Top 5 Tips to CRUSH Your Next Presentation!
About this video
Jeff shares workplace presentation tips, illustrated by a quarterly review joke about reporting revenue in billions instead of millions. His first tip is humor through relatability: the more specific and shared the reference, the more likely it lands with everyone in the room. Second, keep slides clean, invoking Da Vinci’s line that simplicity is the ultimate sophistication: put only short, memorable primary points as text on slides and deliver background and rationale orally. His management-consulting test is that if a stranger could understand the deck just by clicking through it, there is too much information on it, with an exception for presentations built specifically for top-level management to stand alone. Third, assume what he calls lowest common language: expand acronyms and replace technical phrasing with plain implications, using jargon only inside the core working group and plain language for larger audiences, because people will not ask what a term meant. Fourth is etiquette: dial in three to five minutes early and present your screen to avoid technical surprises, prepare a holding slide that sets expectations while people join in the first five minutes, and add a poll, quiz, or game only if it elevates the message. The final, most important tip is to practice out loud and time yourself; he cites Harvard Business Review advice to treat presentations like a performance and rehearse aloud, notes HBR’s guidance of roughly 30 to 60 seconds per slide, and says he personally takes one to one and a half minutes per slide. He closes with a Google Slides tip: use Presenter View for speaker notes and press L for the laser pointer.
Key takeaways
- Open with humor through relatability, and make the reference as specific to the shared audience experience as possible.
- Keep slides to short, memorable primary points only; explain background and rationale out loud instead of cramming them onto the slide.
- Assume the lowest common language for a broad audience: spell out acronyms and state the implication rather than repeating technical process terms.
- Dial in three to five minutes early, show a holding slide while people join, and use interactive elements only when they strengthen the key message.
- Rehearse out loud and time yourself; Jeff cites 30 to 60 seconds per slide as HBR guidance and says he averages one to one and a half minutes per slide.
Episode details: published May 17, 2022 · 6:10 long. Summary written by Self Growth Videos from the episode itself. Business results and any income figures mentioned are Jeff Su’s own claims, shared for education — they are not typical or guaranteed.
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