Marion MacKenzie Pyle Shines At The University Club’s February Business Growth Workshop

With Marion MacKenzie Pyle presenting on business presentations, the University Club of Pasadena continued its early 2015 track record of providing engaging speakers at the Business Growth Workshop. An accomplished media and communications professional with award-winning international experience, Marion MacKenzie Pyle gave an invigorating presentation to an enthusiastic crowd of Pasadena business owners and executives. The goal of the presentation was to help the modern employer and employee give effective business presentations while conveying their essential message.

At the very beginning of her presentation, Marion MacKenzie Pyle clearly told the gathered audience, “When people are looking at their cellphones, you are losing the room.” After a few people in the seated audience slipped their cellphones back into their pockets and purses, Marion MacKenzie Pyle described the challenge of communicating in the modern world.

Shifting away from auditory skills in a visual world, 83% of learning now happens through sight. People only listen at 25% efficiency and recall with only 50% accuracy. The average length of a person’s attention span has dropped in the past decade from 12 minutes to a mere 5 minutes. Yup, 5 lousy minutes and that’s about it!

In light of such huge audience fragmentation and so many competing platforms, a speaker now has about 15 seconds to capture the attention of an audience. After Andy Warhol’s proclamation that we would all have our 15 minutes of fame, the pop artist superstar certainly would be disappointed by such shrinkage. As a result, Marion MacKenzie Pyle explained how you have to start strong and connect with your audience.

Since your purpose determines your content, Marion MacKenzie Pyle wanted to make sure that each business presenter asks themselves from the very beginning two simple questions:

1. What do I want to accomplish?
2. What is the one thing you want your audience to remember?

If you are able to answer each of these questions precisely, then half of the battle is already won. Even if you are not the best speaker in the world, you will be amazed how the answer to these two questions increases your confidence and overall assurance. As Marion MacKenzie Pyle expressed to the University Club audience, “Not only are you as important as the message; you are the message.”

By becoming the message in relation to bearing and presence, you can be as successful in business presentations as Marion MacKenzie Pyle was at the latest Business Growth Workshop at the University Club of Pasadena.

About the Author

Growing up in New York City as a stutterer, John Lavitt embraced writing as a way to express himself when the words would not come. After graduating from Brown University, he lived on the Greek island of Patmos, studying with his mentor the late American poet Robert Lax. As a writer, John Lavitt’s published work includes several articles in Chicken Soup For The Soul volumes and poems in multiple poetry journals and compilations. Today, John Lavitt works at Open Interactive as the Director of Content Development. As a journalist, he is a Regular Contributor to The Fix where he writes investigative reports about the latest issues in the world of addiction and recovery.