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[Musc] Al Getler: Hi, my name is Al Getler. Welcome
back to another episode of Leader be Led. We have a great string of guest on our show,
you have learn from some of the leaders in the market place, some of the leaders in various
industries, some of the leaders in social media and technology. Leaders of companies,
CEO's and founders. We have with us today another founder that I think you're going
to like. This one is really, really unique though.
I call this a coup for having this guest on our show. Because she really is a world renown
expert in the art of presentation. Our guest today is Nancy Duarte. She has a company called
the Duarte Group. She's a profound author of books that really help people out, who
are interested in the Science, and the art of presenting. Her latest book is Resonate.
It's just a fabulous book, it's getting ready to come out in a digital format which will
be a very exciting format that was great audio/video. I'm a huge fan of what she does, in fact let
me give you an idea of what Resonate is about, what our guest Nancy Duarte is about by showing
you this video titled Spark. Female: An idea is the single most powerful
device known to man. Everything you see around you started as an idea in someone's mind.
If you don't communicate your ideas in a way that compels others to take action. Your idea
could die. How can you ensure that your great ideas live? The best way to communicate an
idea is through story. Human Physically react to story. Our hearts raise, eyes dilate, and
you may even feel a chill down your spine all from a story. Stories captivate us, make
us laugh, make us cry and connect us to each other.
Humans love a good story, we root for the hero to overcome their road blocks and emerge
victorious at the en. That's the transformational power of the story. Presentation should be
transformative too, but it's rare to see a presentation that captivates like a great
story until now. John F Kennedy: "And so, my fellow Americans:
ask not what your country can do for you, ask what you can do for your country"
Female: The skills that you're going to learn today are founded in cinema, literature, and
the work of great communicators. The greatest communicators have unknowingly used story
patterns to persuade. That's what make them so effective.
Winston C: "We're going to win. [inaudible 00:03:00] fight, fight, fight, fight, fight,
fight" Mahatma Gandhi: "Long years ago we made a
tryst with destiny" Female: Learning how to resonate the story
will transform your audience and transforming your audience is what will change the world.
Martin Luther K: "my four little children will one day live in a nation where they will
not be judged by the color of their skin but by the content of their character. I have
a dream today" Al Getler: Nancy Duarte that is just an awesome
video. Welcome to the show. Nancy Duarte: Thanks for having me, I'm excited
to be here. Al Getler: Yeah, you have a video that includes
just some of my favorite speakers of all time. Starting with JFK. Was was about JFK just
to start things off, that just made him such a great communicator.
Nancy Duarte: It gives us a visionary too. It wasn't even just even about how he communicated
his visionary. Challenging us to get to the moon in 10 years, that's kind of a long shot
goal. The administration obviously is bugged down, he had a platform where you had to communicate
some very meaningful things in a very tumultuous time in our history. He just rose to the challenge,
he was the right guy to have in the spot at the time.
Very elegant, very eloquent, very clear. He had a very good speech writer.
Al Getler: He certainly did, yet one of the best. When you said the administration was
very bugged down during the presidency. One of my favorite things to watch, and we'll
get off the subject he could have point a passion with that. It's this press conferences
when he was in front of the media. He was one of the first presidents to have to face
the television camera. He did it like, he had been doing it in his whole life.
Nancy Duarte: That's why he won the election, because Nixon looked really fidgety and kind
of angry and he seemed comfortable poise, and calm. They do say that the actual recording
of him, and his communication style helped him win the election when you can trust it
with Nixon. Al Getler: Incredible. Nancy, tell us how
long you've been doing what you do, give us a little insight how do you even came to do
this and maybe because I'm leading the witness here a little bit. Who got you started moving
you in this direction? Nancy Duarte: My husband actually started
the firm in 1988, and I wind up joining him in 1990. I was very, very pregnant with my
son at the time and I was just "You go get a real job, this is a stupid idea. What are
you doing?" It was terrible, I was just terrible I worked very hard to abort what became my
most amazing dream. We've been doing this now for 25 years, this was our 25 year anniversary
though I've worked here for 23 years. We write and produce and put the words in
the mouths of some of the greatest ideas really on the planet right now. We love doing that,
we'll write, produce, visualize and create cinematic stories or designed conversations.
Whatever is this little persuasive communication medium you need. I think it's interesting
to be in agency that focuses solely on the spoken word. There's a lot of agency that
track, clicks and track eyeballs, and all this things that's like that.
When you get them in the room and you want to make an amazing difference and connect
in a very human way. We're the ones that get to write a lot of those words, it's very fun,
very cool. Al Getler: I have watched over the years as
I follow you, you really do quickly adopt to. We're at the point now where speaker community
room, and he or she could be follow by a video camera, an iPhone, a quick click on a cellphone.
You have captured a lot of that in the way you staged your speakers. One of the things
that I picked up on recently is you did a workshop on webinar, and how to do a webinar
which I tripped on by accident and I thought "this is so sorely needed because everybody
is doing a webinar these days." Nancy Duarte: It's interesting the webinar
is another delivery vehicle that sometimes people don't know how to participate in. I
spent a lot of time trying to figure out, how do I look at that little tiny camera right
there and feel like I'm talking to another human being, that's in a webinar. Everything
is quiet, everything is silent. You can't hear a thing, at least you and I are having
a two way conversation and it is interesting how when you put technology between me and
an audience or you and an audience. Many times that just communication just dies,
it's just dead it doesn't come across this very alive, or conversational or so. We coach
people on how to build, and then communicate even remote presentation because 85% at least
that's just the statistic I have from a survey we did about 85% of presentations are done
remote including this one which is interesting. Al Getler: Yeah, we actually strive to make
this more of a two way conversation as should be now. I do know that it has become challenging
for me even when I get on a conference call, or some type of webcall. There are time delays
and there are technology glitches, and you really do ... Everything you do is very well
brought up. Let's go back to that beginning point again, I really love this part of the
story. I was the guy who was in charge of getting
those 35mm slides for presentation, as a marketing director. We just lost half of our audience
with this reference. You guys used to make 35mm slides and charge $300 for them?
Nancy Duarte: We did, we had a little apartment, we worked out of our apartment. Our hourly
rate was only $15/hr. The piece of equipment that we had in our dining room cost us $20,000.
We actually made more on the actual 35mm slides. We have the white cotton gloves, and we would
take our presentation files, put it on this camera base thing and it would developed the
film. We have to run over to Stanford mall because they were the only ones with the 24
hour 25mm slide. We picked them up, and sometimes we drive
to the airport just in time to meet the executives put it in his carousel and he takes off on
the airplane for the flight. Those were days were different. Presenters had to plan ahead,
half of couple of days to output it and you couldn't make changes at the last minute.
It was kind of nice. Al Getler: In a couple of days Nancy, it seems
to me that things just changed in two or three days. I went from those 35mm slides, to my
first projector being the size of a Volkswagen bug. There was no turning back at that point,
it changed so quickly and the powerpoint and the key, the keynote and the presentation
slide has become such a huge piece of our lives. Tell us how your group is taking that
whole art and let's not call it an art, because that's set through some quarterly presentations
with spreadsheets that big on slides. How have you taken that and turn it into an art.
Nancy Duarte: It's interesting in a way what we've done is we've gone back to the future
in the sense that back when we did 35mm slides. Artist did it, it was a trade it was something
you can get schooled in and there was a lot of learnings around the display of information.
Today people go to school, they get their MBA and they become this great brilliant business
thinker but people don't teach them the visual display of information yet the total we use
second only to e-mail is powerpoint which is a visual information tool.
What's interesting is you can find old slides from the 70's and they are just so beautiful,
they're cinematic, they're simple, they're clear and what we've done is we've turned
powerpoint into our teleprompting tool which is fine, but we project our teleprompter we
turn our back to the audience and we read, reread our slides. I've been digging around
I found some speeches from JE. They have his script in there, right beside it. They have
the little tiny image of the 35mm slide. It's beautiful how they did their slides was
beautiful, his spoken word was so crafted, and we don't do that anymore today. It was
so amazing what happen is we just I have to speak, I'm going to throw a bunch of slides
together. I'll just walk on stage and whatever comes out of my mouth, comes out of my mouth.
People kind of undervalue the opportunity you have to really enrapture and capture the
hearts and mind of the audience at that moment in time.
It's been an interesting journey, we're kind of back to the future actually.
Al Getler: I think some of the best presenters not that they ignore the slide behind them.
The slide is as you say are background to the whole presentation, the whole ...
Nancy Duarte: I have a book you'd love, because I know you're a JFK fan. He had a slide lady,
he had a overhead lady. Her name was spear, her last name is spear. She has a book, she
wrote the slideology equivalent from the late 60's and from the early 60's actually. It's
all about simplicity, and clarity, and how you do the layout, why you do it this way,
and it was really telling how we kind of devolve and now we're trying to go back to best practices
again. Al Getler: Now your evolution of Nancy Duarte
what you've become really known for. I mean you were literally the person who is sitting
there, pushing up the 35mm slides. Highly hardware base so to speak in those days. Maybe
software, if you're stuck it in the carousel that was the hardware, and you were software.
Let's not argue that point, the point is that you and from putting the products together,
the literal product together. To a much more expensive you, or what presentation has become.
How did you make that leap and how did you known for that expertise?
Nancy Duarte: What's interesting we've kind of fell into it. When I join my husband, I
was "dude if I can sell it, you can keep it. If I can't sell this, you're going out and
get a real job". I made some calls, and one of the calls I made was the Apple. Apple was
the first company to do a conference wide scale offering where they hook the computer
up to a projector. We happen to ... That was the same time the price of the desktop projectors
were coming down and it was kind of everything going to the masses.
The other thing that happened, that I think was we really blessed by was that Adobe systems
was here. This is 1990 ... I remember 1993, Adobe brought us in and fortunately we figured
out that we needed to know how to typeset. We knew a lot of the basics of typesetting
and we basically ... They were such purist that Adobe was about type and typesetting
and because I've done enough work with Adobe. When Apple saw my stuff they were like you
guys know how to do actual typesetting. Which was really kind of unheard of back then.
The combination of those things, and then one of the things that Adobe required of me,
before they would let me be their presentation company. We were the only presentation company
out there they made me go to an Edward Tufte conference. I don't know if you're familiar
with Ed Tufte or not. He written a book, the quantitative display of information. Very
picky about how their data was displayed how the annotations happened.
If it wasn't that combination, they're making me a 10 Tufte. Then being font freaks, that's
what gave me the ground work to be able to win this large scale projects for Apple. It's
so funny how the journey prepares us for a positive resolution.
Al Getler: I mean where you've ended up really is it a point where anybody who needs to do
your presentation needs to tap in to some of the stuff you put together. I mention Resonate
in the beginning, slideology is I think is a book up unto this point you really know
and a lot for. It's a great book for anybody, even I tell people even if you don't sit down
and read the whole thing at once but you get part of it in, before you do a major presentation
is something to understand. The other book that I think is really, really
helpful is the Harvard Pressbook. That is the ... How to create your persuasive presentation
which is so many people act. Even if you do have to present those quarterly numbers there's
an engaging storytelling way to do that. Which bring us to Resonate. I knew this was going
to happen with you Nancy. We're about at our limited time, yet we haven't dug deep into
Resonate and you have rules in Resonate that I think are just so fantastic.
I'm going to hit one or two of them now. If you would be so kind, I'm going to invite
you back to the show and spend a few more minutes talking about some of the rules. The
first thing you say is that Resonance causes change and I think we just spent about 14
minutes talking about that. Give us an idea of what that first rule means.
Nancy Duarte: What happen is in the actual physics phenomenon of Resonance. You can sen
an audio signal through something, and if you hit it's resonance frequency it will vibrate,
it will move in some way. The same thing happens with communication, if you send a signal through
and I say something to you that hits your resonant frequency you'll change, you'll vibrate
for lack of better words. When someone says "what you said really resonates with me".
What they're saying is you said something that hit something already inside of me.
As a communicator our job is to really get to know our audiences, really get to know
it and find those things already inside of our audience and connect with them there.
Often as communicators or just like ... We're just saying whatever hoping somebody step,
and we're shooting it all out there hoping something sticks instead of saying I need
to know you, I need to communicate with you and I'm going to know you so well, I'm going
to hit something that's inside of you and you'll be changed, you'll be moved.
That's the power that great communicators used, to create change to create a movement
or whatever it is your objective Is. Al Getler: I had an education in college by
having the worst professor in the face of the earth. Who literally read out of a notebook
for two and a half hours everyday. He had his notes written out, and every 15, 20 minutes
or so he'd look up and say any comments any questions, and then going back to the notes
again. What that teaches you, I'll never do that. What you say with Resonance causes change.
I mean that is really what this is all about. Nancy we are out of time, and we've had you
on here already and we haven't even gotten into diving deep into your book Resonate and
talk about it. I'm going to invite you to come back to the show, will you do that?
Nancy Duarte: I will, I have to.
Al Getler: Good. Well this next episode we're going to dive deeply into that, we're going
to give our audience a homework assignment and first of all where do they go to find
you on the web? Nancy Duarte: You can go to www.duarte.com,
I'm also at Nancyduarte on Twitter, and we have @Duarte on Twitter.
Al Getler: Okay, great and on your website I know it's more than just "Hey this is the
company. There are resources, there are videos to watch, lots of stuff to play with and lots
of ways to dig a little deeper into your company." Tell us ... Everybody books I know is available
major booksellers, your online or few of the brick and what is that are left. One thing
I always fish on the show if you can order this book from your local bookseller, your
neighborhood store that's a great thing to do as well.
Your books are beautiful, and give me 30 seconds on why you had put such an effort into make
these book so beautiful, why not just put on a book and get on over.
Nancy Duarte: What that interesting is communication is not just verbal, it's visual. I think as
my organizations grown, that's what we do we create cinematic visuals that create meaning.
I don't think there's any picture or anything that's visual that doesn't add to the meaning,
or add to the value. I just ... I can't just think in pros, for some reason my brain just
won't let me. I'm working on the next book and of course it's got models and visuals
and infographics and it's just been lovely. For the audience too, Resonate is being released
for free as a multimedia book. You can go to resonate.duarte.com and it's beautiful
and you can also go into iTunes and iBookstore and pretty soon the price for that book is
going to be set to free. People can get the free book to two ways because I love, love
writing this book. I love writing it and we also wanted to see what happens if we turn
those static pictures into this multimedia immersive experiences.
We did it, we took it as a personal challenge and we just kind of wanted to share it with
the world. I'm excited to see what fruit comes from more people, understanding this concept.
Al Getler: That is an amazing move you're making and you mention the term cinematic
too. When we get together the next time I want to talk about that. You point out in
a couple of things that I heard and read. Let say that visual is one thing and then
sound becomes something completely different as well too. We'll tap on that next time.
Nancy I'm sorry I have to say goodbye to you for now, I'm bringing you back sometime.
Nancy Duarte: Thank you. Al Getler: All right thanks for being here.
Well folks with that, that wraps up another episode of Leader be Led. I hope you've enjoyed
Nancy Duarte, and I hope especially that you'll share it with your friends, Twit about it,
put it on Facebook comment, and certainly get out there and check out some of her materials
it's just amazing stuff. Also I want to encourage you to come back and see the second half of
my interview with Nancy. Because I know there's going to be tons of
information there for you especially if you ever had to stand up in front of the room
and give her presentation. With that my name is Al Getler and thanks for joining us on
Leader be Led. [Music]
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