The Apple Store’s New Redesign Celebrates Steve Jobs’ Legacy
As traditional brick-and-mortar stores shut their doors at a record pace — and online retailers such as Amazon experiment with brick-and-mortar stores — the category is ripe for innovation once again. The winners might be those who ask more empowering questions.
The Irresistible Appeal of Rags-to-Riches Stories
Social psychology explains why we never grow tired of hearing about an entrepreneurs' rise from poverty. In Pour Your Heart Into It, Starbucks executive chairman Howard Schultz wrote, "The more uninspiring your origins, the more likely you are to use your imagination...
What The Most Admired Brands Can Teach United About A Culture of Service
Culture is a narrative that starts at the top with leaders who share and reinforce the brand story every hour of every day.
Books Make Leaders Better Speakers, Says A Navy Admiral And Commander
Retired four-star Navy Admiral James Stavridis has 4,000 books in his home library. On one side of his business card his title reads: Dean, Fletcher School of Law and Diplomacy, Tufts University. On the other side, his favorite quote by Thomas Jefferson: “I cannot live without books.”
Why Visuals Play A Crucial Role in Changing Hearts and Minds
Neuroscience proves that changing minds requires more pictures than words on PowerPoint In the time it takes the average person to read this article, Instagram users will have uploaded 140,000 photos. Facebook users are uploading 300 million photographs every day....
How To Present Data To Win Arguments, Change Minds And Save Lives
Which of the following warnings would send you running for the hills? “The California Department of Water Resources says flows into lake Oroville are just under 45,000 cubic feet per second. Outflows remain high at nearly 100,000 cubic feet per second. If the top 30...
Prepare For A Job Interview, The Way CEOs Rehearse For The Media
Facing the camera on CNBC or sitting across from reporters at The Wall Street Journal can be intimidating for even the most seasoned business leaders. The methods used to coach executives for high-stakes media appearances can easily be adapted to a job interview because the goal is the same — to inspire confidence and to persuade your audience to buy in to your vision.
7 Top VCs Say These Communication Skills Will Set You Apart
The New York Times and CB Insights partnered this week to publish a list of the top 20 “winningest” venture capitalists in the world. I’ve personally interviewed some of the investors who made the New York Times list and I’ve followed the others. Seven of the top 20 have made notable remarks on the role that communication skills play in a startup or brand’s ultimate success.
Big Ideas Are Best Kept Short According to Venture Capitalists
Condense your key message to 140 characters or less and it's more likely to stick. "If you can't fit your idea on the back of an envelope, it's rubbish," Richard Branson once told me. The Virgin Group founder is on to something. In fact, most of the famous...
This Soft Skill Makes You More Persuasive And There Is Data to Prove It
Storytelling in business presentations is more likely to move audiences to action.
Thanks to advances in neuroscience, brain scans, and data-driven studies, we’ve learned more about persuasion in the past decade than we had ever known previously. We know what works and why it works, and we can prove it scientifically.
Businesses And Nations Thrive When Every Day Is ‘Happiness Day’
The UN’s International Day of Happiness is a coordinated effort in 160 countries to shift attitudes around the world. Creating a happier world is certainly important. In my experience, leaders who are the most effective happiness drivers make every day happiness...
How Passion Helped Jo Malone Build A Multi-Million Dollar Empire
Passion and creativity are the two essential qualities driving successful entrepreneurs Successful entrepreneurs are deeply passionate about their chosen field. Passion and creativity co-exist. It's nearly impossible to have one without the other. Here's an example. A...
Like the Best Speakers, Make this a Habit Before You Hit the Stage
New neuroscience research says this one habit will build your public speaking confidence. At 20 million views, Dr. Jill Bolte-Taylor's TED Talk called "My Stroke of Insight" is one of the most popular TED presentations online. As a result of her talk, the...
At Walmart, Every Receipt And Every Leader Has A Story To Tell
Companies with a strong mission and purpose have a competitive advantage. Storytelling can help you find the messages to inspire customers and employees.
NASA Delivers A TED-Like Presentation To Announce Earth-Size Planets
When two astronomers bump into each other in the hallway, one doesn’t say to the other: “We’ve discovered seven Earth-sized planets in the Goldilocks Zone just 40 light years away.” The astronomers might say: “The transiting configuration of seven temperate...
The Key to Airbnb and Uber’s Competitive Edge
Successful entrepreneurs like Brian Chesky and Travis Kalanick are effective persuaders because the demands of the market require strong communication skills. An upstart, by definition, is a newly successful person who bucks the established way of doing things. Author...
Five Presentation Tips We Can All Learn From Snap
Snapchat represents the intersection of communication, creativity and storytelling. So does its 35-minute IPO presentation
Winning Pitches Follow The 18-Minute Rule
If you can’t get your point across in 18 minutes, keep editing your presentation until you can.
Bill Gates: ‘Melinda Is A Great Storyteller’
The world needs optimists like Bill and Melinda Gates, and it needs communicators like Melinda who bring us the stories behind the numbers.
The Answer to This Question May Transform Your Career
Transform your business by answering this empowering question Steve Jobs brought up in a famous keynote. At the conclusion of his last major public presentation, Steve Jobs paused and said, "It's technology married with liberal arts, married with the humanities, that...
TED Talks Star Hans Rosling Taught Us To ‘Edutain’ Our Audiences
After hearing about the passing of Hans Rosling, Melinda Gates wrote, “he used numbers to educate us, to entertain us, and to share his special brand of big-hearted, evidence-based optimism.”
Warren Buffett Explains How He Conquered Stage Fright
“I had been terrified of public speaking. I couldn’t do it,” billionaire Warren Buffett admitted on an HBO documentary that chronicled his life. Buffett conquered his nerves by enrolling in a public speaking course. He knew that if he couldn’t speak in public, it would end his career.
Four Easy Tips On Using Video To Make Your Presentation Stand Out
Each and every day people around the world watch hundreds of millions of hours of video on YouTube. It’s a staggering statistic. One hour of new videos are uploaded to YouTube every second. People simply love video. It’s likely that the people watching your presentation love video, too. Are you capturing their attention?
7 Essential Elements Of Stories That Inspire Employees And Motivate Customers
What’s your signature story? Every person has one. Every company, startup or brand has one, too.
A Good Story Is Irresistible Even to Sharks
Storytelling is the key to winning entrepreneur pitches because professional investors like Barbara Corcoran and Robert Herjavec are moved by them. "Storytelling is everything," Shark Tank investor Barbara Corcoran once said. "Show me an MBA and your sales numbers,...
Barack Obama’s Final Speech: Five Valuable Lessons For Communicators
(Photo by Darren Hauck/Getty Images)
Words have the power to move us. Words have the power to inspire us. Words have the power to unite us. The great speechwriter, Peggy Noonan, once wrote, “When big, serious, thoughtful things must be said, then big, serious, thoughtful speeches must be given.” On Tuesday night President Barack Obama gave a big, thoughtful speech about serious things.
3 Tips To Wow An Audience Like Under Armour’s Founder And Chief Storyteller
Under Armour CEO, Kevin Plank at CES 2017 (Photo: Patrick T. Fallon/Bloomberg)
“Every great brand is like a great story. Every great story is made up of chapters in a book,” Kevin Plank told an audience gathered at CES in Las Vegas. The billionaire chairman and CEO of sports retailer, Under Armour, delivered a keynote at the 2017 conference to show off his company’s new gadgets, including a smart-shoe and a line of sleepwear to help athletes recover after intense exercise.
How Megyn Kelly Discovered Her ‘Zone Of Genius’
Megyn Kelly became a star when she decided to leave a job and pursue a calling. This week the Fox News star announced that she’s jumping from Fox News to NBC, where Kelly will reportedly command one of the highest salaries in television news.
The One Skill That Will Raise Your Value by 50 Percent
Billionaire Warren Buffett told business students that this is the most valuable skill they can learn.
Three Books That Remind Us The ‘Golden Age’ Is Today
If you’re a leader people look to you for guidance, wisdom and inspiration. And that means you need to see the world as it is and not as it is perceived by the majority of others. Read these three books and you’ll never complain about [almost] anything again.