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I want to talk about impressions.
And I think a good place to start would be first impressions.
Because you see, as I walk up here today wearing this incredibly dope outfit-
>> [LAUGH]
>> Each of you,
whether you realize it or not, >> As many snap judgement about me
based on my look alone.
Before any word comes out of my mouth. >> [COUGH]
>> First impressions matter, and
research shows that it takes one second to make an impression on somebody and
people judge people in just one second.
And unfortunately, if I remove this outfit and
show a bit more of a, reasonable outfit for a presentation like this,
I'm not going to have an opportunity to make that first impression again.
People judge you based on your look, and
potentially the first words out of your mouth on a number of personality traits.
In just that one second the time it takes to say hello,
people are determining whether or not they think you are trustworthy, confident,
competent, warm, amicable, and a number of other traits
that impact the manner in which they respond to the rest of your presentation.
This is a big deal.
If you enter your presentation and people immediately don't think that you're
trustworthy, then your presentation is going to fall flat.
So what can you do to make sure that you do have a good first impression on your
audience and get your presentation kicked off on the right foot.
Let's start with some bad news.
You can't control everything.
If you're tall, you're tall, if you're short,
you're short, if you have an interesting sounding voice, let's say high pitch to
a low pitch to raspy, well, there's not much you can do about that.
You also can't really control the biases that your crowd may already have.
They're going to have certain biases already.
So if you can't control these things, does that mean that you're at a loss for
something to do?
Well, not really, because what you can do is you can overcompensate.
As an example, let's say that you're someone who's much shorter.
In that circumstance you can make the extra effort to make sure that you have
a good posture that you stand straight and you strike a confident pose.
Or if you're somebody who say let's say has a very low or
raspy voice that might shock your crowd initially.
What you could potentially do if the situation calls for it is.
Call attention to your voice and actually maybe make a joke about it and
make them feel more comfortable when they hear you for the first time.
The trick is understanding where your crowd may have biases and
figuring out how you can minimize those biases by doing something else.
Now, there are a number of things that you can't control,
these include things like the way you enter the room or
the first words that are out of your mouth or what you are wearing.
Or potentially the title of your presentation if you do have a title.
These are all things that are critically important,
your crowd's going to see from the get go and you need to really think about these
things to figure out what first impression you want to leave with your audience.
And there's really one important thing you need to remember to be able to figure out
how to craft these things and that is who is your audience.
How do you want your audience to perceive you?
Do you want them to do you as a peer or as a superior or something in between?
And the answer to that ultimately is going to determine the way you should dress,
the way you should speak, and the first words on your slides.
So, if you know your audience and you know what biases they may have,
you structured the things you can control to match that audience.
And you try and overcompensate for the things you can't control.
You can make a good first impression.
Now unfortunately, at this point in time you haven't said anything yet.
So how do you make sure when you're audience leaves that room that you leave
them with a lasting impression? >> What
if I told you that I have found the one thing that can bring the world together?
The one singular thing that can bring everybody in the world together.
The world is a big place over 7 billion people.
And I found the one thing that can bring every continent,
every country, every person together over 7 billion people.
Would you believe me?
It's pretty surprising.
In fact, I was surprised myself, because I can confess one thing to you.
I found this out when I was nine years old.
Now, what do we think the solution is?
Do we think it's science, technology, art, music, government,
philanthropy, do you have any idea of what it might be?
Any guesses? >> Love.
>> Love is usually a good solution that
people often think of.
That's not what I'm thinking of?.
That's not the solution. >> [INAUDIBLE]
>> [LAUGH]
>> Suprisingly,
that's a sub category of the solution. >> [LAUGH]
>> But let me get right to the point.
The solution Soccer.
Now, you might be asking yourself how is soccer going to be bring
the world together?
How is it the one thing that can be the solution that brings everyone together,
and that is a valid question to be asking.
[LAUGH] So we're not going to talk about that now.
We're just going to take a step back from the story and
we're going to talk about what I was trying to do with that story, ideally and
hopefully with the effect that we were intending to make a lasting impression.
And what was I trying to do, tease before you tell.
When you tease before you tell, research has shown that there's a few things
that can actually help engage the audience, and actually engage learning.
So there's a study done by UC Davis, where they had people go through process
of asking questions and the questions that they're more interested in,
they're more curious about actually led to better learning,
and then better subsequent learning.
And the reason that was important is because it piqued their interest.
They wanted to learn more, it engaged them and they were excited for
what was to come.
So how do you do this, a few things that I was trying
to imply ask your audience questions, try to engage them, tease them with answers,
or tease them about potential answers.
Reveal an answer to them, and then ultimately,
dive into some of the points you want to make.
While unfortunately, I haven't delved into why soccer's the solution,
that's one way that you could continue to engage them, and
then you can lead to further discussion.
All in all, these are things that are really important to consider for
actually getting to your story.
But now, the big question becomes how do you eventually go about
telling that story most effectively? >> Well,
you could start by showing something.
So we heard a pitch just now, here's my pitch.
Let's say I want to sell you something.
I want to convince you guys to change your bicycles from one
with a regular metal bike chain to a carbon fiber belt drive system.
One way is I could show on these slides is set of specifications that how
high-strength carbon fiber belt lasts a lot longer.
Or I could highlight on the benefits that you would never ever have to grease and
service your metal bike chain again, saving you time and money for maintenance.
But another way is I could simply just bring the bike here, for
you guys to see for yourself.
There's nothing like having the audience have an up front and
close encounter with the product.
I could even run the live demo, I could let you guys,
one of the audience members take it out for a test drive, and come back and
talk about how great that product is.
Kind of like the earlier medical application.
You could actually bring the app here and let the audience member see for
themselves how good it is.
You might think it's a high risk maneuver, but
if you have confidence, you have to have confidence in a product to sell it.
Now, not all of us will have to be in rural, or a selling something, or
we have to make a pitch to a VC.
But upon graduation,
I'm sure everyone here will have to convince people using data.
So what if I told you that a bag of movie popcorn, the small one, use to
contain 37 grams of saturated fats, that's almost twice the recommended daily limit.
Did that really had an impact on you?
How about if I told you that that small bag of popcorn if you eat it, is
technically healthier then having greasy bacon and eggs for breakfast, Big Mac and
fries for lunch, and topping off steak with all the fats left for dinner?
Well, that's the approach that non-profit organization did in the 1990s.
To which immediate campaign against movie food vendors who
were selling popcorn using cheap coconut oil to cook the popcorn.
And because of the media frenzy and the public outcry.
Those guys had to switch to a healthier alternative.
So what I show you instead of just displaying charts, tables.
I translated that information to something concrete and
tangible such that we can impact on the audience.
Well, some of you may still not be convinced, three-four
days after the headlines, people will forget about that information, right?
Let's do a short experiment, I'll just give a couple of prompts,
you don't have to shout the answer out, but here goes.
So I'd like you recall the first line of the song Hey, Jude.
I'll give you about five seconds.
Now, I'd like you to recall the definition of the word truth.
I'm going to hazard a guess and think that for
most of you one was a lot simpler than the other.
And researchers at Duke University,
attribute this to the Velcro theory of memory.
They found our brains very much like Velcro has thousands and
thousands of discrete pieces of information, very disorganized
like the furry loops on the Velcro, after they come in contact with a solid hook.
A hook, like that information I told you about, the popcorn, how unhealthy it is.
So the moment you had that you'll be able to make a lasting impression.
And I hope I made that simple enough for
you. >> Speaking of simplicity,
simplicity is the key to making your message stick.
I'd like to introduce a fruit, it's called the Pomelo.
I could tell you all types of information about this particular fruit.
It's grown in Asia, it's best in sub tropical climates,
it has lots and lots of antioxidants.
But we often know so much about a particular subject that we're presenting
on, that we end up sounding kind of like Wikipedia page.
I've inundated you with all this information about a particular fruit, but
there's nothing actually concrete about it.
Another option is that I could say, a pomelo.
It's kind of like a big grape fruit.
So whenever you're presenting information think of these two different options.
You could get a lot of details a lot of information or
you could have one simple analogy that's really evocative.
So just think about these two traces, if you're maybe doing a work presentation,
where you happen to know a lot about a particular topic.
I'd also like to introduce a secret of Hollywood executives.
It's called the high concept pitch.
So when it comes time to introduce a new movie or
a new particular show that you might want to pitch, take this example, Speed.
Again, it doesn't say very much or you try to explain it.
It's got Keanu Reeves in it, it's going to be amazing or
I could say it's like Die hard, but on a bus.
And the reason this works is because
you're drawing on something that people know already.
And it's going to evoke a lot of specific imagery.
And we hear this a lot in Silicon Valley.
For example, there could be the Uber of X.
The Uber of dog-sitting.
And this is often overused, but to the extent that you can find some other
example that people can draw upon already, it's going to make it much easier for
that message to be simple and for that message to stick.
And last I'd like to talk about the power of proverbs.
For example one of my favorite proverbs or a famous saying is,
ask not what your country can do for you, but what you can do for your country.
It's also a JFK quote like [INAUDIBLE] earlier and
the reason that these problems work is because they're simple.
It's just one line, and they're very profound.
So if you have a presentation, think if you can just distill it to one line,
to one saying that's going to stick with people, what might that be?
And for this particular section,
I'll just use US Navy saying which is keep it simple, stupid.
US Navy design principle think of
how do you make everything as approachable as possible.
So now, we've given you the tools to make both a great first impression and
also to make your message last.
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