Step Up #2 Welcome to step up to the mic podcast. Number two, in the last podcast, I promised you useful stuff, tools in fact, and storytelling, how to tell stories, which is going to be critical in any kind of presentation that you do. So let me start by telling you a story of an Archer in medieval times, standing on a green in medieval, England, outside of London, and he has a bow and three arrows, and he's dressed in green, and the sheriff is there. And the winner of this competition will receive a small purse of gold, which the sheriff clinked in his hands, as he threw it up and down, there was a crowd lined up behind the green and the guards were standing there holding them back. And there were four arches there. The one dressing green is suspected as being Robin hood, but nobody sure may Marion throws her handkerchief to a signal the start of the competition. Each of the archers reaches down and picks up an arrow, notches it to their boing, pulls it back and then focuses down the arrow at the target perspiration drips on the forehead of the first Archer. He lets go of the arrow and it hits the target, but it's off the second Archer let's fly his arrow. He misses the target altogether, but the Archer in green is very calm. No sweat on his brow. He pulls back the string pulls it, he looks down the arrow at the target focus, strong lean. He lets it go. It flies through the air and hits the target in the center. The crowd cheers. The sheriff of Nottingham looks at him. Everybody picks up their second arrow. The first Archer goes, he lets it go. And he's inside the second ring. The Archer who'd missed the target. This time at least hits the target. But the man in green slowly and deliberately pulls back his bow lines up the arrow, let it go. And it splits the first arrow right through the center. Mm thinks the sheriff of Manningham who is that Archer? Everyone suspects. It's Robin hood who is Robinhood. They pick up their final arrow. The last of the three, picking it up. Notching the bow, pulling the string back. Yes. All three. Let go of the arrow at the same time, you can hear them through the air. They hit the target. But one arrow from the green Archer splits. His second arrow, all three have hit the same spot. The crowd erupts in a roar of applause and cheering. Mm. And the sheriff of nodding him looks at his man, but he didn't get him. He didn't arrest this man, even though he suspects he's Robin hood, the famed Archer. Mm. Okay. So I framed a story around my teaching tools from the presentation power workshop. So hitting a target. It is the same for as it is an Archer. Let's look at the four elements involved. There's you the , or in this case, in my model, the Archer, you, the Speaker, you have to develop the energy, the bow, which gives you the tools, the arrow, which is your message. And you have to hit the target, which is your audience. So let's look at it again just to make sure we get it right. Or perhaps it's just to make sure I get it right. The Archer is you, you, the speaker, your job is to deliver the message to the audience. In my analogy, the bow is used to fire the arrow into the center of the target. Now my ‘bow’ in this case is the podcast microphone and the podcast. You might be making a presentation at a business meeting at an office meeting and power point is your tool to assist you. You might use PowerPoint. It might be a film. It might be a question-and-answer tool. The arrow represents the message you are about to deliver. In my analogy, the bow is the message. As it has a sharp point, will it fly to the target? The target represents the audience. Your audience might be your coworkers or your boss or your future clients. What do you know about them? How do you know? You can get your message to hit the target? The target is the audience. Before I go give a speech, I reach out to the organizers. I research the audience. I look at the composition, who are they? What do they know about what I'm going to say? Do they want to know new things? Or do they want to know old things? Do they want wild, exciting ideas? Or do they want practical tools? The more that you know about your audience, the target, the easier it is to craft your message, the arrow and the easier it is to find the right tool to deliver it to them. And of course you, as the Archer do all of that preparatory work, that's what the , the Archer does. Now. A good Archer will practice, will experiment. They will find the bow that fits them. They will find the bow string and the strength, and they will practice until they can hit any target at any distance with any arrow. No, you know, I've said to you, there's no rules of being you. When I think about archers and delivering a message. And when I first thought about this analogy, I thought about all the different bows there were in medieval times are obviously most of us know about the English long Bo, but did you know that the ...
