MASTERCLASS #4: CAPTIVATE ANY AUDIENCE
Learn how to storyboard your presentations so that ANY topic (for ANY audience) resonates.
An online masterclass for those who completed the first three courses.
Price: $297 USD
Prerequisites: Completion of Courses 1-3
CAPTIVATE ANY AUDIENCE teaches you how to make anything interesting, to any audience.
⚠️ This is a secret page only available to those who enrolled in all three previous courses ⚠️
Do not enroll in this course if you haven’t enrolled in the three previous courses. Refunds will NOT be issued if you skipped to this checkout and purchased this course without purchasing the three other courses.
From DATA DUMPS to CAPTIVATING presentations that make a lasting, positive IMPACT on every audience.
By the end of this course, you will know:
What to INCLUDE in your presentation
What to LEAVE OUT of your presentation
What ORDER you should present the information in, and
How to make ANYTHING more interesting (to ANY audience)
Storyboarding struggles aren’t technical problems or design problems.
Storyboarding challenges are rooted in a fundamental misunderstanding of how to communicate with people.
Starting with your very first presentation, you were taught the wrong communication model. This widespread model is why most professional presentations fall flat.
(Deep breath). Right now you are:
Revising your presentation over and over and over again, and exhausted from the process.
Unknowingly giving your audience mental “whiplash” because of the order you choose to present your information in.
Beginning your presentations with learning objectives, the agenda, logistics, and/or speaker bios.
Unintentionally spewing “data dumps” at your audience, because that’s what you’ve been taught to do.
Ending your presentations with a generic “thank you” or “questions?” slide that just has your contact info.
Constantly facing “writer’s block” (aka “speaker’s block”) because you don’t know what you should include.
Constantly frustrated because you always seem to create talks that are too long at first, but you don’t know what to cut—everything seems so important!
Unsure how to tailor your presentation to different audiences, especially when it’s a “non-technical” or “non-research” audience.
Nervous because you’re presenting about evidence-based policies, diversity, equity, inclusion, and social justice and your audience is defensive or hostile to that.
🤫 p.s. Part of this is because you start your presentation prep by asking “what do I want my audience to know” and/or because you’re still using written outlines to plan your content. Both of those make your life harder!
Ok, let’s do this one last time. This is all about to change because…
After Captivate Any Audience, you will know how to…
Use the storyboarding formula to make ANYTHING engaging for ANY AUDIENCE.
Avoid the current default model of communication that is tragically ineffective.
Apply a new model of communication is both fun and simple to use (and, of course, more effective).
Understand the psychology of your audience and share your info in more relatable ways.
Confidently decide what to include in your presentation AND what to leave out of your presentation.
Use storyboarding strategies to choose a clear and coherent order for your presentation.
Craft an opening hook that, within the first 30 seconds, convinces them to watch from start to finish (and that leverages current evidence about the primacy/recency effect).
Stop ending on a whisper, and end with a strong call to action (even for class lectures!) that leverages current evidence about the primacy/recency effect.
Appropriately deal with (or prepare for) audiences that might be resistant, hostile, or defensive (particularly relevant for people who talk about diversity, social justice, inclusion, and equity)
Which means that you will soon…
Feel more joy when working on your slides, and way less frustration. (Warning: you may be caught laughing at your own jokes or gleefully cheering at the creative way you just figured to present that “dry” content!).
Create a better first draft of your presentation, which will cut down on how much time you spend revising it (or, at least, stop that feeling you’re just spinning your wheels).
Create such a captivating presentation, that your audience might even forget social media exists.
Be able to tailor your presentation to different audiences, with minimal revisions and no overhaul needed.
Witness the moment, in real time, that you just changed someone’s mind or made them think of something in a new way.
Build trust and connect with your audience in ways that you never thought was possible (which pays off in dividends when you need to get through dry or complicated material).
Suddenly want to do a TED/TEDx talk, because you’ve realized that you have an idea worth sharing AND you now have the skills to get up on that stage and share it like a boss.
Vanquish data dumps (info overload) once and for all!
CAPTIVATE ANY AUDIENCE is a self-paced, on-demand course you can finish in a couple weeks.
The Curriculum
Our priority is to make learning fun & easy. That’s why our training is:
Not just lectures! Activities are integrated to keep it engaging and fun.
Packed with SHORT videos (usually only 5-15 mins each), so it’s easy to fit into your workday.
Structured in a logical, step-by-step order, so all you have to do is click “next video”
Core Masterclass Training = Approx. 4 hours
Section 1:
The assumptions everyone makes when they create standard professional presentations.
The default model of communication everyone uses, based on those assumptions.
Why those assumptions don’t work in reality.
A new model of communication to follow that will help you actually resonate with people and make an impact.
The third (and final) “enemy” of the trio of doom!
Section 2:
How to defeat this third “enemy” in the easiest ways possible, while prioritizing accessible & inclusive presentations.
How to create an opening hook (in the first 30 seconds) that will convince your audience to pay attention from start to finish.
How to close your presentation in a way that makes a real impact (instead of ending “on a whimper”).
Sections 1 and 2 will drastically increase the impact of your presentations. But just like before, there’s much more waiting for you inside the course after you complete these core lessons!
The Storyboarding Formula = Approx. 3 hours
A unique aspect of this course is that it has a Section 3.
After you complete Section 2, you will have a new set of super easy, practical storyboarding strategies to try. Those, alone, will significantly improve how much your presentations will connect with people.
BUT…I had more advanced storyboarding strategies to share.
That’s why I included Section 3, which are the “wizard level” storyboard strategies. These have a steeper learning curve, but will massively skyrocket the impact you make with your talks.
In Section 3, you will learn THE STORYBOARDING FORMULA:
How to have a central idea
How to structure your key points so they tell a story
How the key points work together with your central idea
How to combine everything you learned in the course into the STORYBOARDING FORMULA
Technical Walkthroughs that show you efficiency strategies (recorded using PPT, but most features exist in other slide apps too!)
Exercises and examples, plus some design reverse engineering!
Deep dives, PPT technical videos, speed lessons, & activities = Approx. 5 hours
This is our MOST COMPREHENSIVE course yet.
You’ll have an additional 5 hours of training material beyond Sections 1-3.
Together, these lessons will ensure you complete the course having a robust set of tools that will last you for the rest of your career.
Here’s a snapshot of some of these additional lessons >>
Bonus lessons answer FAQs like:
How to tailor a presentation to your audience,
How many key points should I have in a presentation,
and more!
Advanced lessons on:
Setting realistic goals for how much content you can cover (and how much impact you can make)
Public speaking tips that will actually help (and which ones you can ignore)
What to do when you’re presenting on social justice and have a hostile or defensive audience
When you’re all done with the course, you get a Certificate of Completion! 👩🎓
When you complete all lessons, you’ll automatically be awarded a certificate of completion! The certificate includes a unique certificate ID.
Imagine how awesome it’s going to feel once you get the final certificate for this program! I can’t wait for you to have that feeling!! 💪✨
Now that you’ve completed masterclass #3, you’re ready to become a freaking PRESENTATION WIZARD.
Ready to enroll in Captivate Any Audience?
For $297 USD you will get:
12 months of access to this course.
Customized handouts tailored to the course, that you can download & keep after your access expires.
This is our most comprehensive training course yet, so it’ll take a few weeks to complete if you want to finish it quickly.
Still, you’ll have access for 12 months. That means you can re-watch the videos as much as you want during the 12 months you have access.
Visual Slide Design is the 4th course in my 4-part training series that teaches you how to create clear, captivating, and convincing presentations.
You are here
While many people find that Fail-Proof Slide Design perfectly meets their needs for creating slides that are more accessible and modern than before…
…there is a full program waiting for you if you want to continue improving your public speaking & presentation design skills!
It isn’t that long either!
It’s about the length of 4 workshops (it takes about 32 hours to complete the entire program).
🎁 You’ll also get a $10 credit to enroll in course #2 (Visual Slide Design) before your access to Fail-Proof Slide Design expires.
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You can enroll in the full program right here!
This is recommended if you have access to professional development funds, or really want to finish your entire training ASAP.
For most people, we recommend enrolling in 1 course at a time.
That way you can take some time in between courses and use it to work on making everything you just learned into a habit that feels easy.
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Our program goes in a very specific and intentional order.
This course was intentionally designed so it’s easy to improve your presentations.
It was also designed to handle the executive function for you—this course is structured in terms of priority.
There are certain foundational slide design and presentation elements that you need to have in place before the more difficult or advanced strategies are possible (or helpful).
Plus, in each course, we introduce terms and principles that are unique to the framework I developed over 10 years of training on presentation design and public speaking.
For example, no one else teaches you to “MILAM” your presentations, so if you skip over the course that covers this, you will be confused or frustrated.
If you have not taken presentation skills training, then please be rest assured that this path is going to make it easy for you to improve your skills. If you skip a course (or more) then you’re going to unnecessarily make life hard on yourself. But, you can do that if you enroll in the full program here. You get access to all courses at once, so you can skip around if you like (no refunds, just FYI).
If you want to skip ahead because you have already taken presentation skills training, then I recommend you don’t start with these courses at all. Head over to my 1:1 page and let’s just start working together and develop a more tailored approach to improving your presentations.
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Take the last course that will elevate your presentation skills to a level you didn’t even think was possible!
You’re already in our course ecosystem, so it’s just 2 easy steps & you’ll be watching your first video!
Step #1
Complete the checkout…
Step #2
Start the course! It will automatically be added to your account, in the same dashboard you’re used to!
Frequently Asked Questions
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The course is about 11 hours of video, which would take about a month to complete (if you want to finish it quickly).
Still, you will have 12 months to access this course.
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This is not a subscription. We will not charge your card again automatically.
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My recommendation is to complete all four courses in the program.
In courses 1-3, you learned about two “enemies” that cause #DeathByPowerpoint. There is actually a third enemy that makes up this “trio of doom” and you learn about it in course 4.
This course will help you if you struggle with any of the following:
You don’t know what to include in your presentation, or what order to go in,
You often create presentations with too much info or that are too long at first, because it’s hard to know what to leave out or exclude,
You’re still not 100% sure how to present your data even after taking course 3 (which is a sign that you’re having storyboarding challenges, not design challenges),
Your audience still seems overwhelmed sometimes, or you struggle when you reach the really dry or complex material.
You present on sensitive topics, or to audiences that might be hostile or defensive.
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Due to the nature of the training we share in this course, all sales are final.
It’s just that knowledge is not a returnable product. It’s one of those things that once you have it, you can't give it back.
Once you watch even just the first few videos in the course, you will have already learned a new way of thinking about and approaching your presentations that will make them better and more accessible.
If you aren’t sure an online course is for you (or, you aren’t sure my strategies will help), then here are some options:
Hey there 👋🏻! I’m Dr. Echo Rivera.
Hey there 👋🏻! I’m Dr. Echo Rivera. I’m here to help you create engaging presentations!
I did all the academic/eval things: taught an undergrad course, presented at countless conferences, analyzed/presented quant & qual data, wrote scholarly journal articles, wrote research/eval reports (white papers), and presented to broad stakeholders (policy makers, community members, colleagues, etc).
I realized that everyone hated #DeathByPowerpoint—academics, evaluators, community members, policy makers, stakeholders, and scientists. Yet, no one seemed to know how to fix it.
Well…I did. Because starting in undergrad I kept one foot in the graphic & information design world. And when I did, other students, colleagues, clients, and audiences asked me for my presentation secrets.
I finally decided to pivot my career to help my fellow educators learn these secrets.
Although I design presentations for academics from time to time, I knew so many more people could benefit from a self-paced online course.
I’m excited to see what you create in the course. See you there!
