Presenting and Teaching

How to Wash a Chicken is Available!

26 Sep 2018  

My new book on creating and delivering powerful business presentations is now available! It has been a long journey; I’m not entirely sure when I started working on this project, but it was at least four years ago.

Why I Wrote It

Someone asked me this week why I wrote the book. It is a fair question; most of my teaching and consulting is in the area of branding and marketing strategy, not public speaking.

I wrote the book for three reasons. The first is that I’ve always loved presenting. There is nothing quite like taking an immensely complex situation and turning it into a recommendation that is simple, logical and clear. It isn’t easy; you have to really think about the flow and the logic. I enjoyed the challenge back when I was consulting at Booz Allen and when I was managing brands at Kraft Foods. I still enjoy it today.

Second, I think presenting is so important for anyone in business. You’ve probably seen this unfold. A very smart person presents their analysis in a clunky fashion and the senior executives dismiss it. Then a person with debatable ideas shows up and delivers a smooth and logical presentation. The idea catches on and the person is quickly promoted to a bigger job. It isn’t fair but nothing is more important for shaping a personal brand than what happens when you are speaking in front of senior leaders.

Third, many people don’t know how to present. My students at Kellogg, for example, are smart, motivated and experienced. Nonetheless, they often turn in terrible presentations: no executive summary, no headlines, no story, no logic, lots and lots of data. The issue is that they just haven’t learned how to create a strong business presentation.

I hope my book will help people do better presentations. If they do, I’m certain it will enhance their personal brand and progress in their career.

Coming Up

There is a lot going on!

You can order the book here. Please spread the word and post a review.

I’m doing a (free!) webinar on Mastering the Business Presentation tomorrow, from 12-1 CST. You can sign-up here.

You can learn more about the book here.

I’ll be doing presentations this fall in Seattle, Boston, Dallas, San Francisco and other cities. I’ll post details on the blog.


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