Bats and bees

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 first most-common

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...

ChatGPT

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...

Pudong

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...

Details, Volume 2

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...

Break it

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....

Get off the pot

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...

The beauty of boredom

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...

The penalty for deviating is death

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...

You will never not be nervous

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...

Slack (cut yourself some)

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...

Craziness

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....

Peppercorns

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...

Stamping metal

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...

Subjective is not good enough

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...

Good times

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...

BMG, physically represented

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...

God

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...

Drugs

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...

Chasing the wrong solution

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...

The fastest way to say more

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...

Clear the cache

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,...

Step away from the PowerPoint

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...

You’re going to suck at the start

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...

It will never be a good time for anything

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,...

IMF

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...

Yuvarlanıp gidiyoruz

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”...

Personal details

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...

Teddy volume 2

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...

Teddy

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...

Kill your darlings

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...

Something to say

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...

Punched in the face

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...

Moonraker

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,...

That’s a lot of wires

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...

Reducing uncertainty

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...

Snowpack analysis

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...

Where these emails get written

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...

Ice axe

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...

Chasing the dragon

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...

BMG in action

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...

Every day be born a dumbass anew

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...

Hold my beer

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...

Elderly black woman

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...

Accepting the call

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...

The Quest

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,...

That’s not rain, it’s blood

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...

Back issues of Scientific American

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...

Teresa

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...

One, not two

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...

Spill your blood

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...

Mixed tape

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...

Fluke

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...

Ses Etme and the genius zone

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

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...

A/B testing the value of stories

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...

Measuring the gap

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...

Yes, but don’t

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,...

Something for our HR buddies

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...

Your island is shrinking

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’re fooling ourselves

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...

Jesus and mold

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...

HGOMM

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...

Man in hole

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.”...

Difficult conversations

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...

Keep a loop open

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...

Humans are a fungus

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...

Love and Rockets meets BMG

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...

Storytelling for business

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...

Customer retention (Love and Rockets edition)

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...

Throw up your hands

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...

Where can I find drywall anchor bolts?

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...

Drywall anchor bolts

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,...

Jeffrey

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...

AI and corporate succession redux

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...

Pigs on the wing 1

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...

Badass beats pretty

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...

Up and down

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...

Beach days and market research

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...

Put some Tuba in it (plum pie and diabetic husbands)

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...

Humans don’t scale

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...

How does this person think?

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...

Sex and Cash

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...

Nobody knows anything, Volume 2

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...

How AI affects your succession plans

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,...

Don’t flunk the “Taxi Test”

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...

Ankles

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....

Trust

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...

Preply

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...

Spies sell peanuts

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...

Tear gas and Toastmasters

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...

Iranian weddings

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...

Puking cats

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...

Be more like a dog

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%...

More problem

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...

The Four Things

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...

Tight constraints

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...

None of us know what we are doing

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,...

Constant pitching mindset

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...

Rockin’ the mike

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...

Do what you love

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...

Stories in data-heavy presentations

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...

International sales expansion

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...

Train wrecks

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...

“I need business English” is a dangerous phrase

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...

Gilmore Girls exercise #2

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...

Gilmore Girls exercise #1

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...

The point

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...

The right questions

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...

Exporter of Humans

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...

Stalk the board

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”...

RFP presentation tip #2

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...

People are like dogs

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...

Aspect ratios

“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...

RFP presentation tip #3

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?...

RFP presentation tip #4

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...

Six

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...

Slides are a crutch

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

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...

You don’t need more noise

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...

Tech spend and second marriages

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,...

Go retail

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...

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 write blocks of code that would be a waste of time for a human. But when...

Make your headlines tell your message

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,...

Was Don Draper cool or not?

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...

Let your freak flag fly

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....

To look back

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.

To clear away

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.

To catch on

Meaning: to become popular Examples: This game will catch on among young people. In the past, that song was not popular, but now it is catching on.

To catch somebody up on something

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.

To make up for something

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.

To knock off

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.

To work out

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...

To warm up

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.

To take off

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.

To switch on

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.

To tidy up

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...

To dress 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.

To put something on

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.

To get (somebody) up

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.

To wake (somebody) up

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.

To go off

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.

To look forward to something

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.

To keep from

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.

To hold up

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.

To run into

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.

To look on

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.

To get back to something

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.

Alternative CYA phrases

“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...

Key flagging phrases

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...

Three tips for videoconferencing

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...

Kill your darlings

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 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...

Yes, X, but the bigger picture is Y

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...

Fielding challenges from an angry audience member

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...

Idiom: to make a splash

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.  

Idiom: to make waves

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...

CXO letter sample

———- 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...

Free stock photo sites

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...

Interview with Memet Yazıcı

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...

Interview with Roland Meerdter

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...

Interview with Kyle Dunn

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...

Encore interview with JB Beckett

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...

Interview with JB Beckett

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...

Listener question for Ole

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...

Interview with Ole Rollag

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...

Mistakes fund managers make – bonus

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,...

Mistakes fund managers make – #5 of 5

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...

Mistakes fund managers make – #4 of 5

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...

Mistakes fund managers make – #3 of 5

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...

Mistakes fund managers make – #2 of 5

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,...

Mistakes fund managers make – #1 of 5

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 on speaking at conferences

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 on speaking at conferences

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 on speaking at conferences

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 on moderating a panel

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” is not actionable advice

“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...

Don’t bury the lede

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...

Unlock the skills you already have

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...

The “political changes” question in emerging markets

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...

They don’t know nearly as much as you think they do

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...

Get to work

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 are not presentations at all

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…

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...

The CEO on the conference call: Stick to your style

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...

“Can you do an unplanned talk for 10 minutes?”

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...

Use Presenter View to improve your bond with the audience

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...

Aydın Bırık on a startup’s investor presentation

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...

Office hours

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...

Cultivating audience participation

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...

How to ask difficult questions?

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...

Reader comments on Kevin Spacey speech

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

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...

Freelancers’ Show

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...

Email styles

A great cartoon showing one of the main differences between executive and associate email styles…

Swim in my ocean, or splash in my puddle

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...

Mindset change

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...

The Jesse Interviews

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

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...

Stories happen in the listeners’ heads

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...

The moral of the story

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...

The fastest way to say more

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...

Reader question: example of a marketing story

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....

Feel sense describe about numbers

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...

More on stories happening in the listeners’ heads

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...

Preparing for “12 Minutes With…”

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...

Softening words

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...

Acid test of a good financial speech

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...

Work the crowd

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...

Message focusing: Six-word story

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...

What do I do with my hands? (Eric Takaha video)

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...

Money is especially emotional

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...

The wrong question

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...

Method actor approach to communications

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

You are a midwife

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.

Pause

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...

Sometimes…

Sometimes public speaking doesn’t go so well… http://fortune.com/2015/09/15/bmw-ceo-collapse/

The Curse of Knowledge

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...

Actually, attention spans are not shrinking…

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...

Look at your people, not your screen

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...

And that’s how it’s done, folks!

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...

Start with a joke. But how?

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...

Extracting Previously Embedded Media Files in Keynote

[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...

Boy meets girl

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.

When you use video in a presentation

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...

You’re going too fast!

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...

HGOMM

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.

Jesse Scinto: Presentations Are Not About Informing

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...

Jesse Scinto: Commitment Must Be Physical and Public

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...

Jesse Scinto: Commitment and Consistency

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 Scinto: The Credibility of Being Human

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 Scinto: “Progressive Complications” — What It Means

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...

Jesse Scinto: What Benefit Am I Going to Get?

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 Scinto: Example of A Story About Corporate Restructuring

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:...

Jesse Scinto: Using Stories in a Business Context

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 Scinto: Complication and Resolution

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...

Why Watch Videos of Yourself

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...

Turkish or English?

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

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...

Why listen over and over

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.”...

Visualize Your Words in a Tag Cloud

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...

Game tape: Guy Kawasaki, TEDxBerkeley

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...

Do the Flesch-Kincaid

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...

Get them to agree with you first

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...

Sidestepping the bomb

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....

When you can’t avoid the avalanche

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...

Ira Glass interviews

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...

The Sullivan Nod

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...

3 Presentation Ruiners (And How to Deal With Them)

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...

Simplify Your Slides

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...

“B” is for Magic

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...

Good First Impression Tips #1

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...

Review of a Jesse Jackson speech

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...

The seventh method

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...

Reduce your ahh count

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...

Stick to the delta

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...

How to make your audience feel like they’re in the right place

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...

What should I do with my hands?

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...

Chat with a couple audience members

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...

Video yourself

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...

Practice 25 times

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...

The first three questions

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...

SO Fundamentals index

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?

“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...

Doing the Bob Dole

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...

To change the world

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...

Are you sure you want to use that picture?

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,...

And then we did this, and it was cool

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...

The Joe Black Chair

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...

Don’t stare at people

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...

Slow down

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 famous 70%

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...

Like saying, “If the sex is bad…”

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...

I feel camera-shy

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...

Your speech will never be the same twice

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,...

What do you want your audience to do?

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...

Three questions

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...

Dealing with fear

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...

Fear makes bad things seem more real than they are

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, by Malcolm Gladwell

“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,...

The edge and the center

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...

Some examples of Stage’s formatting…

Lorem ipsum dolor sit amet, consectetur adipiscing elit. Vivamus laoreet sodales nunc, porttitor vehicula nisl elementum eget. Sed feugiat tristique tellus ac cursus. [highlight]Duis nec leo at enim egestas tempor nec id lacus. Nunc vestibulum nulla non nunc consequat...

Eye contact is good, but not always

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...

No soggy noodles

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...

Idiom: to put one’s foot in one’s mouth

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...

Idiom: to dig in one’s heels

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...

A Google story

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...

Idiom: to have the floor

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...

Idiom: all hands on deck

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...

First, Break All The Rules, by Buckingham and Coffman

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…

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 Dip, by Seth Godin

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 Black Swan, by Nassim Nicholas Taleb

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.

Resonate, by Nancy Duarte

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...

How to be a Presentation God, by Scott Schwertly

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...

Spill your blood onto the floor

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...

No visual aids

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...

You’ll probably never not be nervous

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...

Talk to the wall

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...

Why practice 25 times?

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...

Feel, sense, describe – don’t just tell!

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,...

Put some Tuba in it!

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...

Channeling Don Draper

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...

Who is your audience? What do you want them to do?

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....

Keep your answers short

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...

Call your audience

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...

Idiom: scut work

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...

Idiom: bang for the buck

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....

Idiom: crunch time

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...

Idiom: to have one’s finger in the pie

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...

Idiom: to land an account

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.

Idiom: the fine print

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...

Idiom: to pull the plug (on something)

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...

Idiom: to plug (something)

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...

Idiom: to keep something under wraps

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...

Idiom: To tighten one’s belt

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.  

Idiom: six of one and a half dozen of the other

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...

Idiom: to get off to a shaky start

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...

Idiom: to fall off the radar

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...

Talk to the dog

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...

Idiom: to cut your teeth

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...

Idiom: To buy (something) for a song

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...

Idiom: Kill two birds with one stone

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...

Idiom: to take stock

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,...

Idiom: to be in the black

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....

Idiom: to come on strong

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...

Idiom: to give the green light

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...

Why do I have to practice 25 times?

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...

Idiom: to be in the ballpark

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...

Idiom: to adjourn a meeting

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.  

Idiom: number-cruncher

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.  

Idiom: to scale back (something)

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.  

Idiom: a company town

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....

Raise the bar, and then break it down

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...

Idiom: a bigwig

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...

Idiom: to run short

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.  

Idiom: to drum up business

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...

Idiom: a dog-eat-dog world

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....

Idiom: to throw cold water (on something)

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...

Idiom: brownie points

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....

No one cares what you want

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...

Idiom: to generate buzz

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...

Kill popular but empty words

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...

Idiom: to call the shots

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...

Idiom: to take a nosedive

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.  

Idiom: to hold the line

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,...

Idiom: to throw money at (something)

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...

Idiom: to deliver the goods

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,...

Idiom: to make a go of (something)

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...

Idiom: to sell like hotcakes

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.  

Idiom: to mean business

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.  

Idiom: to cut corners

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...

Idiom: the bottom falls out (of something)

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...

Idiom: to bankroll someone (or something)

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....

Idiom: to be in the running

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...

Idiom: across the board

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...

Idiom: make or break moment

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...

Idiom: meet and greet

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...

Idiom: low hanging fruit

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...

Idiom: a cash cow

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...

Idiom: a can of worms

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,...

Idiom: to push the envelope

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...

Idiom: a rocky start

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...

Idiom: in a pinch

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....

Idiom: to hit the nail on the head

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...

Two ears, one mouth

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...

Repeat back to me

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...