar with your material. your mind has gotten used to the material. You have fed your mind everything you're going to say. Because if you just have a script and you're looking at the script for 6 days, your mind and your mouth is not familiar with saying those words out loud. But as you're brainstorming, you say those words out loud every single day. Your mind gets more and more comfortable and becomes second nature to you. So you this is how you can speed up how quickly you prepare for a presentation. So, at this point, you'll have a polished draft. This could be a document or slide deck. Or for many of my clients, it's neither. They'll have three bullet points and they're just going to say the bullet points over and over again, and they'll just find actually, yeah, in point number one, when I said it, it didn't quite land. Let me change the word and do it like this. or I have to say this before I go into this. So, for example, a lot of my clients, they have trouble transitioning from point to point. So, they'll talk about point one, blah blah blah. Now, let's talk about blah blah. And it'll feel a little awkward. So, I tell them usually wrap up point number one. So, now that you learn how to do X by doing ABC so that you can do XYZ, what about Y? How do you do that? Well, you're going to learn about that next. Now, you transition. So, all of these things you will realize when you say it out loud. Hey, how do I transition from this point to that point? Do these two stories connect? Did this message land? All of that happens when you say the words out loud. So, at this point, all of this will typically, depending on how dedicated my client is and how soon their presentation is, this will typically take about a week. So we have about a week from the

presentation. Okay, we have a close to a final version of our presentation. Now we've got the preparation part done. The preparation meaning all the material is done. Now we need to go into practice. Two very different things. Preparation, put the material together. Practice, say the material out loud. Most people will do a little bit of this. They will never do this. We need practice. Just like when you see a Broadway show, they have done that a hund,000 times. Just when you go and see a seasoned stand-up comedian, they've done it a hundred times. When you go and you want to deliver your best, you can't just show up and wing it. Yes, you can, but you just have no proof that you can do a good job. And especially if you were someone who struggles with public speaking anxiety, you're not quite sure if you're going to do well. Practice will give you proof. I have done it before, therefore I can do it again. If you have never done that presentation before, why will your mind believe you can do it again? Because we're often looking for certainty. How likely is this outcome possible? So if you practice before and you did good in practice, now you know you can do good when it actually counts as well. So this is how I would

typically get a client to practice every single day. Their only job, let's imagine the presentation is about I'm going to give you two different examples. Let's imagine the presentation is 30 minutes and the presentation is 10 minutes. Okay? Because 30 minutes cognitively it takes a lot out of you to say all 30 minutes out loud. It's a lot of time. We will break it into three points. Let's say it's point A, B, C. We're going to practice this day one and then take a break for about three hours. Go about your workday, do other things. After lunch, try point B, go about your day, do other things. And then in the evening before you go to bed, just say point C out loud. So this is blocks of 10 minutes. This way you can practice them individually so you remember each section inside out. A lot of people when they're rehearsing, they will only practice the beginning and the moment they get into the middle, that part is not very well rehearsed. So, you want to divide it into 10-minute blocks. If your speech is just 10 minutes, it's not a very long presentation, then you can just do one, two, three takes a day. So, let's say you practice it three times a day, start to finish, the next day, day. By the time you get to your presentation, you said the words out loud 5, 10, 15 times, you have the confidence. I've done this before. I'll do it again. So, this is what you're doing one week or however many days leading up to your presentation. The last few days are not for changing anything. Okay? Very few of my clients, if there's a tiny little tweak you have to make on the slide, if you have to change a title here or there, change an image that's not going to derail the entire presentation. Yes, you can make those changes, but don't make any big structural changes. changes that you have to remember the sequence again because you've rehearsed it a certain way and if you change it last minute, the risk is simply too high. Believe me, I've made that mistake many, many times. So, now you've prepared. You said the words out loud. So far, we have put a rough draft

together. We've brainstormed out loud. Then we've come up with a polished version of either slides, it's in our head, or a document. And then we go from preparation to practice. Now, it's either the night before or the morning off. So, there's something magical about sleep. I recommend the night before you at least do the opening and the closing of your talk. because if you can just get your opening down, that'll give you momentum for the rest of your presentation because usually we're most nervous at the very start. If you just know, hey, I'm going to start my presentation. I know the first five minutes inside out, you will naturally know the next few minutes as well. So night before you practice the parts that you also feel most unsure of. Practice parts most unsure of. There's something about you practice and you're kind of not polished and you sleep and the next day when you wake up your brain has made those connections in your mind and you're better the next day. A lot like when you go to the gym, you lift heavy weights, by the end of it, you're tired, you don't feel strong, then you sleep, you eat healthy, and the next day your body is stronger. Similarly, every time you practice and sleep and practice and sleep, your mind gets better and better. This is why the more time you have between your rehearsal and your practice and the presentation, the better you're going to do. So, this is the night before. Then is the morning off. This is the part many people miss and

it's it I cannot stress how important this is. Imagine a professional athlete, a professional tennis player. They practice all day. That's what they do. That's their career, right? But the next day when they're going to play their match, do they just step on the court and immediately start playing the match or do they warm up in the back first? court first? They do, right? So, you have to get your brain, your body to be warmed up into the material. Never go in cold. What does this mean? Never go and speak your presentation out loud without first warming up on the day because your brain needs to be tuned. It needs to be warmed up. I can't tell you how many times I prepared for weeks and the morning of I couldn't rehearse and the words just came out jumbled because I wasn't warmed up and it felt like I forgot the English language that morning. So, at least get one last take out of the way. If you don't have time to do the entire presentation, especially if it's a 60-minute presentation, you don't have to do the whole thing. Otherwise, you'll get too tired when it actually comes time. Just practice the beginning and the end. That's it. If you can just do that, it'll give you confidence and you your brain will automatically know the rest of it because you practiced it so many times before. This is a crucial part. Do not forget. And most importantly, do not change anything. At this point, I'm going to give you an example of how all of this comes together real quick. A real example. So, first you prepare the material. Then you brainstorm it out loud. You don't just keep editing your slides and your Google doc all day every day. You then as you're rehearsing it out loud, you find out what to change and what to edit. You then go and you come up with a polished finalized version. Then you go from preparation to practice, meaning you say the words out loud. The night before, if you have time, try to get the beginning and ending or the parts that you struggle with the most. and the morning off, make sure to get a warm-up done. So, to give you a quick story, for a recent conference, I was training many

of the speakers who were about to introduce speakers who were sharing stories that day. And this one woman I was working with, she is the most confident person you will meet, just a sincere, genuine individual, no lack of confidence, but she hasn't done that many public speaking engagements. And for that specific conference, there were 400 to 500 people there. So what we did was about I want to say four weeks before the conference we first met and we ideiated. So we said okay what is the actual material? And she came up with a story. She wanted to tell a story of where she started her business and where she ended up now. So she said okay what should I say? I said hey let let's just get the story out there. just tell me the story right now. Instead of us brainstorming, let me just hear it. In other words, I'm getting her to say the words out loud. Brainstorm it out loud. So, she told me a story and it was a very personal, emotional story. And as she's telling it, I could tell it's near and dear to her heart. So, I asked her, hey, do you feel like you can emotionally handle the story? And this is also a very important part. We're going to come back to that. And she said, yes, I've told the story many times. I can do it. No problem. Okay, great. So, we get the story out loud and we realize we're over time obviously because it's the first time she's saying the story. It's not quite structured. We're going into irrelevant details. Now, we know, cut this part, cut that part, include this part, turn this into dialogue. Instead of saying it like a report, say it like a story. So, I give her feedback on that. Then, for the next week, she works on that story. And when we meet, she delivers it to me as if she's on stage. So I literally on Zoom because we're not in person, the event is on in person. I say, "Okay, please welcome blank. " And then she comes on to the screen. She goes into a presentation. She's standing while she does it. She wants to replicate it as close to the actual situation as possible. She goes to the presentation. I give her some feedback. So I said, "Hey, as you're presenting, I love how the story has come together. I feel like you're going really fast. " And when you're going really fast on Zoom, when you're on stage in front of 500 people, you're going to get even more nervous. So, I want you to go extra slow in preparation. So, by the time you're on stage, you're so slow that even with the adrenaline kicking in, when you go a little faster, you end up exactly where you need to be. So, we practice going extra slow. Now, forward a couple of weeks. I'm training her and many of the other speakers at the event. The day of the event, she's about to step on stage in about two hours. She said, "Yaser, I'm feeling really nervous. Should I take my notes with me? Should I try to memorize it in these next two hours? " And I know what's happening in her brain is not sure she'll be able to perform. So

her brain is looking for certainty. What can I guarantee? What can I do to guarantee that I can say these words out this way? This is very common. people who were nervous or they feel pressure. They throw all of the learnings out the window because they don't trust themselves in the final moments to deliver the material. So, they say, "Oh, I'll just take some notes or I'll just memorize it right now so I can say it the right way. " But I know when they do that, it distracts them. They focus too much on saying the word a certain way, and now it's becoming a performance. And when they're on stage, they're not present with the audience. They're thinking, "Can I say what I memorized? Can I say what was in my notes? And that doesn't make for a good presentation. What I need them to do is trust their practice. So I said, "No, you're not going to use any notes. You know the material well enough. What you and I will do. We're going to grab a hole. We're going to go there. You're going to say the material in front of me and you are going to once again warm up. warm up your material. Why? Because if you said it just now and you said it great and you relax, then you can trust, hey, I can do it again. So what I had her do, I sat down, she said the entire thing once and I said, hey, material sounds good. Going a bit too fast. Slow it down. Slow the material down. And then she slowed down. She continues talking. And then I noticed that her feet are crossed as she's presenting. So I said, "Hey, when you present, just make sure your feet are not crossing. continue slowing it down. It's really good. So, she did it three times and then I asked her, "How do you feel? " She said, "I'm ready. " And she felt really good. Two hours later, she stepped on stage. Not only did she slow it down, she brought the energy. She told the story, and she even said, "I I told Yaser, I might get emotional when I'm telling the story. He was right. " — Yaser helped me prep. He said, "Are you sure you should tell that story? You're not going to cry on stage and say, "No, no, I have a lot of B. I'm totally done. " — But good thing is we practiced it enough times where that the emotion was easier to manage because if we didn't practice for that, she might have burst into tears. So, she turned it into a vulnerable moment. People were there for her in the moment. She finished the presentation and before that she went into a Q& A. She's talking to the

audience. She's coaching people. All of that was unplanned, but it's because she was so comfortable in the moment. — I believe in you. I buy into you. And I want to help you make a million dollars a year. And so sometimes it has to be more than just numbers. What do you love about someone that you actually like coaching them and supporting them? — See grow. — Why do you like to see them grow? — She just ended up taking over the stage and she got this thunderous applause after her story. And afterwards she said, "Yas, how'd I do? " And I said, "Listen, you crushed it. you were unbelievable. And she said, I I'm a very good student. If you tell me to do something, I will do it. And those are the types of people I love working with. They believe in me, my ability to help them, and they believe in themselves, and they just follow the process. So, this is a quick example of if you are someone who feels the pressure before a presentation, if you feel like you were anxious before a presentation, this is step by step what you can do. Hopefully this helped you out. Let me know.