Think Bigger, Grow & Succeed Podcast

At Think Bigger, Grow and Succeed, we are interviewing professionals on the topic of seeing the bigger picture and discuss how individuals at work or in business can do this so they grow and ultimately succeed at their goals.

Think bigger, grow and succeed has discussions with experts on topics to help business owners, executives and professional individuals wanting to transform their career or business and create the life they are wanting to live. 

You can view on Youtube or listen in to this podcast on Spotify, Apple Podcasts, Anchor, Mixcloud, Google Podcasts, Amazon Music, Radio Public, Pocket Casts, CastBox , Overcast and many others. 

Questions for Think Bigger, Grow and Succeed include: 

  1. What are the pro’s and con’s of staying in your comfort zone?
  2. What are your recommendations for thinking bigger about your goals and aspirations
  3. What happens when one goes out of their comfort zone and test new approaches?
  4. What is the best way to approach achieving a goals?
  5. What does disruption bring to business ?
  6. How important is it to keep connected & building connections during this time of uncertainty?
  7. What do businesses need to do to adjust and move forward
  8. Business models – how are these designed and do they need to change with disruption?

Series 3 – Moving forward and achieving aspirations

 

Series 2 – Moving Forward after Disruption

Series 1 – Getting out of your Comfort Zone! 

Career Advancement

 

 

Career Advancement is important. Being a valued and able to perform at your highest level delivers recognition, along with a financial reward.

The issue is, if you are feeling you lack social skills and don’t have the confidence to speak up in meetings and simply in conversations, you can be left behind. Lack of confidence impacts in so many parts of our lives, at work and even on our private life with making friends.

The Career Advancement program presented by Adrienne McLean, The Speakers Practice, and Sam Lee, Connect with Confidence, addresses the issues that professionals face.

When English is a second language, the issues around social skills and confidence can even be greater. Our programs are very supportive to professionals across the world to help with the social skills, presentation skills and confidence.

Our Career Advancement Program has three levels:

Level 1 : The Ultimate Personal Development Journey for Career Success 

This is a 1 hour session with Social Skills for Career Advancement discussed by Sam Lee. The important points are raised to develop your social skills and help you to feel more comfortable interacting at work or in social situations.

Adrienne McLean discusses “Engaging with Professionals and Speaking with Confidence. These two presentations help professionals with communication skills so they can feel confident to participate at the same level as their peers.

To book in for this complimentary webinar – go to The Speakers Practice Events

Level 2 : Social Skills and Strategies for Career Success

In this 2 hour session, you are asked to invest in yourself to build your career.

You will be developing your social skills and guided by Sam Lee to build your confidence. Sam has navigated this journey and has tools and techniques to help you in the workplace and in your personal life. Feeling that you are not connecting socially can be lonely and there are ways to address this. Sam shows you how.

Applying for jobs, going for interviews, answering all the questions can be daunting and rejection can be so hard to handle. By understanding the interview process and practicing interview questions can help to make you feel you are in control. Also, preparing a resume that showcases your work is important. Adrienne McLean goes through the important parts of going through the interview process and demonstrates with how important presentation skills are.

Your investment, in yourself for 2 trainers for the 2 hour workshop: $110 – to book in go to – The Speakers Practice Events

Level 3 – Professional Skills for Career Advancement

This is a 4 month program with 16 sessions and 6 hours workshop with our experts Sam Lee and Adrienne McLean.

By going into our Level 3 program, this means that you are serious about getting ahead. You are wanting to raise the ranks of your profession even though you may at the moment feel socially uncertain and lack confidence.

The way forward is to be supported by professionals who have been along a similar journey, who have developed their social skills and built confidence with presenting to groups, selling themselves to get jobs and overcome nervousness to get a head.

This program is personalised for each individual client to maximise the benefits and return for you. You are your greatest asset, investing in yourself will bring the greatest rewards personally and professionally.

To find out more, see: Professional Skills for Career Advancement 

The importance of preparing for the big day!

Wedding speeches are one of the most memorable speeches that can be delivered. Whether, it is the Bride and groom or the Father of the Bride or the Best Man or Bridesmaid.

Presentation skills and public speaking impacts on many areas, both in business and personal. At The Speakers Practice, we work with professionals but, in essence, we are supporting and training individuals so they can be more confident with personal presentation matters ,as well as, at work with presentation and in marketing efforts. At The Speakers Practice, we do offer Speciality Speech writing and assistance with delivery.

A loving father got in contact and was looking for some support in preparing a speech for his daughter who was getting married. As the Father of the Bride, he wanted to deliver an impactful speech as it was such an important day for his family.

Being a builder, getting up in front of groups and speaking wasn’t something that came naturally to to Jim. His wife was the one that did a whole lot more talking and had that skill. For the wedding, Jim was the father of the bride and this was his duty. Jim had the intention to do the best speech ever, he was willing to prepare and practice to do it as well as he could possibly deliver the speech. Jim called on me , as a presentation skills coach, to help him with his presentation.

The process:

  1. Brain storming the topic
    Jim worked with me for three sessions. The first session, we brainstormed about his family, I asked questions and took notes. From our discussions, we came up with some family stories that were most important and from these discussions, a speech developed.
  2. Preparing the SpeechThe speech was prepared and this was discussed during the second session.For Jim, it was a nice moment to reflect over the years, for me it was delightful to learn about the family. A speech was prepared and discussed with Jim. We worked on fine tuning the content.Jim got input from others and I helped along the way.
  3. Practice
    Jim got to practice and even though it was on line, Jim was able to practice and I was able to give  Jim feedback.Jim practiced in front of anyone who would listen. Yes, he got lots of input to support him through the process. This is valuable, as practice, gets in out of your head and into a performance. It helps with getting the language right and with the flow.
  4. The Big Day!
    The big day happened and Jim messaged to say how wonderful the day went and he was thrilled with his speech. Everyone congratulated Jim on the fabulous presentation. Think there were a few tears of happiness!

Jim messaged me saying “ I pulled it off! My speech went well. Received so many lovely comments on how well written and presented it was! Thank you so much, I definitely could not have done it without your help. “

His message goes on” The speeches all went very well, mine went well thanks to you. My daughters made some lovely speeches too and the boys spoke. But the groom didn’t want any speeches in the video for some reason. So there are no records of the speeches” Jim thought it was mainly because the groom, his brother and father had nothing prepared and they didn’t come across very well. “

In summary:

The moral to this story is planning and preparation helps prevent presentation predicaments! Plan, prepare, rehearse and practice. Do the work to make the outcome as good as you can do it. Invest in yourself. Do the hard yards. It is worth it. It means you’ll never need to cover up or hide or hide others efforts.

Whether it is a wedding speech, as in this example, or it is a work presentation or a presentation selling your business, doing the preparation and working on each aspect of the presentation will at the end of the day mean you are better off and can present in a much better light than someone who didn’t prepare.

Adrienne McLean is a BookYourselfSolid® Certified Coach, SpeakersTrainingCamp® Internationally Accredited Instructor and the Principle of The Speakers Practice. Offering marketing discovery audits, online training programs, Public Speaking for Professionals, Effective On-Camera Presenting workshop and much more.

Email on adrienne@thespeakerspractice.com.au or ring on 0414 367 960

Our Programs

The Speakers Practice programs are for Entrepreneurs, Coaches and SME Business owners. We also offer assistance with career advancement and speciality speeches.

Our clients have a professional background, have enjoyed many successes and now they have taken the brave step to start their own business. However, growing the business is not as straight forward as they first thought.

Our clients are experts at what they do and offer. The main problem they face is getting in the business, once they can do this, the business prospers and they shine.

The urgent challenges our clients experience are:
➖  Need more clients to grow their business
➖  Talking about what they do is difficult
➖  Marketing doesn’t light their fire
➖  Nervousness about making an error
➖  A stumbling block is anything to do with the internet
➖  Have another block on putting something out there to people who they don’t know
➖  Not admitting marketing and doing sales activities they find difficult

The good news is that this is completely normal.

The Speakers Practice has a suite of programs , specially designed, to help with these challenges and deliver training to achieve and succeed. We offer a systematic approach for getting more clients by implementing the BookYourselfSolid®️ business building approach and here are the results that clients see by going through the training and coaching..

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Our work includes:
✔︎  Marketing & Sales Business training – following the Book Yourself Solid business system
✔︎  Presentation Skills training – following the SpeakersTrainingCamp Presentation skills training
✔︎  Marketing tools – Presenting to groups & camera, video, podcasting and more
✔︎  Implementation of a business system to get more clients
✔︎  Goal setting, 90 Day planning and Accountability
✔︎  Digital Marketing and Social Media training
✔︎  Product development
✔︎  Event planning and management
✔︎  Confidence building

Our clients say the #1 result they experience when they buy into our programs is that they learn what they need to do to grow their business and they see the benefits of doing the work – more clients! 

The thing that sets our programs apart is our individualised approach and absolute belief in every, single one of our clients at their incredible skills and expertise.

Our programs offer training, mentoring and assistance with presentation skills, marketing and business building with camaraderie of others doing the same thing.

Email adrienne@thespeakerspractice.com.au or ring on 0414 367 960 for more details.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

For larger SME companies, we have a speciality with continuous improvement, change management, business building systems and quality management systems which add credibility ,as well as, significantly improved business efficiencies. Contact Adrienne McLean, The Speakers Practice, at adrienne@thespeakerspractice.com.au or ring on mobile 0414 367 960 for more details.

Some examples are:
ISO9001 – Quality Assurance
ISO17025 – NATA Testing and Calibration Standard
ISO45001 – Occupational Health and Safety

Adrienne McLean is a BookYourselfSolid®️ Certified Coach, a SpeakersTrainingCamp®️ International Instructor, trained Quality Auditor and Facilitator. Adrienne is a member of the Australian Marketing Institute of Australia and is a Certified Marketing Professional on the NSW Chapter committee.

Also, check out our Programs for Executive Coaching

The Power of Practice!

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It’s through Practice, that people who give presentations can work on their presentation to give maximum impact to their audience. It’s one thing to talk about what you want to speak about, its another thing completely, whether your audience understands the points you are delivering.

Even the most experienced presenters practice their speeches, fine tune their messages, understand the timings of their presentations so their audience really gets the most out of attending and ultimately wants to hear more and wants to do business with the presenter.

So , what is the Process of Practicing a Presentation?

PREPARE – this is where you gather your information, write your presentation, look at your objectives for giving the speech and what your message is. Use stories that are yours , this will help you to remember what goes next. This is where most of your time is spent. The SpeakersTrainingCamp® has a wonderful structure that can really help you to look at every aspect of a presentation.

REHEARSE – you have your presentation ready, now to get your delivery smooth and confident, you need to rehearse a number of times so that you really feel that you know it inside out. Then you can present your speech not relying on notes, you can have them there ,however, it really helps your presentation if you are not glued to your notes and you are looking at your audience.

AUDIENCE
– you are delivering your presentation to inform, inspire and guide your audience. You can make a difference with your presentation – whether it’s an important presentation to an executive committee , a work group or its a social presentation. Your presentation is for your audience.

CONNECTION
– Practicing your presentation will give you the opportunity to maximise your connection with your audience. The more confident your presentation, the more you know your message, the more authentic you are, the more eye contact you have with your audience, the more you know about your audience – the better your connection with your audience and the more you will be successfully able to get your message across.

TIMING – Always ,and I mean , Always respect the timing of your presentation. Know your presentation, and by going through this process you do now, Know how long it takes and suite the timing to what is expected. You may be given 20mins, then , have your presentation going for 20minutes. This point is really important. Speakers that think they can go on for hours instead of minutes loose their audience’s respect as well as credibility. By practicing, you can fine tune the timing and increase your confidence.

IMPROVE – Professional speakers practice and improve their presentations so that they can confidently present their speech and achieve maximum impact. Don’t wing it, practice and Improve then you will get maximum impact from your presentation.

CONSOLIDATE
– Now you have Prepared, REhearsed , thought about your Audience, built a Connection wtih your audience, worked at the Timing, Improved – all these tasks have Consolidated your presentation so that you can really achieve what you would like from your presentation – and that is Impress them!

EXCEL – when you follow this process , you will Excel and do your best. Ok, there’s always areas to work on ,however, by continuing along this path of Continuous Improvement and Practice of your Presentations , you will Excel! this is the Power of Practice.

Consider joining The Speakers Practice – Speakers Forum. Attendees are like-minded Business People who are wanting to promote their businesses by speaking to networking groups, associations ,etc. We discuss presentation skills , present current speeches and get audience feedback on delivery, objectives , on how we understood the message, and so on.

Enjoy your Presentations, Practice your Presentations and appreciate the Power of Practice!!

How to build a community on LinkedIn globally -Business Success Strategies interview with Anna McAfee

Building on-line communities is important now. Connecting with people is vital for building trust and connections. Anna McAfee, Co-Founder of LinkedIn Local really discusses the importance of this and how the LinkedIn Local community has grown internationally.

There are some gems of information in this interview. The special part is Anna’s advice on her most recommended business success strategy. Anna has some really valuable advice.

Here’s the full interview – takes just on 30 mins. Enjoy!

Adrienne McLean helps professionals to get more clients, move forward and build confidence to get the sales flowing in with developing presentation skills, building confidence to speak to camera and work on business development ie marketing & sales. Ring Adrienne McLean on 0414 367 960 or email on adrienne@thespeakerspractice.com.au for more details.

How our approach helps Business Owners

As Business Owners, confidently delivering relevant messages with quality, professional delivery will help you to build Trust with Potential clients , get their attention and get them interested to see how you can help them.

A confident presence will give you that big break you are looking for. Right now, you have the opportunity to develop those skills, practice them in front of an audience and then book those networking and speaking engagements that will assist you to generate sales leads.

I am the Founder of The Speakers Practice , we specialise in helping clients to confidently market and present themselves. We also assist with promotional tools eg business presentations, video, writing, podcasts and social media. We are the first company in Australasia to present the top-rating programs – BookYourselfSolid® and the SpeakersTrainingCamp® program.

During the time of being in a corporate role and working for small business, the importance of leadership , continuous improvement , marketing and product development was focused on. Delivering presentations in a confident manner and getting the message across was essential.

Today, The Speakers Practice works with business owners and professionals helping with learning and developing marketing skills using the powerful marketing system BookYourselfSolid®, Presentation skills one-on-one, in front of a group and in front of a camera. By developing these skills, the owners and staff confidently present their ideas and the end result is building business by building connections.

Email me on Adrienne@thespeakerspractice.com.au or ring on Mobile 0414 367 960

Specialties: Marketing Skills, Public Speaking and Presentation Skills training.Video Marketing, Understanding of Product Development and Continuous Improvement, Facilitation, Leadership.

Video is the Business Tool for Today for Real Estate Agents

shutterstock_171921824Real Estate Agents need to build a strong bond with their clients to help them sell or purchase a property. Being in a position of helping out with large purchases or sales is a big responsibility.

But how do people who are wanting to buy or sell a property choose an agent?

Real Estate agents are using the benefits of websites to promote properties. Clients like this approach as they can view the properties. So the Agent Profiles are a very big credibility builder and the personalisation to really connect with potential clients the better.

By adding a video to your Agent profile, this allows you to:

  • Introduce yourself
  • Share some details that connect you to your audience
  • Display knowledge of the area and community
  • Talk about market updates

You can build a strong reputation by building a presence on Youtube. This also assists with your Google Ranking.

  • Posting semi-regular video on Youtube
  • Posting worthwhile content
  • personalised video with your personality shining through
  • Using content ideas from your day-to-day Real Estate activities

For your agent profile, it is worth going through the process of creating a personalised, professional video that represents your brand. You can be proud to display on your agent profile. Then, more casual smart phone video can be taken and displayed on Youtube – these could be of your current properties, etc.

What do you need to be aware of when preparing a video –

  1. Connect with the people viewing your video
  2. Your scripting needs to be structured and fast paced.
  3. Catch the viewers attention straight away.
  4. Your whole presentation needs to be engaging
  5. Allow your personality to shine through.
  6. Understanding the video process is essential
  7. Also understanding the marketing of your video will help with the success of building a following.

Learning about the ways to prepare and use video is really important in todays digital world. Have fun and enjoy – it is the way to connect with your potential clients!

For more details on The Speakers Practice – Video Program for Real Estate Agents – see – Presentation and Video Program for Real Estate Agents.

Interview techniques for getting that Job!

photo-1459499362902-55a20553e082Interviewing is one of the most stressful activities imaginable for many people.  It’s a long process – you have to find the right job to apply for, then go through quite a process to get your resume to the key people, get short listed and finally if you’re lucky get onto the interview list. So by the time of the interview , it can be quite emotionally challenging already before setting foot in the interview room. One thing is for sure, by feeling more confident with interviewing skills this will help.

Most people don’t feel confident because they are not adequately prepared.  Here are some easy tips to help you become more prepared and to nail every interview you go to.

1. Research the company

  • What does the company do?  What are their major products and services?
  • Who are their competitors?
  • What opportunities and challenges are ahead of them (and how you can help)?
  • What is the press is saying about them (a quick Google search or search in your local paper can tell you that).
  • What is the “word on the street” about them?
  • What is their financial position?


2. Research the interviewer

  • Do you know someone who works in the company?  Find out what you can about the interviewer and drop little hints throughout the conversation that shows you’ve done your research.
  • Look them up on Linkedin to familiarise yourself with their background.
  • See what Google has to say.
  • Look at their Facebook account (if it’s public).


3. Know how to answer their questions

  • Statistics show that people who “win” interviews take between 30 seconds to 2 minutes to answer a question.  Anything less than 30 seconds is not thorough enough, anything more – you’re waffling – no matter how interesting you might think you are, an interviewer loses attention (and patience) after about 2 minutes.
  • Prepare your answers in advance.  Get a list of Behavioral Based Interviewing questions from the Web (there are loads out there and most interviewers don’t put a lot of thought into their questions so you’ll find 80% of what they will ask you from one of these lists of questions), choose 10 questions that you might ask if you were interviewing you for the role and write out your answers. 
  • It’s very important to write your answers out so you can recite the details comfortably in a stressful situation.
  • It’s also important to answer these questions with real, live examples of what you’ve done in the past and not what you would do.
  • Know your strengths and your weaknesses and don’t try to spin your weaknesses into strengths.  There is nothing worse than drawing a blank to this question.  It’s one of the most common questions asked and being unprepared for it demonstrates a total lack of preparedness.
  • Don’t try to spin your weaknesses into strengths.  Very few people do this well, it’s trite and inauthentic.  After all, everyone has weaknesses, no one is perfect. 


4. Know how to ask your own questions

  • Companies find out as much or more about you by the questions you ask them than by how well you answer theirs.
  • Challenge yourself to ask questions no one else may have thought about.  Business related, thought provoking questions.  Pre prepare based on your research.
  • Ask the interviewer about their background, people love to talk about themselves.  It may also give you insight into the company culture.
  • Determine the qualities you want in a boss and ask them questions about how they would handle situations.  Interviewing is a 2 way conversation.


5. Don’t let nerves get the best of you!

  • Prepare the night before so you know what to wear, where you are going and where your notes are.
  • Make sure you’ve got the name(s) (spelled correctly!) of the people you’re meeting!
  • Show up early!
  • Make sure you ask for a glass of water (don’t bring your own bottle) so that you can stall or pause as you’re structuring your answers!


6. Make a great first impression

  • With a great smile, direct gaze and firm handshake.


7. Follow up

  • Ask for the job (even if you don’t want it, you can always turn it down later!)
  • Send both Email and Snail mail thank you notes.
  • Give detailed feedback to your recruiter including positives, negatives, your interest on a scale of 1 – 10 and how the opportunity compares to any others you may have in the pipeline.
  • Follow up with the company 1 day after they tell you when they will make their decision or take the next step.

Adrienne McLean DTM – SpeakersTrainingCamp International Instructor and the Founder of The Speakers Practice – Adrienne specialises at The Speakers Practice helping clients to confidently deliver presentations for maximum impact. You can contact Adrienne on adrienne@thespeakerspractice.com.au or ring on 0414 367 960.

8 Blogs to follow on Public Speaking

There are many blogs on Public Speaking and Presentation Skills. When developing your skills in this area, you will encounter many teachers who will influence your journey. Here are my favourites who are my teachers, I’ve met or followed on the web. photo-1470145318698-cb03732f5ddf

1. No-Choke Zone Blog… by Sue Gaulke    http://www.successworksusa.com/resources/blog/

Interesting , topical and valuable information on where Presentation Skills can and do have an impact. Expert information on the skills required and approaches that can be used. Worth following! Sue Gaulke is a Presentation Skills expert. Sue is the founder of SuccessWorksUSA and the creator of the SpeakersTrainingCamp presentation skills program – been presented to the US and Internationally for over 30 years. 

2. Manner of Speaking – John Zimmer

John Zimmer goes into detail with speech writing and devices used to create a speech. This is an interesting blog to follow – thought provoking and constructiv advice. See – https://mannerofspeaking.org/author/mannerofspeaking/

3. Darren La CRoix   http://stagetimeuniversity.com/toa

Being a Toastmasters World Champion of Publc SPeaking , Darren has developed skills to create impact with his presentations. Following Darrens blogs and video will help deveop skills in selling as well as promoting and presenting with skill.

4.  Nancy Duarte | www.duarte.com/blog

This blog is all about building communication skills esoecially how creating speeches works and what to do to create impact. Nancy Duarte is a communications expert and influencer.

5.  Patricia Fripp | www.fripp.com/blog

Patrica Fripp is a Presentation Skills coach specialising in sales training – these blogs are business based and discuss presentation skills from the work place needs. Interesting and useful with approaches that can be implemented.

6. Craig Valentine  http://www.craigvalentine.com/blog

Story telling and the way to create a captivating story is Craig Valentines speciality – breaking down how to prepare a speech that works. Interesting tools and advice

7. Lucy Cornell Voice Coach  http://www.voicecoach.net/blog

The use of the voice is important in delivering presentations – Lucy Coornell s a Voice specialit and her blogs are how the voice impacts on presentations. Useful and thought provoking.

8. Steal the Show Podcast – by Michael Port  http://stealtheshow.com/podcast/archive/

Here’s a wealth of information on delivering of presentations – discussions and interviews on every topic around delivering of presentations and public speaking. Michael Port has developed a significant resource on Presentation skills.

To conclude:

Read, listen and watch information on Presentation Skills. It will give you a great background. The secret is though (and its not really a secret) the way to build presentation skills is to go out and do as many presentations as you can. Then, test out and implement some of the advice to discover how to really connect with your audience.

Adrienne McLean DTM – SpeakersTrainingCamp International Instructor and the Founder of The Speakers Practice – Adrienne specialises at The Speakers Practice helping clients to confidently deliver presentations for maximum impact. You can contact Adrienne on adrienne@thespeakerspractice.com.au or ring on 0414 367 960.