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...

Kickstarter and the power of the people around you

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...

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 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...

Eye contact is good, but sometimes not

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...