Steve Jobs (2 page)

buzz, they go through withdrawals. How else do you explain

the fact that some fans threatened to protest Jobs’s absence from

a conference he had keynoted for years? That’s what happened

when Apple announced that Jobs would not deliver his tradi-

tional keynote presentation at Macworld Expo in 2009. (Apple

also announced that it would be the last year in which the com-

pany would participate in this annual trade show produced by

Boston-based IDG World Expo.)

ix

x

PROLOGUE

Apple vice president Phil Schiller filled in for the legendary

presenter. The expectations were nearly impossible to meet, but

Schiller performed admirably
precisely
because he used many of Jobs’s techniques. Nevertheless, Jobs was missed. “The sun is setting on the first generation of rebellious whiz kids who invented

the PC, commercialized the Internet, and grew their companies

into powerhouses,” wrote reporter Jon Fort
t.1

A Steve Jobs keynote presentation is an extraordinary expe-

rience, and he doesn’t give many of them. Although fans,

investors, and customers hope to see more of him at Apple

events, given his leave of absence in 2009 for medical reasons

and Apple’s withdrawal from Macworld Expo, there might be

fewer opportunities to see a master at a craft he has honed for

more than three decades. (It was later confirmed that Jobs had

undergone a successful liver transplant and would return to

work.) This book captures the best of Jobs’s presentations and

reveals, for the first time, the exact techniques he uses to inspire

his audience. Best of all, you can learn his skills and adopt his

techniques to blow away your audience, giving people a high

they will crave again and again.

Watch a Macworld keynote—“Stevenotes,” as they are

known among the Mac faithful—and you will begin to recon-

sider everything about your current presentations: what you say,

how you say it, and what your audience sees when you say it. I

wrote a column about Steve Jobs and his presentation skills for

BusinessWeek.com. It quickly became hugely popular around

the world (Daniel Lyons, aka “Fake Steve Jobs,” even featured it).

It appealed to Mac and PC owners alike who wanted to improve

the way they sell themselves and their ideas. A select few read-

ers had seen Jobs in person, while others had watched video of

Jobs online, but the vast majority of readers had never seen him

give a keynote. What they learned was eye-opening and forced

many of them to go back to the proverbial drawing board.

For educational purposes, use YouTube as a complement to

the techniques revealed in the pages to follow. At this writing,

there are more than 35,000 clips of Steve Jobs on YouTube, a far

larger number than for most other high-profile CEOs, includ-

ing Virgin’s Richard Branson (1,000), Microsoft’s Steve Ballmer

PROLOGUE

xi

(940), and the former head of General Electric, Jack Welch (175).

In this case, YouTube offers a rare opportunity to read about a

particular individual, learn about specific techniques that make

him successful, and see those techniques in action.

What you’ll learn is that Jobs is a magnetic pitchman who

sells his ideas with a flair that turns prospects into custom-

ers and customers into evangelists. He has charisma, defined

by the German sociologist Max Weber as “a certain quality of

an individual personality, by virtue of which he is set apart from ordinary people and treated as endowed with supernatu-ral, superhuman, or at least specifically exceptional powers or

qualities.
”2
Jobs has become superhuman among his most loyal fans. But Weber got one thing wrong. Weber believed that charisma was not “accessible to the ordinary person.” Once you

learn
exactly
how Jobs crafts and delivers one of his famous presentations, you will realize that these exceptional powers are

available to you as well. If you adopt just
some
of his techniques, yours will stand out from the legions of mediocre presentations

delivered on any given day. Your competitors and colleagues

will look like amateurs in comparison.

“Presentations have become the de facto business commu-

nication tool,” writes presentation design guru Nancy Duarte

in
Slide:ology
. “Companies are started, products are launched, climate systems are saved—possibly based on the quality of presentations. Likewise, ideas, endeavors, and even careers can be

cut short due to ineffective communication. Out of the millions

of presentations delivered each day, only a small percentage are

delivered well.
”3

Duarte transformed Al Gore’s 35 mm slides into the award-

winning documentary
An Inconvenient Truth
. As with Al Gore, who sits on Apple’s board, Steve Jobs uses presentations as a

transformative experience. Both men are revolutionizing busi-

ness communications and have something to teach us, but

where Gore has
one
famous presentation repeated a thousand times, Jobs has been giving awe-inspiring presentations since the

launch of the Macintosh in 1984. In fact, the Macintosh launch,

which you will read about in the pages to follow, is still one

of the most dramatic presentations in the history of corporate

xii

PROLOGUE

America. I find it amazing that Jobs has actually improved his

presentation style in the twenty-five years since the launch.

The 1984 presentation was tough to beat—one of the greatest

presentations of our time. Still, Jobs’s keynotes at the Macworld

Expo in 2007 and 2008 were his best ever. Everything that he

had learned about connecting with audiences came together to

create truly magnificent moments.

Now the bad news. Your presentations are being compared with

those of Steve Jobs. He has transformed the typical, dull, technical,

plodding slide show into a theatrical event complete with heroes,

villains, a supporting cast, and stunning backdrops. People who

witness a Steve Jobs presentation for the first time describe it as

an extraordinary experience. In a
Los Angeles Times
article about Jobs’s medical leave, Michael Hiltzik wrote: “No American CEO is

more intimately identified with his company’s success . . . Jobs is

Apple’s visionary and carnival barker. If you want a taste of the lat-

ter persona, watch the video of the original iPod launch event in

October 2001. Jobs’s dramatic command is astonishing. Viewing

the event recently on YouTube, I was on the edge of my seat, even

though I knew how the story came out.
”4
Jobs is the Tiger Woods of business, raising the bar for the rest of us.

Now the good news. You can identify and adopt each of

Jobs’s techniques to keep your audience members at the edge of

their seats. Tapping into his qualities will help you create your

own magnificent presentations and give you the tools to sell

your ideas far more persuasively than you have ever imagined.

Consider

The Presentation Secrets of Steve Jobs
your road map

to presentation success. It’s as close as you will ever get to hav-

ing Jobs speak directly in your ear as you present the value

behind your service, product, company, or cause. Whether you

are a CEO launching a new product, an entrepreneur pitching

investors, a sales professional closing a deal, or an educator try-

ing to inspire a class, Jobs has something to teach you. Most

business professionals give presentations to deliver informa-

tion. Not Jobs. A Steve Jobs presentation is intended to create

an experience—“a reality distortion field”—that leaves his audi-

ence awed, inspired, and wildly excited.

PROLOGUE

xiii

Moving On Up

As soon as you move one step up from the bottom, your effective-

ness depends on your ability to reach others through the spoken

and written word.
5

PETER DRUCKER

Some of the most common terms used to describe Steve Jobs are

“seductive,” “magnetic,” “captivating,” and “charismatic.” Other

terms, typically related to his interpersonal traits, are less flattering.

Jobs is a complicated man who creates extraordinary products, cul-

tivates intense loyalty, and also scares the shit out of people. He is

a passionate perfectionist and a visionary, two qualities that create

a combustible combination when the way things are do not match

the way Jobs believes they should be. This book is not intended to

tackle everything about Steve Jobs. It is neither a biography of the

man nor a history of Apple. This book is not about Jobs the boss,

but about Jobs the communicator. And although the book will

help you create far more effective presentations, it leaves the art of

presentation design to more qualified authors whose life work is

dedicated to the field of graphic design. (For more references, tips,

and video clips of the presentations cited throughout the book, visit

carminegallo.com.) What the book does offer is the most thorough

breakdown of exactly how Jobs crafts and delivers the story behind

the Apple brand. You will learn how Jobs does all of the following:

 Crafts messages

 Presents ideas

 Generates excitement for a product or feature

 Delivers a memorable experience

 Creates customer evangelists

The techniques will help you create your own “insanely great”

presentations. The lessons are remarkably simple to learn, but

applying them is up to you. Speaking the way Steve speaks

xiv

PROLOGUE

requires work, but the benefit to your career, company, and per-

sonal success will be well worth your commitment.

Why Not Me?

When I appeared on CNBC’s “The Big Idea with Donny

Deutsch,” I was struck by the host’s infectious energy. Deutsch

offered his viewers this piece of advice: “When you see someone

who has turned his passion into a profit, ask yourself, ‘Why not

me?’
”6 I u
rge you to do the same. When you read about Jobs in the pages to follow, ask yourself, “Why not me? Why can’t I ener-gize my listeners like Jobs?” The answer is, “You can.” As you’ll

learn, Jobs is not a natural. He works at it. Although he always

had a theatrical flair, his style has evolved and improved over

the years. Jobs is relentlessly focused on improvement, laboring

over every slide, every demo, and every detail of a presentation.

Each presentation tells a story, and every slide reveals a scene.

Jobs is a showman and, as with all great actors, he rehearses

until he gets it right. “Be a yardstick of quality,” Jobs once said.

“Some people aren’t used to an environment where excellence is

expected.
”7 T
here are no shortcuts to excellence. Presenting like Jobs will require planning and practice, but if you are committed to reaching the top, there is no better teacher than Apple’s

master showman. (See Figure 1.)

Performance in Three Acts

The Presentation Secrets of Steve Jobs
is structured like one of Jobs’s favorite presentation metaphors: a three-act play. In fact, a Steve

Jobs presentation is very much like a dramatic play—a finely

crafted and well-rehearsed performance that informs, enter-

tains, and inspires. When Jobs introduced the video iPod on

October 12, 2005, he chose the California Theatre in San Jose as

his stage. It was an appropriate setting as Steve divided the prod-

uct introductions into three acts, “like every classic story.” In act

1, he introduced the new iMac G5 with built-in video camera.

Act 2 kicked off the release of the fifth-generation iPod, which

played video content for the first time. In act 3, he talked about