I hate writing and so writing a blog for you to read at is the last thing I ever thought of doing in my life. To make the matter even worse for me, writing in a second language which I am not good at really make me feel sick.
However, I know that writing blog in English is a very good way for me to become a better communicator in a web2.0 era, I should take up this challenge ASAP. Like many things you want to try in life, there is a risk of failing that keep you from trying in the fist place. The risk of failing in writing blog is stop writing after trying it for a short period of time. This may due to laziness or lack of motivation after initial passion fading away.
In a previous post, I write about some of things that I would not have been doing if not because of the more free time I am having recently. Seth Godin writes a very wonderful post on “What can you build over the next year that will take time now and pay off later? How can you invest the slack to build a marketing asset that you’ll own forever?”
His theory is very much in line with what I am doing right now. I think he can add two more important activities that we can invest the slack. And that is speeding more time on exercising regularly and learning to eat in a healthy way. Your physical body is the most important marketing asset you’ll own forever?
It has been awhile since my last post. The reason of my stop writing is not because of my dis-interest in this blogging thing. The fact is quite the contrary. I love this activity even more than before. However, I like to learn more on the marketing side of blogging before I keep on producing contents.
As i have mentioned before, I am a businessman. For my own business of providing tail-made services for my clients, I think sales and marketing is the most important routines that I have to do it on a daily basis. If I do not get the business from my clients, there is no point for me to produce the services.
As I have not any prior knowledge on doing sales and marketing in the internet world and the cost of producing the content is close to nil, I just start producing without much thinking on the sale and marketing side of blogging.
After using the squeezed spare time to do the producing, I think it is the right time for me to learn something about the sales and marketing aspects of this blogging thing. To earn some money from this activity is one thing. To market what you write is another thing. Both things require me to learn the technique of sales and marketing in the virtual world. This virtual world has a different set of rules when compared to the reality world I am familiar with. Though it is not an easy job for a guy of my age, curiosity and the desire to learn useful new things push me to do it.
Until I have a basic mastery of the skill to do sales and marketing in these new game of mine, I will not spend so much time on producing.
As a seasoned “professional salesman” in a broad sense, my fundamental belief is that “the meaning of communication is the response you get”.I adpoted this belief from one of the NLP presupposition. (Click this link for further expanantion)
Recently, I watched the movie, Benjamin button, which was a close to 3 hours movie. I thought it was great movie and I enjoyed it so much that my perception of the 3 hours was too short and I wanted more. However, a dull 20 minute presentation can be perceived as 3 hours long or even more. If we feel that we get nothing out of a 20 minutes presentation, we want our time back. If there are 300 peoples attending a presentation of 20 minutes long and they get nothing out of it, we are wasting a total of 100 hours of productivity.
Actually, 20 minutes is long enough to pass one important message. If anyone does not believe that, go to TED.com and watch for yourself some of the world great minds, like Bill Gates, Al Glore, Bill Clinton, Sir Ken Robinson and Jill Taylor, who are all given less than 20 minutes to deliver their talks and to pass their messages.
The following is a superb presentation by Sir Ken Robinson on “creativity” without using PowerPoint
The following is a recent talk by Bill Gates in TED conference.
I think the following talk by Dr. Jill Taylor is the best.
The duty of the presenter
As a presenter, we all want to inspire the audience by getting our message across, which resulting in the audiences taking appropriate actions. However, it is not an easy job. We have to arouse the initial interest of the audience so as to engage the audience in our presentation. When the audiences are engaged in our presentation, a connection with the audience is thus created. Without such connection, there is no flow of information from the presenter to the audience. Only there is a smooth flow of information, will there be a chance that our audiences get inspired by my message. A dull presentation cannot arouse initial interest. A dull presentation will tune out audience in the first few minutes. A dull presentation will encourage the audiences to play with their mobiles phones or blackberries. The audiences will want their time back after they found out they learn nothing out of a dull presentation. There is no way we can inspire the audiences by delivering a dull presentation.
If the movie, Benjamin Button is dull one, I probably will leave the theater one hour later and I want my money back. If an ad in the TV is a dull one, we will use our remote controller to vote against the ad by switching to another channel. If a presentation is a dull one, we will tune out or just leave the venue few minutes after the presenter commenced the presentation.
However, for most dull presentations, the common culprit is the misuse of Microsoft built-in bullet-point template. So long as we forgo the use of this template and start learning a better way of preparing our next PowerPoint presentation, we can start afresh by turning our dull presentation into relatively more interesting and engaging presentation. To become a superb presenter overnight is not easy, there are million things we have to learn and practice. However, by just changing the way to prepare a PowerPoint presentation, we will have an instant significant improvement in turning an absolute dull and boring presentation into a relatively interesting and engaging presentation for the same speaker presenting the same material. This obeys the slight edge principle, changing little to achieve a lot. The following two slideshare presentation will help illustrate my point.
To become a better presenter
My belief is that we all can become better presenter. I reckon that there are people who are more gifted than average people as a presenter. However, as far as I know, even world-class presenter like Steve Jobs, the CEO of Apple, who appear so natural and so powerful as a presenter need a lot of rehearsals before appearing on stage. He also participates proactively in preparing the keynote presentation. As a result, his presentation is so perfectly synchronilised for the speech he delivered and the visuals and images he used in the keynote.
I always visualize myself to be a top-notch presenter and yet the cold reality is that my presentation skill is still really sucked right now. However, based on my belief that the skill is learnable, I have committedmyself to learn the skill by doing the following on a regular basis:
1) Join my Toastmaster Club meeting every Monday and grasp every opportunity to speaking on prepared and impromptu speeches and evaluating others’ speeches.
2) Read blogs on speaking from the www.alltop.com and spend time on watching great speeches in websites like www.ted.com;
3) Read as many books as possible directly or indirectly related to public speaking, presentation and personal development;
4) Write posts in this blog about public speaking, presentation, personal development training.
5) Keep on speaking in Hong Kong Institutes of Surveyors and Rotary Clubs.
In this post, I will tell you a story of an eagle in a chicken world.
Once upon a time an eagle’s egg was found by a farmer and mistaken for a chicken egg. The egg was placed with the other eggs in the incubator. The baby eagle was born and raised as a chicken with his chicken peers. He was taught to peck and scratch. He was taught to run like the other chickens. He was warned against flying, because chickens don’t fly, they flap and fall. This eagle made a miserable chicken. He didn’t run well. He didn’t peck well. The other chickens found him disruptive.
After years of struggling to be a normal chicken, this poor eagle’s self esteem was quite low. He hated himself and he said to himself. “Why am I so big, and clumsy and unusual looking?” “Why can’t I find satisfaction in those things that satisfy all the other chickens?” “Where’s the delight and excitement?!”
He began to do more and more disruptive things just to get a little bit of excitement. He was hungry for action and adventure. Other chickens were upset and called him selfish, disordered and a troublemaker. The poor eagle took it all to his heart and became depressed.
One day, the young eagle saw another eagle flying high in the sky. In that moment he felt a surge of recognition. He felt something inside him stirring.
In his excitement he told his family of chickens what he saw and the chickens ridiculed at the poor eagle.
“Flying is risky, irresponsible and impractical.”
“When will you grow up and obey the law and order of this chicken cage. Why can’t you be more like your peers?”
The young eagle was shamed and depressed. He felt hopeless and alone as he fell to sleep that night. The next day, to his delight, he saw that same eagle flying up above. And this time the flying bird let out the cry of an eagle.
The moment the young eagle heard this cry something unexpected happened. The young eagle found his body rocking and his throat contracting. Uncontrollably he responded to that eagle’s cry with his own grand eagle cry.
He was amazed and he talked to himself. “What had just happened?”
“Did that glorious sound come from me? Chickens don’t make that sound! Only eagles do. … Wait. … Only eagles do!”
The young eagle, finally aware of what he truly was, expanded his wings for the first time and flew. He was no longer locked up by the chicken cage, because he was no longer confined by the idea that he had to be a chicken. Nothing could contain him anymore.
A chicken cage can only cage chickens; it cannot stop an eagle from flying when he hears his call.
Have you heard your call?
If no, congratulation, you are normal and you are a chicken.
If yes, that’s so bad, you are an eagle and not normal in a chicken world. Just like me, you may be having the ADHD problem.
For one having this problem, it will be a struggle to live a normal life from the perspective of those not having the problem. Probably, only about 3% of the population will have this problem in Hong Kong, the remaining 97% are normal. When in schools, kids with this problem will be classified as naughty and disruptive. They have great difficulty to concentrate on what the teachers are teaching them. However, as explained in great details in the wonderful book of the Davinci method, it can be a great blessing for anyone having the problem. Again, even life crisises can be viewed as opportunities in disguise. It all depends on how you want to live your life.
If Nick Vujicic can live a meaningful life, there is no excuse that anyone, be they having ADHD problem or not, cannot live a meaningful life.
Spare 4 minutes of your time to watch the following clip of Nick Vujicic-Hong Kong Tour
If it is not for the financial tsunami, I may not have spent my time doing proactively on the following things:
1) Writing this blog so regularly and in the manner I am doing now;
2) Joining the Toastmaster and attending the meeting so frequently;
3) Reading books or attending seminars or meetings that are not so related to my businesses or interests;
4) Meeting peoples or having discussions with peoples not so related to my businesses or interests;
With regards to points 1 and 2 above, I have talked about them in my previous posts. I like to talked about points 3 and 4 in this posts.
I bought a book called 創業2.0-科網六子蕩寇誌 in Cosmo Books about one month ago . I was very much attracted by the 6 start-up stories mentioned the book. I then attended a seminar organized by the publisher, in which 4 of the 6 start-up entrepreneurs mentioned in the book told about what they would do in view of the once in decade financial tsunami. The whole of the seminar was taped and can be viewed below.
Below is the first part of the seminar
Below is the second part of the seminar
Yesterday, I had an opportunity to meet with the founders of one of the company mentioned in the book. They are the founders of the following website which was praised by the Wall Street Journal . The company was based in Hong Kong and their office was located inside a industrial building located in Lai Chi Kok.
The website is developed by a company which founders are 4 young peoples whose ages are all below 30. I had the opportunity to meet with 3 of them and spent more than 2 hours with them. The meeting was of immerse value to me as it was the first time in my life to meet with top-notch peoples in the field of web2.0 start-up entrepreneurs. I did not know whether I would have any opportunity to co-op with them in my business in the future. But I will say this meeting really opened my eye to have such an close encounter with experts in other field which I would probably have few chances to come across if not because I am taking the attitude that Crises are opportunities in disguise.
The meaning of communication is the response you get from the listeners. That being said, on limited time available to prepare a presentation, we should focus our attention to let the listeners get the most out of our presentation rather than to satisfy our ego to impress the listeners. My last speech in my Toastmaster club reinforced this belief. I spent the majority of limited time available to brainstorm interesting ideas and search for related photos to make the PowerPoint presentation. I myself have been egotistically wanting to impress the listeners rather than reminding my self the purpose of the presentation: To help the president to sell the coaching program. Because my want to satisfy my ego, I am too focus on making the preparation than on rehearsing the material to be delivered.
Lesson learned
On the assumption that we have very limited time available to prepare for an upcoming short presentation, anything below 10 minutes can be called short. The priority should be given to prepare the script and core message of the speech. Then rehearse the materials to be delivered and have your rehearsal be assessed by your friends or yourself. Only after good rehearsals with result being satisfactory, we can then decide whether using Powerpoint will enhance the delivery or not. That is to say, considering the use of the Powerpoint to supplement the presentation rather than letting the Powerpoint to become the focus of the presentation. By using this strategy, we can stay away from the computer and keyboard most of the time, which I think will hinder creativity and innovation in the crafting of the core message and in the burning of the information and core message into the mind of us as presenters. So once adequate information has been collected by using computer, turn the computer off and spend time in Starbucks to organize the information, craft the core message and write the speech script. Go back to your private space to rehearse the presentation, or better still, videotape the rehearsal and do critical evaluation on it. I wish I will do what I preach next time in my preparation of my next presentation.
I Just found a very interesting blog hosted by someone I have known for more than 20 years. I am totally astonished at his art and talent of telling simple stories of life in a “Zen” way by simply using photos he took. Go and find it for yourself.
I have used some materials from his blog, without his permission, and made a PowerPoint presentation out of them. I will inform him about the “wrongful” act I have done. If he does not feel right about it, I will delete this post immediately.
Please click the following link if you want to view in full screen
This Monday, I was requested by the president of my Toastmaster club to promote the use of coaching program by giving a 3-minute speech, a program which offered to novice toastmasters to be coached by seasoned toastmaster. The program is operated on the following manner: When the one to be coached is doing a speech in the regular meeting, his whole performance will be videotaped. The clip will then be reviewed by the coach afterward for him to give further evaluation on a one-to-one basis. As a result, more in-depth advice which is hard to give during the meeting can be provided.
Before my clip was evaluated this time, I did my own evaluation on it. The performance really disappointed me. My facial expression was too stiff and tense. The energy level was too high which further intensify the stiffness and tension of my body posture and facial expression. Also, there was a lack of vocal variety and pacing variety. This clip will be of great use for me to benchmark my future performance.
The poor performance may be a result of spending dis-proportional time in preparing the script and design of slide to the detriment of spending time on doing rehearsals. If I would have spent more time in rehearsing by cutting out the use of slide to illustrate my points, the performance I think would then be better.
I enclose the PowerPoint slide I used in the presentation.
Like singing, dancing and playing musical instructments, presenting in the form of public speaking is an art that really needs a lot practices to reach a certain level of proficiency. The more time I spent on this art of prersenting, the more I found myself deficient in this art. However, my intention to improve it dramactically within a short time seems to be too overwhelming for me, it will be more realistically to break it down into different areas of improvement to make the improvement more comprehensible.
I will break it down into three major areas of improvemnt:
Preparation
This is the brainstorming part in preparing the material for presenting. This will involve a lot of information searching from books, internat and blogs to collect as much as information possible, which will become the basic ingredients for preaparting the script for presenting. This step is a very important first step. Whether the final product to be presented is a informative or useless to the audiences will be depending on this first step. Also, this will involve the art of writing story script which hooks audiences. Further, the fine tuning of speech script which make an otherwise ordinary script humorous.
Design
The form of the presentation will be determined by this step. If the presentation will be in the form of powerpoint presentation. This will involve the design of slide. For a effective powerpoint presenation, the latest trend is to forego bullet-point slide and use a visual-based slide filled with relevant visuals to illustrate the points to be presented while words are kept as few as possible. For presnetation without powerpoint, the design will become chanllenging as more rehearsals may be involved as the role of powerpoint as a visual aid to the presenter no longer exists.
Delivery
This is probably the most important and the hardest part for getting noticeable improvement. To secure as many opportunities as possible to practice in the Toastmaster CLub is probably the best way to gain any meaningful improvement in this area. Through each opportunty to delivery, I can simultaneously spend time and effect to improve in the above areas of prepaaration and design stages.
To improve in the above three areas, reading relevant books are also very useful on top of practices. The following books are very useful and are highly recommended for anyone serious about presenting publicly.
. I was very much attracted by the 6 start-up stories mentioned the book. I then attended a seminar organized by the publisher, in which 4 of the 6 start-up entrepreneurs mentioned in the book told about what they would do in view of the once in decade financial tsunami. The whole of the seminar was taped and can be viewed below.
The website is developed by a company which founders are 4 young peoples whose ages are all below 30. I had the opportunity to meet with 3 of them and spent more than 2 hours with them. The meeting was of immerse value to me as it was the first time in my life to meet with top-notch peoples in the field of web2.0 start-up entrepreneurs. I did not know whether I would have any opportunity to co-op with them in my business in the future. But I will say this meeting really opened my eye to have such an close encounter with experts in other field which I would probably have few chances to come across if not because I am taking the attitude that Crises are opportunities in disguise.
