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About this lesson
No matter what kind of talk they watch, the audience will often remember the stories first.
Quick reference
The Perfect Way to Start Every Presentation
Skip the long-winded intros and credentials. If you want to hook your audience from the start, begin with a story. It’s the single most powerful way to engage listeners and make your message stick.
Why Typical Openings Fall Flat
- Most people begin presentations with a dull greeting or a list of credentials.
- That “me-focused” opening is boring — and it fuels the fear many speakers have about being uninteresting.
- The instinct to justify your presence is common — but it’s the wrong instinct.
Why Stories Make the Best Openings
- Stories instantly capture attention and set an engaging tone.
- Starting with a story makes your presentation more interesting, memorable, and relatable — right from the beginning.
- This strategy removes the pressure of having to “defend” your right to speak.
What People Really Remember
- TJ has asked thousands of professionals what they remember from great speakers — it’s never the slides or bullet points.
- People remember the stories — and often recall them in vivid detail.
- They may appreciate other elements (humor, movement, visuals), but stories are what stick.
The Common Trait of Great Speakers
- Across all industries, roles, and cultures, great speakers use stories consistently.
- They don’t just tell one story — they use stories to illustrate every key point.
- For them, storytelling is the foundation, not an add-on.
Rethink Your Presentation Strategy
- Most people treat data and facts as essential, with stories as optional.
- Flip that mindset: stories are essential — facts and data are the extras.
- The story is what draws people in and helps them remember what matters.
- 00:04 Did you see what I just did right there in the previous lecture?
- 00:07 I didn't start by saying hello.
- 00:09 Thank you so much for signing up for my course.
- 00:12 I'm happy to be here today.
- 00:15 Let me tell you about how great I am.
- 00:17 I'm TJ Walker and I've founded Media Training Worldwide and I've been doing this for 30 some years and I have 100,000 students and I've written best selling.
- 00:26 But that's not how I started because that's boring.
- 00:32 And so much of what gives people frustration, nervousness when they're starting a presentation is this fear of being boring.
- 00:40 Well, it turns out it's a legitimate fear because most people start off the way I just did a second ago.
- 00:46 They start talking about me, me, me.
- 00:49 I'd better justify myself, otherwise why should anyone pay attention?
- 00:53 Let me defend myself.
- 00:56 To have the right to speak here.
- 00:58 That's the mentality people have.
- 01:01 But the best way to start a presentation?
- 01:05 Look at what I did in the previous lecture.
- 01:07 I just launched right into a story.
- 01:11 So stories are great not just to make presentations more interesting.
- 01:15 Stories are great not just to lighten the mood, stories are not great just to get a laugh, but they're the best way to actually start a presentation because then you know you'll be interesting and your audience will be hooked from the beginning.
- 01:31 I appreciate you being in this course.
- 01:33 You obviously have an interest in improving your storytelling abilities for your presentation, but I want to take just a few more minutes to to really step back a minute and look at why this is so important.
- 01:47 I've been doing public speaking training around the globe for more than 30 years and I always ask people who's the best speaker you've seen in the last year in your industry, last five years, maybe ever, and what do you remember?
- 02:01 I've never yet had anyone say, well, I remember this person who had 18 slides and all these bullet points in the color-coded charts and the graph.
- 02:09 I've never had anyone mention that.
- 02:12 The only thing I ever have, people mentioned consistently the stories.
- 02:17 They say, Oh yeah, I remember the story, the speaker said.
- 02:20 And they go into explicit detail.
- 02:23 Now, they may remember humor that the person walked around and was engaging, but when it comes to the substance, they remember the stories.
- 02:31 In my experience, the one thing and the only thing that unites all great speakers across continents, across industries, doesn't matter what field they're in or even what level they are in their profession.
- 02:48 The one thing that unites great speakers is they use stories consistently in every single presentation they give and in every single point in their presentation, they illustrate it with a story.
- 03:05 Great speakers know something that the rest of us don't, which is that it's the stories that are essential, more and more facts, data, that's an extra.
- 03:17 The big problem most of us have as we go into a presentation with this mentality of, oh, it's about the facts, it's about the data, and the story is the extra, I want to really get you to reverse your thinking.
- 03:31 Not because we're just here as professional storytellers, but because the stories are what are remembered 1st and often last by your audience.
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