Presentation Skills: Stand Up and Present with Confidence

Presentation Skills: Stand Up and Present with Confidence Effective presentation skills are vital for most business roles. Many people never master presentation skills. Therefore, you can really set yourself apart from your colleagues by developing strong presentation skills. Steps to enhance your presentation skills are outlined for inexperienced and semi-experienced presenters below. What are presentation skills? Presentation skills refer to the skills you require in delivering effective and engaging presentations to any audience. The skills cover many areas including how to structure a presentation, the ability to design impactful slides, how masterful you are at using and maximizing the effectiveness of your voice, how competent you are at using your body language. https://youtu.be/ir0htA-zYtA 4 steps to enhance presentation skills Below are 4 proven steps that will take inexperienced presenters from a zero base in presentation skills to a quite high level, provided they put in the work required. Each step is vital and should not be skipped. Step 1: Prepare what you will say If you have never had any experience in presenting your work to an audience, the first few times will most likely be really uncomfortable and scary. What could help you greatly is to prepare and structure the key points you…

Starting a strategy consulting firm (ex-McKinsey, BCG, Bain, Deloitte, etc.)

Starting a strategy consulting firm (ex-McKinsey, BCG, Bain, Deloitte, etc.) Hi everyone and welcome to another episode of the management consulting podcast series where we discuss the business of running a consulting firm. In today's episode I would like to talk about the route behind the creation of most boutique strategy consulting firms and offices of larger firms. For example, if KPMG wants to open an office in a new territory, it will bring in a consultant who has either worked at KPMG or a consultant with expertise in that local region from a rival firm. If you are launching your own business, the odds are very high that you have already worked at a Deloitte, a McKinsey, Accenture, or even at a tech firm. In fact, you bring in the skills of your prior firm into your new organization. Who usually establishes boutique strategy consulting firms and offices of larger strategy consulting firms A majority of strategy consulting firms and smaller offices are created by consultants who worked at larger firms and larger offices. One of the biggest challenges faced by such consultants is that they take an idea, concept, toolkit, framework, or some kind of intellectual property which is usually a very narrow…

Time Sensitive. Turquoise Eyes: A Novel about Problem Solving & Critical Thinking

Turquoise Eyes: A Novel about Problem Solving & Critical Thinking Our brand new book, Turquoise Eyes: A Novel about Problem Solving & Critical Thinking, is available on Amazon. To celebrate the launch week of Turquoise Eyes: A Novel about Problem Solving & Critical Thinking, we offer a purchase gift to customers as our way of showing that we're truly thankful you chose FIRMSconsulting. To claim Your complimentary 1 month access to the accompanying video program please see the details below Available until midnight EST 28 May 2020 only. But there is more. The first episode of the accompanying program is temporarily released, at no charge, to the broader FIRMSconsulting community and can be accessed on YouTube or below. ADVANCED PREDICTIVE PROBLEM-SOLVING. Turquoise Eyes accompanying video program. 1st episode: https://youtu.be/xQqufjwFm9E BUY THE BOOK HERE Turquoise Eyes started off the groundbreaking new genre developed by FIRMSconsulting that combines compelling narrative while teaching problem solving and critical thinking skills. Set after a bank begins implementing a new retail banking strategy, we follow Teresa García Ramírez de Arroyo, a director-general in the Mexican government, who has received some disturbing news. A whistleblower has emailed Teresa with troubling news about a mistake in the loan default calculations and…

Personal Brand – 6 Steps to Build a Strong Personal Brand in the Workplace

Personal Brand - 6 Steps to Build a Strong Personal Brand in the Workplace in 2020 Your personal style in the workplace significantly influences the perception that people have of you. Moreover, it rolls up into being your brand or personal image. Often perceptions that people have of you are very one-sided and heavily affected by one negative or positive characteristic which is the so-called “halo effect”, which is one of the biases that people have when forming perceptions of others. You can definitely influence how people perceive you. You need to adjust your personal style to build your personal brand in the workplace and in your personal life the same way as Coca Cola and Amazon builds theirs. You can be anything you want to be and make people think anything you would like them to. You just need to consciously manage your personal brand. It must be of the highest caliber, consistent and credible. You can call it your personal style, your personal image, or personal brand. It does not matter. Everyone has one and you need to control your own. https://youtu.be/Q7BOmllCwn8 What is a personal brand? What is your personal brand in the workplace? Your personal brand…

Business Acumen – Step-by-Step Guide to Improve It

Business Acumen – Step-by-Step Guide to Improve It What is business judgement or business acumen? What is good, or bad, business acumen? Is business acumen the same for marketing, digital and IT, strategy, and even operations? Is it your understanding of business? Can you have business acumen if you do not know much about business? Do you need an MBA to have business acumen? Can a person without a university degree have business acumen? How can you use relative reasoning to improve your business acumen? Summary: We define business judgement, or business acumen, as the way we interpret information. And the way we interpret information is the sum of our experiences, formal knowledge, social networks, informal knowledge. Then it is our willingness and ability to draw on them when interpreting information. We will use the term business acumen primarily since it is a more common way to refer to this skill, although we prefer to refer to it as business judgement. Business acumen is routinely listed as a key soft skill or business skill. This article will provide a definition and teach you how to improve your business acumen. Why do you need business acumen? Let’s explain business acumen and, thereby, define business…

10 Powerful Insights to Help You Succeed as a Small Business Consultant

10 Powerful Insights to Help You Succeed as a Small Business Consultant In the previous article "Freelance Consulting Online: a Step-By-Step Guide" we shared enough information for you to start your online freelance consulting business to help you replace your income if you lost your job or about to lose your job during current challenging economic times. If you have not read that article, please start there. In this article, we take it a step further and discuss 10 insights you need to succeed as a small business consultant. But first let's briefly speak about what is happening with the global economy and how it is impacting consulting work and recruitment prospects with major consulting firms. What is happening with the global economy? For those of you wondering why you should consider following this online-only freelance consulting path, we will explain what is happening in the world because for many of you you were not yet working during the 2008 recession. You do not know how bad it was. https://youtu.be/17vk9vEsjQA This recession will likely be much worse. The thing is people are not working. You know this. You walk out, restaurants are shut down. You go anywhere and there is…

Freelance Consulting Online: a Beginner’s Guide

Freelance Consulting Online: a Beginner's Guide The dizzying speed of disruption due to the COVID-19 pandemic is leaving many people jobless or with a fear of losing their job, with few prospects to find a similar role in a quickly darkening economic climate. And this is just the beginning. Dealing with the coronavirus's aftermath will be extremely challenging. These are the early days of a very bad, very painful recession. COVID-19 will likely end up far surpassing the financial crisis in economic damage. For some organizations and individuals, short-term survival is the only agenda item. So we are sharing this article with you, which is based one some of the training content from our new FIRMSconsulting Insider course, Replacing Income with Online-Only Freelance Consulting. If you are a business consultant or work in corporate and need to find a way to replace your income, this article is for you. https://youtu.be/SobRpjhqpgE Here and in part 2, "10 Powerful Insights to Help You Succeed as a Small Business Consultant" we share enough information for you to start your online freelance consulting business to help you replace your income, and you can get more in-depth step-by-step guidance on how to freelance as a business…

Overcoming Imposter Syndrome: a Detailed Guide

Overcoming Imposter Syndrome: a Detailed Guide Have you ever felt that you achieved your successes by luck, timing or due to other external events, instead of your effort, character, talent, and abilities? Do you consistently discount your achievements and face internal resistance to go after major opportunities because you are afraid to fail? Are you afraid you are not as good as people think you are? If so, you are in need of overcoming imposter syndrome. I wanted to write an imposter syndrome article for a long time as it is such a crucial topic to address. An estimated 70% of people experience imposter syndrome to some degree at some point in their life, according to an article published in the International Journal of Behavioral Science. The imposter syndrome was one of the biggest roadblocks I faced in my life. And I know many of you face it too, yet people hardly ever talk about it. Imposter syndrome is real, and if you have it and do not manage it, it is likely holding you back. Definition of Imposter Syndrome Let us first define imposter syndrome, if you are not familiar with what it is. The imposter syndrome (also known as imposter…

How to motivate yourself

How to motivate yourself Summary: At a time when the path to professional success is not only more fraught with competition but arguably more ambiguous than ever, professionals must tap the potential of two motivation drivers to deliver better results. The key is to figure out which of two drivers works best for you. Get that right, and your career growth efforts can truly become exemplary. There is a critical disconnect between the manner in which many people change their careers and get results, and the way they could do it most effectively and efficiently. And while the majority of people believe there is room to increase their performance, most of them have no rational basis from which to challenge how to motivate themselves more effectively to take action. We mistakenly assume we can only be motivated by positive stories and routinely fail to get that promotion despite feeling so inspired after listening to a great story. How do we overcome this inability to get results despite being motivated? The solution? Understanding that you can motivate yourself with an aspirational or deficit model, based on how you are hard-wired. The important part is figuring out which model is right for you. https://youtu.be/1Sl59uRYXZs Fear of failure can be an important motivation What we are going to discuss…