Scott Sambucci's Stuff

1. Read.  Read anything you can find. It's similar to the advice of copying a phone book when one has writer's block. The related action fires the kiln of your brain. I prefer essays and works on how people think and make decisions. Or ideas on creativity or novels. When reading novels, I enjoy the Easter egg hunt for great sentences and identifying their construction. Look up words for which you don't know the meaning, especially words with which you are familiar but could not yourself use in a sentence. This morning I learned unctuous, aggrieved, and erudition.

2. Read and write simultaneously.  As you are reading and thoughts, ideas, and concepts develop, write them down. You may begin reading mostly and jotting an occasionaly note. Eventually the writing will take over and the book is placed quietly aside. Stand on the shoulders of giants.

3. Arise early. Starting the day while it's still night motivates by this simple sense of accomplishment.

4. Think about your writing the evening prior.  It's best t consider the topic about which you'd like to write, but most any topic will do. Last night, I thought about the best way to spend $25 after the responses received from a Craig's List ad posted for part-time nanny help. A second idea was to hand out 25 $1 bills on a public corner to watch people's reaction. It's about pushing the brain into motion.

5. Use paper and pen to start. They allow you to draw associations between ideas you've written. Imagine you are Mozart and your pen is a quill as you scratch out a sonata or concerto.  Listen for the music in your mind. Find a rhythm in your writing. Write quickly and legibly. Once you become exhausted, ready what you've written to add ideas and small corrections. Then later, type your writings into notes. Do your editing then.

8. Stand in a familiar room from an odd vantage point, then be still for a few minutes.

9. Stop trying. You can introduce writing, but you can't force it. If you're not swimming in creative juices, take a moment to recognize it. Then reach for a book and begin reading.

10. Ask yourself questions. This creates a conversation.

11. Know your routine. Find inefficiencies and correct them. I arise early, take a shower, make coffee and breakfast, then sit to write. Thus, I must remember to start the coffee before the shower, have my desk clear and computer closed, pens and note cards ready, and listen to music via my phone instead of a web browser. This flow allows me to dive immediately into writing. If I am traveling, I look excitedly ahead to the early train so I arise enthusiastically with the alarm, as it frees me from my sleep instead of awakening me from my slumber.

John Cleese on Creativity

James Altucher: Brain Storming - Everything is Allowed and How to have great ideas

Five Manifestos for the Creative Life

Magic Hours: Tom Bissell on the Secrets of Creators and Creation

Brenda Ueland, If You Want to Write: A Book about Art, Independence and Spirit (and the inspiration for today's post)

(download)

Click here to download:

what-i-learned-from-tedx-lrHHpxbBebcAsbrvntub.zip (377 KB)

1. It takes me several weeks to develop an intelligent presentation.  A remarkable presentation takes weeks because I need to give the idea time to self-develop.  NY Times columnist David Brooks refers to this as "letting an idea marinate." John Cleese of Monty Python fame advises using all of the time possible to develop your creative ideas.

My process:

a. Identify the original topic (that I eventually trashed) during a jog. My best ideas usually peek out around mile 3 or 4. That I trashed the topic is inconsequential. That I had a topic was a starting point.

b. Iterate on the topic over the next few days and talk it out with my wife.

c. Map a concepts into a slide presentation.

d. Research to see what content and data is available (For example, I thought I'd find time series data on the number of salespeople employed but this data wasn't available after hours of searching)

e. Build out slides.

f. Delete slides.  I built more than 35 slides and had only 17 in the final presentation including a blank first slide and the title slide.

2. Presentations require data. This means factual information synthesized from several sources that creates an "A-ha!" moment for the audience.  It's not about generating new content - it's about presenting existing information in a new framework.

Hans Rosling's 2009 TED presentation is a wonderful example.

In 20 minutes, it is impossible to teach a new idea from the beginning, so structure the presentation around existing knowledge. The audience will engage because they're starting from familiar territory.  You hook them at the end when the thought path leads them to a place they never considered. 

In my case, I used cultural perceptions about salespeople using Arthur Miller's "Death of a Salesman" and recent movies about the sales profession - Glengarry Glen Ross and Boiler Room as the starting point then broke the mold with data as I progressed.

3. There's a performance curve.  Even when carefully selected, some speakers will disappoint.  They'll fail to invest the preparation required to deliver a memorable presentation and this is your opening.  This is where placing best practices into action differentiated me from everyone else.  It's a combination of:

a. Topic

b. Preparation

c. Content
(See #1 above for arriving at a, b, & c)

d. Presentation slides/visual quality - I met with Jim Prost who volunteered his time to the speakers in preparation and read "Presentation Zen" on Jim's suggestion.  (I'm embarrassed to say that I've had this book on my shelf for three years and never read it.)

e. Passion/enthusiasm - A willingness to be emotionally naked.  If you believe it, share it.

f. Presentation (verbal & physical) - Be well-rehearsed and comfortable.  Know your slides.   I prepared my verbal presentation by typing out my words in Evernote, then timing the delivery. I learned that I needed to be at minute 9 when I got to my key slide (see #2). By knowing this outcome, I worked backwards to cut down the first section of the presentation by 40%.  Then I wrote out notecards twice and rehearsed live in front of my wife, then twice more by myself.  By the time of the presentation, I didn't need the notecards and knew my slides by memory and where I would be in my presentation at each moment. 

4. Prepare for the stage. I was expecting a grand stage like you see on the TED.com videos where I'd be free to saunter about the stage, glance at slides, and use movement as a way to emphasize key points of the presentation. Our stage was small and restrictive. The back-lighting was red and generally dark. I work dark pants (okay, jeans, but I swear it's okay. It was Saturday in San Francisco!) a white shirt and a navy suede sport coat. With the dark background and lighting, I worried that the video would not show well.

There was no visible timer or slide viewer in front of me as expected and I didn't want to turn around to glance at slides to assure I was on course.  This caused some trepidation for me, but see 3e - once onstage, I knew my stuff and rolled along.

5. Know your audience. This audience was mostly MBA students and most were international students.  But... the presentation was recorded for the TEDx YouTube channel for a mass audience to view later. So which was my audience?  To feel connected and share my enthusiasm, I chose the students with whom I could play along the way by generating smiles and nods. That engagement was far more important to keep me cruising than presenting for the camera thinking about a YouTube viewer three months from now.

Plan how you are going to engage the audience before and after the talk.  I should have engaged more with the audience instead of sitting backstage for final edits and preparation.  That said, given that I needed these final edits, it was worth the cost in my case.  Next time, I will be sure to set a goal of talking to at least 10 audience members before and after.

6. Write your own introduction and rehearse it with the person introducing you.  Jim Prost recommended this and I simply let it fall off my plate.  It wasn't until 30 minutes before I was introduced that I knew who was introducing me, yet she had developed an introduction and had been rehearsing to say it from memory the entire afternoon. Yikes! In the introduction, she mispronounced "SalesQualia" and didn't mention my book. The introduction is your teaser - help the introducer set the right state of mind for the audience.

7. Prepare notecards and know your slides blind, then put them away.  If you follow #3, the presentation will flow naturally.

8. Bring food.  Prepare for the external environment.  We were in No Man's Land in San Francisco for a Saturday (near the corner of Samsome and Broadway). NOTHING is open on the weekends, not even the Starbucks across from our building. The event organizers had a wonderful green room with dried fruit, energy bars, Odwallas, and coffee.  Speakers were asked to arrive at 12:00noon and I was scheduled for 4:20. I'm an eater plus I can be particular about what I eat because of my race training, and there weren't enough of the right calories to keep me from hunger. I should have packed my own food just in case.

9. Ask for help.  Everyone wants you to be successful.  Jim Prost donated his time to review presentations the Tuesday before the event and only two or three speakers took advantage.  Dirk, Laura, and Alex (the primary event organizers) had every detail of the day planned and launched immediately into action for any unforeseen requests.  Remember - the organizers are at risk too - they want you to impress the crowd because they sold the attendees on the event in the first place.

10. Ask to help.  There are always details that need filling. Offer to help. Caution when offering suggestions - you may think your suggestions are good but it's likely that the organizers already considered that idea and now you're making them feel bad that they couldn't or didn't execute on it. Carry boxes, serve food, run errands. Contribute to the event.

11. Thank everyone several times.  Do this in person and follow with a personal note.  Praise, praise, praise everyone from the organizers to the minimum-wage caterer. Everyone matters and they're all there to make you look good and promote yourself.

[View the presentation slides on Slideshare.]

[View the event Flickr stream.]

Thanks to Grandmom and Grandpop for the help. :-)

[Updated the title.  Was previously - "My 24 rules for writing." I expect over time I'll discover more rules.]

I thought it was time I organized my own rules of writing. These are personal and will not work for everyone. Feel free to use, copy, or ignore.

1. Never use the word "get" for any reason. It's lazy and imaginative.
2. Never use a thesaurus to find a word.  Use it to help you find you want to say.
3. Writing something is always better than writing nothing. You can always discard something. Nothing can never be good enough to keep or use.
4. In case of writer's block, read about human decision-making, economics, how people think, and essays. Interpretations of core philosophical works are acceptable but not the original works themselves. They are too dense to identify what is valid or important. Leave that to people much smarter than you.
5. Think about your topic the night before you plan to write.  
6. Confirm your subject-predicate agreements.
7. Incomplete sentences are acceptable. Sometimes.
8. Use commas, but judiciously to guide the reader on how you'd prefer they read the sentence.
9. Think "long, short, short" in constructing a paragraph.
10. If you need a semicolon, your sentence is completely fucked up.
11. Never end sentences with prepositions.
12. Check your subject-predicate agreements.
13. Scrap all attempts to be funny. Situations are funny. Stories are funny. Writers are not.
14. Don't try to out-wit your reader. Attempts to do so will fail miserably and your writing becomes childish.  
15. Read your sentences aloud during proofreading. It will embarass you into writing better.
16. Editing always takes longer than writing. Plan for this.
17. Writing dialogue is very difficult to make believable or interesting. Make it good or skip it altogether.
18. Write on paper with a good pen from time to time. Thoughts flow differently in a new environment. Have pads of paper and pens scattered around the house at all times for this purpose.
19. Write whenever and wherever an inspiration emerges because it's unlikely that same inspiration will come again.
20. As soon as you realize that you're becoming tired and losing focus, you are. Keep writing if you so choose, but it is unlikely that more coffee or a break will help.  You're done for the day.  Rejoice - the hard work is now done.
21. If you disagree with someone, don't tip-toe around with "I don't totally agree." Remember your debate lessons. "While he makes several valid points, I disagree." is the correct way to present an opposing viewpoint. Otherwise your writing is just fluff without a backbone.
22. Avoid similes.
23. Be honest.
24. Brevity is preferred.

Left-hand navigation bar is a nice touch to the fact that they have 53 sales positions open. Can't imagine what that would be like. Do you sell on price? Raw page views? Just wondering what the morale must be like with the sales professionals there.

You might know Hans Rosling of TED.com fame for his presentation with the best stats you've ever seen. And while I'm not exactly hanging with Hans Rosling, I will be speaking at the TEDx hosted in San Francisco by the Hult International Business School.

My topic?

Death of a Salesman: Why salespeople are dying everyday, and engineers should be worried.

The sales profession is changing dynamically, especially in the past 10 years.  As products and services become increasingly more complex, the traditional salesperson becomes irrelevant.  The enterprise sale now requires an individual that can organize complicated technical information and explain it in a business setting to senior managers.  This shift fundamentally transforms business transactions and what's known as "the sale."

I'm both delighted and honored to contribute to TED and TEDx.  Many thanks to the Hult International Business School for their hard work organizing the April 14th event.

Somehow found 90 minutes to watch this entire program yesterday - "George Orwell - A life in pictures."

What I learned:

• Was born into "lower end of upper middle class England" and lived among the homeless for two years to understand what it was like to hit bottom so that he could effectively write about it.
• Orwell didn't write "Animal Farm" and "1984" to promote free markets and democracy. As an ardent defender of the working class, he was an anti-totalitarist.
• He believed that one might as well put salt or pepper in their tea if they were inclined to use sugar.  Tea should be strong to the taste, with six scoops without a bag of any kind to
• He fought in the Spanish revolution in the 1930s.
• He wanted Britain to have their own workers revolution that he personally witnessed in Spain.
• The British government didn't want him to publish Animal Farm in 1944 because of the war effort, and suggested that he change the ruling class in the book from pigs to some other animal that would be less offensive.
• He wrote 1984 from his bed, and finishing the book, collapsed from his long bout with tuberculosis and died just weeks later.

Orwell's Rules for Writers

Six Tips on Writing from John Steinbeck