Can I make money in this field?

Ginzue

Hi folks,

Its an odd hobby, but I absolutely love presenting powerpoints/keynotes/oo's and am currently teaching two courses at my college (Fairhaven WWU in WA) for faculty and students about the principles of a good presentation.

My question is:

I live in Bellingham WA, about half or less the size of Seattle. Its big and small.

Is there a market at all for people who can give great presentations for small businesses? I feel my presentation skills and graphic design abilities are really quite good, but I am not completely content with paying my school to give them presentations: I would prefer someone to pay me :P Any advice would be wonderful.

altmann

I know someone that does this for a living.

Ironically, his website is not great:

http://www.kirkmossing.com/

But he does presentation consulting for companies like American Express, IBM etc. He makes pretty damn good money!

Shark_MegaByte

Consider that surveys have suggested the average person gets more nervous about public speaking than they usually feel about death.

A skilled and confident presenter should be able to make a living at it. You just have to get good at some of the same things that are necessary in a lot of fields - finding, persuading, and keeping clients. Winning repeat clients means you can sleep comfier at night. If you can manage to add teaching people how to be better presenters to your repertoire, your chances improve even more. There will always be a need for people to do these things.

DrFrylock

You want to be a professional PowerPoint Ranger? Neat! I'm not a career ranger, I'm in the PowerPoint Ranger Reserves, 3rd Battalion. Just today I was on a four-hour briefing deployment. I've been drilling for the last week.

I've never seen anybody hire their services out as a presenter, although it's certainly not outside the realm of possibility. Some things to consider: can you really give a great presentation on something you're not fairly intimately familiar with? It's tough to do. This is why it's probably easier to teach other people how to improve their presentations, since they have ownership of the material and can actually answer questions about it. Also, presumably you'd be presenting material to somebody, and that somebody would be in the room. Unless it's a very large room, it's likely that someone will ask (or expect to find out) what your role in the project or the business is. Are you going to tell them you're just the PowerPoint mercenary?

I'm interested to know from what source materials you teach your "improve your presentations" classes. Tufte, I assume, but who else? Is there a body of research in this area?

Dulcius_ex_asperis

Ginzue wrote: »

I am not completely content with paying my school to give them presentations: I would prefer someone to pay me

I'm confused -- why are you paying them?

And yeah, it seems like people will always need consultants for all sorts of things -- Presentations 101 included. Go for it.

Feral

Being able to give a good presentation is a core skill in the corporate world. Just being able to bullshit your way through 12 Powerpoint slides will get you a looooooooooonnnnng way.

However, it's not typically a sufficient skill to get a job. You should have some kind of business or economics degree and/or relevant experience to back it up. Nobody's just going to hand you content and say, "here, build a Powerpoint." You typically have to come up with the necessary content yourself.

But then again people have gotten jobs doing stranger things...

Theungry

What you really want is a job with a training company. there are lots of organizations that just teach professional classes on things like running meetings, managing and yes, giving presentations. Look for professional development companies in your area and start talking to people now. You could probably secure an internship before you finish school and make some great contacts toward a very lucrative career before you even graduate.