From the course: Master Confident Presentations

Make yourself bulletproof

From the course: Master Confident Presentations

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Make yourself bulletproof

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- The second of my seven confidence tips is to have back up plans for everything. Then you know you're bomb-proof. So bring spare connecting leads. They don't cost very much. Just have two leads for everything, 'cause leads are often the problem when you find your projector is making everything look pink colored or yellow colored. It'll be the lead, one of the little pins in the lead has got worn out. So it's often the leads. But also, if you can, bring a spare laptop, and certainly when I go and do a presentation and they say everything is provided, I bring my own laptop, 'cause I quite often find they've uploaded my presentation on to their laptop, and the fonts are different, or it's a different version of PowerPoint, or whatever, and I just bring out my laptop and everything's fine. Similarly, I have a spare projector in the boot of my car. Now that perhaps is a bit obsessive. I do training courses all the time, so it's easy for me, but if you're going to go and do a talk somewhere, it's really important, and they say they've got a projector, why not borrow the one from the office or whatever and just chuck it in the back of your car? Because sometimes there'll be a problem with the projector at the far end. I can think of two or three times over 10 years where I've turned up, and they've gone, oh my God, Chris, it's awful. The projector's not working. And I've said, no problem, I've got mine. And sometimes their projector isn't broken, it's just crap. It's just all fuzzy, and it's a really old one that's been in the hotel for years, and you just think, uhh, so you bring out your own, and it's all sharp and bright. So bring your own laptop, bring your own projector, and bring all the wires, as well. Also bring an extension lead, 'cause quite often, you know, you can't reach to the plug, and it's just a small thing, but why not have an extension lead in your car? And then the final two things, bring spare notes. So I bring handouts for the talk I'm going to do, and then, if there is a total failure of visual aids, then I can still just give them the notes and we can use those as a visual aid, and I can talk them through the piece of paper that they're each holding. So I bring notes. The other thing, I always bring spare marker pens, because if you're going to write on flip charts or a whiteboard, the whiteboard pens are always dried up, and quite often the flip chart just has a sort of yellow one or something. So bring loads of pens, as well, just in case. So then you arrive with all this kit of stuff, and then you know that you're absolutely bomb-proof.

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