Make Your Slides
Support Your Talk

Transcript from the episode recording, with speaker names added and paragraphs formatted for readability. Automated transcription may contain errors; the audio is the original record.

Brad Hauck 00:14

You can always tell when slides are supporting someone's talk and when they're propping it up. In this episode, we're tackling slide dependency. How do you slides as a tool, not a crutch? When do you go minimalist and when do you show real detail on your slides? When should you blank the screen to pull attention back to you? And how do you keep eye contact rhythm that feels natural, not rehearsed? And here's the big question. Should your slides make sense without you? Or is that a sign you've built a handout, not a talk? Good morning, Dixie.

Good morning, Brad.

Dixie Carlton 00:46

How are you going?

Brad Hauck 00:47

I'm going great. Thank you. I see you're back in the other end of the world again.

Dixie Carlton 00:51

I am back over on Bali, which is lovely. Very wet here at the moment, but at least it's warm and the rain falls mostly vertically.

Brad Hauck 01:00

Excellent. And you'll be back in Australia next week for the GSS in Cairns. Is that correct?

Dixie Carlton 01:04

Absolutely. Yes. Looking forward to that. Lots of fun.

Brad Hauck 01:07

Looking forward to catching up with everyone.

Dixie Carlton 01:09

Yes. Will be very exciting. I always love these international speaker conferences. The quality of the presentations is always outstanding. And that's our tribe, right? That's the people that we get to hang out with who get the concept of doing the most terrifying thing on the planet, i.e., speaking in front of others, is not such a big thing for us.

Brad Hauck 01:32

Yeah. And for anyone who doesn't know what the GSS is, it's the Global Speaker Summit. It's held every two years around the world somewhere. And people who speak come from all over the world for the conference. There's normally between about four and five hundred speakers there. And anyone can attend, you can buy a ticket and come and enjoy the company of other speakers. You get to make great connections and really great friends. And that really helps when you're on a speaker's journey.

Dixie Carlton 01:57

And the learning is amazing. And of course, we're doing a workshop the day before the conference. And there's opportunities to do these in-depth conversations and learnings and trainings of things that help us as professional experts on our experts' journey. So it's going to be a great week.

Brad Hauck 02:15

I'm looking forward to it. Before we get started, just a reminder: if you're thinking about writing a book but you're not sure how to shape your ideas, reach out to Dixie at indiexpertspublishing.com. And if you want help build your marketing with AI that actually converts, join my Authority Multiplier Mastermind at bradhauck.com. So today we're talking about slide dependency. And we see this a lot. One of the most famous things, of course, is death by PowerPoint. And we know from our experiences working in industry that it happens more than you'd like to think, where you have a meeting and someone gets up to make a presentation and then they just pump you with slides with thousands of pieces of information and tiny little writing all over them.

And it's absolutely painful to watch as a person in a room. And I don't know how the person who's delivering can cope with it. So as professional speakers, that's not something that we're encouraged to do. In fact, we're taught to do the exact opposite, and that is to have a picture with no information on it and just talk over the talk. So today we're going to talk about a bit of a balance because my experience is that I've seen plenty of speakers over the years, hundreds and hundreds of them. And some speakers have a lot of information on slides, some have none.

And finding the balance for yourself that works for your audience is really important. So, Dixie, what do you do when you have your slides? How much information do you put on them? Hundreds of words? Oh no.

Dixie Carlton 03:41

And it's an interesting conversation to have because I personally have struggled for years with the whole concept of, are my slides good enough? Oh my God, my slides aren't good enough. And I'm one of these people who will right up to the 11th hour or maybe even the two minutes to midnight hour, still be making adjustments on my slideshows. I do tend to now have very little on my slides. I prefer to have something where, should the worst-case scenario come about that the tech fails or that there's no power or something goes terribly wrong, that I can get through my presentation without having anything more than just a couple of bullet points that I can refer to if I need to.

That might be hidden away somewhere. But I do tend to err on the side of not having too much information, mainly just an a picture or two. And someone said to me years ago, if you've got more than I think it was two slides per minute, you've overdone it. So I've always been really cautious about their number of slides. And I've watched what other people do on stages, both professional speakers and industry leaders, and what they do well and what they don't. So I'm constantly learning from the audience perspective as well.

Brad Hauck 05:02

Yeah, absolutely. I think from my perspective, I start out with a slide deck that has a lot of words on it, and then I practice. And then as I practice, I remove the words. So for me, it's a learning tool. So I'm still able to have that information on there. Like most speakers, I'll go through my presentation 10 or 15 times before I actually get on stage. As I go through those practices, I will pull slides out. So in the end, I want some words on there that are designed to prompt me, for example. So if I have a story, I might just have three words that gives me the introduction to a story with a picture.

So I'm currently working on my slide deck for cans where I'm speaking on AI, and I have a picture of me on the fire ground and it says, replace yourself. And there's no other words on there. So I'm basically using that as a prompt to help me remember. Oh, I need to talk about as a firefighter, one of the first things I need to do is actually replace myself in a crew because I get pulled off to run the fires. And so one of the tools I'm talking about is like that. So it's my lead-in to the tool that I'm going to talk about.

But then the next slide has heaps and heaps of information on it because I haven't pulled all that information off yet because I'm still practicing it. So when I get on stage, I like to end up with some slides with just a picture and some slides that have information on them. But it will depend on whether I'm talking technical stuff, where I'll be giving examples of websites people can use in my talk. I'll put screenshots of those websites and their addresses on that. That sort of thing I think is interesting or important because people need to be able to copy them down.

And if you just speak them, they don't get them. So very much is if it's an all-story talk, I'll go to more pictures. If it's a more technical talk, I'll use more slides. But I'll have as minimal information as I can put on there.

Dixie Carlton 06:56

Sometimes my slides will consist of things like a screenshot of someone's Amazon page as an example. And there's a lot of information on that. I find using screenshots are a good way of conveying information and then talking to what the slide is. It's the same as the concept of talk to the information, don't show it all fully unwrapped and talk through it. Talk to it instead of through it. Yeah, that's it. Talk to it instead of through it. And that gives you the means to actually sound relaxed as well. And because you know your information, right?

So if the slides are a prompt to keep you on track, then use them as minimalist as you possibly can. But if you've got something that is a lot of information, talk through it rather than to it. And that way the audience doesn't start to shift in their seats and start to check their phones and see how long you're going to be on stage for.

Brad Hauck 07:52

Yeah, one of the biggest things I've seen watching audiences when people have too much information on slides is that the audience is not taking any notice of the presenter. And if that's the case, you might as well have just sent them an email. So, you know, you're there to present, you're there to be the center of attention. That's your job as a speaker. So it doesn't matter what you're presenting about, whether it's a book you've written or a topic that you're an expert in, you need to make sure that you're the center of their attention.

So there's numerous things we can do. The first, obviously, is cut down on the amount of information. If you want to have three big bullet points on there and then talk for 15 minutes about each bullet point, that's fine. But if you've got three bullet points on 300 slides, now you've created a problem. It's all about that balance. Remember, they're there to see you, not to see your slides. So you've got to pull things apart like that. And one of the techniques you can use is to blank the screen. Now, I've seen plenty of speakers use this really effectively, and most pointers have a button on the top that you can press to blank the screen, or a key on your tablet or your laptop if you're using one.

So you can make the screen go black. Now, that is really useful because when the screen goes black, you can guarantee that everybody's eyes are going to come back to you. So think about how you can use that as well in your speeches. It's a really powerful technique. And done right, you know, you don't need to use a slide all the time. It's not important as much. So you can use them as a prompt and then black out and talk for five or six minutes and move around the room, and all the eyes and the heads will turn to watch you do your thing.

Dixie Carlton 09:35

Yes. Which is really powerful. And again, as you said, if they'll sitting there watching their phones or just watching the screen, you might as well send them an email. You are there to be the entertainer, and you need to assert your presence fully.

Brad Hauck 09:50

If you've got the statute. Your slides should be a support tool, not a crutch. And this is really important. You can tell people who have practiced what they're going to say. Because when they haven't practiced, they're always stuck looking at their slides. Now, that's fine. I get that, but sometimes you've got time frames and you've got to present something and you've got to put something together so you refer to your slides. And I'm guilty of this myself. But if you've got time and if you know you're going to speak in three months' time, don't leave it to the week before to start practicing.

Start putting this together a month or two before. So even if once a week you go through it, by the time you get on stage, you'll be less reliant on them. That you won't need that crutch. Yeah, you'll still see them, you'll still get that prompt, but you're not doing this and staring and reading it and then turning around and saying exactly what it's said. And that's where you lose your professionalism and annoys your audience.

Dixie Carlton 10:50

Yeah. I learned a really good tip from Karen Twee Boys a few years ago. She's a great speaker and she's a great educator. And she suggested that if you've got a piece of paper, so I usually have my my presentations divided into three parts. So three main points, just as I do with my books, etc., using my trivariant framework. I will create what the three main points are. And I might have a very simple icon or something on each point, or a couple of icons. But I can, if I need to get by without my slides, which is now what I do when I create my presentation.

So I'll go backwards now from this. I'll create my, I'll grab a piece of paper, I will divide it into four, I will create what the four main points are, and then put an icon or two on each. So for example, I might have a star or a tick or a number hashtag or something. Those kind of things, just to remind me what I'm going to say about each of those four points. So the first point being pre presumably the introduction or the sun or maybe the fourth one is the summary. But I'll have those points and I will have them mapped out in an image style more than text-based.

And then if you need to, and she said this was a great study technique, is you can hold that piece of paper, that single piece of paper, above your eye sight level and look up and you blink forty times. I don't know if you count forty, but you blink multiple times to embed that image into your mind. All right. So then what you can do is if you have to get by without your side deck, then you can still go back to either using that, having it on the table or somewhere behind you or whatever.

But you can use that or you can memorize just what that's that four points on the page are, and then you just talk to those and you talk for the five or ten or fifteen minutes per point. That has been a game changer for me. And as I say, now when I'm creating my slide deck, I will start with that. What are the main points? What are the icons that are going to remind me of what each of those points needs to be addressed in? And then I've got it, and then I'll create the slide deck.

And that helps me to keep it simple, helps me to keep it focused, and helps me to make sure we have memorized it long term before I get onto the stage. Which then now brings me to the point of how do you create your slide decks? Because I know you do amazing things with AI. And I've been so impressed with some of the slide decks I've seen of yours recently.

Brad Hauck 13:32

Yeah, so I'll use it. I'm extra techniques, I must admit. Sometimes I'll go to AI and I'll fit it all the information that I want on each slide and then get it to create the slides for me. And that comes up with some really cool designs. Then I will export it and then edit it in PowerPoint. On the other hand, sometimes I'll actually get it to create the deck and then I'll just recreate what I want out of it in PowerPoint. In the end, I generally will work in PowerPoint manually because I want to carry a theme through, for example, in my case, it's always fire.

So I want to carry that theme through. So in my latest presentation, I actually have an animated embers down one side of the page and the information on the other side of the page. And so for me, it's all about carrying my brand through my presentation and having everything I want on the slide as well. But the biggest problem I have using AI at the moment is the fact that it can be a little bit inconsistent. So you have to pull it apart. And on the other hand, it tends to write PowerPoints the way you would present if you're in an office rather than as a professional speaker to a conference.

So it's really good for ideas, it's really good for backgrounds and styling, gives you really takes you out of your comfort zone, which I think is great. But in the end, I'll sit down and I'll manually create them. But being a technical person, my slide deck, so the way I do things is different to you. So if I was talking on leadership, that style of laying out a presentation would work really well for me because it's more about the stories and the information. But when I'm doing something like I'm doing in CAMS, where I'm talking about five AI business opportunities you can create off the back of your speaking, I'm talking more technical.

I'm talking about five different business opportunities, basically. So I'm doing a more technical talk, and so it tends to be one, two, three, four, five summary sort of thing rather than following a pattern, like if I was talking about leadership and firefighting in AI. So I I do find that given the nature of what speech depends on which style I'm using. Yeah.

Dixie Carlton 15:38

Yeah, I think you touched on an interesting point. With AI, it does create far more intensive slide decks and a lot more information. And so, like I've done a couple of Zoom presentations recently, and I used AI to pick up the information that I wanted it to be based on. And then I asked in GenSpark for it to create me a basic slide deck based on using ABCD information from my book, for example. Um, and it gave me information that completely blew my mind. It was amazing, very in-depth, very solid, a lot of information per side, and it needed a lot of humanizing and deconstructing after it had been created.

But I was blown away by how it picked up on the flow of the information that I wanted to provide and some of the points that actually made me think, oh, this is maybe me even stepping up the information levels that I wanted to present anyway into a new form of a new level of information provided for the people attending the Zoom call. But of course, with Zoom, when you're on a Zoom platform, you've got your slides up for longer. You're not enabling people just to be part of you walking around the room and having them follow you.

It's a lot more static. So in that instance, I think you can put more information onto your slides. Still come off the slideshow periodically for one-on-ones or conversations with the audience. But if you then take a slide deck like that you can have created by AI and then ask it to develop your handouts, for example, now give me a checklist, now give me something that people can download at the end of, that's a really useful, high-functional thing for me with regards to using AI to marry up the thinking, the slide deck, and the handouts.

Brad Hauck 17:36

Yeah, so you brought up an interesting point there. You're talking about working on Zoom. And one of the things we learned through COVID and obviously those times when we were intensively implementing delivery online, I mean, I've been doing it for many years, for the general public, it really grew, is that we actually need to use a lot more slides when we're doing online because people will become distracted by what's going on in their computer around them. So one tip that you know really came out of that was that if you're doing a presentation for 40 minutes, you should have a hundred slides.

You should be changing every minute almost or more often. Now you don't have to have much information on each slide, but you just need to keep changing because the changing of the slide keeps people focused. So the way you build a slideshow for live compared to live online could be entirely different. And I think that's always interesting to remember those things because people, if you leave everything on one slide, people will sit there and read it all while you're talking and then they won't listen because they'll drift off. So that's another reason why, even when we're live, we don't put a lot of information on slides because people will read it and then their mind switches off to what am I having for dinner?

What's my next session? All those things that go on in our heads.

Dixie Carlton 18:52

Yes, definitely. And when I say putting more information on, I think you can one of the things that I like to do whether I'm presenting live or whether I'm using the slideshow is I like to use icons or images that might be like a framework, for example. This is the framework. Now talk through it. And again, talk to it, sorry, rather than through it. You know, you might have something that here's in, let's say, a leadership presentation. Here's the ladder, here's the colours, here's the stigma going up the ladder. You can recreate that on a whiteboard, you can recreate that simply on a flip chart.

But you can do it more sophisticatedly on sophisticatedly, is that a real word? Sophisticatedly by using your slide decks, right? And using PowerPoint or Canva and all of those things. But you can then put more information around that on a slide. So I'm not talking about putting a lot more text, but you you can do a lot more with your images. You can pat out the interest factor on a on a one slide if you're using same, I think.

Brad Hauck 20:00

Yeah, absolutely. So a question I've got written here is should your slides work without you? And I think this is a really good one. Because you'll often give a presentation and someone will say, Oh, can I get a copy of your slides, please? And I'm happy to do that. So I've already prepared a page for the GSS where people can download this presentation because it is a technical sort of presentation and there's links and stuff like that in there. I feel like it's important. But on the other hand, if I do something on leadership and firefighting, it'll be mainly stories.

And on the slides will be the main points. So if I give you the slides, you're gonna get the main points, but that's it. You're not gonna get all of the stories and everything that goes on with it. So there is ownership of the IP in a lot of ways, depending on how you set your slides up and give your slides away. Because you've got to remember, even if you think you're not gonna give them away, people in the room are gonna take photos of them. So it's really common. I do it myself. I see something interesting, I'll take a photo of it and never look at it again.

But it's down to the internet. And I think it's a good sign if you're presenting and someone takes a photo of a slide. You shouldn't be angry or upset by that. That's a sign you've actually put up something that people go, ooh, I want to keep that. But when you put your slide decks together, think about is this the sort of thing people are going to want to download or not? How much information do I want to put in here? I'd be very careful about how much you give away because we've talked previously about how much do we give away?

What do we give away free? What do we charge for? And as speakers, we often give away too much. And I think when you give away your slide deck with every slide, especially if you have a lot of in-depth information on them, you're actually giving away something that they could buy from you, which is your training, your one-on-one, or whatever it happens to be. So remember, think carefully about that.

Dixie Carlton 21:52

Well, uh, you're dead. And also you need to think about what you are putting up on there. Like, for example, when I talk about using frameworks and images, etc., I will do IP protection around anything that is specifically, uniquely protectable. Because I don't want people taking off with my my my imagery, my concepts. Just willy-nilly. And so, yes, you do need to think about what you give away. And I know that one of the things that a lot of conference organizers ask for is they want you to send the slide deck before you present. And I absolutely hate that.

I resist that to the nth degree if I can manage to avoid it, I will. Not only because I will also still be making final tweaks at the last minute, but also because I don't want them to hold me to using that specific information or that specific slide deck if I want to make changes, or to have them then say to their HR team or whatever, oh, next year we could just get someone else to deliver something based on this.

Brad Hauck 22:58

Yes, you raise a good point. I'm very much the same. I'll often be sitting in the room making final adjustments to a slide deck based on what's been going on. So if I'm presenting on day two or something of a conference, I'll be there day one generally. And I will edit in some comments from other people's speeches because I sometimes see that cross-relationship going on. So I I do not send PowerPoints to people. I will tape them and I will give it to them on the morning. I will go in early. I don't mind being there early for conference days, even if I'm speaking in the afternoon.

I like to be in the room, I like to meet people and talk to people, but I'll take it in on a stick and I will give it to them and they can transfer it then. But I am constantly updating what I'm doing because I'm practicing. So I'm throwing slides out even up to the night before. I'm still throwing slides out of my slide deck. So I know that it is a thing, but I have never had anyone say you can't speak because you didn't send it to your slide deck. Which it generally is, quite frankly, because I'll used sometimes video or something in the presentation, and it is too large to send.

Dixie Carlton 24:05

Yeah, I haven't ever been told that I can't because I didn't send them the information. But I know that I've come across a couple of times people who get quite, and usually they're the assistants, they're not the person who's actually paying the check at the end of the day. They're the people who are also on a have a task list that they have to check through. But yeah, a couple of times people have been quite firm about their requirements for that and they've taken a bit of convincing that no, that's not what we do. But yes, it does make you really stop and think about where does that go afterwards.

Make available at the end of your presentation, you could say, here, forward slash this event and this code or this URL, and you can go and download my whole slideshow. And I know a lot of speakers do that. I would prefer to send people to a landing page where there is additional value, whether you add information or checklists or lead magnets or whatever that they can access rather than just thinking they could get the slideshow.

Brad Hauck 25:05

Yeah. But it's a personal decision and it's one you can make. And there's times when you'll give the deck away and times when you won't. It's that simple from my perspective. So this presentation I'm doing next week, I will give the slides away because I'll probably never make that presentation again. So it doesn't really matter. And I want people to learn, and I'm sharing with other speakers in this case. So it's a kind of a it's a gift. It's one off. If I was doing it all the time, probably not.

Dixie Carlton 25:31

So that brings me to another point. Do you use templates when you're drawing similar, like your standard keynotes? Do you use templates and do you just update those? Or do you do a completely fresh set of slides every time you go and speak?

Brad Hauck 25:48

That's a good question. I don't often do the same talk twice. So using templates is not really an option. I do use basic elements that are the same on all of them. So you'll always see fire, you'll always see orange, dark blue, my logo, things like that that will carry across. That's my branding coming through. But as far as templates go, no, I do test different things. So this technical speech, I have a sidebar down one side, and then I have the information, the other two-thirds of the page. Other times, if I was talking about firefighting and leadership, I would just have a big picture with some words on it.

And I would use that style, but I would reuse that firefighting one for any speech like that. Yes. So I've tried to template it a little bit. And as I said, certain types of speeches I do, and others I'm using something a little bit more open to change.

Dixie Carlton 26:44

What I've noticed is that some companies will offer to do a professional slide deck for you. Like we run an office services company, so we are periodically asked to do that for our office. But often there's so much personalization that needs to go into it that it's not always a very successful thing to rely on someone else to do it for you. So what we've found, for example, is put the basics up there, but you really have to, as a professional speaker, get good at doing this yourself. You know, you can't really outsource this to any great degree.

You can get someone else like us to, for example, just do the templated backgrounds or the style sheets or whatever for it. But then you, the speaker, really have to get good at doing this. And if this is not a strong point for you, my best advice is to learn. You know, like I've spent years second guessing my slide decks, but I've had to learn how to get good at using PowerPoint. And it's not my favorite thing to do, and it stresses me out, but it would stress me out more to give this to somebody else to try and do for me and have them be able to do a job that I was satisfied with.

So I think this is one of those tools of the trade that we have to get really up close and comfortable with, regardless of how we might feel about our abilities. By all means put the information into something and get someone else to pretty out the pages, but you have to take responsibility for this part of what you do.

Brad Hauck 28:15

Yeah, I think there's an opportunity to make your slide decks amazing. And there is an opportunity to bring in professional designers to do that. And I generally see that where you have a keynote that you do on a regular basis. So you've done it a couple of times, probably 10 or 15 times. You've got your slide deck built, you know exactly what slides need to be in there that. Then if you can go to a company that does professional PowerPoint design and branding, they can then make it look like a million dollars. So Keith Abrams does this, his stuff is incredibly good.

He has a team that has worked with him for many years across his business that keeps his branding consistent. And the way they do the diagrams, the fonts they use, the colors they use are all very set. And that's quite obvious. And you can see it Tucky Moore does the same thing. So there's a lot to be learned from that. But what you're looking for is to try and understand your brand and your style, and then lock it down into a repeatable template, and then use that template. And we do this on websites all the time, so it's not that hard.

But the trick is to work your way to a position where you are comfortable. And if you need to go and find some examples, AI can create great examples. Alternative, go and look at the speakers that you really love and look at how their stuff is created and think about how I can apply that in mind. But don't stress about it. In the end, if you're a great speaker, I've seen speakers and their slides give me horror stories. I have a hard time sitting in the room looking at their 20 2005 slide deck with the old icons and the terrible fonts.

Like I get cold chills watching the speakers, they're amazing. I just wish they'd go out and spend a couple of hundred bucks to update their slide decks to a little bit more modern. I know they don't think it's important, but I think it actually damages their brand slightly. They're fantastic, but everybody cringes at the slides. So for a little bit of money, you could just make it so much better. But that said, as I said earlier, it comes down to the information you're delivering. So that's more important than your slides in the end. Yes. So I think that kind of brings us towards the end there, Dixie.

I think we've covered a lot today. We have indeed.

Dixie Carlton 30:38

And a great conversation, some points, great tips. Yes.

Brad Hauck 30:42

Yeah. So, you know, your slide, Dick, it's a personal thing. But our tips are keep it compact. Don't put too much information up there and practice so that you don't need to have all that information. So you're constantly turning around using it as a crutch.

Dixie Carlton 30:58

Yeah. And if you do run into a technical issue on the day, make sure you're savvy enough to be able to simplify it down to a couple of bullet points that you can memorize and march on and tell the stories and provide the information without relying on a slide deck at all.

Brad Hauck 31:13

Absolutely. So if this episode has you thinking about writing a book, but you're not sure how to shape your ideas, reach out to Dixie at indiexpertspublishing.com. She'll help you turn what's in your head into a clear, compelling book that builds authority. And if you're doing the work but you're not getting enough clients, start with clarity. If you want to sharpen your positioning and build marketing with AI that actually converts, join me in my authority multiplier mastermind at bradhauck.com. Take the steps that fits where you're stuck right now, and we'll see you in the next episode.

Dixie Carlton 31:44

And don't forget, if you love what you're listening to, please post a review. Rank us, we love the feedback as well.

Brad Hauck 31:53

See you next time.

Dixie Carlton 31:54

Thanks, Brad. Talk soon.