Transcript: On the way out of Van today I walked past a garbage dump. A bunch of mangy dogs barked at me. I walked a little further. A puppy, probably only about 10 weeks old, raised its head and started screeching at me. I hadn’t heard a dog make that noise...
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...
About six months ago, I finished a pretty major project. I walked all the way across Turkey. I started on the west coast, at the Aegean Sea, in the city of Kuşadası, and then I walked east, to the Turkey/Iran border east of Van. I walked every single meter. Every...
There are many ways of dealing with fear. Here are two of them: 1. Conquer your fear Try to wrestle your fear to the ground. Try to beat it. Try to control it. 2. Look at something else Your job is not to conquer fear, your job is to do something else. Don’t...
A couple years ago there was a woman who walked from Spain south to Morocco, and then east across Tunisia, Libya, and Egypt, then north into Jordan, and then into Jerusalem. She walked alone, and she didn’t spend any money. When I talk about my walk across Turkey,...
“The Tipping Point is the biography of an idea.” What is the idea? The idea is that “[i]deas and products and messages and behaviors spread just like viruses do.” In addition to describing how the spread of ideas is like the spread of viruses,...
There are different ways to see the world. One of them is “What can I do on the edge?” Another is “How do I get to the middle?” Before you ever open your mouth, before you even start thinking about a problem, you will, consciously or...
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...
As presentation trainers we tell our clients over and over, “More eye contact, more eye contact.” But sometimes you’ve got other stuff to do, and it’s okay to look away. Not to read your slides or look at your shoes, no. But to visualize...
The other day I was working with a client on her PowerPoint slides. We looked at the first slide, then the second slide, then the third slide. She asked me what I thought. “Should we add this?” “Should we take that out?” The thing is, she had...
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...
I threw this book across the room. Couldn’t read more than a third of it. Why? I’m no statistician, but, if I understand correctly, analyzing large amounts of data (which is the technique the authors used) is a great way to find a population’s...
If you can’t explain it simply, you probably don’t understand it well enough. Students come to me often and say, “I want to use more complicated sentences, like a native speaker.” Huh? Expressing yourself well does not mean using complicated...
The upshot: If you want to get to the high points, you’re going to have to push through the low points. Most people don’t push through the low points, so the playing field will be nice and clear when you get to the good times. I recommend Seth Godin all...
The upshot: Sometimes big, disruptive things happen, and they can’t be planned for, because you don’t know what they’ll be. They will end life as you know it (or as your business knows it), and that’s just the way it is.
Do not look for a summary of this book. In my opinion, this is one of those books you should either submit to, allowing it to change the way you think, or don’t even bother picking it up. Go big or go home. In other words, I loved it. The thing I liked most...
The upshot: Blah blah blah, a bunch of stuff. When you are preparing a presentation, segment your audience. Blah blah blah, a bunch more stuff. That one part, the reminder to segment your audience, alone makes the book worth it. All too often, presentation books tell...
