Carmine Gallo: "Talk Like TED" | Talks at Google - VoiceTube: Learn English through videos!

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JESS: Hi, everyone.
Hello.
Welcome to Authors at Google.
So, as you all know, over the past decade,
Steve Jobs has changed the way that we
think about giving presentations by modeling
a new form of interaction types of presentations.
Today, we are going to hear from the man that
taught the world how to be like Steve Jobs.
He has watched hundreds of hours of footage of TED talks,
and today, he's doing it again-- teaching
us all how to talk like TED.
Carmine Gallo.
CARMINE GALLO:All right.
Thanks, Jess.
Good afternoon.
Hello, everyone.
I feel like I have a lot of microphones on me today.
There's multiple streams going on, and that's why the mics.
This is such an honor for me to be speaking at Google.
First of all, thank you for changing the world.
That's astonishing and must be an amazing experience
to work here.
That's what I want to talk to you about today is
world changing ideas.
How many of you have good ideas?
How many of you think you've got a good idea?
OK, most of you.
Your ideas are your currency now.
Your ideas are the currency of the 21st century.
In the information age, the knowledge economy,
you're only as successful as your ability
to communicate your ideas persuasively.
How do you do that?
I believe that there are three fundamental laws
of communications-- laws that I learned after studying hundreds
and hundreds of TED talks and also analyzing and interviewing
some of the most famous TED presenters of our time.
Now, it's not just me who says that communication skills are
so important.
Ben Horowitz is a very well-known local venture
capitalist.
With Andreessen Horowitz, who's behind Facebook and Twitter
and many other companies as well, and obviously many of you
know him as a substantial investor.
He was at South by Southwest and he gave us this quote.
"Storytelling is the most underrated skill
when it comes to entrepreneurship."
he was speaking specifically to entrepreneurs.
Storytelling-- the ability to tell your story convincingly,
persuasively, in a way that really engages me--
that's going to be your value.
That's going to help you stand out in all of the noise
and to stand out and move your brand forward and your careers
forward.
Ben Horowitz believes that.
I certainly believe that.
And this gentleman believes that.
You may have seen him before-- Warren Buffett,
the billionaire.
Listen to this audio clip where he
is telling a group of business students--
I believe this was Columbia University--
he's talking to a group of business students.
Listen to the value that he places
on communication skills and public speaking.
[VIDEO PLAYBACK]
-Right now I would pay $100,000 for 10%
of the future earnings of any of you.
So if anyone wants to see me after this is over--
[LAUGHTER]
If that's true, if you're a million-dollar asset right now,
right, if 10% of you is worth $100,000?
You could improve-- many of you, and I certainly
could have when I got out, just in terms
of learning communication skills.
It's not something that is taught.
I actually went to a Dale Carnegie course
later on in terms of public speaking.
But if you improve your value 50% by having communication
skills, that's another $500,000 in terms of capital value.
See me after the class and I'll pay you $150,000.
[END VIDEO PLAYBACK]
CARMINE GALLO: Why would he say that?
Because Daniel Pink, a noted author, has recently observed,
"like it or not, we're all in sales now."
That means that you are constantly
selling yourself and selling your ideas internally
and externally.
It's the 21st century.
We have new models of communication, don't we?
We communicate in photos, videos, 140-character tweets.
Well, I believe that a 21st century model of communication
requires 21st century techniques, which
is why I turned my lens from Steve Jobs, who
was one individual-- and in my opinion, the greatest
corporate storyteller we've ever had--
and I turned my focus onto TED, the TED talks.
TED, even though I'm independent, I'm objective,
I'm not affiliated with that conference,
I've worked with many TED speakers.
I've interviewed TED speakers.
I've analyzed 150 hours worth of TED content
and I've categorized it.
And I think I know why the best TED talks go viral.
But more importantly for all of us in the room
is what can we learn from the world's greatest
presenters and speakers that we can apply
to make our message, our pitch, more persuasive, more
convincing?
Especially if you only have-- let's
say you don't have 18 minutes.
You have five minutes to convince your boss
to back your idea.
How do you get it across?
How do you persuade?
That's what we're going to talk about today.
I believe that there are three fundamental components
that all inspirational communication has.
Any time there is a conversation, a presentation,
a pitch that we consider persuasive,
these are the three components that they have.
They are emotional-- that conversation is emotional.
You have to touch my heart before you reach my head.
Those conversations are novel.
They teach me something new.
And finally, they're also memorable.
It doesn't matter.
Your idea doesn't matter if I can't remember what you said.
So we're going to talk about each one one by one.
Let's talk about emotional.
How do we make ideas emotional?
First, passion.
Passion is everything.
You cannot inspire unless you're inspired yourself.
It's also important for your career.
Dr. Larry Smith gave a very famous TEDx event.
He is a University of Waterloo economics professor.
He's been studying passion and entrepreneurship for decades.
And he says passion is the thing, the thing that
will help you create the highest expression of your talent.
I asked him after his TED talk, I asked Dr. Smith,
how do you identify passion?
This all sounds good, and I agree with it.
But how do you identify it?
What is it when we say, that person
is passionate about something?
I want to follow my passion.
That sounds so cliche.
What exactly does that mean.
He pointed me to an excerpt from his now-famous TED talk,
and here's what he says about what passion means.
Probably the best definition I've heard.
[VIDEO PLAYBACK]
-Passion is your greatest love.
Passion is the thing that will help you create the highest
expression of your talent.
Passion, interest, it's not the same thing.
Are you really going to go to your sweetie
and say, marry me, if you're interested?
Won't happen.
Won't happen, and you will die alone.
What you want.
What you want.
What you want is passion.
It is beyond interest.
You need 20 interests, and then one of them, one of them
might grab you.
One of them may engage you more than anything else,
and then you may have found your greatest love in comparison
to all the other things that interest you.
And that's what passion is.
[END VIDEO PLAYBACK]
CARMINE GALLO: OK, your greatest love.
By the way, he's really passionate, isn't he?
He's worked up.
And I asked him, Dr. Smith, you're going nuts on this.
What's happening?
He said, Carmine, what you have seen
is 40 years of pent-up frustration,
of telling people that they need to follow
their passion in order to create the highest
expression of their talent.
And he said, Carmine, wasted talent is a waste I cannot
stand, which is why passion is so important to him.
But I love that definition-- your greatest love.
How does that relate to us?
How does that relate to, say, entrepreneurship?
I write for "Forbes," also the books that I write.
I have this amazing opportunity to interview and spend time
with some of the great leaders of our time.
Let's talk about this idea of your greatest love,
and what does that mean to follow your passion?
Here's a photograph of me and Richard Branson.
Richard Branson always seems to be smiling.
I think when you've got five billion reasons to smile,
you're always happy.
He's always happy.
But when I asked him, what's your greatest love?
It's not-- it's not getting people from point A
to point B on an airplane.
That's not his greatest love.
His greatest love is disrupting the status quo.
It's elevating the customer experience.
Some of you are familiar with Zappos, I'm sure.
Tony Hsieh, who's sort of elevated the customer
experience, speaking of that.
I've interviewed Tony Hsieh.
His greatest love is not the shoes,
which is very interesting.
He sells shoes online, but he wears old shoes
till they're worn out.
When I asked him, what's your greatest love?
He never mentioned shoes.
He says it's delivering happiness.
How can I deliver happiness to my customers and my employees?
Which is why he's created that great culture at Zappos,
a culture like many of you have experienced here at Google.
The point is, he's always thinking.
The most inspiring communicators and entrepreneurs
don't really pitch their product as much
as they pitch what the product means
for the lives of their customers.
Big difference.
Howard Schultz, the founder of Starbucks-- actually,
they he's the founder.
No, he's the CEO of Starbucks, and he's
going to explain in a video clip I'm going to show.
But Howard Schultz, when I interviewed him,
completely changed the way I look at communication skills.
This was several years ago for one of my books.
He spent two hours with me and not
once did he talk about coffee.
I was the one who brought up coffee.
That's because that's not what he's selling.
He's selling a better customer experience.
He is selling a workplace that treats people
with dignity and respect.
He's selling community and the romance of coffee,
but it's not about the coffee.
It's so much deeper than that.
He gave me a quote that I'll never forget.
He said, Carmine, coffee is the product that we make,
but it's not the business we're in.
So you need to think about that.
That blew my mind.
I can't tell you what-- I mean, it completely
changed the way I look at communication.
You've got to think about not your product,
but what business you're in.
This week, Oprah Winfrey created her first big product
partnership with Starbucks.
I think it's the Teavana brand.
Some of you may have that tea.
It was her first big product partnership,
and she decided to go on a partnership with Howard Schultz
because-- and I'm paraphrasing-- but she said because Starbucks
is so much more than a company.
It's so much more than the coffee.
It means so much more.
That comes from him.
That comes from the entrepreneur, the leader,
and the way he communicates the vision behind his brand.
Watch this very short video clip taken a few months ago
of Oprah Winfrey first interviewing Howard Schultz.
Listen to the way he talks about the brand.
[VIDEO PLAYBACK]
-People think I'm the founder of Starbucks,
but I'm was an employee of Starbucks
when they had four stores.
I was sent to Italy to do a trip for Starbucks.
I came back with this feeling that the business
that Starbucks was in was the wrong business.
-Because at the time that you were employed by Starbucks,
they just sold coffee beans, and they actually
did not sell a cup of coffee.
-That's correct.
And so what I wanted to bring back
was the daily ritual and the sense of community,
and the idea that we could build this third place between home
and work in America.
-Can you take me back to that little coffee
shop and the feeling you had there?
-In Italy?
-Yes, absolutely, when I was reading it,
it felt like an [INAUDIBLE].
-I was out of my mind.
Every--
-Had you gone in for coffee?
-Yeah, like anyone else.
But I walked in and saw this symphony, the romance
and the theater of coffee.
And also, coffee can be a center of conversation socially.
That is what spoke to me, and that's
what I wanted to achieve.
[END VIDEO PLAYBACK]
CARMINE GALLO: Coffee at the center of conversation.
You see how it goes?
His communication about his brand
goes so far beyond just the physical product.
Passion, by the way, is contagious.
I did a lot of research into the science of persuasion
for my new TED book, and I interviewed
neuroscientists and researchers.
What they're finding is that passion is indeed contagious.
We already know this intuitively,
but they are finding that if you meet someone or listen
to someone who is genuinely and authentically--
those are important words-- genuinely enthusiastic
about their product and what it means
for the lives of their customers,
that it will significantly alter your perception
of that person and that product.
So you've got to think about passion.
How do we transfer that passion?
How do we transfer what we're excited about?
That's where we have to master the art of storytelling.
All of the greatest presenters in corporate America
today, and certainly on the TED stage, are fantastic
storytellers.
Research is finding some remarkable things.
A remarkable thing happens to your brain on stories.
Princeton University researchers have
found that if I tell you a story,
the same areas of our brains-- if they take an MRI
scan to look at brain blood flow-- the same areas light up.
That means we are literally in sync.
They call it mind-to-mind coupling.
I just call it being in sync.
Stories are powerful.
Sheryl Sandberg, Facebook COO, is
learning all about the power of stories.
How many of you have heard of the movement
that she started, Lean In?
Many of you, most of you now.
Lean In is a very powerful movement
for young women in the workplace.
I argue-- and if you'd like to push back, please do.
Save your questions for the Q&A. But I'm
arguing that you never would have heard of Lean In,
you would not be leaning in right now,
if it had not been for a viral 18-minute TEDx presentation
that Sheryl Sandberg gave that led to a bestselling book that
eventually sparked the movement.
And here is why it went viral.
Sheryl Sandberg recently admitted-- just a few months
ago, she talked about the TED talk
she gave several years ago that launched Lean In.
She was ready to give a talk, in her words, that
was chock full of data and no personal stories.
A friend of hers right before the conference
pulled her aside and said, Sheryl,
you look a little out of sorts today.
What's going on?
And she said, it's kind of been a bad day.
Right before I came out to the conference,
my little girl was tugging at my leg,
and she was crying and screaming, mommy don't go.
But it's OK, I'll work it out.
I'll get it together.
And her friend said, why don't you just tell that story?
Sheryl Sandberg was skeptical.
She said, in front of people?
You want me to tell that story in a presentation?
And then she realized she had to be vulnerable.
She realized that in order to touch people emotionally--
isn't that what we're talking about-- touching people
emotionally?
She had to break down that wall and connect with them
on that personal storytelling level.
Here is how Ms. Sandberg started her now-famous TED talk.
[VIDEO PLAYBACK]
-At the outset, I want to be very clear
that this speech comes with no judgments.
I don't have the right answer.
I don't even have it for myself.
I left San Francisco, where I live, on Monday.
I was getting on the plane for this conference,
and my daughter, who is three, when I dropped her off
at preschool, did that whole hugging the leg, crying,
mommy-don't-get-on-the-plane thing.
This is hard.
I feel guilty sometimes.
I know no women, whether they're at home
or whether they're in the workforce, that
don't feel that sometimes.
I'm not saying that staying in the workforce
is the right thing for everyone.
My talk today is about what the messages are
if you want to stay in the workforce.
And I think there are three.
One, sit at the table, two--
[END VIDEO PLAYBACK]
CARMINE GALLO: The story.
It's the story that went viral.
She applied the same technique to her book, "Lean In."
Again, the first chapter was all data.
No personal stories.
Her husband-- true story, she just said this a few weeks ago.
Her husband read the first chapter and said,
this is like eating your Wheaties.
Because we know it's good for you, but it's kind of boring.
The book itself is now full of stories
if you read the first chapter.
18 minutes leads to a best seller
leads to a movement for millions of young women.
An 18-minute presentation has the power to start a movement.
I studied 500 TED talks.
Categorize the content, and here's what happens.
Pretty fascinating.
Aristotle, for we communication geeks,
is the father of persuasion.
He said that persuasion occurs when
you have three components-- pathos, which
is what we're talking about now-- emotion, storytelling.
Logos is data, statistics.
Ethos is establishing credibility for who you are.
65% of the majority of the best TED talks-- 65% are stories.
25% data, only 10% ethos.
Sheryl Sandberg's talk was 72% stories.
Bryan Stevenson, for example, tells a lot of stories.
Bryan Stevenson is a civil rights attorney.
He knows how to talk to people.
He successfully wins cases before the US Supreme Court,
which, if you haven't guessed, is a pretty tough audience.
He knows how to persuade.
When he gave a TED talk last year,
he received the longest standing ovation at TED.
I talked to him afterwards.
He told three stories from his life.
He supports the stories with data,
but the data come after the stories.
So his template is stories data, stories data, stories data.
He includes the data, but he supports his argument
with stories.
His argument is, as a civil rights attorney,
that young men and women in underprivileged and underserved
communities are incarcerated at a much higher rate than others.
That's his theme.
I want to show you a clip from this TED talk
because again, he received the longest standing ovation at TED
because it was deeply emotional.
Here, he tells a story about his grandmother.
I've got to set it up for just a second.
He said that his grandmother pulled him aside
when he was 11 years old and said Bryan,
I want you promise me never to drink alcohol in your life.
And Bryan said, well, OK, I'm only 11.
So, sure.
Sure, I'll go along with it.
Here is how he picks up the story.
His theme, by the way, was there's power in identity.
Watch and listen for how the story reinforces the theme.
[VIDEO PLAYBACK]
-I grew up in the country, in the rural South,
and had a brother a year older than me and a sister a year
younger.
I was about 14 or 15 when one day my brother
came home and had this six-pack of beer.
I don't know where he got it.
And he grabbed me and my sister and we went out in the woods
and we were kind of just out there doing stuff
we crazily did, and he had a sip of his beer
and he gave some to my sister and she had some,
and they offered it to me.
I said, no no no, it's OK.
Y'all go ahead.
I'm not going to have any beer.
And my brother was like, come on, we're doing this today.
You always do what we do.
I had some, your sister had some, have some beer.
I said no, I don't feel right about it.
Y'all go ahead.
Y'all go ahead.
And then my brother started staring at me.
He said, what's wrong with you?
Have some beer.
And then looked at me real hard and said,
oh, I hope you're not still hung up
on that conversation Mama had with you.
I said, what are you talking about?
He says, oh, Mama tells all grandkids that they're special.
I was devastated.
And I'm going to admit something to you,
I'm going to tell you something that I probably shouldn't-- I
know this might be broadcast broadly.
But I'm 52 years old, and I'm going
to admit to you that I've never had a drop of alcohol.
I don't say that because I think that's virtuous.
I say that because there is power in identity.
[END VIDEO PLAYBACK]
CARMINE GALLO: You see the template.
Story ties back to the central theme.
There is power in identity.
Now look, I don't have all the answers.
I'm constantly learning something
about communication and persuasion.
That's why I talk to people who, frankly,
are more persuasive than I am.
If you win Supreme Court cases, you're pretty persuasive.
You know how to talk.
So maybe Bryan Stevenson has some pretty good answers.
Maybe we should listen to him.
Storytelling is powerful.
How many of you enjoy consuming organic fruits and vegetables?
Most of you.
I see downstairs they had a nice organic section
of the restaurant.
You have this woman to thank.
Her name is Myra Goodman.
Myra Goodman, several decades ago with her husband Drew,
started a two-acre raspberry farm
and grew it into what is now Earthbound Farm, the largest
grower of organic produce in the world.
If it wasn't for her, you probably
would not be having the abundance of organic
that you do because she really pioneered the movement.
She called me in October and she was
getting ready for a TEDx talk.
For those of you who don't know, TEDx are the smaller,
independently organized TED events.
She called me in October and she was
getting ready to talk to this-- it was a food-related event.
She knew that I had just finished a book on TED.
I've known her for several years.
She said, what advice can you give me?
I said, please start with stories.
You've got some great stories.
You've got good data.
You've got awesome data, but we're
going to wrap that data in stories.
For example, I said, Myra, I love that story
that I remember long ago when you told me
that you started literally selling raspberries at a farm
stand in Carmel, California, and now you go into every Costco
and they've got the entire section of organic.
Here's how she started her TEDx talk.
I think it was-- actually, it was just a few weeks ago
in March.
[VIDEO PLAYBACK]
-I have been a passionate advocate of organic farming
for 30 years.
I can still remember the exact moment
when I knew I didn't want any chemicals to grow our food.
It was just two days after my husband Drew
and I moved onto our original two and 1/2 acre raspberry farm
in Carmel Valley, and I was standing
between two rows of raspberries near a little orchard of fig
trees surrounded by the gorgeous green mountains,
and the miracle of what was happening around me
was stunning.
I was 3,000 miles away from my 11th floor on East 36th Street
here in Manhattan, but I felt like I had finally come home.
I just knew in my heart that we shouldn't try and conquer
this beautiful earth with chemicals.
Drew felt the same way, so right from the beginning,
we made the commitment to learn to farm organically.
Back when we started Earthbound Farms,
Drew and I were two faces of small organic.
[END VIDEO PLAYBACK]
CARMINE GALLO: I just realized-- I
don't know why it's happening-- but I can see it in real time
here, and it looks like there's a slight delay when you see it
on the projector.
What did you notice, by the way?
I know we're going to have some Q&A in a minute,
but what did you notice about the slides?
What did you notice about the slides that she presented?
AUDIENCE: Personal.
CARMINE GALLO: Personal.
Personal, visual, pictures.
When we tell stories, we don't want
to clutter the slides with a lot of words, charts, and text,
because it's about the story.
The visuals complement the story.
Make sure that we-- we can talk about this
when we have the Q&A if you have questions.
Save your questions.
So emotional, touched my heart, passion, storytelling.
Also, ideas that spread, which is the TED motto,
"Ideas That Spread," teach me something new.
Teach me something that I've never heard before.
Something new, unexpected, or surprising.
There's science behind this.
Dr. A.K. Pradeep, who is a neuroscientist in Berkeley,
said that our brains are trained to look for something
brilliant and new, something that stands out,
something that looks delicious.
When the brain detects something new, surprising, shocking,
unexpected, it literally releases
dopamine, which acts as a mental save button.
I interviewed Robert Ballard.
Robert Ballard discovered a little ship
you may have heard of, Titanic, in 1985.
I actually asked him, I asked the silliest question.
What makes you more nervous, actually public
speaking or exploring the undersea world?
He said, Carmine, almost dying 2 and 1/2 miles
beneath the surface of the Atlantic is a lot scarier
any public speaking.
He has no stage fright anymore.
He said, your mission in any presentation
is to inform, educate, and inspire.
Think about that.
That's a powerful line.
You can only inspire when you give people
a new way of looking at the world in which they live.
Researchers call that new way an emotionally charged event.
It simply means that when you perceive something
that is fresh, unexpected, surprising, and new,
it actually creates that dopamine
hit that I told you about.
It's called, in the academic research,
an emotionally charged event.
OK, so what does that mean in a presentation?
How many of you have seen or remember the now-famous TED
talk by Mr. Bill Gates?
What do you remember the most from
that particular presentation?
AUDIENCE: When he released the mosquitoes.
CARMINE GALLO: When he released the mosquitoes.
OK.
Wait a minute, don't you remember the third slide?
You don't remember the--OK.
His slides were professionally designed.
They were really nice slides.
You don't remember the slides.
You remember the emotionally charged event.
So here, for some of you who didn't see it,
Bill Gates is talking about reducing childhood deaths
in third world countries, deaths caused by malaria.
Here's how he picked it up.
[VIDEO PLAYBACK]
-For example, there's more money put into baldness drugs
than are put into malaria.
Now, baldness is a terrible thing.
And rich men are afflicted, and so that's
why that priority has been set.
But malaria-- a million deaths are caused by malaria
greatly understate its impact.
Over 200 million people at any one time are suffering from it.
It means you can't get the economies in these areas going
because it just holds things back so much.
Malaria's, of course, transmitted by mosquitoes.
I brought some here so you could experience this.
We'll let those go around the auditorium a little bit.
There's no reason only poor people
should have the experience.
[LAUGHTER AND APPLAUSE]
Those mosquitoes are not infected.
[END VIDEO PLAYBACK]
CARMINE GALLO: OK, thank you.
Thanks for putting me at ease.
I know as a fact that Bill Gates is significantly
working at improving his communication skills because he
has to transfer very complex information
and he needs to make it simple, engaging, memorable.
This is one example.
It's an extreme example.
You're not going to release mosquitoes
at your next Google meeting.
I get that.
But it's an example of creating what's
called that emotionally charged event.
The reason why you remember it is
because you did not expect Bill Gates to release
a jar of mosquitoes in a presentation.
It's different.
How many of you may remember watching last year
Amanda Palmer-- a performance artist, a musician--
give a TED talk?
Did some of you see?
OK, this one actually went viral for a few weeks.
It became very, very popular.
Amanda Palmer is a musician.
I'm not even sure where the music would be categorized,
something like indie punk cabaret rock.
Some of you might be familiar with those categories.
This particular presentation that she gave last year
was viewed more than 5 million times.
She practiced a lot.
We can talk about practice maybe in the Q&A and rehearsal.
She practiced more than 100 times
on this particular presentation.
But here's what people remember the most--
the emotionally charged event from
this particular presentation.
[VIDEO PLAYBACK]
-So I didn't always make my living from music.
For five years after graduating from an upstanding liberal arts
university, this was my day job.
[END VIDEO PLAYBACK]
CARMINE GALLO: OK, so now she's talking about being a living
statue, and she's going to talk about her experience
and then bring it back into what she learned about the music
business.
That's what people remember most.
Why?
It's completely unexpected.
She's using props.
She's using visuals.
She's telling stories.
It is very unlike the way you would
expect most presentations to start.
The reason why, if you watch a presentation or a movie
or any kind of visual event, you're
going to remember one part.
That one jaw-dropping moment.
That's what I mean by novelty.
You need to teach me something new,
but also shake out the cobwebs, shake out
the way the brain is modeled to perceive information
and give them something entirely new.
Steve Jobs, the reason why I first wrote about Steve Jobs,
he was brilliant at this.
He didn't these extreme things.
You never saw Steve Jobs stand on a milk crate or release
mosquitoes.
Those were extreme.
But what did he do?
Oh, but there is one more thing.
When he first did that, that was completely surprising,
completely unexpected.
Steve Jobs was brilliant at that and incorporating something
new and novel into every one of his keynotes.
Finally, the brain has to remember it.
It doesn't matter.
Your idea, your presentation, the beautiful
slides-- it's not going to matter
if I don't remember the content.
Let me give you some very specific techniques
on making your pitch more memorable.
All TED talks, as you probably know,
are limited to 18 minutes.
The 18 minute rule.
It doesn't matter whether your name is Bill Gates, Sheryl
Sandberg, or this week, Sting.
Sting talked, last year was Bono.
Doesn't matter who you are.
You're only limited to 18 minutes.
That's not a bad time limit.
In fact, the TED organizers found
that 18 minutes is long enough to have a serious discussion
and short enough to keep people's attention.
There's science behind this that you as communicators
need to know.
It's called cognitive back log.
Researchers at Texas Christian University are working on this.
It simply means that if I ask you retain
more information, the more information I pile on,
like weights, pretty soon, you're
going to drop the whole thing.
Cognitive back log.
In fact, they're finding-- depending
on the research-- anywhere from about 10 minutes to 18 minutes,
people start losing attention.
They actually will physically start looking at their watch,
look at their phones, and thinking
about what they're going to do next.
From 10 to 18 minutes.
So during that time, you need to reengage them.
I'm going to speak for-- I'm going
to break the 18 minute rule.
I'm going to speak for more than 18 minutes.
We're going to break that up.
We're going to have some Q&A so it's not just me speaking.
I'm trying to add video clips so there's two voices.
Those are different ways of reengaging.
But if I were to just stand here with no visual display
of content, no information, no second speaker
and I just talked to you, by now,
you'd be ready to tear your hair out,
no matter how engaging a speaker you think you are.
The brain naturally tunes out after about 10 to 18 minutes.
That's a very powerful concept.
It's very important to understand
when you're giving a pitch or a presentation.
A lot of great things can happen in 18 minutes.
John Kennedy inspired a nation to look
to the stars in 15 minutes.
Steve Jobs gave one of the greatest commencement
addresses of our time at Stanford.
That was 15 minutes.
Martin Luther King, he took a little extra time
to outline his vision for racial equality.
That took about 17 minutes.
Sheryl Sandberg started a movement is about 16 minutes.
Al Gore's "An Inconvenient Truth"
was originally a TED talk.
Launched the whole global warming thing.
A lot of initiatives, movements can
start in as little as 18 minutes.
Think about keeping your content concise.
And then think about this other technique that is so powerful.
It works almost every time.
I'm not going to guarantee you anything,
but this is close-- the rule of three.
The rule of three means that in short term or working memory,
you're only capable of caring about three big ideas, three
chunks of information.
If I ask you to remember a phone number,
you divide up into chunks of three and four.
Threes is a very powerful number.
It pervades every aspect of our society.
From slogans like "Just Do It," or Obama's "Yes We Can."
Company names-- SAP, IBM, CNN.
And certainly literature-- "The Three Musketeers," "The Three
Little Pigs," "The Three Bears."
The rule of three.
Authors know this very, very well.
Writers know this very well.
Great presenters know it very well.
Bryan Stevenson told three stories.
He did not tell 12 or two.
Told three.
It's an important number.
The brain needs more than one, but after you give it
about five, six, or seven points,
it starts to forget everything.
Three is a really good number.
Tell your boss there's three reasons why
you should back my idea.
There's three reasons.
There's three new features of this product
that I think our consumers are going to like.
When I was analyzing all the TED talks, take a look at this.
These are just some examples of the rule of three
from the best TED talks.
Three reasons why videos go viral.
These, by the way, are not necessarily
the titles-- some of them are, but most of them are not--
but it's the theme of the actual presentation.
Three reasons why videos go viral.
Three ways design makes you happy.
Three ways the brain creates meaning.
Three clues to understanding your brain.
A lot of brain stuff.
AUDIENCE: That was four things.
CARMINE GALLO: That was four.
There was a bullet of four.
But there's more.
Three ways brands lose control.
Three ways crooks steal your digital data.
Three myths about big organic.
And of course, three things I learned when my plane crashed.
The rule of three.
Very, very powerful.
I do a lot of what's called media training,
so I work with executives before they go on
to import media interviews.
Three always works.
I hate to sound too manipulative,
but this is how the brain works.
If you give people three things that they need to keep in mind,
they'll write them down.
They want to know, what's the third?
Or what's the second?
Did I miss the second one?
People cannot ignore lists.
Three is a good list.
And finally, to make it memorable-- especially
when we're delivering it doesn't matter what software you use,
either Google software or traditional PowerPoint,
or I use Apple Keynote or Prezzie, think visually.
Think visually.
This is called picture superiority.
Picture superiority means that if I deliver content
to you verbally, you'll remember about 10% of the content.
If I add a picture or an image, retention soars to 65%.
The average PowerPoint has 40 words.
Several years ago, when I started analyzing Steve Jobs'
presentations-- and again, I think
we'll all acknowledge he was the original great corporate
storyteller-- I never found one slide, never, with 40 words.
In fact, on average, it took him 10 slides to reach 40 words.
It was all pictures, images that spoke so much
more than any text could.
When you're talking about a new computer like the MacBook Air
and you want to talk about how thin it is, no number of words
could describe it like that photograph.
So thin it fits inside an office envelope.
When you watch some of the great TED presentations-- and Bono
did a beautiful one that you can go onto TED.com
to watch-- that was created in Prezzie.
Beautifully done.
Some data, mostly images and pictures
that supported the data.
Steve Jobs, his PowerPoints are very unlike anything
that you used to see from him and Microsoft.
They're very visual, this whole idea of picture superiority.
Whenever you see major executives now
give presentations-- maybe not internally, but certainly
to external customers and at external events--
they're are all using this style.
Whether it's Google-- I've seen a number of executives using
this style-- Marissa Mayer is now using it at Yahoo.
She's building beautiful presentations
if you saw her at CES.
Actually, she was doing it here.
She was still doing it here.
Zuckerberg over at Facebook, and Apple, certainly, they
continue to use this style.
It's more of a visual style.
You need to think visually.
This is an actual slide from Bill Gates' slide, where
he was talking about global warming.
His formula-- he said it's a really simple formula-- as CO2
goes up, the temperature increases,
which leads to some really bad things.
OK, he's trying to simplify complexities.
When you simplify complexities, you need a simple slide.
So that's an actual slide from a Bill Gates presentation.
You can do this-- I remember working
for LinkedIn before they went IPO.
They started using some picture superiority
to explain what they did, especially in the marketing
department.
This is a before slide.
This is an after slide.
So you see the difference.
Here, it's a lot of numbers.
The most important numbers get lost.
But if that's all I want you to know
is how many members we have and how many members we're
collecting every month, you can tell this is an old slide.
Only 70 million.
This was before they event went IPO.
But again, it's let's think about how are we
going to display information visually.
Those are the three components that all inspiring
presentations need to have.
They all need to be emotional.
Passion, storytelling.
They all need to be novel.
Teach me something new, unexpected, fresh, surprising.
And of course, memorable.
There are a number of techniques that you
can use to make sure that people recall
the information that you've given them.
Above all, keep this in mind-- that you do all
have the capacity to move people.
You all have the capacity to educate, to electrify,
to inform, to inspire.
You have ideas.
All of you have big, bold, transcendent ideas
that need to be heard.
Please communicate those ideas as persuasively as possible
because we need to hear those ideas
and we need to be able to act on your ideas.
Thank you very much for inviting me this afternoon.
Thanks, guys.
[APPLAUSE]
For those of you who have a few minutes,
we are going to have the "Talk Like TED" book.
I'd love to sign them for you.
But if you have any questions, I'd love to take them.
Yes, Jess.
AUDIENCE: We've heard a lot about the way that [INAUDIBLE]
structure of the presentation.
I'm curious if you have any thoughts on how [INAUDIBLE]
CARMINE GALLO: So how TED as a concept
has affected presentations and society.
I wrote a column for "Forbes," and I said, like it or not,
your next presentation is being compared to TED because you
can't argue with the empirical evidence.
The empirical evidence shows that we have two million TED
videos stream every single day.
They are being seen in 150 countries.
They're being translated into 90 languages.
This style-- fresh, engaging, visual, emotional
is catching on.
I've traveled to Europe and I've traveled to Asia.
I'll never forget being in Japan.
I've had several people in Japan come up to me and say,
we love the whole American style of presenting.
And I said, what's the American style?
One person said, you know, like TED.
People see TED.
True story.
I had a rabbi come up to me.
This didn't happen too long ago.
A rabbi came up to me, and he said, Carmine,
I need to improve my sermons.
I said, well, why?
He said, people in my congregations
have told me I've got to step up my game.
One person said, we see TED talks.
Whether you're a spiritual leader, whether you're
a business professional, there is
this new and fresh dynamic way of presenting that people don't
know what they're looking for, but they know it
when they see it.
I think that's what TED means.
Yes, Toni, right?
Toni.
AUDIENCE: I'm wondering if you can just
talk about the application of these principles
to communication.
[INAUDIBLE]
CARMINE GALLO: Perfectly.
So how do you apply this to written communications?
The rule of three.
Rule of three works beautifully.
You have to have a headline.
That's the theme of your presentation.
All TED talks, they all have themes
that fall into 140 characters or less.
You can actually tweet out the headline
from every theme of every TED talk.
You could tweet them out.
They're that short.
And then, so give me a headline.
What's the one thing you want me to know in this email,
and then break it up.
Give me some white space, just like a nicely designed slide
should have some content and some white space.
If you fill it up with content, then it's very hard for the eye
to analyze.
What's the one thing you want me to know in this email, the one
action you want me to take, and three supporting points.
That's actually not a bad way of structuring an email.
Whether it's a TED presentation or it's an email,
you can use of the same techniques.
AUDIENCE: I was thinking more about what
you do in your articles, for example.
CARMINE GALLO: In my article.
Articles are structured very much like a presentation.
We put most of our thoughts into the headline.
What is the one thing I want you to know?
The headline would be the title of your talk, for example.
That would be number one.
Then I'm going to think about what story am I
going to start with, what data am
I going to use to support my argument,
and the examples I'm going to use.
Very much structured like a good presentation.
I'm a former journalist.
I worked for CNN and CBS and a number of other media outlets.
We're storytellers.
We think in stories.
I think that's what a great presentation does, too,
especially from the examples you saw today.
Yes, sir?
AUDIENCE: When I was at IBM, we used
to joke about making presentations
to senior executives only three points because they
couldn't absorb anything else.
[INAUDIBLE] here got thrown out of the room.
What can I do for people who actually
don't care about emotion?
They want the real numbers.
They are going to push back really hard.
[INAUDIBLE]
CARMINE GALLO: Yeah, push back.
Because I am so confident, I am absolutely,
110% confident in these techniques.
I'll tell you why.
I have worked with nuclear scientists
at Lawrence Livermore Lab.
I live out in Livermore, Pleasanton.
I worked with nuclear scientists at Sandia in Mexico.
Nothing-- I know what you do is complex-- nothing
is more complicated than nuclear weapons and nuclear science.
They're using these techniques pretty effectively now.
When we say three, it doesn't necessarily
mean I'm only going to deliver three points.
That's a great question.
It doesn't mean I'm just going to deliver three points.
But I'm going to try to break up the content
so it's not just a flood of information coming at you.
I'm going to break it up into chunks.
Maybe there's a component within my presentation
that focuses on the three features,
and then within those I have subpoints.
I gave you a lot more than three techniques,
a lot more than three techniques.
But I tried to make it simple in terms of the categories.
There's three categories that the techniques fall into.
It's pretty powerful.
But you also bring up another good point.
Do not walk into your boss and give a TED-like presentation.
You can take elements from this, but it's
somewhat of a contrived scenario, right, this whole 18
minute thing?
You don't want to distract people
by doing something so different and unexpected
that it actually becomes a distraction.
But I would urge you to start using some of these principles
to make for a more engaging conversation and more
engaging presentations.
Look, I'm not going to mention the name,
and I won't mention the company because he
might recognize himself.
An executive middle level manager
called me from a global technology company
that all of you would know.
Called me last year.
He said, Carmine, over the last two years,
I have improved my presentation skills.
He showed me a deck very unlike the decks that are typical
and standard at this particular tech company.
It's very old school PowerPoint.
His are more like this.
He said now, he's been considered an evangelist
and he is being blown all over the world to give presentations
to prospects and to new clients because even area managers know
they can't give a presentation as good as this guy can.
So he's actually been labeled evangelist.
I said, what does that mean to your career?
He said, well, in a company of 80,000,
it gets me a lot closer to being a country manager.
And a country manager in my company
is the equivalent of a million dollars with salary and bonus.
So presentation skills in two years went from old school
to radically different, has actually elevated his stature
within this company.
Again, it does come back down to public speaking, communication,
persuasion.
Yes, sir.
AUDIENCE: Whenever anybody has to stand and up
talk about standing up and [INAUDIBLE] but I really
enjoyed the presentation.
CARMINE GALLO: You enjoyed it, good.
Thank.
AUDIENCE: I notice it's about the craft in your presentation.
Obviously, you tried to illustrate
the points you're talking about.
CARMINE GALLO: You're suggesting I didn't give you everything.
AUDIENCE: Well, I was going to ask a simple thing.
Content aside, what are the three most important things
about presentation.
CARMINE GALLO: I'll give you one.
I'll give you one.
Practice.
That's what I didn't talk about.
Practice.
You only hear this when you talk to people
who are great presenters.
You wouldn't get it just from watching a TED talk.
Some of the best TED talks, the ones that
have been seen 20 million times were
practice and rehearsed 200 times.
That Amanda Palmer one was practiced,
she practiced it 100 times.
Remember I showed you that Myra Goodman?
She practiced every day for about three months.
Every day for three months.
Dr. Jill Bolte Taylor, which she is a Harvard researcher,
she has the second most viewed TED
talk-- about 15 million views-- she practiced 200 times.
Steve Jobs practiced, and I know this
as a fact, practiced relentlessly.
He knew every font, every slide, every demo.
Drove his engineers crazy, but he made sure that he practiced.
That's why he made it look effortless.
When you see a presentation that looks effortless,
it's because a lot of work went behind it.
Let's do this, folks.
I will be around for a few minutes.
I'm going to be around for a few minutes.
Is there one more question?
AUDIENCE: Just wanted to know if you had any insight as to how
one gets elected to give a TED talk.
CARMINE GALLO: How does someone get elected to give a TED talk?
It's very difficult to be on the national TED stage.
This year, it was held in Vancouver.
It's only held once a year.
That's the big TED stage.
That's where you see Sting and Bill Gates and the others.
Apparently, Sting gave a sensational TED talk
in Vancouver.
It hasn't been uploaded yet, so I can't wait to see it.
Unless you're curing malaria or your name is Bill Gates,
probably aren't going to be invited.
It's very, very difficult.
But there are the lower, the smaller TEDx talks,
which are regional, community based.
Some are much better than others.
Some are more prestigious than others.
You can go directly to the websites of those TEDx
organizers, and they're always looking for great speakers
locally.
And guess what?
The video still goes to the TED page.
It's still in the same network.
I'm going to hang around.
I'm going to sign books.
I'd love to talk to you, I'd love to meet as many
of you as possible and continue to answer your questions.
Jess, thanks for inviting me.
Thanks, everyone.
[APPLAUSE]