“Steve Jobs turned presentations into an art form because he approached keynote presentations like an artist,” Carmine Gallo reports for Forbes. “Musicians, actors, and designers master their crafts over many hours — 10,000 hours, according to writers like Malcolm Gladwell. Mastering public speaking skills is no exception and Steve Jobs was an artist in the field.”
“In the new book, Becoming Steve Jobs, authors Brent Schlender and Rick Tetzeli reveal some new insights into the intense preparation that made Steve Jobs a master presenter,” Gallo reports. “According to the authors, ‘Steve would rehearse endlessly and fastidiously.’ The book contains exclusive behind-the-scenes photos of Jobs, alone on stage, reviewing scripts the day before a MacWorld keynote. In another photo Jobs is sitting off to one side of the stage watching Apple vice president Phil Schiller practice his portion of a presentation. ‘Rehearsals for product presentations were always intense.'”
“Steve Jobs wasn’t a natural speaker,” Gallo writes. “He worked at it really, really hard.”
Read more in the full article here.
MacDailyNews Take:
Simple can be harder than complex; you have to work hard to get your thinking clean to make it simple. – Steve Jobs
Because he practiced. He was about the DETAILS (does he BACK of the dresser ring a bell?) that others scoffed @. Good LORD.
Well said. Luck is where opportunity meets preparation.
“If I don’t practice one day, I know it; two days, the critics know it; three days, the public knows it.”
– Jascha Heifetz, American musician
A photo of the component layout of a MacBook Pro adorns my 27″ desktop because it is some badass beautiful.
The really beauty was that whilst he was practised he wasn’t overly rigid, he was aware that things can go wrong, that the room can respond differently to things meaning you might have to slow down or speed up a bit to work around that. You see a lot of other people and they either have no clue what is happening, or it’s so drilled that there is no life to it.
In contrast Steve Ballmer looked like he stumbled in unrehearsed and uninformed from an all night binger after a brief stop through the bad fashion department and a nice sweat spritz.
I’ll never forget the panic of that guy demoing the Surface when it crashed on him mid-presentation to large audience. Poke poke poke…um…poke poke poke… run over and grab a back up… poke some more… disaster. Yeah, he doesn’t work for Microsoft anymore.
Heh heh. Yeah you couldn’t have a much worse presenter displaying your products convincing no one than maybe that kid playing banjo in DELIVERANCE.
“Steve Jobs wasn’t a natural speaker”
Not sure about that since there are quite a number of video interviews and statements with Jobs where he is perfectly eloquent, smart and witty in interactive mode.
You can not rehearse that.
Well, i bet it helped he wasn’t forced to use Powerpoint
“…a phone, an iPod and a media player. A phone, an iPod and a media player. Are you getting it now?”
An utterly electric moment. Best ever.
I loved that presentation, he was following the train of thought that a lot of people would make. As soon as I saw the photos of the “old button” phones I knew he was going to release a phone…without buttons.
He had a great presentation style, thanks for the memory.
Enjoy the day.
Very possibly the greatest single presentation ever made by a CEO in history:
As we used to practice in the Army as Instructors…. Prior Preparation and Practice Prevents Piss Poor Performance. PPPPPPP 🙂
It’s not exactly news that Jobs rehearsed presentations over and over.
There is only one way to make something look easy: Hard work in the form of constant repetition.