Episode 189 | Stop Boring Your Audience: Virtual Presentation Tips with Rebecca Morgan

In this episode, Rebecca shares how to transform ordinary virtual presentations into memorable, interactive experiences. She explains why authenticity beats perfection, how to avoid the “death by PowerPoint” trap, and how to create slides that support—not smother—your message. From camera setup and lighting to pacing, fonts, and audience engagement, Rebecca offers practical tips to help professionals at any level shine on screen.

You’ll learn how to connect with your audience as if you’re in the same room, use visual storytelling to hold attention, and design virtual meetings that are clear, fun, and effective. Rebecca’s message is clear: good enough isn’t good enough anymore—virtual presence is your brand, and it’s time to make it remarkable.

About Rebecca Morgan:

Rebecca Morgan is a world-class speaker, trainer, and bestselling author of 28 books, including Calming Upset Customers. With decades of experience helping people communicate more effectively in person and online, she’s mastered the art of keeping audiences engaged—whether on stage, on Zoom, or on a global broadcast.

 Resources:

Website

LinkedIn

bit.ly/RebeccaTime

bit.ly/VMPselfassess

 bit.ly/es-vmp

Want to be more successful, make more sales and grow your business? If so, you'll love this podcast. In this show, I (Kay Miller, aka "Muffler Mama,") interview superstar women from all industries. Their experience and advice will give you specific tools you can use to enjoy Uncopyable success. I earned the nickname “Muffler Mama" when sold more automotive mufflers than anyone in the world, and I've been a successful entrepreneur for over 30 years. During that time, I (along with my husband, Steve) have generated 8 figures in revenue for our business. Besides hosting this podcast, I'm an author, speaker, coach, consultant and most importantly....Kelly's mom.

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Transcript

My guest today is Rebecca Morgan, a world class speaker, trainer, and bestselling author of Get This 28 Books. Rebecca has been delivering virtual presentation since 1996 and has been helping improve people's in-person and online communication skills for decades.

Our conversation will help you avoid the most common mistakes people make, and you'll get specific tips to make your virtual presentations stand out, engage, and impact your audience. Whether you're on Zoom teams or a big stage, Rebecca will help you shine. Rebecca, welcome to the podcast. Thank you, Kay.

That was a lovely introduction. Yay. I see hearts on your screen. Yay. Rebecca, you were highly recommended by Patricia Fripp, who is a superstar speaker. , You do a great Fri impression, which a lot of people do. We love you Fripp. And so Fri said you've got to interview Rebecca for your podcast, and of course you listening, we all make presentations and anymore it's, it's online.

So much of it's online. So, Rebecca I'm just gonna give you a, a chance to just tell us a little bit about yourself and, , what we're gonna talk about today. Well, sure. You had asked me to talk about how I got started, and that was decades ago when I was a secretary at a, at a. University and I went to a lot of personal development courses and the training director said, would you teach a class for us for the staff?

And I go, well, I've never taught a class, so you know, why do you want me to talk about it? And she said, I want you to talk about assertiveness. And I said, well, I've never read or taken a class on assertiveness, but sure. And she said, 'cause you live your life assertively. So I got started because I was, somebody thought I was an exemplar.

And they wanted to learn how I did what I did, and that then grew into time management communication. My first book was on professional selling because I then went into sales and was successful. And then my second book was on calming upset customers. And both of those books have sold over, , 150,000 copies.

And the Calming Upset Customers book is what got me on Oprah in 60 Minutes and Forbes and NPR and USA today and a bunch of international media. So, , so that I did that, I have done that since like I said, for decades. I've spoken in 24 countries and, , then. I about in the mid nineties, about 1996, I started doing virtual, which you can imagine at that time was very primitive.

Very primitive, which I won't regale you with those stories. And, . And eventually I got pretty good at it and was able to serve both my domestic and international clients by giving virtual seminars on Skype. Can you remember, remember Skype? I be, I vaguely remember Skype still around, but that's how I did it.

And then of course the pandemic hit and after we realized it wasn't gonna just be a couple weeks of shutdown I had clients who canceled everything, but then they started wanting to do virtual. And I made more in 2020 than I did in 2019. And in 2021, I doubled what I did in 2020. And in 22 I tripled what I did in 2021.

So I saw that there was a need and a value. And when I asked my clients why my programs were so popular, they said, 'cause they're really different. They're different. They're engaging, we've. We feel almost if we're as if we're in the same room, because of the engagement techniques I learned, some of which I poured over from what I knew worked in person, and I figured out how to make them work virtually.

Now, there's some things that I could do in person that I can't do virtually, and there's some things like the heart that I can do virtually that I can't do in person. So each has its place. And even local clients, I live in the middle of Silicon Valley and E even local clients will sometimes want to do virtual because they have people from around the country, around the world that they don't have to then bring in.

And even if 80% of their staff is local, they may still wanna do some virtual. I do a, so my two focuses are management academies where I design year long or more programs for managers to come once a month. And that can be either virtual or in person or some combination of the both. So often I'll do a couple in person and then when they bring the remote people in once a quarter we will do a half a day or a full day in person.

So that's one of my focuses. And then helping others craft and polish their virtual presentations is my second focus. Well, a with. So, so where would you like to start as far as giving the listener, you know, some specifics on how they can do better job at at online presentations?

So the first. Session. The first three hours is on your, what we call your frame.

So what the audience sees. Now, I come from a background of theater where things are not as they appear. You know, you have flat , walls that really look 3D from the audience, et cetera. And a film where the director is very conscious of the shot and what is in the shot. Everything is very intentional in that shot.

As presenters, as virtual presenters, we need to be conscious of both of those things. So our background, does our background have anything that's distracting that if someone comments on it, it's probably distracting. Rebecca, your background, 'cause most people will listen, is very simple. Is that your real background or virtual? No no, because I'm not losing body parts.

You can tell it's real. Okay. So if I lose gesturing and you was losing fingers or ears or hair, yeah, that's virtual and I actually recommend against virtual, so even so tidy. Authentic is better than virtual. Okay. so camera angle is another one. A lot of people have their camera at the top of their screen and so they're always looking up. They're either always looking up at the camera, which is an odd angle, or they're looking down at their script or their notes, whatever.

So to have your camera in the middle of your screen at eye level, and the easiest way to figure this out is to measure from your desktop to your eye. You know, get the tape measure out of the yardstick measure. Where's your tabletop? I'm not gesturing here with the tabletop for, because it, I would be off screen.

So for those listening here, wherever your tabletop is to your eye. Okay. So when I have my laptop open, I think that, I forget what it's, it's like 19 inches when I have the laptop open. So I need a riser. Because my, my laptop screen's only eight inches, eight and a half inches. So I need a riser that's gonna bring my computer up and the camera up if I'm using my laptop to the 19 inches.

Then you're looking eye to eye. I have a camera that hangs down. It's a little tiny dime size camera called the center cam, and it is in the middle of my 61 inch monitor. That's a monitor, man. 'cause I have everything on one screen. And, , if you have PowerPoint, you actually have to have a second screen.

So I use Keynote instead of PowerPoint for my slides, which I can have it all on screen. But if I am forced to use PowerPoint, then I will take the slide, the full screen, slide off to my iPad as a second screen and I never look at it. I never look at it because everything is on my big 61 inch monitor where I can then see the gallery.

I can have my timer open. I, I can see my slide, my sorter so I can skip slides if I need to. So, , so camera angle is where we got off on. This is camera angle, making sure that it's eye level and that you are talking in the eye. So like you're doing a great job, Kay, at looking me in the eye. If I'm talking to just one person, I shut off the self view.

So then you k are in the middle of my screen and then I put my little camera, my little dime size camera on your forehead. So then interesting. Yeah. So then I'm looking right down the barrel into your eyes, but I can see your eyes 'cause the camera's not covering them up, but I don't need to see your forehead, no, that's, that's good. And, and I'm looking in the camera when I am, , not looking at my notes or not looking at you. And as you said you know, that's a great way to not be looking back and forth. So that's a big one. And if you hide yourself for you, which you can do under your view options, then you take yourself out of the picture.

Unless you need to be for some reason, see yourself, but most of us don't need, and we get distracted by our own image. So just take that outta the equation and then your other person can take up more room. So that's more of a one-on-one tip than a group tip. That's great. So camera at eye level, which I think I have eye level, I also have a camera that hangs down.

But also, . Take yourself off the screen. I mean, it's, it is kind of hard not to look at yourself on the screen sometimes, so that helps you focus on the other person. In 2020, the cosmetic surgeons said they had a surge in business in 20 and 21 because we got so tired of seeing ourselves and our wrinkles and stuff.

And so just take that outta the equation. If you get bothered by it and, and just hide yourself, you, it's easy. so what's the next tip? So one of the biggest mistakes I see is mediocre at best slides. Mediocre at best, I could count on one hand. The number of people that I think do a good job with their slides for virtual. Now, the good, and we have a whole three hours on slides.

Whole three hours, because I'm kind of a slide nerd, which I actually encourage you to be a slide connoisseur. Some of my, some of my graduates say they, they become slide snobs because they know what works and 99% of what they see doesn't work. , I, I, so I love watching tutorials for PowerPoint and Keynote just to see what possibilities that I may not see.

And, , even the people who offer templates for PowerPoint, let's say they're beautifully designed for a magazine article. Your slides are not a document. Your slides are a way to introduce and reinforce your points. So you need to. Spoon feed your audience. With any content you have on your slides, you don't give them 12 bullet points on one slide.

Oh my heavens. No. You don't even give them three bullet points at first, all in one cell. You give them one at a time as you were talking through it. In fact. If you have more than four bullet points, I recommend you break it into two slides. So you only have two bullet points for a slide. Or what about this for concept?

How about having one concept per slide so you're not having any bullet points per se? You're having, okay, here's the header and here's the subheader, but it's a different slide. And people go, oh, my boss says I shouldn't have more than, X number of slides. Who cares how many slides you have? They only care that they can comprehend and follow what you're explaining or what you're talking about.

So really reduce the number, amount of content on your slides. Add some color or pizazz that's relevant to your brand and bump the fonts. This is always the woo-hoo for people because I show them in that section of the V MP course what different fonts look like in the same size. Then if so, then some of the fonts, because of their design are smaller.

Some are huge, but they're the same point size. And then I have them guess what point size I'm showing on screen and it's 60 point and they're aghast because they've been using 24 point, or Heaven forbid, 36 point for a title. Oh. So I suggest like 48 is the minimum in PowerPoint. Now Keynote has a different , ratio, so Keynote would be like 80 to a hundred minimum, and go crazy if you only have one or two words on a slide and you really wanna add pizazz, make it 200 points.

200 point. Yeah. People wouldn't think, I mean, yes, it's shocking, but true. Well, it reminds me of death by PowerPoint was the, is the saying. And it's true. I've experienced this as well, where you see way too much text on the screen and it is tempting. Now, what do you feel, how do you feel about the animations where you have one point and then you bring another point in like that?

Do you think it's better just to flip to a new slide with a new graphic that's kind of mm-hmm. That's kind of in the weeds, but I'm curious. Yeah. It, I love animations. I love animations as a generality if they're used purposely and well, But if there's a bunch, and depends on how much you have to say about each one.

If each one is just a one sentence comment, but if you've got more to say about that, then take it to a new slide. Just don't put too much stuff on your slide. , I'm guessing you're so funny. You are really funny. And you talked about even doing standup comedy, and so I'm wondering, do you use visuals for your humor too? I do. I'm one of the few. That use slides in my comments in my comedy, which is obviously easier to do when I'm doing virtual comedy, but I do it in person too when I do it in person.

The other thing I wanna say, oh, about the slides was people don't realize how many people will come to even a live session on their phones. One, one conference, virtual conference provider, or they did hybrid so you could come either in person or virtual. They found that those who joined virtually live sessions, 54% came on their phones.

So that means you have to design for the worst possible scenario, which is people watching on their phones on a tiny little screen, right? When you pinching and you pinch out and you pinch. No, don't make them pinch. No pinching. Just pinching. Don't make them pinch. Okay? So if you design for the fir worst possible scenario, then those watching on a 61 inch monitor will be fine.

It won't look garish, it'll be fine. And then the other cool bonus is if you are also giving that same presentation in person, you can use the same slides. You don't have to redo your slides because they look good, they're clear, they're crisp. People absorb the information. And you mentioned text, Let's add to that. Diagrams or visuals that aren't necessarily text heavy. How about some charts, pie charts? Oh man. Take out anything that's extraneous. Anything that you're not gonna talk about, that's not important. You know, I, I hate it when somebody goes, I know you can't read this slide.

 I have to give a shout out to my husband, who you also know very well. Steve Miller and He really is a master slide designer. I think you would approve because big graphics, visuals, one picture that he'll say, fill the screen. Don't keep making it small and. I brought up the humor because that's one way to really, that's easy even if you're not funny, like Rebecca is to, , use humor to put something in that's just a site gag or whatever.

So I, I like that you are breaking this down for people. So clearly we gotta remember, just like with everything else, it's not about you, it's about them putting yourself in their shoes. And as you said, the small screen thing is a big challenge now. And people don't really understand that, so, Kay.

I do have a little 11, , question assessment, self-assessment that if people wanna take to see where they feel they are on their virtual to see if they want to invest in improving themselves. And I put it in your chat for the notes, but it's also, I'll give it to you verbally for our listeners. It's just Bitly, BIT ly slash and then the first three letters are capitalized. 

So V as in virtual, M as in master, P as in presenter. And then the rest is all lowercase self assess. S-E-L-F-A-S, SESS. So take that little 11 question, self-assessment and see is there room for you to improve in your virtual presentations? 'cause most people can think that they're already okay, but Okay.

Doesn't cut it anymore. Doesn't cut it. Whether you're an internal person doing virtual presentations or whether you're an external, trying to either make money for your presentations or get business from your presentations, okay, is mediocre and complacency equals mediocrity. And you don't wanna be mediocre, do you?

You know, you're a stellar person. You wanna stand out, you wanna, people go, wow, that was fabulous. Exactly. And, and number one, I will put that in the show notes. Number two, I'm afraid to take that assessment. I already have a bad background. I'm not looking at the camera, but I can't wait because as you said, why not?

Try to be better or not. Try to be better. Be better. Even you said you study this even though you're already teaching this, you wanna be on the cutting edge. And as we talk about all the time, and unc copyable your advantage, why not take advantage of what you can do differently? I have this saying about like, no one trust, because people talk about that and I've heard, you know, people say you only have to have trust.

That's a deal breaker. People won't do business with you unless they trust you. And I say, yeah, but what if you're competing with someone else who they like and no. And, and remember that's one of the things we talk about extensively in our branding book, uncapable, you remember you so not, why not take advantage of every possible advantage like you're talking about.

Exactly. And Kay, I've been talking about this, the virtual master presenter, which may be a lot for some people who don't do a lot of presentations or they just wanna be good at what they do. And I do offer a three part, two hours per part called Virtual master polish. And that would, virtual master polish sorry, virtual presentation polish.

Okay. Virtual presentation. Polish. Polish. And also I put the link for you in your, , in your show notes, but I'll give it verbally to our listeners. It's you can just go to rebecca morgan.com and on the homepage it talks about that, and that's more for either a, a group. That wants to do their team wants to have their team, especially like maybe salespeople.

I do have a session, a program just for salespeople as well. But, you know, do you want just your department or division to go through? Then that would be appropriate. And we are not doing that publicly as a right now, where you can enroll just individuals. But if you go to my website and, and register on the list, you'll be notified when and if we do a public one where individuals can sign up.

One thing I find with,  clients and salespeople, or I'm gonna pick on salespeople because they just don't like to be on Zoom. They're not comfortable, they're afraid. And so following Rebecca's advice will help you be less afraid because it's such a disadvantage also to have your screen turned off, your picture not showing.

Would you agree? Absolutely. Absolutely. And one of the things that graduates have said to me is they were like, what you just described, I don't really like virtual, but because we have a whole three hour session on engagement on 46 different ways to engage your meaningfully, engage your audience, not stupid stuff, but meaningfully engaged beyond polls and beyond chat, it actually becomes more fun for the presenter as well as more fun for the audience.

But it's on target, it's purposeful, it's topic related, and , so there are ways to make them less odious. In fact, people say they look forward to them because they're interesting and engaging and get people to think. I think everyone's gonna wanna learn more and go to, to Rebecca's website and also explore the, the links that she's sharing.

One of them, let's end with your virtual Master presenter course. That's coming in February of 26. So, , you, if when you go to the Bitly, it's, it's another Bitly and it's all lowercase after the slash. ES because I partner with E speakers, so it's e, s and then A dash B as in virtual, M as in master, P as in presenter. 

And you can sign up to be notified of the preview, which we'll do in January. Or if you know you wanna take it, then go ahead and register for the February we go the last week of February through all of March. We do five sessions a week apart. And, , you'll be with a, a co, other colleagues who are presenters.

And I make it so that we learn from each other and we have time to practice and get input from other people. So the. Graduates, and then if you want to have the actual BMP designation as I do, then after the course you need to come to four of the five live. You can watch one virtually, but again, but it's like watching a.

Video of a massage versus getting a massage. So you wanna come to all of them live, if at all possible. But then you can sit for the certification with me, which is a half an hour. We go through the all five of the key topics. So the you know, your background, how to make eye connection, how to virtually engage people, your slides.

And then the final one is tech glitches. The final one is tech glitches and what you can do to avoid them and how to recover from them. So having plan B, C, d, and E in place, because I've had it all happen where a loss, the internet or my computer shut down or a Yeah, yeah, I've had that all happen.

So how you can make sure that you still shine even among the tech hiccups that may happen. So then they, you can sit for the BMP. Once you pass that, you get the designation and you can add that as your credentials. Yeah, you, and then you really have the cred. And I would love, I don't know if you do this, but it'd be fun to see some before and afters of the students.

Do you do that at all? I do, but let me, let me find them on my side deck here. I, I, , actually I'll show you some that I created because I don't wanna embarrass my students. Okay. And we're, we do need to wrap up here, but I think, let me give you the opportunity to share the screen or share your slides.

Okay, great. And there you go. We'll do a few slides and then we'll, , we'll call, wrap it up. Okay. Sounds good. Yes. And tech problems. Oh my gosh, how stressful is that? But, , I would love, , your pointers. Sure. So, what I commonly see are oops. See, even I screw up sometimes. What? Kicking you off the show.

I know, I know. No, this is, this is great. I'm curious to see what you're going to tell us about this. Okay. I'm going to show you a bad. Agenda. Do you, is this common? This is what you see common. I see. Agenda with some smallish print. Exactly. Which is four different lines. And it's boring. It's boring. Okay. So then we say, all right, well, let's add a little color.

Let's bump the font. So now we're doing, , in PowerPoint that would probably be 56 point font with a little star for the bullet point instead of just a boring circle. Okay. But what if we spoonfeed it to them? What if we give them each agenda item one at a time and we, we make the previous ones, , , dark, , darker so they blend in so that we're focusing the people on where we want.

Okay. Well, what don't we, right. Only, yeah, only what you're talking about is, is. Highlighted. So the rest of, okay, but now we're gonna go another step. We're adding a little pizazz to the numbers of each agenda item. We're, , we're graying out the ones that came before. So now, instead of all in one slide for our listeners, we're doing two slides with four bullet points of the agenda instead of one.

Okay, well, what if we go vertical? And now we put each agenda item vertically, we add a little movement, a little annotation so that we're again, o only giving the audience what we want as we share. Or what if we add a little cool effect where we give them some icons. We have the each agenda item move in and out through a morph effect.

And so each one comes up. In a different slide, it expands, and the other ones contract. Or what if we make it scroll? What if we do that? What if we scroll the agenda items? So the point is we're just making it different, aren't we? We're, yeah. Making a different, and each point gets attention, as you said. I mean, it seems like the before that you showed would obviously be bad, but we see people doing that, so you'll have to look at the YouTube video, those of you listening, because this is really, you know, that what you've done so far is not that complicated.

I'm, I'm guessing you do more, but just some of the action that you, some fun things you add, really changes everything. Just simple things. But again, you're trying to, where do I want them to focus and giving them, one at a time. I say it's like spoonfeeding a baby. You wouldn't give the baby a whole bowl of cereal.

You wouldn't have done that to Kelly. You wouldn't have just said, here toddler, here's the whole bowl. Because soon it's gonna be on their head. You spoon feed them so they don't choke. They don't take on too much. So think of your audiences not as babies, but you get the metaphor. Yeah.

You're spoon feeding them the content you want as you explain it. Which means your slide re remember is not a document. You don't have everything you're going to say on that slide. You just have a key word or two or three or four, not a whole lot of text. That's a great point. I think a great place to end and I just.

Everyone's talking about the fact we are, , our attention spans are so short, and so for you to pop something that's powerful on your slide versus having people read through all of that, which they probably never like to do, but now we're so distracted, like you said, we're on our phones. Well guess what else?

All that other stuff's. So your phone, those are great points. I asked you to give specifics and you totally did. I love this. Thank you to Patricia Fri for referring you. And the resources that Rebecca mentioned.

The links will all be in the show notes. So I just wanna say, Rebecca, you've made a big impact on me and the listeners, so thank you so much for being on the show. Thank you, Kay. Appreciate it.