PowerPoint you hear people trashed PowerPoint, attack PowerPoint, talk about death by PowerPoint. I'm not here to attack PowerPoint. So my best friends are powerful. And I use PowerPoint all the time. But let's face it, most PowerPoint is awful. It puts everybody to sleep because this is just a boring data dump.
I want to give you a few tips here. This is a quick summary of what's most important to PowerPoint. If you follow these basic precepts, your PowerPoint presentation will be the best anyone in your company is seen, probably ever. But if you want a lot more details on PowerPoint, below, further on in this course, there's a whole sub course just on PowerPoint. For starters, realize the PowerPoint slides are for your audience. They're not for you.
If you just have a bunch of words and bullet points for you to remember what to say. As we talked about you The very first video in this whole course, just is a good old fashioned piece of paper. Don't use that slide for your audience. Be honest now. Do you like it? If someone reads to you, I ask audiences all over the world that question and unanimously everybody says, oh, gosh, TJ, I hate that.
Someone starts reading bullet points to me. I got the perfect solution. It's called checking Facebook, checking my email. That's the best solution to that. So we don't want to give people an option for leaving us. They might not leave the room but mentally and emotionally they've left the room.
So we don't want to do that. The slides are for your audience, not for you. Here are the basics. One idea per slide. Use images, not text Some of you said, okay, TJ, so I hear you what you're really saying is, the fewer words the better no more than three bullet points. Hit rewind a second, because that is not what I said.
People think I say that I've never said that. If you want to use PowerPoint effectively, the most effective way is one idea per slide. One image, per slide, don't use any text. Let me say that again, because some of you are doing is this guy crazy. He couldn't have possibly said that. What I'm saying is if you want PowerPoint to actually work and be effective, when you're standing up giving a presentation to people live, it's different if you're just emailing them a deck or some kind of a webinar.
But if you're standing up and talking to people, my recommendation, do not put a single word of text on a slot. Well, but TJ corporate culture, we have a prop. Frankly, I don't care about your culture, your corporate culture, but you know who else doesn't? The people in your audience listening to you. So it's not about me and my preference, but it's also not about your corporate structure and best practices. It's about what actually works on your audience.
So here's the test when it comes to PowerPoint. Does the slide you have actually help your audience understand the message more than you just saying it? And does this slide actually help your audience? Remember your message more than you just saying, and if it doesn't do both of those things, it's not helping you. I understand. That's not how most people in your organization use PowerPoint.
This course is about how to be great and do it the most effective way not how to adjust Go with the flow and be awful and mediocre the way others are. So that's my recommendation. Now, here's another simple, easy cheat, that's going to dramatically help you help your audience boost your reputation as a speaker. Just have two PowerPoints have one that you're projecting, that has one image per slide, have another one with lots and lots of text bullet points complexity, email it to people, hand it out to people. I've got four or five books at the end of this course I'm going to give you but I'm not standing here, reading bullet points with bullet points going across the screen because that would be boring. But if you want to read the five books, it's all there for you.
If you don't want to, you're not bothered by it. You don't have to open them up or read them at all. So that's the easiest way to just just have two separate powers. PowerPoints, the traditional one more and more data, the better more come make it 1000 pages. I'm giving you 1000 pages. But when you're presenting the highly selected, think of some of the most effective presenters in the whole world.
In. in the corporate world, for example, most people would say Steve Jobs, the founder and former CEO of Apple when he wanted to unveil a new, exciting product. What do they do? He didn't typically put up slides with lots and lots of bullet points in text. When he was unveiling the, the iPhone, what did he do? He said, you know what this is and he put up a picture of an iPod.
And he said, you know what this is and he put up a picture of an old fashioned traditional flip phone. Why are we here today? brought images together into a picture of an iPhone. Everyone instantly understood what it takes. it what it was about what the product was and it generated excitement. That is the most effective way to use PowerPoint and it doesn't require money, you don't have to have the marketing budget of an apple.
You just have to have a mindset that you're going to create slides for your audience, not for you. It's very simple to go on google and type in a word, click images, find something rights free that you can use in your presentation. So I understand that isn't how most people create PowerPoints in your organization. But if you want to know the most effective way, that is how to do it. Again, there's a lot more information in the PowerPoint course below. You want to go even deeper to PowerPoint.
But if you follow those basics, you're going to be better than pretty much anyone your audience has seen. The ultimate test of course is test your audience After you have a PowerPoint presentation, you're going to give one to, let's say 30 important clients Thursday, get a couple colleagues together Tuesday at lunch. Give them your PowerPoint presentation. When you're done. Ask them what slides they remember what was on it? What was the point?
Any slide they remember and they remember your point. Congratulations, you have evidence it works. Keep the slide. Use it on Thursday. But if your audience can't remember the slide, or they can't remember the message, you now have empirical evidence that slide is completely worthless. Take that slide, tear it up and throw it in the trash can