Lend Me Your Ears!

Don't ask your audience for permission: just tell them what you want them to know.

It's a common impulse to want to apologize to your audience for having taken up their precious time, but that comes from insecurity, not courtesy. Your audience isn't there to be generous: they are there to learn from you--to be given information they can't get elsewhere. YOU are the one acting out of generosity: you are offering your audience an opportunity to benefit from what you have to say.

Speak with certitude. Speak with confidence. You have no cause to do otherwise!