As many of you know, I am on a quest to assign a dollar value to stories. I will not rest until there is a calculation a company can use that says “stories add X to our P&L each year.” So it is with great interest that I listened to a RadioLab podcast...
The other day I mentioned I was working on the second most-common mistake my customers make in their sales proposals. One of you emailed me back and said, “Nice, Matt, but what’s the first most-common?” The first most-common mistake, by far, hands...
People ask me a lot, “What does ChatGPT mean for my presentations?” The short answer: Nothing. If you’re a CTO, ChatGPT and AI are helping your coders a lot. They probably save them boatloads of time. They might even be helping clean up their code or even...
Today’s email has absolutely nothing to do with presentations. If you’re here for presentation stuff, sorry about that. The next one will have something for you, I promise. If you’re still here… In 1992 and 1993 I was teaching English at a university...
Yesterday I was sitting in my office, rewriting a sales proposal for a client. Nothing unusual about that. That’s what I do for work, so I do it pretty much every day. By the way, when most people hear the word “writing,” they think fingers on...
In recent weeks I’ve written about the importance of breaking patterns in your presentation (yuvarlanıp gidiyoruz, clear the cache, etc). I know, I’m a strange person to be giving that advice. Routine and patterns make up a huge part of my day-to-day life....
When I was a kid, I heard my mom say to my dad, many times, “Jim, sh*t or get off the pot.” I’ve always loved that phrase, and its bias towards taking action, even if imperfect. I’ve mentioned before, and I’ll say it again: People care...
As many of you know, I used to be an import buyer, which means that I was flying from Seattle to Hong Kong quite often. I used to love that flight. I hated the return flight, because I knew that when you fly east across the Pacific Ocean, you tend to have huge jet-lag...
For years, I was puzzled by the word strategy. “What is strategy, what does that word even mean?” I figured it was a word people used mainly when they wanted to sound smart. Then, a month or two ago, Alper and I interviewed corporate strategy consultant...
I’ve been doing presentation training and public speaking for over 15 years. If I had a dollar for each time I’ve heard someone say those things make them nervous and they want to learn how to not be nervous, I’d be a very rich man. Of course...
Below is a cut from our blooper reel where I forget the name of my own podcast. My point for your presentations is that you will never be perfect. In this example, even if you’ve been doing your podcast for three years, you’re still going to forget the...
I’m currently reading a book, “Alchemy,” by Rory Sutherland. Sutherland is Vice Chairman of Ogilvy UK, one of the biggest advertising agencies in the world. When Coke and Apple choose an advertising agency, Ogilvy is probably on their short lists....
When I was 28, the company I worked for bought a pepper grinder company. We would buy the raw peppercorns from India and have them shipped to the grinder companies in Thailand and China, where the grinders were made and then filled with the peppercorns. It was the...
I got to visit my first metal stamping and polishing factory at age 26. This one was in China, and there were many more to come, in many other countries, but I’ll never forget my first. You see, metal stamping and polishing is an inherently filthy process. I was...
As many of you know, I’m on a quest to quantify the value of a story. I want a financial calculation I can plug into a spreadsheet. I want to take something people consider subjective and turn it into a hard metric. And the question often comes up, from people...
We’ve talked a bit about the BMG story structure. We’ve also talked about the drug flow of the BMG cycle, and we’ve even talked about how tweaking the sentence arrangement of a case study from Finland would improve the drug flow in that particular...
Some of you have asked for me to sketch out what BMG (the story structure boy meets girl) looks like. Here you go: The first leg (boy meets girl) gets the dopamine flowing (you want your customer to get at least somewhat positive vibes from you), the second leg (boy...
Selim gives an example of overcoming the curse of knowledge. The curse of knowledge, of course, is your forgetting what it is like to not have the knowledge you worked so hard to get. This is a notable example in part because Selim comes from the enterprise software...
Matt, summarizing Selim’s point, mentions that our attempt to ask questions, as well intended as it is, can sometimes actually hurt our ability to discover the other person’s reality in a conversation.
One of the deepest needs in man is to make sense of the world, to see order where it may or may not exist. Evidence of this deep-seated need is all around us. You can see it in how we vote. You can see it in how we think about chaos theory. You can even see it in how...
Sorry, no, I’m not talking about the illegal ones, like heroin or cocaine. I’m talking about the ones your body makes naturally, like oxytocin. Oxytocin is often called “the trust hormone.” It enhances bonding between people. Your body makes it...
Fully 70% of the people who call me are chasing the wrong solution. And as a result, they are setting themselves up for misdirecting a huge chunk of time, 10 years, when all they need is 4 months. You see, the problem they are trying to solve is how to make a better...
It’s counter-intuitive, but the fastest way to say more is to slow down and say less. Here’s what I mean: Recently I was working with a client on her storytelling and public speaking skills. She ran an insurance company, and she felt like her speeches to...
One of the most interesting things I ever learned was that a lot of what we think we’re seeing, we’re not actually seeing. Turns out the human brain caches an awful lot of information, including information it’s getting from the eyes. For example,...
My friend Şebnem Dağ Güven, Chief Commercial Officer for payments processor iyzico, has her people use an approach similar to what I’ve been using in my trainings for years. Before she lets them build the presentation, she has them walk through what they are going to...
Alex mentions that the two stories (the company story and the customer story) will be significantly different, even though they are describing the same business, because they are for different audiences.
Alex goes into how important it is to stay in touch with what you want to change about the world. Your strategy will largely flow from that, and it will change as you learn more about the market.
Alex goes into the internal story that you tell to your employees, partners, investors, etc. It will come from the same bigger picture that your customer story does, but it will be reframed for internal consumption.
Alex goes into how he got started in the strategy business, and how he realized how thoroughly-done it was, yet he was able to bring something new to it.
Your strategy is important, but sometimes even the best ones are crazy simple. So your success is not going to be based so much on how special your strategy is, but on how well you communicate it to your employees and your customer base.
Alex gives an example of what the customer story might be like, using IKEA as an example. Note that this is not necessarily the story IKEA uses, we’re just using IKEA as an example. However, IKEA, if you decide to use this, please contact me for bank information...
And in this one, Alex gives us an example of what a company story might sound like, using IKEA as an example. And again, note that this is not necessarily IKEA’s story, it’s just us imagining what IKEA’s story might be like. IKEA, if you decide to...
Şebnem mentions that some employees already have the story mindset, so all you need to feed them is the raw data, and they’ll take care of the rest. Other employees don’t already have this mindset, and they need additional assistance. She goes into that in...
Şebnem reminds us that different constituencies in the same company are going to respond to different angles of the message. In other words, don’t get lazy and think that one message is good for everyone in the same company!
Şebnem mentions that storytelling for business is not a natural skill, and how it is regained. Our education system and early job training drill the skill out of us until what we “think” the business world needs is totally out of line with what it actually...
And don’t forget the fourth lever of building trust, credibility through association. Some of your existing customers might be really good partners for this.
Şebnem goes into how you establish personal trust with a new customer, and that a key part of that process is your ability to describe the market and how it, and your product, fit into the customer’s life.
There’s a podcast I love listening to, Acquired. We’re not talking about a podcast I kind of enjoy, something I turn on for background noise while I cook eggs in the kitchen or fall asleep in bed at night. No, we’re talking something like appointment...
There’s a guy, I’ve written about him before, the 85-year-old guy who goes to the park to exercise six days a week. He’s been doing it for 30 years. Maybe not at this particular park, because who knows where else he’s lived during that time,...
One of my favorite projects was for a Turkish client who was attending the IMF meetings in Washington, DC. (Most of you will be familiar with the term “IMF,” but for those of you who are not, it stands for “International Monetary Fund.”) The...
I used to have an early morning class, and I was usually greeted at the door by my client’s assistant, who would arrive at work a few minutes before his boss. He would ask me how I’m doing, and I would sometimes reply “yuvarlanıp gidiyoruz”...
It is well-documented that sprinkling personal details into your stories works. It works whether you are hanging out with friends over a beer, or whether you are selling a widget to a potential customer. Why is this? Why are personal details such a potent ingredient...
The other day, I wrote about a scene in the show Mad Men. That scene illustrates some really useful presenting skills, so I wanted to call them out here. If you clicked through to the video the other day, you’ve probably already seen these, but in case...
A couple weeks ago I mentioned a back issue of Scientific American magazine, and how enamored they were of the use of anecdotes. I see this all the time in my own work. If you want to make a point, wrapping your point in an anecdote that makes your point, too, goes...
I’ve mentioned before that when I was a kid, I was really into bicycle racing. There’s a point at the beginning of every race, immediately after the gun goes off, when everyone has a lot of energy. Everyone is sprinting ahead, the pack is going really...
One of the more embarrassing moments of my life was when I told a story to Maya. Or, more accurately, failed miserably to do so. You see, when I was in university, I was totally hot after Maya. She was beautiful in all the right ways, with just enough of an edge that...
The customer story and the company story are pretty easy to write if you have something to say, but virtually impossible to write if you have nothing to say. In this short, Alex Smith goes into why so many companies don’t have these stories. And yes, you guessed...
Mike Tyson has a great quote, “Everyone has a plan until they get punched in the face.” Years ago, long before we started the podcast, Alper and I were talking to Noel Francisco, an old university roommate of mine who has gone on to fame and fortune as one...
Who would have thought Dolly Parton was a strategy expert? According to her: “Find out who you are and do it on purpose.” Alex Smith goes into what most people do instead.
If you don’t have a strategy and the two stories, all you are left with is hustle. In other words, “a world of hurt.” In this short, Alex Smith goes into how that is.
When I was 9 years old, my mom took my brother and me to see the new James Bond movie, Moonraker. That was when Roger Moore was James Bond, remember him? Moonraker was my first James Bond movie. The movie had everything a nine-year-old boy could want. Outer space,...
In this short from The White Rabbit podcast, Alex M H Smith uses “Q” in the James Bond movies as an example of how much of you should be in the stories you tell your customers.
Today we dig further into this “measurements don’t need to be exact to be useful” idea. Here we go… At one point I needed a new heater core for my car. The heater core is the little radiator that sits inside your car, behind the dashboard where you...
In my bathroom there is a new sink. That sink is 0.9 meters wide. Or maybe it’s 0.89 meters wide, or maybe it’s 0.91 meters wide. I don’t know and I don’t care. If I had been working in a tight space, or if I had had to fit that sink into a...
The other day I wrote about learning how to use an ice axe properly, and what it had to do with practicing for your presentations. Today, since we’re in winter, the snow theme will continue, but the point changes to understanding your audience. Here we go… One...
This is the main place these emails get written: Sometimes they get written here too: Notice that there is not a keyboard in either of these photos. Writing is not the words you use, it is the idea you are talking about, and the best ideas come when your mind is free...
At one point, I was doing a lot of stuff in the mountains during wintertime. Snowshoeing, backcountry trekking, building snow caves, sleeping on the ice, etc. One of the pieces of equipment I needed with me, just in case, was an ice axe. Ice axes are used for many...
Years ago, a girlfriend and I had a ritual: We would get take-out from the Boston Market restaurant, and then we would take it home and eat dinner while watching a movie we rented from Blockbuster (later, of course, the kids would coin the phrase “Netflix and...
There’s a great study from a university in Finland about using storytelling in B2B sales. The study looks at an IoT (internet of things) company that was selling sensors for factory machinery, and it was also selling an upgrade where they would monitor the...
The other day a friend sent to me a link to a video on YouTube, “How Anthony Jeselnik misdirects the audience.” Anthony Jeselnik is an American comedian. I hadn’t heard of him before, so don’t worry, if you don’t know his name it...
In my quest to put a financial number to the value of storytelling, to hold stories up to an ROI calculation, I often get the pushback that putting a number to the value of storytelling will somehow strip storytelling of its magic, that somehow it will kill the...
I have an elderly black woman who lives inside me. She wears a plain print dress with faded pink flowers and blue-green stems set on a white background. She lives in the state of Georgia or Alabama (I’ve never tried to figure out which one), speaks with a heavy...
The other day I was re-watching one of my favorite movies, “Not Fade Away.” I’ve probably seen it 9 million times. Some of you know it, too. One of my favorite scenes in the movie comes during one of the band’s practices, when the main...
As many of you know, I am on a quest to quantify the value of storytelling. I want to put a number to it. I want a calculation I can put into a spreadsheet. It is not enough to say, “Storytelling is good, we should do more of it.” It is not enough to say,...
You know how I bang on on a regular basis about how important mirror neurons are, and how important it is that when you are presenting, you display the emotions you want your audience to feel? Here’s a little story related to that: When I was a teenager, I was...
The other day I was reading a March 1847 issue of Scientific American magazine. Don’t worry, I don’t normally read 178-year-old Scientific American back issues. I was looking into something else and just so happened to stumble across this one. There was...
When I was 29, I was cruising through the streets of Hong Kong in the back of a taxicab with my friend Teresa. It was nighttime, so we were probably heading to dinner somewhere. Her dad had created a business that had become one of our vendors, and she was taking it...
I was watching a TV show recently, Outer Range. It started out so well. Rancher in Wyoming, a “strong but silent” cowboy-type played by Josh Brolin. Loyal wife. Two photogenic kids. Cute grandkid. A couple “hot, but realistically-so” types (one...
One of my favorite movies is “Cadillac Records.” It’s about the founding of one of the seminal record labels for American Blues. It and the movie “Not Fade Away” are must-sees for anyone interested in the birth of rock. In the the movie, Beyonce plays Etta James. She...
The other day I wrote about chaos theory. Today I’m going to write about a mixed tape a friend recorded for me when I was a kid. And believe it or not, there’s a connection. When I was 16, I lived in eastern Washington state and drove my dilapidated...
These days, I am reading a book called “Fluke,” by Brian Klaas. It’s about chaos theory. You know chaos theory: Basically, “butterfly flaps its wings in Japan, and a hurricane hits the United States.” A lot of people hear about chaos...
Recently I wrote about the genius zone. Remember the genius zone? It’s the place where you are doing something almost no one else can. The activity comes to you naturally. You don’t even need to think about it. It’s like god put the words in your...
Today is my birthday. I have never made much of my birthday, even when I was a kid. My birthday comes sandwiched between two of the biggest holidays in the world, and I figured, well, people are exhausted from all the holiday-ing, so I’ll just shut up and...
An excellent example of the value of storytelling comes from the non-profit world. Yes, the non-profit world. We like to tell ourselves that our world of business is the real hard-nosed one, and non-profits are for fuzzy do-gooders, but the reality is this: Cash...
I’ve mentioned before how the use of AI in your organization will be making the base of your organization’s pyramid narrower, and how this could impact succession, and in turn competitiveness, and in turn the stability of your enterprise value. The...
The other day, a friend and I were talking about whether he could do work outside of his genius zone. You know the kind of work I’m talking about. The kind of work you can do, but others can do it too. My answer was “Yes, but don’t.” Why not,...
Regular readers of this email have heard me mention the economics blog “Marginal Revolution,” and have also heard me spout forth opinions related to AI and how it is changing, and will change, the world of white collar workers and the organizations they...
In the summer of 1992, I had just graduated from university and I needed some quick cash for my upcoming trip to China, so I worked on a construction crew building a house in Utah. I was a college boy who had studied Chinese history, so I was the lowest man on the...
We like to think that B2B is the rational one, and that B2C is the one dripping with emotion, and that somehow we are playing a more rational game when we walk into work. But reality is showing something different. I’ll get to a couple examples in a moment. But...
One of the things that I enjoy about writing this newsletter is trying to find the connection between things that normally have little to do with each other. For example, what does the rock band Love and Rockets have to do with storytelling. In doing so I tend to, a...
This is a real quick gut check, a filter you can put your stories through. Only takes a couple seconds, you can do it outside your customer’s office to calm your nerves before you go in there. H = Hero (usually your customer)G = Goal (usually your...
Last week I was talking a lot about the Boy Meets Girl story structure. Remember, BMG is one up, one down, one up. Insert yourself and your product/service towards the end of the second leg. Today I want to mention a second story structure, “man in hole.”...
In 2014, I started working primarily with CEOs and board members of publicly-traded companies. You know these companies by name, their ads are everywhere and these people get asked to speak on just about every panel and TV news show that ever existed. At first, I was...
The other day I was writing about storytelling in business, and how it can be so much easier than you might think. Today I want to dive deeper into the topic of storytelling. But if that was Storytelling 101, this is Storytelling 102. So in other words, nothing too...
I am reading a book called “Wanting: The Power Of Mimetic Desire In Everyday Life” by Luke Burgis. “Mimetic” is a fancy word for “imitative” (don’t worry, I had to look it up too), so the book is basically about how we learn to...
Recently, in two separate emails, I mentioned the band Love and Rockets and a storytelling structure. Both are going to come back today. First, Love and Rockets. They have another great song, “No New Tale To Tell.” In the song are these lines: People like...
The other day I was talking about the value of storytelling in customer retention. Stories are one of the best ways you can get your clients to remember your product. But if I had a dollar for every time I heard someone say, “Oh, we don’t have time for stories in this...
Want to know one of the best customer retention techniques ever devised? Learn how to tell a story, and then become the one who tells your customers’ stories back to them. One of the best bands to come out of the 80s, a band that produced music that sounds as...
Almost as soon as I got to high school, I wanted to drop out. You see, I realized that classes at college were worth more than classes at high school, so if I went to the college and scheduled my classes just right, I could be out of there by 10:30am, instead of the...
Question: Where can I find these drywall anchor bolt words? The short answer: In the headlines of the Financial Times. Okay, here’s the longer, more thorough answer: Keep in mind that your client has a gazillion other options, and often, you are not competing on...
Recently I wrote about Pink Floyd and how listening to rock songs is a good way to learn how to make a limited vocabulary go a long way. Today’s email digs deeper into that theme. Some of you saw an article like this from me in March, but many of you haven’t seen it,...
I feed the stray cats outside my apartment each morning. I call it “Breakfast Club,” a reference to the 80s movie of the same name. I’ve been doing this every morning for a couple years, so the cats learned long ago that when the hall light comes on...
A few weeks ago, I wrote an email about AI and corporate succession. Remember that one? It’s the one where I referred to AI as the crusher of white-collar labor costs, like the steam engine was the crusher of manual labor costs, and how that means the bottom of...
There are 4 things that I tend to work on with my clients, four things you can do in order to express yourself really well without learning any new English. Of those four things, the fourth is “use vivid vocabulary.” A lot of people seem to think that means they need...
There’s a guy who exercises in the park. He’s 85 years old. He’s one of the regulars (there are only three or four of us in that time slot, actually). He’s there, rain or shine. In late January, when it’s cold, and it’s dark, and...
Forget the presentation skills this time, I’m not even going to bother tying this one in, today we’re just going to geek about microchips and cocaine a little … As most of you know, I’m a huge fan-boy of the Acquired podcast. In fact, I’m such a...
My dad, may he rest in peace, used to have an orchard grafting business. He started out doing pit fruit (plums, peaches) in central California, and as he was expanding the business into the vineyards of western California’s wine country, we would often combine...
A while back, a friend of mine named Tuba was working on her public speaking skills at Toastmasters. I encouraged her to make sure that in all her speeches she “put some Tuba in it,” by which I meant to put some of her own personality into everything she...
Lately, as you can tell, I’ve been binge-reading the blog and cartoons at Gaping Void, like this one… In the blog post this cartoon is in, they mention the phrase “humans don’t scale” — one of my favorite phrases, especially in this era...
Recently I wrote about Netflix, AI, and the importance, nay, the duty, of rocking the boat. Getting good at tapping into this next tip will be one of the best things you ever did for your career: Keep in mind that one of the most basic desires most humans have is to...
LinkedIn, and attending conferences, will be good for outreach, but it is important to remember that they need to be just a couple tools in a much larger marketing toolbox.
Rick mentions that the tech industry is used to outsourcing sales activity, and therefore your company will probably be familiar with it, if you decide to go down that route.
Rick mentions that your team might only do the qualification research once, or maybe a few times at most, in their lives, but there are some who do it regularly.
Rick addresses the question, “Will my sales stars back home be my sales stars abroad,” and mentions that the answer to that question may depend on the financial commitment your customer is making.
Don’t let the hotness of the market in a country blind you to the competitive presence there. Map out where your competition is, and don’t be afraid to target a secondary market.
Make sure those verticals exist in your target market, too. It might sound obvious, but maybe they don’t, maybe an unexpected dynamic is at work, you’d be surprised.
It is important to understand how you reached those verticals in your home country. The approach may be different elsewhere, but you need to understand how you reached them in your home country anyway.
Usually in this newsletter I take whatever little story I start out with and find a way to tie it to presentation skills. If presentation skills are what bring you here, sorry man, couldn’t do it this week. So if you’re one of those people, come back next...
These days I’m reading a book about the early days of Netflix, written by one of its founders, Marc Randolph. I came to the Netflix game in 1999, a few years after they started. At that point, internet speeds weren’t good enough for streaming, so they...
Like the steam engine crushed the labor cost center, AI crushes the white collar cost center. Here’s what that meant for the labor world: The need for labor didn’t go to zero, it just went down a lot. We still have construction workers and farm laborers,...
What is the Taxi Test? It’s a test you apply to the headlines on your slide deck before you send it out. The question you are asking yourself: If someone only reads the headlines on your slides, will they still understand what you are proposing and why? Imagine...
As many of you know, I go to the park to exercise in the pre-dawn hours. I’ve been doing this for years, it’s one of my favorite activities each day. Last week I suddenly, out of nowhere, started limping on the way to the park. The problem was my ankle....
A couple weeks ago I wrote about selling evil eye (nazar boncuğu) bracelets. When you’re selling a $20 bracelet, trust enters into the picture, but not that much. These days I’m in another world though, one in which my projects might be for 2,000 times...
The teachers, at least at Preply’s pricing high end, tend to be 30-35 years old, which means they have, at best, spent 10 years witnessing and solving the problem your company faces. Many of them have a methodology they will mention in their videos. A...
Years ago when I was walking across Turkey, I was out in the middle of nowhere in the eastern part of the country. Some old beatup car, like a 1970s Datsun or something like that, stopped on the other side of the road and a man got out and walked towards me. This was...
Some years ago, there were some protests near my house in Istanbul. So I grabbed my camera and figured I’d see how close to the action I could get. I didn’t get very close before the tear gas turned me away… (click image for video) That day, I learned that...
Today it’s all about Iranian weddings. I’ve written before about how when I came to Turkey I started a business selling evil eye bracelets. After a couple years in that business, I saw Amazon getting into the game, and I knew their reputation for being...
Yalın describes a situation where sometimes even the sellers don’t want to sell, because that means the company would need to produce (yes, you read that right, sometimes the sellers don’t want to sell).
Yalın suggests sellers start with the end in mind. Before the first pallet gets to the new country, what are you going to do with it, all the way to the end.
Recently I wrote on dogs chasing cars and our human predilection to assign cause when there is in fact none. Today I want to talk about puking cats. Don’t worry, I promise that it has to do with something, and also that future issues of this newsletter will deal...
You know how when a dog chases a car, the car leaves? From the dog’s perspective, the car left because he chased it. Sure, from our human perspective, we know the car was going to leave anyway. But from the dog’s perspective, chasing cars is 100%...
Time and again, one of the most common things I see in presentations is the speaker not spending enough time describing the problem. Plenty of time is almost always spent describing the solution, but not enough attention is given to the description of the problem that...
When I first moved to Istanbul, some Brits invited me to play in their weekly football game. Keep in mind that I have never had any football skills whatsoever. None. If my life depended on my ability to dribble a ball, I would be dead within a second. They invited me...
Many years ago, in a former life, I was an inventory planner for a kitchenware import company in the US. We would design stuff, get it made (mostly in China, surprise surprise), and import it into the US. Since I was managing one of the largest assets on the balance...
In the podcast short below, Romanian entrepreneur Vlad Cazan talks about the learning process that has continued, and still continues, throughout his entrepreneurial journey. The guy, and his business partner, have between them decades of experience in IT, sales,...
Vlad Cazan responds to Alper’s question about the entrepreneurial journey, and how much learning is involved, even if you are starting the journey in your 40s.
Vlad Cazan points out that some countries are more open than others, and that knowing which ones are more open to you is an important part of the research phase.
Vlad Cazan’s company had numerous references from subsidiaries of multinationals, but found the assistance of an accelerator/incubator and embassy crucial in expanding abroad.
Berk Temuroglu describes what he calls “the wheel of engagement,” and how it might include a boring period that many of the employees, who were attracted by the sexy idea of working for a startup, will find uninteresting.
Berk Temuroglu goes into the problem/solution cycle, and how he believes corporate managers spend too much time discussing the idea (solution), and not enough time describing the problem.
Berk Temuroglu tosses around some theories on why more corporate managers are not making use of the startup-mindset learning opportunities available to them.
Berk Temuroglu says the tables have turned, and while the two groups (startups and corporate managers) can learn from each other on a two-way street, 10 years ago it was more that startups could learn from corporate managers, and now it’s corporate managers who...
Years ago, when I was walking across Turkey, I adopted a phrase: “Every day be born a dumbass anew.” It doesn’t mean forget all the stuff you’ve learned, it just means put that stuff aside for the moment, confident that it’ll still be...
Berk Temuroglu compares the corporate presenting mindset to the startup presenting mindset, and says the corporate mindset needs to learn something from the startup mindset.
A few years after arriving in Istanbul, I found myself saying, “You know, what this place needs is a Toastmasters club.” (for those of you not familiar with Toastmasters, it’s basically a place where people practice their public speaking skills) So I...
I used to hear that phrase “Do what you love,” and think, “That’s a lot of woo-woo hippie-ish BS,” about loving everything, always being happy, The Secret, etc. “Life’s not like that,” I’d counter, “sometimes...
Back in 2003, one of my first entrepreneurial activities was to get a 20-foot container of galvanized steel springs made in China. They were called “Branch Benders,” and their purpose was to open up the branches of a new tree so the sunlight could get in...
Some of you have asked why we are doing a podcast miniseries on international sales expansion. What does that have to do with presentations? You’ve asked why I am interested in this subject. What is my tie to this subject? These are very good questions. The...
I’m a presentation coach. But even I have presentations that go, shall we say, “less than ideally” (read: disastrously). I tell myself that having disasters of my own makes me a better coach, because I know what to look out for. 😉 I remember one in...
Why? Because it leads to way too much unfocused effort and time wasting. You’re going to waste your time learning how to set meetings and talk to receptionists. I don’t mean to malign receptionists, they are great people and the world needs them. But you...
In this exercise, you are doing two things: 1. Training your mouth to move quickly in English, and 2. Training your mind to think in English, because with the quick conversation, there isn’t time to think in Turkish too. Below is a video and a transcript. Try to...
In this exercise, you are doing two things: 1. Training your mouth to move quickly in English, and 2. Training your mind to think in English, because with the quick conversation, there isn’t time to think in Turkish too. Below is a video and a transcript. Read...
In this episode of The White Rabbit podcast… …Alper makes an interesting point, that the value of a presentation is not in convincing people to support you, it’s in reassuring your convinced people, your “fertile ground,” that they are in...
99% of my clients are not native speakers of English. (Fun fact: Did you know that, by far, most speakers of English are not native speakers of English?) And, quite dependably, every single one of those clients asks at some point, “How is my English,” or...
I recently began introducing myself at parties as an “exporter of humans.” That never goes over too well. People imagine me loading excessive numbers of Syrians into an inflatable raft and then pushing it towards Greece. What I actually mean is much more...
This is a great article, it made me so excited and I jumped for joy many times upon reading it! One of my favorite points it makes: Know the board members. Not on average. Every. Single. One. They’re all different. I call it “stalk the board”...
The second step in our series is to reduce your ahh count. It’s much easier to listen to somebody who is not saying “uh” all the time. Let me give you an example. Option 1: I, um, went, um, to the, um, store. Option 2: I went to the store. Read them...
If you stare at one long enough, it’ll attack. Screen-based teleprompters are great. They allow you to read a script while looking at, or at least appearing to look at, the camera. But don’t fall in love with your teleprompter so much that you forget to...
“The aspect ratio is off.”Said no one in your audience, ever. They probably aren’t sitting there thinking, the aspect ratio is off, I don’t like this guy.But they might be sitting there thinking, I don’t know what it is, but...
Make mirror neurons work for you. What are mirror neurons? Basically, it’s that humans tend to do what other humans are doing. You know how if you’re at a party talking to someone, and they are smiling, you’ll smile too, even though you’re not sure why you’re smiling?...
Use vivid language. Use words loaded with color. Emotion. Sound. Why? If you use dead or uncolorful words, then when your audience leaves the room, they’re going to forget what you said. They’re going to forget you. And when you’re giving a pitch...
There is a magic number for how many filler words are fine. It’s six. There are some people on the logical extreme, and they’ll say you need to hit zero. And sometimes that would be nice, to hit zero filler words, but in my opinion, don’t worry about...
It was the most important presentation of her life. Not just of HER life. Of the lives of every single one of the people who worked for her, too. After all, their jobs at her company were how they put food on the table to feed their children. But they weren’t...
Don’t feed the monster. Kill it. You don’t need prettier slides. You don’t need fancy animations or most of the bells and whistles that are built into PowerPoint. You probably don’t need to spend hours and hours preparing, if you’re...
Slides are noise. There are 30 million new slides made every day. No one wakes up in the morning and says, “You know what I need more of in my life? PowerPoint slides.” What the world needs more of is the ability to take a one-hour idea and crush it down...
They say that 60% of tech projects fail or underperform. (That number varies, but it’s usually north of 50.) Which means tech spend is, like a second marriage, the triumph of hope over experience. Your budget committee presentation is going to be mostly numbers,...
A lot of public speaking coaching is directed at speaking to large groups. You know the images: A speaker, holding a microphone, standing in front of hundreds of people, usually on a stage or something like that. But most big decisions are not made by hundreds of...
The short answer: Nothing. If you’re a CTO, ChatGPT and AI are helping your coders a lot. They probably save them boatloads of time. They might even be helping clean up their code or even write blocks of code that would be a waste of time for a human. But when...
Make sure that if someone reads only the headlines of your slides, and nothing else, they will still get your message. For example: Slide 1 headline: Sales are up Slide 2 headline: But average pick lines per order are too Slide 3 headline: So to protect profitability,...
Elsewhere, I’ve held up Angus Young, admiring him for his complete lack of detachment. Today, I hold up the opposite, a King of Cool, Mad Men’s Don Draper. When you need to be cool and collected in a hot environment, channel your inner Don Draper. But now...
Look at that guy. He’s sweating, he’s drooling, he’s desperately sucking oxygen through a tube. He’s the uncoolest guy that ever existed. And yet… There are tens of thousands of fans calling his name, straining to touch him, like he is a god....
Meaning: to become known, to become public knowledge Examples: I don’t want it to get out that I am leaving. Please don’t tell anyone. If this bad news gets out, people will panic and try to run away.
Meaning: to construct or build something Examples: The people set up camp by the lake. The child was building something with her blocks, so I asked her what she was setting up.
Meaning: to continue without interruption Examples: The discussion ran on for hours. Don’t start that book, it runs on for hundreds of pages and never says anything.
Meaning: to be very busy doing something Examples: My new boss asks me to do a million different things. She makes me run around all the time. I am tired, I have been running around all day, fixing the house, doing the shopping, etc.
Meaning: to explain something Examples: This is a complicated subject, I don’t know how to put it across to you. If someone does not understand that other subject, it is hard to put this across to them.
Meaning: to escape from something Examples: The prisoners ran away from the prison during the fire. I don’t like my job. I don’t like this city. I want to run away from everything.
Meaning: to allow someone to know something Examples: I let him in on the big changes happening in our office. I never know what he is doing, he never lets me in on his life.
Meaning: to cut into pieces Examples: My mother cut the onions up before cooking the meat. This big project will be easier if you cut it up into smaller pieces.
Meaning: to cross something in order to make a shorter route Examples: If I cut across the field, it’ll save time. If I cut across the school, I can get to work earlier.
Meaning: to make something shorter or smaller Examples: The knife is very sharp, it will easily cut into the cake. I like my family time very much, I don’t want my new job to cut into it.
Meaning: to think about the past Examples: It is important to look ahead at the future, and to not spend too much time looking back. When I look back at my childhood, I realize it was a very good childhood.
Meaning: to remove something from a high position Examples: He took the vase down from the high shelf. I don’t like that man, I think he got his position by stealing it. I am going to take him down.
Meaning: to take control of something Examples: He loves to control everything. If we invite him to the party, he will try to take everything over. A new boss took the company over last week.
Meaning: to give a short visit, often just to make sure someone is okay Examples: My father is very old. Can you look in on him a few times each week, just to make sure he is okay? When I was in the hospital, my best friend came to look in on me every...
Meaning: to visit a place and look at the things in it Examples: When I visit a new city, I like to just look around the place. When I go to a store, sometimes I just want to look around at things.
Meaning: to think about the past Examples: It is important to look ahead at the future, and to not spend too much time looking back. When I look back at my childhood, I realize it was a very good childhood.
Meaning: to think about the future Examples: I know this won’t happen for another year or two, but I just want to look ahead. The past is finished. We must look ahead.
Meaning: to read a lot about something in order to learn about it Examples: I wanted to learn more about the war, so I read up on it. Before we met, I read up on you.
Meaning: to read something again, out loud, to someone else Examples: That last sentence was really important, can you read that back to everyone in the room? Could you read that back to me? I want to hear your pronunciation.
Meaning: to change something into something else Examples: I don’t like my new boyfriend. He keeps trying to make me into someone I am not. If you add blue paint, you can make red paint into purple paint.
Meaning: to not tell someone something, to not let someone near something Examples: He doesn’t like bad news, so I try to keep bad news away from him. It is important to keep medicine away from children.
Meaning: to not touch something, or to not discuss something Examples: He talks a lot, but he keeps off the subject of his divorce. I ask the children to keep off the grass.
Meaning: to not allow someone to go outside Examples: Because they were noisy during class, the teacher kept the children in after class. The dog is barking a lot today, I am keeping him in because it is raining.
Meaning: to move slowly, to do something slowly Examples: Don’t hang around, you have a train to catch! I am doing nothing today, just relaxing and hanging around the house.
Meaning: To take a vacation from something (or to something), to escape from something Examples: I have been working too hard, I really need to get away to a tropical island. Sometimes I just want to get away from this big city.
Meaning: to continue with something Examples: When I am gone, I want you to carry on with this project. Even though he asked me to stop singing, I decided to carry on like I was before.
Meaning: to mark with a tick mark, to mark something as done Examples: I like my “to do” list to be clear. Please wait while I check off these last two things. Here is a list, let’s check off the names of the people we don’t want at the...
Meaning: to solve, to explain, or to remove a problem Examples: This project is confusing, I hope he can clear it up. It rained a lot today, maybe it will clear up tomorrow.
Meaning: to leave from somewhere Examples: We need to clear out of here before that bad man comes back. I haven’t paid the rent in many months. The landlord asked me to clear out of the house.
Meaning: to open a space, to put things away Examples: You should clear away all your toys before bedtime. I need to clear away the trees before I can farm this land.
Meaning: to give somebody the latest news or information about something Examples: Can someone catch us up on the latest news? He doesn’t know about the new products. I will catch him up on them.
Meaning: to recover, to make something better, to fix a problem you created Examples: Nothing can make up for a lost child. I came to work late yesterday, so I have to work this weekend to make up for it.
Meaning: to allow somebody to stay in your home Examples: My house has an extra bed, so I can take in one more person. Our friend was homeless after the fire, so we took his family in.
Meaning: to make peace after a fight Examples: I had a big fight with my dad, but we made up and have a good relationship now. Let’s not fight, please come home and let’s make up.
Meaning: to wait for a short time Examples: She told me to hang on, she would arrive in 10 minutes. I am in the middle of an important task, you need to hang on for a few minutes, and then we can talk.
Meaning: to stay at one place for a short time on the way to another place Examples: They stopped over in Singapore on their way to Australia. We stopped over at the grocery store on our way to my parents’ house.
Meaning: to quickly drink something Examples: At the bar after work, we knocked back 6 vodkas. After exercise, I like to knock back a tall glass of cold water.
Meaning: to talk to someone whom one has not seen for a long time Examples: It’s always good to catch up with old friends. I haven’t seen you in years. We should meet for coffee and catch up.
Meaning: to stop working for the rest of the day Examples: It’s nice and sunny today, we should knock off early and go get some ice cream. What time do you knock off today? I want to take you to a movie this evening.
Meaning: to start the operation or flow of something Examples: She turned her PC on and opened her browser. It was dark in the room, so I asked her to turn on the light.
Meaning: to tolerate, endure, or bear something or somebody Examples: I’m leaving, I don’t want to put up with you anymore. We put up with the high prices because we like living here.
Meaning: to stop making an effort; to admit defeat Examples: It’s not like you to give up so easily on an assignment so early. We knew we couldn’t beat the other team, so we gave up in the second half of the game.
Meaning: to enter a database, system, or software Examples: I tried to log in with my username, but I couldn’t remember my password. Before you can use Facebook, you have to log in.
Meaning: to find, or try to find, the answer to something; to resolve a dispute Examples: She worked out the math problem quickly; I was still trying to solve it. We had a big fight, but we worked it out and are friends again.
Meaning: to accept someone’s wish or stop fighting; to admit defeat. Examples: He gave in to the group’s pressure and decided to accept the decision. My mother told me to not give in to peer pressure.
Meaning: to make a paper copy of information stored on a computer Examples: My boss asked me to print out the report and give it to him. I need to print this document out before I mail it.
Meaning: to repay some money or a loan or a favor to someone Examples: If you lend me the money, I’ll pay you back by Friday. He did me a big favor last week, now I need to pay him back.
Meaning: to connect an electrical appliance by inserting a plug in a socket. Examples: I need to plug in my phone; it’s completely out of juice. I thought the lamp was not working, but I just needed to plug it in.
Meaning: to tear something into small pieces so as to destroy it Examples: She ripped up her pile of old letters and put them in the bin. I hate this contract, it is a bad deal, I want to rip it up.
Meaning: to remove something violently or suddenly Examples: He tore out the pages that he didn’t want anyone to read. We are going to redo the whole bathroom, but first we need to tear the old one out.
Meaning: to begin to suffer from an illness Examples: Oh, god! I think I’m coming down with flu. I might not go to work tomorrow. Be careful around him, he has a cold. You don’t want to come down with it.
Meaning: to have an argument and stop being friends Examples: They were flatmates for two years, but then they fell out and never spoke to each other again. My best friend and I fell out over this issue, I don’t know if we’ll ever speak...
Meaning: to try to find something or somebody Examples: Jack was looking for his phone everywhere, but couldn’t find it. I looked for my father everywhere. I finally found him outside in the garden.
Meaning: to make or become hot or warm Examples: I think we can heat up yesterday’s pizza and have it for dinner, right? The coffee should be fine once it heats back up.
Meaning: to reheat something Examples: My coffee is cold now, I need to warm it up. I am cold from playing in the snow, now I want to sit by the fire and warm myself up.
Meaning: to wash your hands before eating or after doing dirty work Examples: My mom tells me to wash up before every meal. I just finished working on my car, I need to wash up before going in the house.
Meaning: to stop working, to stop functioning. Examples: My TV seems to be breaking down a lot, I think something is wrong with it. It’s an old car, it probably breaks down all the time.
Meaning: to hang from a clothes line Examples: I don’t mind ironing, but I hate hanging the clothes out to dry. After you wash the laundry, you should hang the clothes out.
Meaning: to take a complex thing apart into smaller pieces Examples: If you have a complex problem, try breaking it down and solving the smaller pieces. I like the way she analyzes that song, breaking it down into single parts.
Meaning: to end a romantic relationship with somebody Examples: After they broke up, he listened to sad music and didn’t leave his house. You annoy me and you smell bad. I am breaking up with you.
Meaning: to choose something and then pursue it Examples: I usually eat the steak, but today I am going to go for the fish. He asked me if he should apply for the top universities, and I told him yes, go for it.
Meaning: to calm down and relax Examples: At the end of the day, I just want to put my feet up and chill out before going to bed. Chill out, man, it’s not a big deal!
Meaning: to reply defiantly or disrespectfully Examples: My child talks back to me when I give him an order. That teacher lets his students talk back to him, I don’t think that is right.
Meaning: to take care of somebody or something Examples: My parents will look after my dog when I’m on vacation. My friend is alone here. Can you look after him when I am away?
Meaning: to replace something Examples: Please put the book back on the shelf after you read it. I’m just going to borrow this shirt today, I will put it back tomorrow.
Meaning: to finish one’s supply of something Examples: We ran out of eggs, can you go to the store and buy some more? If we continue using paper towels like this, we will run out tomorrow.
Meaning: to fall lightly asleep Examples: I don’t take a real nap after lunch, I simply doze off for a bit in front of the TV. The meeting was really long and boring, so I dozed off for a while.
Meaning: to end a telephone call, especially abruptly or quickly Examples: When I told her the bad news, she hung up on me. I got angry during the call, so I hung up on him.
Meaning: to talk more loudly, or to express an opinion when you are usually quiet Examples: Could you speak up, please? The music is really loud, and I can’t hear you clearly. He usually sits in the corner silently, but today he spoke up, so we know what he...
Meaning: to answer a telephone call Examples: I kept calling her but she wouldn’t pick up, so I couldn’t tell her the news. When I call my mother, she always picks up on the first ring.
Meaning: to quickly consume the rest of a drink Examples: She drank up what was left of her beer and left in a hurry. He told me to drink up because there wouldn’t be more water, we are going to the desert today.
Meaning: to expel or remove someone Examples: They kicked me out of the club after the fight. I was really messy and got kicked out of the hotel, they won’t let me back.
Meaning: to adjust one’s position to make room for someone else Examples: Could you guys move over so I can sit down too? He asked me to move the couch over so he could insert another chair, but I don’t want the chair there.
Meaning: to enter a room, building, or other place Examples: Please, come in and sit down. I wanted to come in the living room, but she was busy cleaning and wouldn’t let me in.
Meaning: to admit someone to, or to allow someone into, a room, building, or area Examples: We let our dog in the house every morning, he prefers to eat breakfast in the kitchen. My boss is angry at me. I tried to go into his office, but he won’t let me...
Meaning: to engage in heavy physical exercise Examples: I try to work out three or four times a week at the gym, it’s good for my health. I like to run in the forest. My brother calls it “working out,” but I just call it “having...
Meaning: to prepare for exercise by moving or practising gently Examples: I always warm up thoroughly before going out for a jog. Before you lift heavy weights, be sure to warm up so your body is ready.
Meaning: to remove clothing or items in general from one’s or another’s body, or from an object Examples: I took off my shoes and lay down on the sofa. I would like to use the new cooking pan, but first I need to take off the price tag.
Meaning: to start a device, to start the operation of something by means of a tap, switch, or button. Examples: Please switch on the light, I can’t see. When I try to switch on my phone, nothing happens. I think it’s broken.
Meaning: to bring order to, to arrange neatly, especially in a quick action before a meeting or before a guest arrives Examples: The kids don’t like tidying up their room, but they always do it when I ask them to. The guests arrive in a few minutes, I need to tidy up...
Meaning: to put on smart, nice, good-looking, or formal clothes Examples: I only dress up on special occasions, like weddings or other celebrations. The interview was very important, so I dressed up in my best clothes.
Meaning: to place a piece of clothing (like a shirt), jewelery, etc. on part of one’s body Examples: I put on my watch when I got dressed this morning. When I got out of the shower, I put my clothes on.
Meaning: To rise, or cause someone to rise, from bed after sleeping Examples: I get up immediately after waking up each morning. We got him up early, because he had to go to the airport.
Meaning: to stop sleeping, or to cause someone to stop sleeping Examples: I woke up at 7 o’clock yesterday. The loud party woke me up during the night.
Meaning: to begin to sound (usually said about an alarm) Examples: My alarm clock goes off at 6am, and then I begin my workout. During the fire, the alarm went off. It was really loud.
Meaning: to happily expect something that is happening in the future Examples: He had worked hard and was looking forward to his retirement. We look forward to your visit next week.
Meaning: to not do something, or to not tell someone something Examples: I couldn’t keep from eating all the food at the party. I think he’s not telling me the whole story, I think he’s keeping something from me.
Meaning: to delay something or to rob something Examples: I’m sorry, I am late but I was held up in a meeting. The bank was held up by the two criminals.
Meaning: to experience something or meet somebody unexpectedly Examples: I’ve run into a problem with the project. I ran into him on the street yesterday.
Meaning: to watch something happen without taking part in it Examples: Look on the bright side – no one was badly hurt. You go speak to the group. I will just stand in the corner and look on.
Meaning: to respond to something or to resume doing something Examples: I will get back to you tomorrow. (I will respond to you tomorrow.) That was a good meeting, but now I need to get back to work.
Meaning: to wake up and get out of bed, or to stand up (like from a chair) Examples: Matt gets up at 5am. (Matt wakes up and gets out bed at 5am) I need to get up from this chair. (I need to stand up)
To examine or inspect something or someone. Examples: Can you look over this email and tell me what you think? He looked over my application and said it looked fine.
Definition: To become less strong or less intense. Examples: When the rain lets up, let’s go outside for a walk. A good coach never lets up on pushing her athletes to excellence.
Meaning: to oppose somebody or something, usually, but not always, in an election Examples: Luck was really running against you yesterday! Biden ran against Trump in the 2020 US election.
“CYA” (cover your ass) is a great phrase for office life, but sometimes it has connotations of selfishness, like you’re saying someone just wants to protect himself, he doesn’t really care about the group or the company. Example: “That...
Flagging is a way for you to call attention to the main point of your message. There are some key words and phrases that wake people up and tell them to listen carefully. Here are some of them: If you take just one thing away from this, it should be… The most...
I know a lot of you are working from home this week. It probably involves a lot of videoconferencing, which might feel a little strange, since it’s probably a bit unfamiliar. I do a lot of videoconferencing, so here are three tips that might help. 1. Humans...
Before all the other important stuff you might want to know about presenting, the single most important step is a brutal one: “Kill your darlings.” This phrase, often attributed to author William Faulkner, means get rid of the things that mean a lot to you, but that...
It’s not that faces are good or bad, it’s just that they’re very distracting. One thing that we see often in almost every corporate presentation is there’s an introduction of the company. In that introduction, there will usually be a couple of slides with pictures of...
When you want to persuade somebody to choose your argument over another, one of the things that you can do is tie your argument to a bigger picture. For example, we had a client recently who worked for a European bank, and there was an internal debate within the bank...
Sometimes when an emotionally-stated challenge comes from an audience member, as much as 50% of the emotion behind the challenge might be the audience member feeling unheard. They don’t feel like their opinion is understood or being listened to, even if you think it...
Definition: to attract a lot of attention; to get noticed Examples: Everyone is talking about the new movie. It really made a splash. That new book is really popular. The author is on all the talk shows. She really made a splash.
Definition: to create a significant impression; to cause trouble, to be disruptive Examples: At your new job, be sure to speak up at meetings. You want to make waves right from the start. I didn’t know anyone at the dinner party, so I kept quiet. I didn’t...
———- Forwarded message ——— From: matt@krauseenglish.com Date: XYZ Subject: CXO Letter sample To: xyz@xyz.com A favorite word that I’ve run across an unusual number of times in my readings this week is “slog.” This...
BucketListly Photos CC0 Archives | Magdeleine Cupcake FoodiesFeed Foodie’s Feed Free Refe Real Life Photos FreeDigitalPhotos Function – Design Blog Gratisography ISO Republic Jay Mantri Kaboompics.com Life Of Pix Little Visuals Magdeleine MMT morgueFile...
Baldwin and Matt interviewed Memet Yazıcı, Managing Partner of TRPE Capital. Memet speaks here about preparing for pitch meetings, a portfolio company’s management team’s role in telling the company’s story, and the importance of relationships with...
This post originally appeared on Fund Marketing Secrets. Baldwin and Matt interviewed Roland Meerdter, co-founder of Door Ventures. Roland speaks here about streamlining the DDQ process, the origins of Door, how standardized DDQs evolve over time, and how...
This post originally appeared on Fund Marketing Secrets. Baldwin and Matt interviewed Kyle Dunn, CEO of Meyler Capital. Kyle speaks here about marketing in the fund world, and what opportunities fund managers are missing, and that performance is vital, but...
There was so much to talk about in the first interview that Baldwin and Matt asked JB Beckett to grace the podcast a second time. For those who missed the first interview, JB is the author of #New Fund Order and a very articulate veteran of the fund scene. In this...
Baldwin Berges and Matt interviewed JB Beckett, author of #New Fund Order. JB has listened to thousands of fund pitches in his career. In fact, he’s such a wealth of information that we will bring him back for an encore presentation. A major theme running through...
One of our listeners, a country fund investing in publicly-traded equities on that country’s exchange, had a followup question about something discussed on the Ole Rollag interview. They asked: “We send out a monthly newsletter about our fund performance...
Baldwin Berges and Matt interviewed Ole Rollag of Murano. Ole mentioned a couple things in particular that caught our attention: One is the importance of good old phone followup. Ole mentioned that Murano’s people spend a lot of time on the phone with allocators; he...
The mistake: Mismatching their product design and their target investors. Summary: Okay, let’s do one more. Think of it as a bonus mistake, #6 of 5: Mismatching your product design and your target investors. #6 is kind of related to the mistakes that came before it,...
The mistake: Not qualifying their prospects. Summary: At first glance this one seems like a rookie mistake, but even people who have been in the business a long time still do it sometimes: wasting time talking to the wrong people. It’s not that the “wrong people” are...
The mistake: Putting the wrong person up there on stage. Summary: At a conference, the speaking gig often goes to the CEO. However, that’s not necessarily the best person to represent your company. The best person to represent your company is the one who can convey...
The mistake: Trying to go all the way on the first date. Summary: You get the meeting, it’s in the diary, and you walk in there with your big pitch book. You’re excited, maybe a little bit nervous. Gotta land this client! But slow down, cowboy! You wouldn’t...
The mistake: Rushing their investor. Summary: You went through a journey to learn what you know. Way back when, it was uncharted territory for you. Your investor is venturing into uncharted territory now, too. So give him some time. The things you think are obvious,...
The mistake: Not equipping your investor to argue your case to the other investors. Summary: You’re an expert, and the person you’re speaking to is probably also an expert. So it’s tempting to get lazy and stay in your expert comfort zone. But remember, you are not...
Tsufit (LinkedIn profile) started out as a lawyer, singer, and actress, but for over 15 years now she has been coaching others to step into the spotlight. In fact, she wrote a book titled exactly that: “Step Into The Spotlight!” As you’ll hear, one...
Baldwin Berges (LinkedIn profile) spent years in the investment world, helped companies raise money, and is now helping them clarify their messages, making complex ideas simple to understand. In this interview he talks a bit about speaking at conferences, and gives...
Erik Vos (LinkedIn profile) has worked and presented in 91 countries and counting. In this interview he talks a bit about speaking at conferences, and gives some tips to other speakers. As you’ll hear, he’s a big supporter of preparing a lot (a man after...
Zeynep Stefan (LinkedIn profile) has been in the insurance and risk management business for over 10 years. In this interview she talks a bit about moderating a panel, and gives some tips to other moderators. As you’ll hear, she’s a big advocate of...
“Stories are good, you should use them more often. And it’s important to put yourself in your stories.” That’s good advice. But these days a lot of people pass out advice like that, and then you ask them to explain themselves, and they tell you stuff...
When you list things, put the most important thing first. Don’t save the best for last: –Most important thing–Second most important thing–Third most important thing–Fourth most important thing Someone in your audience might get called...
The most effective presentations aren’t presentations at all. They are conversations, and you probably already have all the skills you need, you’ve been using them since the day you were born. Let’s say the big boss is coming to your regional office and...
A question that often comes up in investor conference calls, especially with emerging markets companies, is “How are political or regulatory changes affecting the business environment?” The way your company chooses to answer this question is a stylistic...
Our clients often think that when audience members are high up in the industry or in the company, they already know everything. This is completely wrong. Yes, they are experts in something you are not. But you are an expert in something that they are not. That’s why...
Steven Pressfield, the author of The War Of Art, one of my favorite books, once said: “The amateur believes he must first overcome his fear; then he can do his work. The professional knows that fear can never be overcome.” Since you’re a professional, you know what...
The most effective presentations aren’t presentations at all. They are conversations, and you probably already have all the skills you need, they just need to be unlocked. Let’s say the Big Boss from Headquarters is coming to your regional office for a...
Wherever you look, your audience is probably going to look there too. This is a human trait. You’re not going to get around it. There’s no amount of presentation training that is going to help you overcome it. If your audience sees you looking at your...
Every CEO has a different style when it comes to handling investor conference calls (for example, an annual earnings report). The styles lie on a spectrum. On the one end, you’ve got a Jamie Dimon style, which is where the CEO will just say two or three...
The other day a reader said, “My boss asked me if I could do an unplanned talk for 10 minutes. What do I say, how can I organize my thoughts?” Here’s what we suggested… Two things humans almost always find fascinating: 1. Change or movement...
During some situations, maintaining eye contact with the audience may be one of the biggest factors defining the whole presentations’ success or failure. Your audience will be more drawn into your topic, as long as you successfully keep an eye contact with them and...
Alper and Matt interviewed Aydın Bırık, who in his job sees many, many startups pitch their companies to potential investors. Here he talks about what he does (and does not) like to see in the presentations, and what suggestions he would give to the entrepreneurs who...
UPDATE: As of March 2017, Matt’s public office hours have been replaced by “members only” office hours. For the location of the members-only office hours, please see: https://dopplercomm.com/members-only/office-hours/ Matt holds weekly office hours...
When the speechwriting is almost done, it’s time to move on to the delivery training. Why do we say “almost done”? Because we need to make sure the speech we’ve written is going to work in real life, and we can’t start to gauge that until we start the training. Does...
A reader asks, “How can I ask difficult questions?” You know the kind of questions, the ones where you wonder beforehand if you dare ask them, the ones where you stop first and think things like is that question too forward, or too bold, or is it too early in the...
One of the most commented-on items in our Tips & Tricks email series is this Kevin Spacey speech: https://www.getdrip.com/9763063/campaigns/7516685/emails/102822/archive The comments are often to the effect that the readers loved the speech, for various reasons,...
What’s behind that 25 times There’s more behind that “practice 25 times” advice than just an unthinking “more practice is good, so get a lot of it.” Here’s what’s behind it… (click here if you don’t see the...
Welcome to the Freelancer’s Show podcast listeners! Here are a couple things to reinforce what we discussed on the show. Just sign up with your email address, and we’ll send them along to you. They are: a brief guide covering the three mindset changes...
Before they realize there is huge power in deep preparation, some of our clients at first resist the idea of practicing a lot. They think practicing a lot is going to kill the spontaneity in their speech. What they haven’t realized yet is that you will never...
Why we do Tips and Tricks as a weekly email, not a once-and-done ebook: New Service: Test My Presentation. You send us your presentation, we suggest how you can improve it. Click here for more info. Pro Tip: Use this service once a month, and watch your presentation...
Jesse Scinto, our head speechwriter and presentation trainer, is a faculty member at the Strategic Communications department at New York’s Columbia University. So, understandably, we are proud of him and happy to have him on our team. In these interview...
Why we don’t do many one- or two-day trainings We get a lot of requests for one- or two-day trainings, but we don’t do very many of them. Why? It is almost impossible to make a deep change in someone’s life, or in a company’s performance, in...
There’s a story about Ernest Hemingway. Ernest Hemingway is in a bar with a bunch of other writers. They make a little bet with each other. They say, “How many words do you need to tell a story?” One of the writers, he says he can tell a story in 10 words. Another...
Here we dive deeper into one of the five elements of story structure. This one is perhaps your speech’s most important element, but it’s usually the most difficult element to communicate clearly… Notes: HGOMM (5 points of story structure) Jesse...
Go slow and speak less. Yes, I know it’s counterintuitive. I can barely believe it myself, even though I see it happen almost every day. Here’s an example: These days I’m helping a client prepare for a speech at a major committee meeting. It’s...
One of our readers had an excellent question about HGOMM… (HGOMM: the five elements of a marketing story, outlined here: https://recipientlabs.com/hgomm/) His question: Can you send an example of a short marketing story with these 5 components? Yes, of course....
One of our readers had a very good question. She watched the Feel Sense Describe video, and asked, “That’s nice, but how do I do that when I’m talking about numbers?” Good question. Here’s a voice response with two suggestions: By the...
In another blog post, we mentioned that stories happen in the listeners’ heads. In presenting, do not underestimate the power of this dynamic. It is a special talent pretty unique to humans. It allows us to organize into groups of millions (nations), or even...
Equipment: Please use headphones. They don’t have to be fancy; the ones you use with your iPhone are fine. Please use Chrome or Firefox. Sometimes Internet Explorer works for this, but most of the time it doesn’t. Preparation before the call: Please look...
This guy Eric Takaha at Franklin-Templeton is a master of using what I call “softening words,” which can come in very handy when you are describing overall trends in a public forum. I’ve bolded the “softening words” in the transcript...
The acid test of a good financial speech: When you read the speech to someone who is not in the target audience, and ideally who barely even understands the subject, can you hold their interest to the end, without losing the interest of your target audience? If you...
Three tips for working a conversational style into your presentation: 1. In the first 30 seconds of your presentation, ask a couple audience members a simple yes or no question related to your topic (If you are speaking about nutrition: “Murat, did you eat breakfast...
One of our clients is an executive at an international bank, so he presents to global management quite often. To be able to give his message using a few well-chosen words, instead of dozens of data-heavy charts and graphs, would be revolutionary. We took one of his...
One of the most common questions we hear when people go onto the stage is, “What do I do with my hands?” Believe it or not, that question is actually more common than “Where’s the nearest escape route?” 😉 Watch Franklin Templeton’s Eric Takaha’s hands in this...
One of the best arguments for how people make decisions based on emotion, even when (perhaps especially when) they are making decisions about money… Especially after expenses, most actively-managed funds perform worse than their benchmark. If you listen to many...
All day long, I am surrounded by people who are fluent speakers of English, or nearly fluent speakers of English. One of the main questions people ask me is how can I speak better English? I tell them, if you are a fluent or near fluent speaker of English, then asking...
Michael Bierut describes not only the method we use, but why we use it, so well I read it and thought, “Yeah, that’s me!”… http://99u.com/workbook/51901/the-method-actor-approach-to-design
The presenter is not the star of the show, the audience is the star of the show. The fastest way to Death By PowerPoint is to think you are anything more than a midwife to the audience’s dreams.
I love this article,… Pause. Just Pause. …Especially the third tip: “Pause for a moment longer than you feel comfortable. Try pausing for 2 – 3 seconds. It might feel like an eternity to you, but it will sound perfectly normal to your...
The “Curse of Knowledge” is the inability to clearly explain something to another person, because you know the subject so well. Not a clear explanation as defined by you. A clear explanation as defined by the other person. Why is it so hard to clearly explain...
At about minute 34:45 in this speech… …Kevin Spacey makes a very good point: Many people complain about their audience’s shrinking attention span, and yet people still find 12 hours to binge-watch a TV show. So instead of trying to trim things until you...
One of the things I love most in the infographic below is the part that says avoid looking at your screen when pitching. Yes, this goes for pitching (selling) an idea or service. But it goes for just about any other situation, too. When you look at your computer...
Don Draper shows us how presentations are done right… Notice three things in particular: He starts his story with “my first job” — time-shifting phrases (“my first job,” “a couple years ago,” “once upon a...
You don’t always need to start with a joke. After all, you are probably not a professional comedian, and no one expects you to be. And starting a speech with an irrelevant joke, no matter how funny it is, like “Two men and a dog walk into a...
[twocol_one]You may have used a certain image, music or video in a previous Keynote presentation but you might no longer have access to that media to use it on your current project. If you still have the Keynote presentation that contains that specific media, you can...
American author Kurt Vonnegut diagrams some basic, but very classic, story structures… Believe it or not, the structures he outlines here even work for speeches about corporate debt and global financial crises.
Videos can make an excellent addition to your presentation. Most of the time they work, but every once in a while they don’t, and then you’re left there on the stage feeling embarrassed and saying something lame like “Hey, there’s supposed to...
A common issue we see is people speaking too fast, trying to cram too much content into too little time. Fortunately, there’s a very natural way around this. It’s something we’ve been practicing our entire lives, and we do it so naturally we don’t even realize we are...
The five components of a story: Hero Goal Obstacle Mentor Moral… Thanks, Copyblogger, for making one of the simplest explanations of the components of a story I’ve ever seen.
According to Jesse Scinto… “A lot of people think presentations are about informing, but here’s the problem with that view…” “Audience members remember very little of what they hear in a presentation.” “If the purpose...
Here Jesse and Matt are talking about Robert Cialdini’s book, Influence: The Psychology of Persuasion, particularly about the importance of audience members making their commitments physical and public, and how we can do that in a presentation… “One...
Matt and Jesse discuss a chapter from Robert Cialdini’s book Influence: The Psychology of Persuasion, specifically the human desire to seem logical and consistent, and how we can use this natural human desire to persuade our audiences… Using commitment and...
Jesse and Matt discuss Adam Grant’s book, Give and Take: Why Helping Others Drives Our Success, specifically Grant’s concept of the power of powerless speech. “When our audience can see that we have flaws, it really helps them identify with...
Jesse tells us what “progressive complications” are, where they come from, and how to use them in our presentations… “If you can arrange your presentation in that kind of fashion [using progressive complications], it’s really gripping for...
Often, our clients feel like if they talk about conflict or problems in their presentations, their audiences won’t respect them. It feels kind of risky. We asked Jesse about this. If a speaker takes the risk, what is the speaker going to get in return?...
Jesse demonstrates how to tell a story about a corporate restructuring. [content_upgrade cu_id=”13259″]Get all 9 Jesse Scinto excerpts consolidated into one PDF:[content_upgrade_button]Email me the PDF[/content_upgrade_button][/content_upgrade] Transcript:...
One of our clients asked us how to tell stories in a business context. Jesse gives a great answer about that… “When we’re talking about stories in a business context, we’re not talking about fables or fairy tales.” “It’s a...
Jesse describes a more interesting way to structure your information, one that will keep your audience’s attention better… [content_upgrade cu_id=”13259″]Get all 9 Jesse Scinto excerpts consolidated into one PDF:[content_upgrade_button]Email me...
There are a lot of reasons to watch videos of yourself practicing. Watching videos of yourself helps you improve your body language. It helps you improve your content, and it helps you improve your opening and closing. But mainly, watching videos of yourself helps you...
It’s a good question: Should I do my training in Turkish or in English? The best way to answer that question is probably to ask yourself, “What do I ultimately want to be able to do?” For example, if your ultimate goal is to give presentations in...
Brevity is vital. But one thing that often gets lost is that brevity is not enough. If you can’t quickly articulate to an executive why he/she should care about your presentation, brevity won’t save you. When people talk about a flood of information, what...
Since I work in Istanbul, I run into a lot of people who are learning English. They often ask me for some tips. They often look at me, slightly puzzled, and ask, “Why would that help? In real life, people don’t repeat their words 5 times.”...
A couple weeks ago I wrote about looking to see what grade level you’re speaking at. Here’s another neat tip for seeing your speech from another perspective: put it into a tag cloud: Go to the website, paste your text into the text box, click...
Guy Kawasaki speaks at TEDxBerkeley, about the 10 points of innovation… Notes: Local references: In this speech, he makes a lot of references to local universities [Stanford, Cal (local nickname for University of California Berkeley), USC (University of Southern...
As a speaker, there are a couple numbers you should know. One is your average WPM — how many words do you speak per minute (the average human speaks about 120-130 words per minute). You do that so when you are writing a speech, you know about how many words you...
Sometimes you’re speaking about a hotly-debated topic, something that not everyone in the room agrees with you about. Here’s a tip for those situations: Before you talk about the hot issue, get the audience to agree with you on something else. Two professors, one from...
Here’s a tip for those times when you’re speaking to a potentially hostile audience, or coming dangerously close to a hot, explosive topic: In your opening sentences, remind the audience you share common ground with them, but also acknowledge the debate....
Yes, you compete with your slides for the audience’s attention. When the audience is looking at your slides, they aren’t listening to you. So we preach, over and over, keep your slides simple, keep your slides simple. But in real life, you don’t...
Below are four videos, and a transcript, of an interview with a famous radio presenter in the US, Ira Glass. He speaks about storytelling, the importance of being yourself, and the difficulty of the early days, when you know what “good” is, but...
Here’s a body language tip: It’s called the Sullivan Nod. When you are talking to an audience, and you are listing three or four or five options, smile and nod when you’re describing the one you want them to choose. Chances are pretty good that they’ll choose it. The...
Getting up in front of people and speaking may not always be as easy as strolling in a park on a warm Sunday afternoon. Sometimes, it may feel more like a bigger challenge you find yourself immersed in. Our experience with our clients show that, people are usually...
When you deliver a presentation, your audience members will be able to process only one source of information at any given moment. That is, they will either listen to your speech or read your slides, but they will not be able to do both at the same time. Here is a...
When delivering a presentation, it is a good idea to keep the audience’s focus and attention on ourselves. In fact, keeping the attention on ourselves it is one of the main pillars of a successful speech or presentation. So much so, that at certain times you may not...
When you connect your computer to the projector before starting a presentation, what does your audience see first? Do they see a neat and tidy computer desktop with a regular wallpaper? Do they see a cluttered desktop with a lot of icons on top of your two year old...
In this speech Jesse Jackson, campaigning for US President in 1984, speaks at a church. There are two things I would like to point out in this speech, and they both have to do with point #3 in overcoming the Curse of Knowledge (make it concrete — use simple words and...
In the Fundamentals we mentioned the Curse of Knowledge, and six ways to overcome it. My personal favorite, though, isn’t on that list. It is: #7: Ask questions. Specifically, ask your audience to describe back to you what you just said. Ask them to describe your...
For you, as a listener, what’s easier to understand? “I… went… to… the… store…” …or… “Uhhh, I, uhhh… went, uhhh… to, uhhh… the, uhhh… store, uhhh.”? Which one was easier to understand? Probably the first one, right? Both of them took the same amount of time — the...
When you’re organizing your presentation, the Rule of Three is a good place to start. For example: We’re going to do A. We’re going to do B. We’re going to do C. The human brain loves things that are organized into threes. It tends to forget point #4, but it can...
Remember the One Question, the one thing that’s on everyone’s mind. The one problem they’re trying to solve, the reason they asked you to speak. Then tell a story that basically goes, A. I had that question myself once, and B. here’s how I solved it, and C. now I’m...
When you’re on stage, what do you do with your hands? It’s one of the most common questions we get. Personally, I suspect you already know what to do with your hands, but the best answer is actually kind of zen, so we reserve it for more advanced courses. In the...
Before your speech, meet some of the members of your audience. Talk to them, get to know them a little. It’ll make you a lot less nervous when you’re speaking, because you’ll be talking to friends, not a bunch of nameless, faceless strangers. How can you do this? At...
Have a friend video you while you’re speaking. And yes, watch it! I’ve never met a person who liked to watch himself speaking. Not once. But there’s something magic about it. Every person who ever watches himself on video decides to become a better speaker. It’s like...
When professional actors prepare for a role, they usually rehearse for hours, or days or weeks, learning how to make a particular facial tick appear at just the right time. When she was preparing for the movie Gravity, Sandra Bullock practiced one of the moves for...
Opening PowerPoint is one of the first things people do when preparing a presentation. However, it’s the wrong place to start. Opening PowerPoint first is like buying paint for the living room before you’ve even started building the house. Asking three particular...
There are 9 lessons in the SO Fundamentals course. They are: Lesson 1 : The First Three Questions Lesson 2 : Practice 25 Times Lesson 3 : The Curse of Knowledge Lesson 4 : Reduce Your Ahh Count Lesson 5 : “B” is for Magic Lesson 6 : Video Yourself...
“How does this person think?” Maybe your audience members don’t know who you are. They might not even care about your subject. But they probably want to know how you think. It’s a natural human impulse: We want to know how other people solve problems, because maybe...
We all have “tics,” little things that we do, little habits. Some presentation trainers tell people to get rid of their tics, but tics aren’t always that bad. Take, for example, Bob Dole. Bob Dole was a famous United States Senator in the 1970s, 1980s, and 1990s. He...
President John F. Kennedy once said, “The only reason to give a speech is to change the world.” When I first heard that quote, I thought, “Wow, that’s a high bar to set.” People who change the world are people like Winston Churchill, or Nelson Mandela, or Mahatma...
Yesterday I saw this ad in the subway station… At first I thought, “Oh, that’s such a pretty picture there on the screen… fish, water, blue, nature, sun, how nice!” But then I saw something completely different: A herd, moving in unthinking unison, swimming,...
Recently I was watching a TEDx speech video with a client of mine. The speaker was a designer with a doctorate from MIT, talking about research he’s doing into innovative mechanical solutions. Here’s the video: Neither my client nor I liked the speech. We both came...
Sometimes our clients ask us to sit in on their “real life” presentations. We love opportunities like that. Seeing our clients operate live, “in the wild,” helps us do our jobs so much better. When a client lets us watch them give a real-life...
People are like dogs. If you stare at one long enough, he’ll attack. When you are giving a presentation, if an audience member gets aggressive and starts challenging you, resist the urge to spend too much time looking at that one person. Address his questions, but...
The other day someone asked me for advice. He had wanted to give a speech that would last about 4-6 minutes, but instead the speech went for almost eight minutes. “What should I do?” he asked. “Slow down,” I said. Wait a second, shouldn’t I have told him to talk...
The other day, a few of a client’s employees went to a presentation skills training. The trainer told them 70% of presentation is body language, voice tone, etc. My client asked me if I agree. This is what I told her: That 70% figure is bullshit. It’s not bullshit...
There are many ways to start a speech. One of them is outlining what you’re going to talk about. Watch how Guy Kawasaki does it in the first 90 seconds of his speech… He tells us that he’s going to cover 10 points, and that telling your audience...
Put politics aside for a second. Listen to the patterns in this guy’s speech, there are a couple things I would like to point out… Below is an anonymized version of the email that points those things out… Hi XXX, I agree completely, you don’t...
One of our clients asked what he called a “million-dollar question”… He asked, “I feel very shy in front of a camera. How can I improve? Any tips?” Here was my response: “Here’s what I do, try this… “Humans naturally relax and light up when they talk to...
You know the saying, “You never cross the same river twice”? That applies to speeches too. The other day I was speaking about my walk across Turkey. Because of a timing mixup, I ended up giving the same speech to two different audiences. To my surprise,...
Transcript: Rule number two. Something to remember before you even start outlining your speech. Rule number two or question number two is what do you want your audience to do at the end of your speech. The other day somebody said, “Oh you mean, what’s my...
When you start preparing a presentation, don’t you dare start by opening PowerPoint. Mull over these three questions first: Who are you talking to? What do you want them to do? Why should they care? Ask these questions because a good presentation doesn’t...
There are many ways of dealing with fear. Here are two of them: 1. Conquer your fear Try to wrestle your fear to the ground. Try to beat it. Try to control it. 2. Look at something else Your job is not to conquer fear, your job is to do something else. Don’t...
A couple years ago there was a woman who walked from Spain south to Morocco, and then east across Tunisia, Libya, and Egypt, then north into Jordan, and then into Jerusalem. She walked alone, and she didn’t spend any money. When I talk about my walk across Turkey,...
“The Tipping Point is the biography of an idea.” What is the idea? The idea is that “[i]deas and products and messages and behaviors spread just like viruses do.” In addition to describing how the spread of ideas is like the spread of viruses,...
There are different ways to see the world. One of them is “What can I do on the edge?” Another is “How do I get to the middle?” Before you ever open your mouth, before you even start thinking about a problem, you will, consciously or...
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As presentation trainers we tell our clients over and over, “More eye contact, more eye contact.” But sometimes you’ve got other stuff to do, and it’s okay to look away. Not to read your slides or look at your shoes, no. But to visualize...
The other day I was working with a client on her PowerPoint slides. We looked at the first slide, then the second slide, then the third slide. She asked me what I thought. “Should we add this?” “Should we take that out?” The thing is, she had...
Definition: to say something awkward or inappropriate Examples: I saw my boss on the street yesterday. He was with a woman. I said I loved his wife’s dress, but she wasn’t his wife. She was his girlfriend. I definitely put my foot in my mouth that time. I...
Definition: to be stubborn, to refuse to move Examples: We tried to renegotiate the contract, but the customer dug in his heels. He said no, we could not discuss the contract again. I wanted to go to the beach, but my wife wanted to go to the mountains. She dug in her...
Some years ago I heard a story about Google. I forget the details, but the gist of the story sticks with me, and I think of it often… In Google’s early days, before “google” became a verb, when the founders of Google were still just grad...
Definition: to have permission to speak in a meeting Examples: The CEO had the floor for almost an hour during the meeting, but he didn’t have anything interesting to say. I fell asleep. Excuse me, but I have the floor. Please wait until I’m finished...
Definition: a job or task requires everyone’s attention or help Examples: This new client is our biggest client so far. It’s really important that we serve them well. It’ll be all hands on deck for a while. It’s August, and many people are on...
I threw this book across the room. Couldn’t read more than a third of it. Why? I’m no statistician, but, if I understand correctly, analyzing large amounts of data (which is the technique the authors used) is a great way to find a population’s...
If you can’t explain it simply, you probably don’t understand it well enough. Students come to me often and say, “I want to use more complicated sentences, like a native speaker.” Huh? Expressing yourself well does not mean using complicated...
The upshot: If you want to get to the high points, you’re going to have to push through the low points. Most people don’t push through the low points, so the playing field will be nice and clear when you get to the good times. I recommend Seth Godin all...
The upshot: Sometimes big, disruptive things happen, and they can’t be planned for, because you don’t know what they’ll be. They will end life as you know it (or as your business knows it), and that’s just the way it is.
Do not look for a summary of this book. In my opinion, this is one of those books you should either submit to, allowing it to change the way you think, or don’t even bother picking it up. Go big or go home. In other words, I loved it. The thing I liked most...
The upshot: Blah blah blah, a bunch of stuff. When you are preparing a presentation, segment your audience. Blah blah blah, a bunch more stuff. That one part, the reminder to segment your audience, alone makes the book worth it. All too often, presentation books tell...
There’s a scene I love from the movie Cadillac Records. Beyonce plays Etta James, and she is in the studio recording the famous tune “All I Could Do Is Cry.” The producer tells her it’s not good enough, that she isn’t putting enough...
Transcript: I recommend, for the first 10 speeches, no visual aids at all, no slides, nothing. We’re there in Toastmasters to learn how to connect with the audience. We’re there to learn how to make eye contact, and how to relax, and how to use body...
People make a big deal out of being afraid of public speaking. When somebody tells me that they’re afraid of public speaking, I just want to tell them, “You know, you’re never going to get over it.” I’ve been going to Toastmasters...
Transcript: Talk to the wall. What does that mean? Sometimes when you’re doing a speech, before you’re even writing the speech, when you’re just at the very beginning and you’re outlining the idea, sometimes a real rational approach, a really...
New Service: Test My Presentation. You send us your presentation, we suggest how you can improve it. Click here for more info. Pro Tip: Use this service once a month, and watch your presentation skills rise up to the next level. It’ll be like your own personal...
Transcript: When you’re practicing and when you’re standing right there on stage, imagine the stuff that you’re talking about. Visualize the things you’re talking about, see them. When you’re talking about flowers, don’t just say,...
Transcript: This one is called, “Put Some Tuba in It.” When you’re mentoring somebody, I recommend that you tell your mentee to put some of them into their speeches. If their name is Ayşe, or Mehmet, or David, put some Ayşe in it. Put some David in...
One of my favorite scenes from Mad Men comes at the end of season 1, when Don pitches Eastman Kodak using a slide show from his own life… There are many things I like about this scene. One of them is that Don knows his audience has a question (“What does...
These are the first questions I ask my clients when we are preparing a presentation. They are obvious questions. It is so easy to answer them quickly, forget the answers, and continue on, unthinking, unchanged, uninspired. The other day I was meeting with a client....
Q&A (questions and answers) is a great way to break up a speech and make sure you and your audience are thinking in the same direction. However, I often see my clients, when giving an answer, give answers that are too long. The result is that they become less and...
Ken Robinson is one of the most popular speakers in the TED community. But it’s not because he’s doing most of the things speech trainers tell us we should do. He doesn’t move around on the stage much. Usually he just stands in one place. His hands...
Definition: boring, tedious, menial work Examples: Some people think a lawyer’s workday is filled with dramatic courtroom moments. In reality, however, much of a lawyer’s day is filled with scut work — reading long documents, going to boring...
Definition: value for the money Examples: When we advertise on the internet, we get a good bang for the buck. We don’t spend much money, but we get a lot of customers. Our Maltepe service center gives us a better bang for the buck than the Şişli service center....
Definition: a short period when there’s high pressure to get results Examples: This month is the busy season for our business. If we do well, we’ll make tons of money. It’s crunch time. I want to take a vacation, but it’s crunch time at work...
Definition: to be involved in something, to get a piece of the reward Examples: This is not the only company he owns. He has his finger in the pies of many other companies, too. Almost every single person is involved in this project. Sometimes it seems like everyone...
Definition: To acquire a new customer Examples: My boss told me we really need more business. Maybe if I land this account, he’ll promote me. I’m not having a very good year, it has been a long time since I landed a new account.
Definition: The limits, conditions, qualifications, or other details printed at the bottom or end of a contract. Examples: The contract might look good at first, but you have to read the fine print to know for sure. The cell phone company’s new promotion sounds...
Definition: to cancel or stop (something) Examples: This new program will never be successful. We need to pull the plug on it, before we waste more money. I was really excited about this new advertising campaign, but my boss didn’t like it, and he decided to...
Definition: to promote or sell (something) Examples: He was on the TV news last night, but he didn’t have anything interesting to say. He was just there to plug his book. At job fairs, it’s hard to plug our company to potential recruits when we have such a...
Definition: to keep something secret, to keep something hidden Examples: Our development department is working on a new product. We can’t tell anyone, we have to keep it under wraps. My boss is going to promote someone. I hope it is me, but I don’t know...
Definition: to cut back on expenses Examples: Sales are down, we need to tighten our belt until business is better. You should tighten your belt, if you spend money like that, you’ll go out of business quickly.
Definition: two things are the same; the difference is zero Examples: The company is going to cut our pay, but increase our health insurance. So my paycheck will be smaller, but I won’t pay as much when I go to the hospital. I think it’s six of one, and a...
Definition: to start roughly, to start badly Examples: The business is very successful now, but in the early days, we didn’t know if it would succeed or not. It got off to a really shaky start. When you meet the new boss, it’s important to make a good...
Definition: to disappear, to be invisible Examples: We were good friends for many years, but when he moved to South Africa, I lost track of him. I haven’t spoken to him in 10 years, and I don’t even know where he is now. He fell off my radar. When our...
The other day, I was helping a client with a presentation. He was an engineer for a solar power company, and he was going to introduce his company to some potential investors. Other engineers would have loved his presentation. They would have picked him up, put him on...
Definition: to learn a new skill; to get basic experience Examples: He is a big, famous Finance Guru at the World Bank now, but he cut his teeth managing the finances for small textile factories in Egypt. He is a great addition to our manufacturing team, because...
Definition: to buy something for a really good price; to buy something cheap Examples: These days, a lot of banks are in distress, so they can be bought relatively cheaply. They can be bought for a song. I bought this house for a song, when prices were cheap during...
Definition: To solve two problems with only one action Examples: Last week the logistics department figured out how to deliver the customer’s goods early, and save money on shipping too. They killed two birds with one stone. If you want the promotion, you need...
Definition: to count, or to evaluate Note: Sometimes this is used philosophically (as in, to evaluate one’s life), and sometimes it is used literally (as in, to actually count the number of inventory items sitting on the shelf). Examples: On major birthdays,...
Definition: to be profitable, to be making money Examples: Our new startup lost money for two years, but now we are profitable. We are finally in the black. Our company has a long history of financial strength. In fact, we have been in the black every year since 1972....
Definition: to overwhelm with excessively strong language or personality Examples: The salesman came on too strong at the meeting and made the customer angry. The new employee has some really good skills, but he comes on too strong. The other employees think he is...
Definition: to approve something, to give approval to something Examples: This marketing plan is great, but you have to show it to the boss first. Until he gives the green light, we can’t do anything with it. I want to hire a new sales rep, so I checked with the...
People ask me for advice on how to speak better. When I tell them they have to practice 25 times, their eyes glaze over. They don’t want to hear it. What they want to hear is, “Yes, you can be lazy AND awesome at the same time”. But it’s not...
Definition: to be near a target, to be close to the target Examples: You haven’t told me your target price, but I think it is probably around $100,000. Am I in the ballpark? The customer wants us to lower our price, he says we are way too expensive. He says we...
Definition: to end a meeting Examples: It was late in the evening, so we adjourned the meeting until the next day. We’re not making any progress, let’s adjourn the meeting and go back to work.
Definition: an accountant, someone who works with numbers Examples: Our president is a good number-cruncher and understands the finances of our company. I am an artist, but my brother is a finance guy. He is more of a number-cruncher.
Definition: to reduce or cut Examples: When Ayşe had a baby, she scaled back her hours to just work part-time. Times are hard, and we are losing money. It is time to scale back our spending — we need to spend less.
Definition: a town dominated by one industry or company Examples: When the coal mine closed, the company town faced a severe economic crisis. I come from a company town, where one company owns everything — the stores, the banks, the houses, and everything else....
Text of the speech: Raising the Bar on Yourself Raising the bar on yourself. What does that mean? Well, “to raise the bar” simply means, “to set a higher standard”. Raising the bar on yourself just means setting a higher standard for yourself. At first, it sounds...
Definition: an important person, or a leader of the group Examples: When the company’s bigwigs came to visit the factory, we all had to change our work schedules to accomodate them. That guy is the head of Marketing, he is a real bigwig in the company. If you...
Definition: to not have enough (in quantity) Examples: At the factory, we ran short of an important part, and had to close the production line. They ran short of gasoline at the gas station and had to close early.
Definition: to create new business, to find new customers Examples: Sales have been very slow lately. Do you have any ideas for drumming up business? Our production capacity is too low to meet demand. We don’t need more salespeople to drum up business, we need...
Definition: a cruel and aggressive world, where people only look out for themselves Examples: Your company fired you two days after you had a heart attack? Well, it’s certainly a dog-eat-dog world! Be wary of your other competitors, especially in this industry....
Definition: to discourage, to remove hope Example: Steve wanted to expand the business into China, but his boss threw cold water on the idea, and told him to focus on the domestic business. I was eager to try our big new software system with the new customer, but they...
Definition: Credit for doing a good deed, or for giving someone a compliment (usually a boss, teacher, or other authority) Examples: When I told the boss his new suit was very handsome, the other employees laughed and said I was just trying to score brownie points....
Should you put an objective on your CV, or not? Probably not. Here’s a typical objective: "A challenging managerial position in marketing at a growing FMCG company." What’s wrong with this statement? First, it’s about you, and what you want...
Definition: to get a lot of attention; to promote; to cause people to talk about a product or service Examples: Procter & Gamble’s new toothpaste was really popular, and people talked about it a lot. It generated a lot of buzz. Facebook is in the newspapers...
These words are on almost every CV. They are popular, and everyone thinks they should use them. But they are empty, and they say nothing about you. Kill them, and replace them with something else: responsible for experienced excellent written communication...
Definition: to make the decisions, to be the leader Examples: In this office, Joe is officially the boss, but everyone actually listens to Sarah first. She’s the one who calls the shots. This group is so disorganized, I don’t even know who approves new...
Definition: to collapse, fail, lose value quickly Examples: The stock market took a nosedive during the financial crisis. If we lose permission to sell this product, our earnings will take a nosedive and we might go bankrupt.
Definition: to maintain the existing opinion, position, or status; to resist Examples: The employees are resisting the changes. We need to train our team managers how to hold the line regarding this restructuring plan. Our competition is attacking us hard on pricing,...
Definition: to try to solve a problem by spending money on something Examples: You can’t solve this problem simply by throwing money at it. You need to use imagination and brains and try new things. The president of our company really wants to solve this...
Definition: to succeed, to get results, to complete a project successfully Examples: Sure, everyone likes him and he is fun to talk to, but can he produce results? Can he deliver the goods? I highly recommend Murat — if the job is difficult and really important,...
Definition: to produce good results, to succeed (especially with an experimental project) Examples: This project is difficult, but try it, and see if you can make a go of it. Although he works very hard in his business, he has been unable to make a go of it and may...
Definition: to sell very quickly, to sell really well Examples: Children’s toys were selling like hotcakes at the end of the year. In the summer in Antalya, Efes pilsen beer sells like hotcakes.
Definition: to be serious, to be determined Examples: Our boss means business when he tells everyone to work harder. Don’t mess with them, they are determined to win. They really mean business.
Definition: to economize, to take a short-cut, to reduce quality in order to save money Note: this idiom is usually negative — don’t use it when you want to express approval or support something Examples: During these hard times, we are tempted to cut...
Definition: a collapse occurs, and a new low is reached Examples: Things were good at our company, until the founder died of a heart attack. Then, the bottom fell out of the company, and we all lost our jobs. When the bottom fell out of the coffee market many...
Definition: to supply someone (or something) with money, to finance someone (or something) Examples: This new project will be very expensive. We need to find someone to bankroll it. The movie actor bankrolled his son while the son was producing his first movie....
Definition: to be a candidate, to be competing for something Examples: This is a very competitive bid. There are three very strong candidates in the running — our company, and two others. Only one of us will win. After the interview, I felt very confident. I...
Definition: including everyone or everything Examples: Our company decided to raise all the salaries. It’s across the board — everyone will get a raise. Times are tough, and we need to cut expenses. All departments have to reduce expenses 10%. The...
Definition: an important moment that decides whether you will succeed or fail Examples: Today’s presentation in front of the board is very important. It will decide whether they approve our project and we get promoted, or they kill our project and fire us. It is...
Definition: a basic introductory meeting, often informal, where you meet a person (or people) for the first time Examples: This is a new customer, and we’ve never met them in person. Let’s schedule a short meet-and-greet, so we can introduce ourselves. We...
Definition: things that are easy to do, and give quick results Examples: This project is really complicated. It will take years to finish. Let’s start with the low-hanging fruit, so we get some benefits quickly, and feel like we are making progress. The new CEO...
Definition: a source of a lot of cash; a big profit-maker Examples: That is one of our best products. It is a cash cow. If we killed it, this company would lose a lot of money. That industry is very unpopular, and people want the government to regulate it more. But...
Definition: a complicated problem, a tangled mess of problems Examples: If we layoff a few employees, it opens a can of worms. You fire a few people, then the media says your company is sick, then investors start to worry, and your customers call your competitors,...
Definition: to test the boundaries, to try something new Examples: Our company is very conservative. Every presentation is always the same. I am going to push the envelope, and completely change the normal format. I’m trying a new sales technique with this new...
Definition: a difficult beginning, a rough start Examples: In the end, the project ended well — on time, and under budget. However, in the beginning, it had a rocky start — important employees quit, there was no clear direction, and there was no support...
Definition: in an emergency, in a difficult situation Examples: I don’t like fish, but if there is nothing else, I will eat it in a pinch. I don’t know much about finance, but if I have to read an income statement in a pinch, I can do it....
Definition: to describe something perfectly, to identify the source of a problem perfectly Examples: We were trying to explain why last night’s party was so funny, but we couldn’t. However, Murat found the perfect words. He hit the nail on the head. My...
Want to be more engaging? Want people to think you are more interesting? Remember this old saying: “God gave us two ears, but only one mouth.” Use them in that order. Listen twice as much as you speak. And when you do open your mouth, use it to...
When someone else talks, what’s a good way to make sure you understood?Remember this phrase:"Let me repeat what you said, to make sure I understood you correctly…"I’m a native English speaker. I still use this phrase 10 times a...
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