Tell us about yourself Paula!
My name is Paula Castles. I work as a Digital & Ecommerce Executive at Revlon Inc., for the Elizabeth Arden brand. I look after their website and everything digital marketing related. I’m originally from Brazil and have been living in Sydney, Australia for almost 8 years now.
What kind of presenting do you do at work?
I mainly present internally, talking about the website results to the team or General Managers or externally to vendors talking about strategy and presenting briefs.
What prompted you to study with Michelle?
I was gifted by Revlon Inc. and what a gift! I knew I needed to improve my presentation and persuasive skills but I never thought there was a course this complete!
How did Michelle’s teaching change your attitude to presenting in business?
I used to be so scared of presenting, my confidence was very low and just the thought of presenting to people in a higher position than me would freak me out. This hasn’t gone completely away from one day to another, but I feel that at least now I have the tools to prepare for a better and more efficient presentation, which makes me more confident when I am presenting.
In general, what positive outcomes have you achieved from improving your presentation skills?
I think that after my first presentation to the general managers after the course, and all the compliments I received, I feel that people see me in a higher level already. The way I presented and how I presented even though weren’t only good news, I can tell it made them trust my work more. I’ll feel more comfortable and confident to talk to my manager about career progressions considering the level of stakeholders I’m in contact with, the results I bring to the company and how I present them.
In what specific ways have your presentation skills improved since learning with Michelle?
How I prepare for them, the way I structure them and how I deliver the message. Not only on work presentations, but on emails or important conversations with my husband.
What were your top three take-aways from Michelle’s masterclass?
1. The 5 step analysis is so helpful to find the purpose of your presentation.
2. The Persuasion Blueprint is excellent. You put everything together and instantly have a script that will make the way you deliver your presentation so much easier and structured.
3. The fact that this is for life, as I said, not only for work presentations, it’s for a conversation with friends or husband when I need to be persuasive!
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©2023 MICHELLE BOWDEN CSP is an authority on persuasive presenting in business. She’s run her Persuasive Presentation Skills Masterclass over 970 times for more than 13,000 people over the past 24 years and her name is a synonym for ‘presentation skills’ in Australia. She’s a multi-million-dollar pitch coach to her client list that reads like a who’s who of international business: banking and finance, IT, pharmaceutical, retail, telecommunications plus many more. Michelle is the creator of the Persuasion Smart Profile®, a world-first psychological assessment tool that reports on your persuasive strengths and weaknesses at work, the best-selling internationally published author of How to Present: the ultimate guide to presenting live and online (Wiley) and her new book is called How to Persuade: the skills you need to get what you want (Wiley).