From Overwhelm To Clear Plan: Building A Presentation In One Hour

I was coaching a woman recently. Over the last year she'd delivered a great project, and had been asked to present a case study on it at a big conference. What an opportunity. A real honour too. She'd said yes, and now needed to actually build the presentation.

She turned up to her first coaching session. Brave face on, but I could tell she was pretty stressed about the situation she was in. I asked her how far she'd got with prep. Zero, she said. So I asked if she minded me taking her through a process to get us started. "Please do," she said. So we split the hour into three phases. Here's what we did and why it worked.

Phase 1: AOREN

I started with my AOREN framework. It's the one I use to start almost every piece of technical storytelling work, whether that's a conference session or a client pitch.

• Audience. Who will be in the room? We wrote down the personas and types of people attending the conference.
• Objective. What does she want from this session? Building industry presence and showcasing the project. What do the audience want? To be inspired and to leave with practical, reusable lessons from her experience.
• Remembered. What are the three things she wants people to remember? We brainstormed for a while and landed on three key themes.
• Emotion. What stories, anecdotes or real moments has she got? Any problems or funny things happen during the project? We wrote down a handful that came to mind.
• Next Steps. What does she want people to do afterwards? Connect with her on LinkedIn, and come and chat to her at the conference.

That gave us an AOREN template we could use as a North Star for the rest of the process. Every decision about what to include, and what to leave out, gets checked against it.

Phase 2: The GoTo Content Flow

Next I gave her my GoTo Content Flow. It's a brilliant starting point for pretty much any presentation. Something like this, with more specific detail layered in:

• Beginning: introduce yourself, hook, benefits of the session, key themes
• Key Theme 1: interesting story, substance
• Key Theme 2: interesting story, substance
• Key Theme 3: interesting story, substance
• Ending: announce it's the end, summarise key themes, next steps, thanks
• Q&A: allocate time for it

We overlaid her AOREN template on top of this structure. Suddenly the shape of the whole session existed on paper.

Phase 3: Timings

Last piece. Be exact about how long each section needs to be.

• Beginning - 5 mins
• Key Theme 1 - 7 mins
• Key Theme 2 - 7 mins
• Key Theme 3 - 7 mins
• Ending - 4 mins
• Q&A - 10 mins

Now she had a plan for exactly what content to create and how long each section needed to run. A clear narrative for the session. There was still work to do, but it was an achievable plan rather than a vague pile of anxiety.

Had It Helped?

As we got towards the end of the session I asked her how it had helped. She gave me a massive, relieved smile and said it had helped "so much, in every way." She'd arrived with a head swirling with ideas, feeling tremendously overwhelmed and worried. She left able to take each section, build it out, and work through the presentation methodically.

In one hour she'd moved from overwhelm to clear plan. Her face had changed. Her body language had changed. I felt the relief washing through the video call.

A couple of weeks later she was due to come back with a first draft of her narrative and slide deck.

I've coached so many people through sessions like this one, and I still love watching that shift happen. If you've got a big session coming up and you're staring at a blank page, this is exactly the kind of thing I can help with. Have a look at what that looks like on the individuals page, or just get in touch via the contact page.

Ben.