Tips on how to be an effective Speaker

Public speaking is one of the most important skills that you can develop in your career. Most effective public speakers have worked hard to master effective speaking skills and good public speaking techniques. They may spend hours practicing, working with a coach, or taking speech courses. Here are some things to take into consideration when preparing for your public speech.

Listen to recorded speeches

If you want to become a great speaker, you should first have an idea on what it means to be great. Famous speeches became that way in part because the speaker knew how to wring the most feeling and meaning out of what he was saying. Pay attention to the pauses they take, the words they emphasize, and the steady pace most famous speakers perform at. Source: wikihow

Nervousness Is Normal. Practice and Prepare!

All people feel some physiological reactions like pounding hearts and trembling hands. Do not associate these feelings with the sense that you will perform poorly or make a fool of yourself. Some nerves are good. The adrenaline rush that makes you sweat also makes you more alert and ready to give your best performance.

The best way to overcome anxiety is to prepare, prepare, and prepare some more. Take the time to go over your notes several times. Once you have become comfortable with the material, practice—a lot. Videotape yourself, or get a friend to critique your performance. Source: extension

Focus on concepts

Avoid sounding over-rehearsed. Rather than memorizing the entire content of your presentation, understand the concept as this will help you develop the points even on an impromptu basis. It also takes away the fear of your mind going blank at any point during the presentation. Create bullet points of the key takeaways and speak naturally about them. Source: yourstory

Give Yourself Time to Acclimate

Many speakers begin talking immediately after being introduced or walking onstage. Instead, try approaching the stage in silence. This gives you time to gather your thoughts, take a deep breath, and get used to being in front of the audience.

It gives your audience the chance to get used to you as well. If they’re checking email or answering some last-minute texts, it provides a few buffer moments so they can wrap up. This pause also sets the tone for the rest of your speech, which should be evenly paced, effective, and purposeful. Source: blog.hubspot

Slow Down

Most inexperienced speakers talk faster on stage than they realize – and it’s completely understandable.

When you’re giving your talk, you’re nervous, anxious, and you’re trying to hold all the information you need to present in your head. All you want to do is get through your speech so you can get off the stage and go someplace where people can’t judge you.

Unfortunately, this can cause you to rush through your speech far too quickly, which make the information you’re presenting hard to understand. Source: collegeinfogeek

Structure your material in three sections

Grabber, middle, close. Know your material. Get really interested in the topic. Find good stories. Source: forbes

Be Yourself

You don’t have to be someone else on stage, all you have to do is just be yourself. Sometimes, no matter how much you believe in your message or how well you’ve rehearsed, if you don’t act like yourself in front of the group, your audience may view your speech as insincere or calculated.

If a political candidate doesn’t seem authentic, it’s not likely they’ll win an election. If a company’s social marketing strategy appears inauthentic, their sales will not go up. If you create a page on a dating website but what you write is not authentic, the people reading are likely to pick up on this inauthenticity and never contact you. Speaking is the same way. Source: magneticspeaking

Body language

Make sure your body language is engaging and comfortable. If you fold your arms across your chests or you speak with your head down the audience will be able to pick up on your nerves and may not be receptive to you. Use your body language to convey a message of ease, comfort and openness. Source: studentbrands

Think Positively

Positive thinking   can make a huge difference to the success of your communication, because it helps you feel more confident.

Fear makes it all too easy to slip into a cycle of negative self-talk, especially right before you speak, while self-sabotaging   thoughts such as "I'll never be good at this!" or "I'm going to fall flat on my face!" lower your confidence and increase the chances that you won't achieve what you're truly capable of.

Use affirmations   and visualization   to raise your confidence. This is especially important right before your speech or presentation. Visualize giving a successful presentation, and imagine how you'll feel once it's over and when you've made a positive difference for others. Use positive affirmations such as "I'm grateful I have the opportunity to help my audience" or "I'm going to do well!" Source: mindtools

Just Smile

There is nothing as powerful as a smile and nothing as simple either. Smile before you head on stage. Smile as your audience filters into the room and smile during your speech. When you take a moment to smile, it naturally brings a feeling of confidence and relaxation over your entire body.

Smiling at someone in your audience can help you feel calmer, and less nervous, while helping you feel more connected to the audience that you are speaking to. It is really that simple—so give it a try. Source: blog.mindvalley

Ask questions

Draw your audience in by asking questions. If you do not receive many responses to a question posed to the entire group, approach one of the participants and ask, “What do you think, John? I’m interested in how you would approach this.”

Once one person responds, others will often engage. If you are asked a question, repeat if for the group, and rephrase it to be sure you fully understand what is being asked. When responding to a question from the audience, be sure to talk to your group, not at your group. Source: meadowlandsusa

Make first impressions count

Before you even begin to present, your audience will base their first impressions on your appearance. Make it count. Dress appropriate to the event. Be neat, clean, professional, and comfortable enough to act naturally. Source: office.xerox

Be Open to Receiving Feedback

Both positive and negative feedback can improve your confidence. One of the most painful experiences is watching recordings of yourself. Although I’m uncomfortable every time I view my performance, I push myself to do it and to find places I can improve.

Watch yourself on video and observe your overall delivery. What seemed to rouse the audience? Watching yourself from a third-person perspective can accelerate your growth. Negative reviews help you pinpoint areas for improvement. Even though negative feedback might sting your ego, these points of view usually boost your skills in the long run.

Being open to criticism helps you develop thick skin. Grow your confidence from both positive, inspiring feedback and negative, constructive feedback. Source: businesscollective

11 Tips on How to Improve Yourself

Do you find yourself feeling frustrated on a daily basis? Do you feel like a zombie, waking up each day to the same repetitive cycle that seems never-ending? Has the quality of your life decreased over time, resulting in a loss of energy, vitality, and enthusiasm for the future?

We have gathered up things that could help you improve yourself and make a better person.

Exercise your willpower to change direction

You don’t have to keep doing what you’ve been doing the last six years if it’s not yielding the benefits you want. Pick a new destination and go that way. Use your willpower to start the process. You don’t have to repeat last year. Clean up the errors. Invest it now in the next year. Watch it make the difference. Source: success

Read a book every day

Books are concentrated sources of wisdom. The more books you read, the more wisdom you expose yourself to. When you’re reading a book every day, you will feed your brain with more and more knowledge. Do you know what’s the best way to store up all this knowledge and information? You need this Digital Brain. Source: lifehack

Learn a new language

Learning new languages without a particular need, develops and opens our minds. It is beneficial to our academic and work environment and allows you to get to know other cultures. Source: lifehacks

Optimism

Never mind if you don't have hours a day—even a few minutes spent in quiet contemplation once in a while yields noticeable benefits. A group of adults who meditated an average of six hours and 13 minutes over the course of five weeks developed patterns of brain activity typically associated with positive moods. Source: oprah

Do something different

If you zig when others zag you will avoid being in the majority making it easier to rise to the top. Its far easiest to be great in a smaller pool. Source: medium

Be kind to yourself

If you had a friend who spoke to you in the same way that you sometimes speak to yourself, how long would you allow that person to be your friend?  The way you treat yourself sets the standard for others.  You must love who you are or no one else will. Source: marcandangel

Appreciate life lessons and mistakes you’ve made

No one is perfect, and there is nobody who never makes mistakes. The only difference is that some people successfully overcome difficulties and make the right conclusions, and other people easily get discouraged and believe that life is a failure. Remember, life’s obstacles and trials make you stronger. Having taken a risk and fallen, rise and try again. Try to be in constant motion, learn new things, grow and improve yourself. Source: learning-mind

Create goals and targets

What does it distinguish successful people from others? Well, the willing to build objectives and achievements. They know what they are looking for, they do daydreams, and they dare. The secret to achieve any goal is then to plan every step. If you want to have a better idea, you have to create smart goals.

And remember, big goals are always divided into several smaller steps. Identify the steps of every target plan you are going to do. Source: mind-globe

Change Your Habits

Do you find yourself feeling frustrated on a daily basis? Do you feel like a zombie, waking up each day to the same repetitive cycle that seems never-ending? Has the quality of your life decreased over time, resulting in a loss of energy, vitality, and enthusiasm for the future?

We are all creatures of habit. We follow the same routines, day in, day out. This makes life easier for us, but also makes us lazy. To spice things up, you need to change your habits. I’m not talking about refraining from brushing your teeth, but maybe brush with the opposite hand. Source: MoneySmartGuide

Learn to face your fears

If you constantly shy away from facing your fears then you will never be able to improve yourself. When you face your fears not only do you feel incredibly liberated but you also broaden your horizons. This will help to make you a better and broad minded individual as well. Source: WiseStep

Don't want too much

Desire can be a powerful motivating tool, but wanting something too much can be very painful and very expensive, so don't live beyond your means or covet the unattainable. Seek your desire, but keep your integrity. Source: PsychologyToday

6 Tips on Building your eCommerce Website

eCommerce web design isn't just about how the website looks but how it works. Successful e-commerce store design merges conversion strategy, visual design, and technical engineering to create a simple and smooth shopping experience.

Choose the Right Platform

The first step in the process is to choose a website building platform. Also known as content management systems (CMS), these are the engines that allow websites to run. The three most popular platforms are WordPress (which has an incredible 50.07 percent market penetration rate), Drupal and Joomla. Source: Business

Make branding a priority

When it comes to shopping online, people want to buy from established brands—not faceless ecommerce sites that look like a front for trying to steal your credit card information.

If you want to build the trust you need to drive serious sales with your ecommerce business, you need to put some serious thought into your branding. Your branding is like the DNA of your ecommerce business; it’s who you are as a company, what you’re about, and how you’re different from your competitors—and it plays a huge part in building a connection with your audience and driving sales. Source: 99designs

Get all the paperwork you need for a legitimate business.

Register your business, get a vendor's License and start looking into legal business issues. You should contact a local attorney to assist in the creation of your business. While it is an upfront cost, it likely will save you significant headache and expense in the future. Source: entrepreneur

Finding a product to sell

The first step to building an ecommerce business is to know what products you want to sell. This is often the most challenging part of starting a new online business. In this section, we’ll highlight strategies you can use to find product opportunities, explore the best places to look for product ideas, and finally, we’ll look at trending products to consider. Source: Shopify

Know the Competition

Prior to developing an Ecommerce business, you need to make certain whether your potential brand name has been used. You should be conscious about the competition present in the market that you are targeting. You need to divide the market, target a specific client base with similar. Source: Quora

Utilize simple website design

Minimalist websites are consistently rated as more visually appealing and more trustworthy than visually complex websites. If you want to optimize your ecommerce web design for conversions, you should consider simplifying it. Source: LyfMarketing

And this is all for now..

Keep checking this blog as we will be adding more tips and guide to building your eCommerce website!

Ways to make your workplace more flexible

Flexibility in the workplace allows employers and employees to decide about working conditions that suit them. This helps employees maintain a work / life balance and can help employers improve the productivity and efficiency of their business.  Flexible working arrangements have traditionally been viewed as a special privilege for employees. Here are some of the way’s flexibility can benefit your business and strategies you can employ to make a flexible workplace a reality.

Start with a Plan

Freedom and flexibility will make your employees feel well-treated and respected but maintaining productivity and keeping track of your bottom line really come down to effective management and personal accountability. Don’t start implementing more flexible workplace policy or design elements without establishing a plan to manage how different spaces are to be used, how flex-time will be managed and who will approve it. Be sure to include communication as a cornerstone to your flex strategy. Remember, Flexible doesn’t equal lenient. If you aim to be a truly flexible organization, how and where your team work should be left up to them, but accountability and deliverables should be well-defined and well communicated from the get-go. Source: apexfacility

Think creatively

Your team should be encouraged to explore different avenues for fostering creativity and accomplishing work goals with a new mindset. Those who tend to stick to the same tried-and-true methods are likely to have decreased flexibility and will resist change. Be prepared to give your team a little extra effort. Source: bizjournals

Be Open-Minded

You'll likely find it easier to understand and manage a situation if you look at it from different perspectives. For example, if you're looking to launch a new product, you might first like to analyze it from different viewpoints.

How will it fit into the marketplace, for instance? What will the impact be on your production process, and your sales and marketing teams? How do you think your customers will react to it?

Make it a priority to listen to and understand the views of the other people involved. If your manager asks you to help out on an urgent project, for example, consider how it will benefit the team or your career, rather than simply thinking, "Oh no, not more work!" Source: mindtools

A better work-life balance

The biggest reason most workers want a flexible workplace is to spend more time with their families. Cutting out the commute, cutting down hours (job share) and flexi-hours all help to facilitate more quality family time. If your family’s happy, then you’re happy and usually better equipped to deal with work demands. Source: cpacareermentor

Give employees time to think

Allowing your employees to go for runs may also have more benefits than just making them happy. While we are engaged in aerobic exercise, our brains convert to alpha waves, indicating our brains are in a default-state typically connected to daydreaming or meditation. Research shows that alpha waves reduce stress and boost creativity and innovation — supporting the proverbial “I got my idea while in the shower” notion.

Giving your employees time away from drilling down into email, communicating in meetings or marathon-ing through a project -- the activities associated with beta and gamma brain waves -- allows them the mental energy to individually brainstorm, internalize information and devise some of their best action plans. This means managers should encourage breaks, whether it's a stroll around the block or a face-to-face interaction. Source: entrepreneur

Consider Culture

Organisational and team cultures are critical to the success of workplaces where employees can access flexibility for all roles and for any reason, and can have successful, engaged careers. Source: flexibleworkingday

Establish Good Communication

Communication plays a huge role in flexible work arrangements. One of the main reasons flex work programs fail is because of lack of communication. There’s no excuse for miscommunication, especially with all the available online team collaboration programs. Slack, Yammer, and numerous instant messenger programs are just some examples of software tools that promote consistent and solid communication among telecommuting employees.

Additionally, a regularly scheduled ‘check-in’ via weekly or monthly group meetings can aid managers and leaders in monitoring telework. During the planning phase, institute both formal and informal systems for ensuring that flexible work arrangements are productive. Be sure to include fail safes that end the ability to work flexibly for employees who don’t meet productivity goals. It’s important to communicate to everyone involved that the flexible work schedule is predicated on meeting certain goals and completing assigned tasks. Source: risesmart

Know that not everyone will be a good flexible worker

Telecommuting and working flexible schedules require specific traits that not everyone has. But don't shut down the entire flex-work program just because a few people aren't cut out for it. Instead, consider other perks that can be offered to employees for whom flex work isn't a good option, while continuing to let the majority of employees take advantage of work flexibility. Source: businessnewsdaily

Tips on Choosing the Best Business Location

Location can also have a big impact on costs and revenue and can affect the perception your potential clients have of your company and your work, so it’s important to get it right. Here are some key Tips to consider in your business location choice.

Population Demographics

Find out if the majority of the human traffic in the area falls under your targeted consumer base. For a fee, you can make use of location analysis tools, such as Locate, Grow and Optimize that can give you information like traffic patterns and lifestyle data of those who come and go in the area. Such demographics include age, professions and household income. By figuring out the nearby demographics, you’ll be able to know how well your product will sell in that vicinity. Source: canon

Know your business          

Understanding the needs of your business is the first step in finding a location. Will customers visit your location? Do you anticipate walk-in business, or will customers call for appointments? Does your business make use of natural resources? How are your goods delivered? Does your business involve chemicals or excessive noise that might fall under the zoning restrictions? Make a list of your business-specific needs. Source: allbusiness

Foot traffic

For most retail businesses, foot traffic is extremely important. You don't want to be tucked away in a corner where shoppers are likely to bypass you, and even the best retail areas have dead spots. By contrast, if your business requires confidentiality, you may not want to be located in a high-traffic area. Monitor the traffic outside a potential location at different times of the day and on different days of the week to make sure the volume of pedestrian traffic meets your needs. Source: entrepreneur

Proximity to Your Competitors

While it may seem counter-intuitive, operating a business close to your competitors is often very beneficial. This is especially true if you have a retail business that relies heavily on foot traffic. Shopping malls are a good example of why proximity to your competitors is an important factor. Most major pedestrian malls are chocked full clothing shops, and cost of retail space is often very high. The reason for this is that the number of potential customers increases exponentially on a per-store basis around a concentration of similar businesses. For example, while one store might attract 50 customers, two stories might attract 200 customers, and three stories might attract 1,000 customers. Source: saleshq.monster

Consider local taxes and infrastructure

Taxes vary between municipalities, with some towns offering preferential rates in the hopes of attracting businesses. Your commercial real estate agent should know what the taxes will be, as well as the infrastructure and utilities—including Internet access, garbage pickup, roads, electricity and natural gas—that are available at the sites you're considering. Source: bd.ca

Safety

Having that sense of security should be a big factor for you, and will be a big factor for your potential customers. If they don’t feel safe leaving their car in the parking lot, they likely won’t enter your store. Not only that, but it should be weighed heavily on your part as well because the higher the crime rate in the area, the more susceptible your business is to break-ins and theft.

If it’s in a part of town where the windows and doors of all nearby stores are barred at night, that’s probably not a good sign. Running a business is tough enough as it is. Don’t add to your stress by placing yourself in a dangerous part of town that is known to have a higher than average crime rate. Source: lendio

Legal considerations for commercial property

There are a number of legal considerations when choosing business property including planning permission, health, safety and fire regulations, insurances, accessibility and licences. You will probably need to pay stamp duty if you purchase the property or if you rent commercial property you will need to comply with the terms of the lease. Ensure you get advice from a solicitor when buying or leasing business premises. Source: nibusinessinfo

Consider possible plans for expansion

This may not be an immediate concern, but optimistically thinking about business expansion helps in determining the potential of your desired location.

Moving your business to another location is not an easy task. That’s why you have to consider the options available if ever your business would grow and require more space.

If it’s not possible to rent out the adjacent lots or do a reconstruction of the place, then at least go around the area to see if there are bigger and better spaces you can move into when the time comes. Source: fitzvilla