Excellerate Associates

Excellerate Associates, the go-to business mentors for entrepreneurial and leadership development

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Your Presentation Process

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Picture this: you are thrilled because you have a shot at getting in front of your ideal audience.

To enroll them in your idea, you spend some time working out your content. As you deliver the presentation, you assume that you’ll figure out the rest.

You deliver your speech and are quite pleased with your presentation. You’re relieved to finish, the audience claps, and some people ask questions.

Then you wait. And wait. And wait.

You check your phone to make sure it’s working.

Confusion turns into frustration.

You simply don’t understand why you’re not getting calls because they seemed to love your message. Your time, effort, money, travel and nothing to show for it.

If you presented to an audience, but your idea is not accepted, they don’t buy into your services, or you’re not getting leads, I invite you to consider you’re leaving out important elements in the presentation process.

While presenting may seem easy, it takes more than being comfortable speaking in front of a group. There are key strategic, tactical, and developmental elements to generating a positive outcome.

From reverse engineering your presentation to engaging the audience, your presentation should be an experience that leaves your audience with value and a clear outcome. If you’re wanting to authentically connect with your audience, it takes a commitment to uniting your strategy, tactics, and developmental elements with each presentation.

The speaker who prepares will be the one relaxed and at ease. It’s this authenticity that will keep you top of mind.
What would you need to put into your next presentation so that you achieve your desired outcomes?

 

Invitation

If you’re inspired to learn the strategy, tactics, and developmental framework to deliver a magnificent presentation, join us for Speaker Lab on June 22 with feedback sessions on July 13 and 20, 2022.

More at https://www.excellerateassociates.com/speaker-lab/

As soon as you’re registered, you’ll take your human wiring assessment to understand your authentic delivery style.

Speaking Tip: Share Your Signature Story

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One of the best ways to quickly establish credibility and connect with your audience is through sharing your signature story. A good way to develop a solid connection with your audience is to share a core story or message that is an authentic expression of you.

Creating that signature story is the secret that all good presenters share. Over time, you become so good at telling your signature story that people will request you speak over and over again. My tire iron story, for example, is one that ties into many lessons, one that I’ve used for years and have become known for. I’ve had audience members who have seen me speak on many occasions and have said how that story gives them chills but also inspires them each time they hear it.

Ideas for Creating A Signature Story

Your signature story can describe great loss or even hardship and how you overcame it. As a leader, you may feel vulnerable so you have to be emotionally ready to share it. Stories that demonstrate hardship help you to connect with your audience on an emotional level. When presented with authenticity and grace, you create a circle of comfort that envelops audience members especially when they share a similar experience.

Your signature story might even come from an embarrassing situation or misunderstanding that snowballed out of control. Some of the funniest signature stories are born from the most humiliating moments and offer important learning lessons.

When choosing a story, remember to stick with personal stories. Because you’ve lived them, you can recall details and provide insights that makes your story come alive. When it is the reason you got into business, it helps develop your credibility. Your story is what makes you unique and your ideal clients or audience members will connect with you or want to work with you.

Your story becomes insightful and memorable through development and performance. What can be seen as an ordinary experience becomes an amazing story especially if you tie it into learning a life lesson, a turning point, and even overcoming adversity. When you weave your story with key points, you leave your audience connecting with you and engaged.

Winging a presentation is not a strategy. Your Signature Story is just the beginning step to connect and engage your audience.

Invitation

Creating a Signature Story that has staying power and can be used in a variety of scenarios, takes know how. The good news, is that you can elevate your speaking and presentation skills by joining the:

Speaker Lab: Create Your Signature Story and Talk

June 22, 2022 with feedback sessions on July 13 and 20.

Learn ways to:

  • Engage your audience whether you are presenting onsite or online,
  • Enroll others in your products, services, or ideas by learning how to reverse engineer every presentation,
  • Authentically inspire others to take action leaving them empowered

Register at https://www.excellerateassociates.com/speaker-lab

Define It. Design It. Market It.

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Just like your human wiring, your signature is like no other. It’s unique to you.

You may not realize it, but your company also has a signature asset that defines your approach, process, product, or model so that it is easily understood. Yet, many businesses don’t take the time to define it, design it and market it.

However, when you integrate your signature asset through your marketing, your prospects quickly understand what you do, making it easier to do business with you. You also create a higher perceived value because you can ensure its implementation.

As added benefits, you:

• Construct a foundation of content that is easily shared in your marketing.
• Easily guide the customers through the range of products and services that increases the lifetime value of each client
• Differentiate your company from all others becoming the go-to resource.

When you take your signature way and define it, design it, and market it, you elevate your company’s brand experience, credibility, and visibility.

Invitation

If you are inspired to Create Your Signature Program, join us May 19-20 at our Create Your Signature Program practicum. Register before this Friday at https://ExcellerateAssociates.com/create-your-signature-program.

Beliefs Are An Interesting Thing, Aren’t They?

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Beliefs are an interesting thing, aren’t they?

Beliefs are a state of mind in which you regard a thing to be true. It makes sense that if you regard a thing to be true, you’re more likely to take action consistent with that belief.

Some beliefs support us to open and grow, while others keep us stuck. At times, you may wonder why you’re not quite getting the results you seek even though you’re taking action. Staying stuck often stems from an unconscious belief.

Even the most seasoned and successful entrepreneurs can have a belief they don’t realize is holding them back or no longer serves them. They just know something is off.

The key is to become aware of what that belief is serving. It’s usually designed to protect us, keep us “right” or avoid pain. Sometimes it’s a matter of bringing awareness to it that’s in our blind spot and gently shifting it so that you see it, reframe it, and take action consistent with a possibility.

What Limiting Beliefs Sound Like

Some limiting beliefs are subtle or based on assumptions or conclusions, like

• “They don’t care.” I see this happen when people run up against an obstacle sometimes to justify their inaction around a goal or refusal to reframe a situation.
• “I only have a limited time for personal development away from my work week.” “I can’t possibly take off two days, a week, or more.” I hear these phrases when people have a belief around investing in their own personal development or self care.
• “If I start a business, they will come.” (A frequently seen belief when someone transitions from an employee to an entrepreneur, assuming that getting clients is requires nothing further than hanging an open-for-business shingle).
• “I’m not enough.” “I’m not doing something right.” “They underestimate me.”

Imagine if your action was aligned with any one of these limiting beliefs. If you have the belief of “they don’t care” running in the background, what do you bring into each conversation with that person you believe doesn’t care? “I can’t possibly take off two days from my work.” You will never invest in your own personal development that can drastically change how you operate in the world. “They underestimate me,” then work proving them wrong. That’s a lot of energy focused on a limiting belief rather than a positive possibility.

How Limiting Beliefs Can Develop

Here’s how a belief can develop. One of my clients had a long and successful career at a corporation. She successfully climbed the corporate ladder and got the itch to start her own business.

As an employee, she was conditioned to churn out projects in a certain way. The process she followed included having her projects reviewed by several levels, changed multiple times, and re-worked before launching it. Over time, she developed a belief that this is how you launch projects.

When the time came for her to launch her new eBook that educated her prospects on her proprietary Signature Process, she kept getting stopped before she even started. She got overwhelmed with the project saying, “it’s going to take a long time.” Underneath that notion, was her employee belief that her eBook needed to be “perfect” before launching it. She applied a belief that worked in a corporate structure in her entrepreneurial pursuit.

As an entrepreneur, if you wait until your product is “perfect”, you may never launch at all. While you want to make sure your product is a good one, too many revisions will slow you down and stop you before you get started.

I asked her, “What is possible if you launched your eBook, then improved it after you received some feedback from the people who downloaded it?” There was silence, then a breakthrough.

With this newfound awareness, she decided to keep the format of her first eBook simple. Instead of waiting to launch a “perfect” edition, she decided to get feedback from early adopters and invite their feedback through her launch process, helping her to create an improved offering in future editions.

While her employee-minded belief worked to navigate the corporate environment, she now has access to a new entrepreneurial belief to empower her to accelerate her results. Instead of waiting, she’s creating an eBook that invites feedback and engages her prospects.

While she’s building a following, she’s simultaneously building a better product and filling her prospect pipeline. Beliefs are an interesting thing, aren’t they?

Invitation

If you are inspired to differentiate your company from all others who do similar work, I invite you to Create Your Signature Program on May 19-20, 2022.

 

The Psychology in Creating a Highly-Productive Work Environment

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There’s a meme going around social media that has a crayon looking at the pencil and says to itself, “I’m not sharp enough.” The pencil looks at the crayon and says to itself, “I’m not colorful enough.”

I often wonder what the world would look like if, instead of comparing, we focused on our own super powers. This meme reminded me of a training session on human wiring that I led many years ago for one of my corporate clients.

There was a women who worked in Accounting who was drained at the end of the day. You see, her desk was located right next to the Sales Department. The sales people preferred face-to-face communication and would interrupt her during the day thinking they were being social. This was frustrating for her and she compared herself to them wondering what was wrong that she wanted it quiet to focus on her work.

When I reviewed the innate needs of the each human wiring element, she had an ah ha moment. She even said, “Wow, there’s nothing wrong with me.” All the time she wondered why the sales team seemed motivated yet she had the opposite reaction to face-to-face interactions.

Her employer also had an ah ha moment. They realized to maximize productivity, an office move would be the best solution. The woman in Accounting was thrilled to have her office moved so that she could get her innate motivators of focused quiet time met each and every day.

Even the smallest changes in how you structure your work environment, can make the biggest difference in your motivation and productivity. The smallest changes in how you manage based on that person’s human wiring can also make the biggest difference in workforce engagement.

If you are inspired to learn proven strategies to transform your work environment, improve your leadership effectiveness, and understand the environment in which you best thrive, register by this Friday, March 25 for:

Wired to Win! Your Path to Passion, Purpose, and Prosperity
March 31 & April 1, 2022

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