New Zealand-based specialists in Presentation Skills

We caught up with Olivia Mitchell, who together with hus­band, Tony, owns and oper­ates one of New Zealand’s few busi­nesses solely ded­i­cated to run­ning pre­sen­ta­tion skills train­ing courses.

Tell us about your busi­ness, effec­tive speak­ing, and how it started?

We’re pas­sion­ate about help­ing peo­ple become more con­fi­dent and effec­tive pre­sen­ters. We’re one of the few busi­nesses in New Zealand who only run pre­sen­ta­tion skills courses. Most other train­ing organ­i­sa­tions also do time man­age­ment, nego­ti­a­tion etc. So we’re spe­cial­ists and pretty obses­sive about being up-to-date on research and cur­rent trends.

Tony started the busi­ness about 10 years ago as a nat­ural pro­gres­sion of his career. One of the things he par­tic­u­larly wanted to help peo­ple with was fear of pub­lic speak­ing. So he went to uni­ver­sity and did a psy­chol­ogy degree and a post-graduate diploma in Ratio­nal Emo­tive Behav­iour Ther­apy ( a school of Cog­ni­tive Behav­ioural Ther­apy) before start­ing the business.

What do you love about your line of work? Challenges?

We love see­ing peo­ple gain con­fi­dence. There is noth­ing bet­ter than wit­ness­ing the trans­for­ma­tion of some­one who is shy as a mouse, into some­one who’s able to share their ideas and thoughts. One of the things that moti­vates us is this quote from Lee Iaccoca:

So we help peo­ple gain the con­fi­dence to share their ideas, and give them the tools to do so effec­tively. When we say good­bye to peo­ple at the end of one of our two-day courses we know we’ve made a dif­fer­ence in their lives.

Every pre­sen­ta­tion that we deliver, every course that we run is a chal­lenge. A pre­sen­ta­tion skills course is out of the com­fort zone for most peo­ple. We see our role as cre­at­ing an envi­ron­ment where they feel they can explore and exper­i­ment in rel­a­tive safety, but some­times we need to gen­tly push peo­ple to try out new things. We work on the edge with people.

Olivia, you blog at www.speakingaboutpresenting.com — tell us about the site’s pur­pose and your readership

I blog to help peo­ple with their pre­sen­ta­tions. The site is very much focused on busi­ness pre­sen­ta­tions — the sort of pre­sen­ta­tions that peo­ple have to do as part of their work — rather than pub­lic speak­ing. I want to get across our phi­los­o­phy that giv­ing a pre­sen­ta­tion at work is not a per­for­mance. You can use the nat­ural con­ver­sa­tion skills that you already have — that makes giv­ing a pre­sen­ta­tion a less scary beast. I also empha­sise that think­ing about what you want to say — the con­tent of your pre­sen­ta­tion — is critical. 

What advice do you have for cou­ples keen to work together in a business?

Hav­ing sim­i­lar stan­dards is some­thing that has really helped us. For exam­ple on cus­tomer ser­vice — what’s the stan­dard for timely responses to phone mes­sages and emails. And being able to give each other feed­back with­out the per­son on the receiv­ing end get­ting defensive.

What feed­back do you receive from peo­ple who have attended your pre­sen­ta­tion skills courses?

Great feed­back. We now use an online sys­tem for gath­er­ing feed­back a few days after the course. But we also encour­age peo­ple to email us to let us know about their suc­cesses. We love those emails — they really make our day. One of our course par­tic­i­pants just posted this on our Face­book page:

These guys are great! Just this week, I was told I had to give a 10 minute pre­sen­ta­tion to new staff about my par­tic­u­lar depart­ment — only prob­lem was that I was given this with very lit­tle warn­ing. With the skills I had learnt on the course I was able to write a 10minute speech in no time! – this method is fan­tas­tic, it took away the ini­tial panic of “ohh no!-10minute pre­sen­ta­tion with no prep time!” So thanks so much guys, and keep up the fan­tas­tic work!

What are your pas­sions? What keeps you motivated?

I think you can tell that help­ing peo­ple get their ideas across is one of our pas­sions! I love the feel­ing of being an expert in one par­tic­u­lar niche. I know that in this nar­row area, I’m good at what I do. And I get sat­is­fac­tion from con­stantly work­ing on my skills and keep­ing up-to-date.

What do you do in your spare time? Hobbies?

There is another major part of our lives — we live on a 200 acre prop­erty with pas­ture, pine for­est and native bush. We bought it because we’re pas­sion­ate about horses and horse-riding. I’ve been obsessed with horses since I was a child — I intro­duced Tony to horse-riding, and he adores it too. We bought such a large prop­erty so that we could ride on it. It already had a few tracks and Tony spends a lot of his time in his dig­ger (the most fab­u­lous man-toy) build­ing new tracks for us to ride on. We also have dogs, cat­tle and chickens.

How does a typ­i­cal day pan out?

We have two types of days: days when we’re run­ning train­ing courses and days when we’re based at home.

Train­ing course days mean an early start — we always arrive in plenty of time to have our room set-up just the way we want it, and to be able to wel­come course par­tic­i­pants as they come in. The day is full-on, totally liv­ing in the moment respond­ing to people’s needs.

Dur­ing at home days I work from 7 am to 10 pm with a break for a horseride or some out­side work that needs doing. Week­ends are not that dif­fer­ent except that we don’t get client phone calls. I don’t have work-life bal­ance and I don’t want it. I love work­ing on my blog, writ­ing and mak­ing con­nec­tions with peo­ple all over the world.

What do you love about liv­ing in New Zealand? Dislike?

I come from the UK, and there is NO WAY that I could have the lifestyle (large prop­erty, horses etc) that I have here and still be within com­mut­ing dis­tance of a major city.

A lit­tle less wind is about the only thing that I would ask for!

Get­away destinations?

We do like trav­el­ling. Gen­er­ally, it’s been to Europe because that’s where my fam­ily is based (my mother, daugh­ter and my sis­ter and her fam­ily are all there). How­ever, next year we’re going to the States to go to the South by South­west con­fer­ence in Austin, Texas and to take a speak­ing course (work­ing on our own devel­op­ment). We’ll do some trav­el­ling around at the same time.

Phone: +64 4 528‑4561

Web­site: Effec­tive Speaking

Olivia’s Blog: Speak­ing about Pre­sent­ing