In short, presenting yourself and your idea is a basic fact of business life and setting up a business, so you'll need to be good enough at it. The words are carefully chosen there - you don't need to be "good", just "good enough". That's a useful thing to remember because it makes the job of training yourself that much easier. So the story so far is that you've got to make presentations but that they're not as difficult as you might suppose - we're not looking for great orators here, just people with enough about them for the audience (think of whoever you're talking to as an audience and you won't go far wrong) to get the picture.

I'm going to break down the process of making the presentation into three parts: the first is the obvious one of what you say. The second is the corollary of that - how you say it. The third part is what's referred to as the meta-language of how you look (and dress and so on) while you say it.

To be honest, the first is outside the scope of an article like this: there are other articles on this site that should help you with that.

The second part, how you say it, is absolutely critical. The last one is also important (but not as important as you'll be told by many NLP trainers who base their work on a mis-understanding of some good, experimental psychology).

So, back to business.

It's likely that when you're making some kind of pitch for your business you're likely to be nervous. I know I always am. When you're under stress, the body has a set of physiological responses designed to deal with the emergency: it's called the "fight or flight syndrome" and you've probably heard of it. It's very good at what it does, but unfortunately 'what it does' is designed to work in a much more primitive environment than today's business one - one where you were literally going to have to fight for your life or run away. One of the things your body does is start to use your upper chest for breathing with, in order to get oxygen into your lungs faster, which is great for fighting but no good for talking. To talk you need to try and remember to use your diaphragm to breathe in (and therefore breathe out). The diaphragm is the big sheath of muscle underneath your lungs and above your stomach area. If you can use that when you're making your pitch lots of good things will happen.

The first, and most important is that your voice will firm up. It might go deeper, but it might not. Generally though, what it will do is sound richer and fuller - in short, you'll sound more interesting and more credible. When you're making a pitch, credibility is important. The second thing it will do is begin to calm your nerves. This is because there's a part of your brain that is fooled into thinking that, because you're breathing like there's no threat, there really is no threat. The consequence is that

In short, presenting yourself and your idea is a basic fact of business life and setting up a business, so you'll need to be good enough at it. The words are carefully chosen there - you don't need to be "good", just "good enough". That's a useful thing to remember because it makes the job of training yourself that much easier. So the story so far is that you've got to make presentations but that they're not as difficult as you might suppose - we're not looking for great orators here, just people with enough about them for the audience (think of whoever you're talking to as an audience and you won't go far wrong) to get the picture.

I'm going to break down the process of making the presentation into three parts: the first is the obvious one of what you say. The second is the corollary of that - how you say it. The third part is what's referred to as the meta-language of how you look (and dress and so on) while you say it.

To be honest, the first is outside the scope of an article like this: there are other articles on this site that should help you with that.

The second part, how you say it, is absolutely critical. The last one is also important (but not as important as you'll be told by many NLP trainers who base their work on a mis-understanding of some good, experimental psychology).

So, back to business.

It's likely that when you're making some kind of pitch for your business you're likely to be nervous. I know I always am. When you're under stress, the body has a set of physiological responses designed to deal with the emergency: it's called the "fight or flight syndrome" and you've probably heard of it. It's very good at what it does, but unfortunately 'what it does' is designed to work in a much more primitive environment than today's business one - one where you were literally going to have to fight for your life or run away. One of the things your body does is start to use your upper chest for breathing with, in order to get oxygen into your lungs faster, which is great for fighting but no good for talking. To talk you need to try and remember to use your diaphragm to breathe in (and therefore breathe out). The diaphragm is the big sheath of muscle underneath your lungs and above your stomach area. If you can use that when you're making your pitch lots of good things will happen.

The first, and most important is that your voice will firm up. It might go deeper, but it might not. Generally though, what it will do is sound richer and fuller - in short, you'll sound more interesting and more credible. When you're making a pitch, credibility is important. The second thing it will do is begin to calm your nerves. This is because there's a part of your brain that is fooled into thinking that, because you're breathing like there's no threat, there really is no threat. The consequence is tha

I'm going to break down the process of making the presentation into three parts: the first is the obvious one of what you say. The second is the corollary of that - how you say it. The third part is what's referred to as the meta-language of how you look (and dress and so on) while you say it.

To be honest, the first is outside the scope of an article like this: there are other articles on this site that should help you with that.

The second part, how you say it, is absolutely critical. The last one is also important (but not as important as you'll be told by many NLP trainers who base their work on a mis-understanding of some good, experimental psychology).

So, back to business.

It's likely that when you're making some kind of pitch for your business you're likely to be nervous. I know I always am. When you're under stress, the body has a set of physiological responses designed to deal with the emergency: it's called the "fight or flight syndrome" and you've probably heard of it. It's very good at what it does, but unfortunately 'what it does' is designed to work in a much more primitive environment than today's business one - one where you were literally going to have to fight for your life or run away. One of the things your body does is start to use your upper chest for breathing with, in order to get oxygen into your lungs faster, which is great for fighting but no good for talking. To talk you need to try and remember to use your diaphragm to breathe in (and therefore breathe out). The diaphragm is the big sheath of muscle underneath your lungs and above your stomach area. If you can use that when you're making your pitch lots of good things will happen.

The first, and most important is that your voice will firm up. It might go deeper, but it might not. Generally though, what it will do is sound richer and fuller - in short, you'll sound more interesting and more credible. When you're making a pitch, credibility is important. The second thing it will do is begin to calm your nerves. This is because there's a part of your brain that is fooled into thinking that, because you're breathing like there's no threat, there really is no threat. The consequence is tha

It's likely that when you're making some kind of pitch for your business you're likely to be nervous. I know I always am. When you're under stress, the body has a set of physiological responses designed to deal with the emergency: it's called the "fight or flight syndrome" and you've probably heard of it. It's very good at what it does, but unfortunately 'what it does' is designed to work in a much more primitive environment than today's business one - one where you were literally going to have to fight for your life or run away. One of the things your body does is start to use your upper chest for breathing with, in order to get oxygen into your lungs faster, which is great for fighting but no good for talking. To talk you need to try and remember to use your diaphragm to breathe in (and therefore breathe out). The diaphragm is the big sheath of muscle underneath your lungs and above your stomach area. If you can use that when you're making your pitch lots of good things will happen.

The first, and most important is that your voice will firm up. It might go deeper, but it might not. Generally though, what it will do is sound richer and fuller - in short, you'll sound more interesting and more credible. When you're making a pitch, credibility is important. The second thing it will do is begin to calm your nerves. This is because there's a part of your brain that is fooled into thinking that, because you're breathing like there's no threat, there really is no threat. The consequence is tha

The first, and most important is that your voice will firm up. It might go deeper, but it might not. Generally though, what it will do is sound richer and fuller - in short, you'll sound more interesting and more credible. When you're making a pitch, credibility is important. The second thing it will do is begin to calm your nerves. This is because there's a part of your brain that is fooled into thinking that, because you're breathing like there's no threat, there really is no threat. The consequence is that your body chemistry is altered towards a relaxed, almost sleepy state. Don't worry about becoming too drowsy, there's no chance of that, but it should make your whole voice and demeanour a lot more relaxed and confident. The third thing that will happen is that you'll actually have more stamina and a better oxygen flow over the longer term. That in turn means that you'll be more tuned in to what's going on around you: basically, you're likely to start thinking faster.

Moving up from your lungs, the next part of your "speaking system" is your throat. This is where the actual sounds of your voice are made, as airflows between your vocal folds. Again, when your body is under stress, you'll probably react like the vast majority of the population and tense up your shoulders and your throat. That's bad. This constricts your throat and stops the vibrations of your voice being made so easily - or so well. The consequence is that horrible "nervous voice" sound that everyone has heard (coming from other people as well as themselves, usually). The solution is pretty straight-forward. Breathing from your diaphragm is going to help but you'll need also to make sure that your shoulders, head and body are positioned in the right relationship to each other.

If your neck (and hence your throat) is twisted you're reducing the amount of vibration your vocal folds can achieve, so make sure that you're facing forwards when you speak. If that means you've got to turn slightly, in order to face whoever you're talking to, then do so. What's more, once we're stressed we all have an instinct to tip our heads back - to raise our eyes - but once again this constricts the throat and makes your voice sound thinner and less mature. It's important to make sure that you're not tipping back: it'll probably feel awkward difficult at first because most people are accustomed to raising their head too far, but once you've got the hang of it you should find it becomes second nature.

The balance point for your head that you're looking for is the position where your head is resting on your neck in as "effort free" way as it can possibly be. Stand for a few minutes checking out your head position, making a conscious note of how much effort you're putting into holding it in one particular position compared to others. I want to give you a word of warning here - be careful not to get confused between the position in which you're actually doing the minimum amount of work and the position where it feels like you're doing the minimum; this position is almost certainly related to having become habituated to standing in a certain way, and so your muscles are used to doing that particular amount of work.

Keep at it - little and often - because it's quite a subtle thing.

Make sure that while you're doing this a few other things are also taken care off. For a start, make a point of remembering to breathe: you'd be amazed at the number of people who concentrate so hard on the position of their heads that they hold