The Presentation Secrets of Steve Jobs: How to Be Insanely Great in Front of Any Audience

5 Responses to “The Presentation Secrets of Steve Jobs: How to Be Insanely Great in Front of Any Audience”

1. Raihan Jamil says:

   May 4, 2010 at 4:29 pm

   I have just read the book. I am glad I did not buy it.

   I could have easily condensed the material in 20 levelheaded pages with pictures.

   I thought I could learn how to make PowerPoints (or Central for that matter) like Jobs, as the title suggests/implies. But no such luck.

   The Internet has free copies of that book. Also, the book refers to the leader’s site for more info, and that site is reasonably useless as well.

   Overall, I felt let down by this book, even though I did not spend money on it.
   Reader’s Rating: 2 / 5
2. David Field says:

   May 4, 2010 at 7:05 pm

   So, you want to know the Presentation Secrets of Steve Jobs? Simple, really.

   First of all, you only give four presentations a year, at “Apple Events.”

   You do this in a packed hall of Apple acolytes, and members of the world’s press who will give you a standing ovation for just showing up after being sick. They will all hang on your every word.

   You hand out the design details to slide producing companies. Have a name else really advance the slides.

   You try to give the impression that Apple is anything but a marketing company masquerading as a tech company.

   You have a bunch of monitors facing you across the front of the stage, so you can see both what’s on screen and your notes, lacking looking away.

   You run the presentation as a sales pitch, with a minimum of detail.

   As CEO, you are acutely conscious of adage anything that could lead to class action suits.

   So, is this sounding like the presentations you give? Me neither, and basing this book on the way one legendary individual presents is pointless. You might as well tell the Presentation Secrets of U.S. Presidents. What the legendary have to look out for is something wildly different than your presentation of the Third Quarter Sales Facts for the North East Region.

   Much of the information here is superfluous. If you’re trying to sell something with your presentation, it’s fine. But, there’s small real advice for any additional kind of presentation. If you’re a school student or a pastor, a examination lawyer or a company pension fund administrator, you have to work for your audience.

   So why two stars? That’s because the book points out some thoughts that are regularly overlooked. It makes sense to limit your “take-home messages” to three. Many presentations blind you with dozens of facts lacking telling you which are vital.

   Another point is to control your presentation. Lead into and out of different thoughts, and make it clear if the presentation suddenly takes a turn to become more technical. There are plenty of ways we do this in normal conversation, and you will help your audience considerably if you adopt this method and not the “Here are the facts, sort them out for yourself” approach.

   Sorry to say, this book ends with the most useless advice agreed to presenters – “Rehearse, rehearse, rehearse.” That means you spend endless hours trying to remember the words, and the thoughts gradually become having no effect. Then you have to go out trying to remember whether you were supposed to start with “I’m pleased to be here today,” or “It’s excellent to see all of you here.”

   As a replacement for, rehearse the Thoughts. When you know that you don’t have to recall your words, you can get worked up – enthusiastic, even – in the presentation. How regularly have you seen people mumble their way nervously through presentations? They seem obsessed with the need to say all the right words in the right places.

   Presentations have many different audiences needing many different messages to be effective. Let Steve Jobs smarmily introduce his overpriced products in his way, and use the best way for yourself.

   And if you reflect that Steve Jobs is the master of conflicting messages, remember that this book calls him the Tiger Woods of business. Oops!

   EDIT – Here’s an example of how NOT to do it.

   In the launch of the iPad, Steve Jobs showed a slide of how much the iPad will cost. It is a classic of non-presentation design in a presentation.

   You’ll find this on Gizmodo’s site. It shows a chart of six items (Three memory sizes, and with or lacking 3G).

   This has all gridlines in place. Hello, with only six items you rarely need gridlines, and just about no chart needs lines separating it from the exterior world. So why keep them?
   
   Reader’s Rating: 2 / 5
3. Corby Guenther says:

   May 4, 2010 at 7:51 pm

   How many iPods do you own?

   I ordered the first Windows-compatible model on launch day. I had to wait until then because I didn’t have a effective Mac at the time; now I have two of them. Since then, I’ve accumulated new iPods at the rate of roughly one a year. Some day soon I’ll be able to open a tiny museum featuring all of them and the three inch thick PowerBook that I used in grad school (it came with a whopping 32 Mb hard drive).

   Am I a prodigal gadget geek? A spendthrift composition maven. Nah. I blame the presentation skills of Steve Jobs.

   You can’t get very far studying current thoughts about presentations and public language lacking the example of Steve Jobs popping up over and over again. And for excellent reason– he excels at selling us stuff. Jobs is one of the few CEOs of a large corporation who is a household name and whose presentation skills clearly add value to his company. His showmanship at Apple’s product launches generate buzz and demand– if not lust– for Apple’s products. Clearly my expanding collection of superseded iPods proves that I’m not immune. And when Jobs was ill there was a fantastic deal of concern about whether Apple would be able to generate anything close to that excitement lacking him and whether the company would be mortally wounded by his absence at these events. His value to Apple is so fantastic that the SEC opened an investigation into whether shareholders had been harmed because Jobs’ illness had been downplayed. If he wasn’t around to convince us we had to have stuff that we never knew we needed, who would?

   So it isn’t surprising that many of the leading presentation experts focus on Jobs as a clear example of how strong presentations can make a real impact. What has amazed me is how many of these writer (Gar Reynolds, Presentation Zen; Guy Kawasaki, all kinds of fantastic books) have really worked with Apple or on Steve Jobs’ presentations. It seems that Apple isn’t just a place where they make fantastic presentations but also a crucible of thought on what it takes to make a presentation fantastic.

   Now Carmine Gallo has written The Presentation Secrets of Steve Jobs with the thought of pulling back the curtain on Jobs’ huge presentations to show us how they are place together and some techniques that we can borrow to improve our own talks. Probably the most vital thing that Gallo reveals is how much work really goes into crafting one of Jobs’ presentations. Despite the fact that the final results are persuasive, polished, and entertaining, Steve Jobs is not a natural presenter who just gets up in front of an audience and speaks off the top of his head. As a replacement for, he relies on a whole team of professionals who spend weeks helping him write, design and rehearse every one of his talks. Suddenly it makes sense that so many of persons experts have personal experience with Jobs.

   While this might initially seem discouraging to persons of us who don’t have the resources of an entire corporation at our disposal, it’s really very liberating to know because it means you don’t have to be a “natural” either. With enough thought, preparation and practice anyone can improve their public language skills. Sure, it’s going to take some effort to place together and deliver a really fantastic talk, but building the effort can help you rise above the sea of terrible presentations out there. Work hard on your presentation and deliver it in a way that makes it look effortless and you can be a star!

   Some of the additional major strategies that Gallo focuses on include:

   Building time for rehearsal: Jobs rehearses his presentations over and over and over again until he’s confident that he knows his material and that he’s got all of the various fundamentals (speech, slides, props, demos) just right. Rehearsing will help you iron out the kinks in your own talk and cool your nerves when you’re confident that you know what you’re going to say.

   Taking the needs of your audience into consideration: It isn’t enough to just get up in front of an audience and share information or try to sell something. Steve Jobs knows that he needs to meet the expectations of his audience if he wants to hold their attention. They need to see Steve Jobs up on stage in his familiar black turtleneck with cool new gadgets, jokes, polished slides and product demos (preferably fleeting ones). You need to be just as aware of the needs of your audience and focus on how you’re going to engage them.

   Showing your passion for your topic: If you don’t feel fervently about what you’re talking about, how do you expect your audience to care? Gallo repeatedly quotes Jobs discussing his belief that his success is due to the fact that he feels passionately about his work. There’s a fantastic scene where Jobs tears up during the editing of Apple’s “Reflect Different” commercials because he is so stirred by the message that he’s helping craft. He sees Apple as having changed the world in a positive way and encourages others to do work that they really judge in. Anyone who has ever worked to sell a product or an thought knows that it’s a lot simpler when you’re selling something that you can judge in yourself.

   Making an antagonist: One of the best ways to erect strong emotions for a product– make a villain. Jobs regularly contrasts the thoughts he’s presenting against examples of additional companies (Microsoft), products (the PC) or technical limitations (slow internet access on conventional cellphones). Presenting a problem and offering a solution is a fantastic way to win over an audience while building excitement and loyalty.

   There is much more to recommend in The Presentation Secrets of Steve Jobs, though the book does have a few drawbacks. Using the example of one public figure throughout is an appealing way to focus attention, though some readers may want to hear about the strategies of additional speakers. And it does get repetitive hearing the same Apple launch presentations recounted over and over again. The design of the book itself is also a bit awkward– side topics are regularly jammed into the main text in a way that makes it hard to follow.

   But this is a book that has a lot of valuable concepts for students of public language, especially persons who don’t come to it as “naturals” and need tips on how to prepare in order to overcome that challenge.
   Reader’s Rating: 4 / 5
4. Consultant says:

   May 4, 2010 at 9:46 pm

   The You Tube videos and the excerpts seemed appealing, so I bought the book. It’s worth the money, but that being said – it is merely a collection of public language and presentation tips with a focus on Steve Jobs’ use of them.

   There are no real “Secrets” here – everything in the book I’ve seen elsewhere. But, it is a excellent roll up and case study.

   I’m not a huge fan of Jobs’ presentations – I’ve seen others like him – who can only do their thing in highly controlled environments. Frankly, after about five minutes, I find Jobs dull – once you’ve seen one of his presentations – you’ve seen them all. And the hyperbole gets really annoying after a while – or, to use Jobspeak – insanely annoying.

   I only gave it three stars for two reasons: the leader is clearly a Jobs worshipper, which blinds him to the fact that Jobs has a stage persona that Jobs is peddling as reality – the real Steve Jobs is rather different. (For a very different tale, read the book Icon – which is an unauthorized biography of Jobs.) Secondly, the leader ignores the history of Jobs, which tends to place a lot of the Jobs embellishments in factual perspective.

   When you boil it down, Jobs’ major contribution is that he has made existing equipment much more accessible (and has done an brilliant job at it) – but he really didn’t invent that equipment, as he would have you to judge. The Macintosh (and before that, the Lisa) GUI was taken for the Xerox Star computer that Jobs saw in 1975 at the Palo Alto Research Center. The iPod concept was taken from the Sony Walkman, The iPhone from the concept of existing smartphones (Palm, etc.) Laptop (or pad) computers were made by a name else, not Apple.

   If you read the book Icon – it points out that Jobs has had a long history of stepping in at the last moment and taking credit for additional’s work. This dates back to the Macintosh development team – which was competing with the Lisa project that Jobs was (mis)managing.

   Jobs goes through the motion of thanking others, but he won’t allow anyone at Apple to come close to competing with him – he learned that lesson the hard way from John Sculley. When Jobs passes from the scene, they will run Apple like they ran Disney for 20 years after Walt Disney passed away – they’ll sit around a table and questioned each additional: “What would Steve do?”

   The leader here (Gallo) – makes an appealing observation, the eventual implication of which I’m sure he couldn’t foretell: “Jobs is the Tiger Woods of business…”(page xii, Prologue)
   Reader’s Rating: 3 / 5
5. Randolph K. Botti says:

   May 4, 2010 at 10:38 pm

   This was an brilliant insight into what fantastic presentations have. My first presentation using these principals resulted in new customers immediately. Less is more.
   Reader’s Rating: 5 / 5