Something most people in the paranormal world don’t know about me: I have extensive experience as a public speaking and media skills instructor and coach.
Given the number of ghost hunters, paranormal investigators, paranormal authors, podcasters and others that are expressing interest to speak at conferences and work with television, radio or simply do a podcast or be a guest on one, it’s essential that public speaking, presentation skills and media skills are developed.
From my own experience – which goes back to college for speaking and to right after grad school (and my first job in Parapsychology) for TV and radio – I did much better by having people coach me for both. Over the years, my experience as a parapsychologist, ghost hunter, professor, and author led me to a huge number of media interviews (TV, radio and print), and many many speaking opportunities outside the classroom or corporate training I was also doing.
This in turn led me to teach courses in public speaking and media skills at JFK University, to authors’ groups, and to corporate audiences. I’ve done individual coaching with business execs and authors, lawyers and other parapsychologists (and a couple of other scientists). I ended up as the Technical Editor for two editions of Public Speaking for Dummies by Malcolm Kushner.
Technology (such as Skype and even the simple telephone) allows for easy individual coaching of individuals and even small groups.
I’m putting this out there, as I’m about to launch a couple of different coaching programs tailored for the paranormal community.
One will be directed at helping people improve their speaking skills, build interesting presentations, and gain (or beef up) their media skills for TV, radio, podcasts, print interviews and even YouTube.
The other, which I’ll detail more in another post, is based in my 33 years of investigation and research as well as 30 years teaching Parapsychology (from graduate school courses on down to adult ed). It will be geared towards individual and group coaching on the paranormal itself and the investigation and research process, methodologies and understanding of what their evidence is.
If you’re interested in being a speaker, in promoting yourself or your work (including books) to the Media, chances are you could use some real foundation coaching in public speaking, presentations, and media skills.
Contact me at profparanormal@gmail.com for more information.
