Presentation M.A.G.I.C. Course

Unlike my colleague Howard Stableford I am not a natural presenter. My palms sweat at the thought of appearing in front of a camera. My carefully rehearsed comments seem all too much like carefully rehearsed comments. And for far too long the easy grace of people like Howard seemed, well, magical.

Watch any great performer. Steven Jobs, President Obama, former President Regan, they all seem naturally charismatic and compelling. Their style appears unexplainably engaging and their messages disarming and naturally persuasive and motivating.

I wanted to be like that, even if just a little bit. Even if just for a moment.

I had always thought it was a gift. Some people had it and others, like me, well, we were destined to be on the sidelines or part of an adoring audience.

What they did and how they did it was a total mystery.

As a kid I was a big magic fan. I loved to watch even the simplest tricks and believed that those stage personages knew something hidden and unexplainable. They could bend the world to their will with their strange specialized knowledge.

I can still remember when as a teenager I watched in fascination and horror as a TV program featuring a masked magician (presumably to hide his face from angry colleagues) went step by step through a dozen of the most common and intriguing magical tricks seen on stage. As each illusion became clear I was stunned by their sophistication and fiendish cleverness. Magic had, I sadly learned, far less to do with real magic than smart engineering.

As time went on I got into the publishing business and hid behind the scenes. I had lots of opportunities to speak publicly but turned them down because of my belief that this was something I wasn’t good at. My associates tried to convince me otherwise and suggested we were losing business opportunities because of my unwillingness to bring our message to wider audiences. Eventually after being hounded enough I decided to do something about it.

I took classes at our local cable TV station on TV production because I wanted to know how the magic happened. Well, I learned how it was captured, but not how it was created.

I then found myself in a situation where I had to coach authors and other business people on presentation skills and like a new food critic who knows what tastes good, but can’t himself cook, I launched into the opportunity with surprising zeal.

Now more than ever I was determined to discover exactly how the magic happened.

I read all the books, attended workshops and seminars, joined speaking clubs and associations and finally hired a presentation coach and slowly the curtain began to part.

Just like those magicians who had captured me as a kid I began to see there was a method to this presentation madness, that with the right combination of knowledge and skill anyone, even someone introverted, scared and awkward like me, could stand in front of a group or a camera and deliver a message that was credible, interesting and maybe even a little entertaining.

For the past decade Howard Stableford and I have worked at the Center for Creative Leadership where we’ve been privileged to work with some of the nation’s top executive leaders.

These are literally the people you see on CNN and other major news networks and we’ve interviewed thousands of them in mock TV sessions. And afterwards we’ve coached them on how to be even better. But, and this is probably the most significant thing of all, we’ve carefully studied and analyzed what makes the best presenters better than the rest. And now we have a program that teaches these secrets to you.

If you have the time and the resources I encourage you to go to the Center for Creative Leadership and take their week-long course yourself and you’ll discover not only how you can be a better presenter, but how you can become a better leader.

But Howard and I realized that not everyone can afford that $10,500 trip or can take a week out of a demanding schedule to learn what the Center has to teach about presentation success.

So we’ve taken the best of what we do and distilled it down to what we call, appropriately enough, Presentation M.A.G.I.C., a comprehensive step-by-step process that will allow anyone to dramatically improve their presentation skills.

Just like the folks on stage, this isn’t really magic. It’s engineering. We pull back the curtain and give you a proven blueprint outlining every step along the way and then we take you step by step through the entire process.

It only appears like magic to someone sitting in the audience who hasn’t seen your new skills in action. To them it will seem like an amazing transformation while to you it seems completely natural and commonsense and fun.

This isn’t, of course, for everyone. Some people are naturally gifted with an expansive stage presence. But even if you are already good, there are ways to be better. And if you struggle, like I did and sometimes still do, to be comfortable and assured and effective, then I ask you to look at what else is available, particularly online, and compare all of what we offer with everything else available. Especially at this introductory price.

Now, there are some extraordinary presentation trainers out there but you’ll have to go spend time with them or pay for them to come see you. And you’ll have to do this on their schedule.

What makes the M.A.G.I.C program totally different is not the 10-plus hours of video instruction and the hundreds of pages of transcripts, research and written instructions.

What really makes this program work is the opportunity you get to practice and have your presentations reviewed online by us as well as your program peers in a positive and constructive way. It’s our belief that you learn best when provided with a variety of perspectives that allow you to practice and build on your authentic communication strengths.

Without practice, without this key, vital element it will be very difficult, if not impossible for you to make truly dramatic progress. You can’t learn to play tennis by watching the U.S. Open and you can’t learn to cook by just reading cookbooks.

More significantly, you can’t master any skill if you don’t get feedback. Imagine playing golf but not being able to see how well you hit the ball or where your shot went?

To get good at anything you have to get on the court and in the kitchen and you need knowledgeable feedback on how you are doing. You need a safe environment in which to experiment and build on who you are. You need expert guidance so you know when you are connecting and when you are falling a bit short of your potential.

There is no magic without knowledgeable preparation and practice.

We’re going to be offering an online Presentation M.A.G.I.C. program in the near future and if you’d like more information on what it can do for you subscribe.  This entitles you to free, exclusive information on how you can begin right away and if you decide it’s something you want more of you’ll get a special discount and guarantee.