Steve Jobs (38 page)

for themselves. They’ll ask themselves, “Is my shirt wrinkled?

What is that person in the third row thinking?” In other words,

it’s all about you. Instead, go from “me” to “we.” Shift the focus

to what your product or service means to the lives of your lis-

teners, and be confident in your preparation. I have worked

with several executives who are worth millions (in some cases,

billions) of dollars. Guess what? They get nervous speaking in

front of groups. Funny thing about nerves, though—the more

you practice, the less nervous you will be.

I know a world-famous business leader who gets very ner-

vous before major presentations. He gets over it by preparing to

the extreme. He knows the content on every slide and exactly

what he is going to say. He arrives early to the venue so that he

can test the audio and projector and advance through his slides.

This particular executive even knows where the lights are in the

room, so he is never in shadow. That’s preparation! He might

get nervous, but his routine makes him feel much more confi-

dent, and he is considered one of the best speakers in corporate

America.

Golfer Vijay Singh hits thousands of balls a day to prepare

for a tournament. Olympic gold-medal winner Michael Phelps

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swims fifty miles a week to prepare for a competition, and Steve

Jobs spends hours of grueling practice before a keynote presenta-

tion. Superstar performers in all fields leave nothing to chance.

If you want to thrill any audience, steal a page from the Jobs

playbook and start practicing!

D IR EC TO R ’ S N OT E S

 Practice, practice, and practice some more. Don’t take

anything for granted. Review every slide, every demo,

and every key message. You should know exactly what

you’re going to say, when you’re going to say it, and how

you’re going to say it.

 Record your presentation. Spend a couple of hundred

bucks on a camcorder and record yourself. You don’t

need to record the entire presentation. The first five

minutes should give you plenty of information. Look

for distracting body language and verbal tics, or fillers.

When possible, review the video with someone else.

 Use the bucket method to prepare for tough questions.

You will find that most lines of questions will fall into

one of seven categories.

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166

Wear the

Appropriate

Costume

It is hard to think that a $2 billion company with 4,300-plus

people couldn’t compete with six people in blue jeans.

STEVE JOBS, RESPONDING TO AN APPLE LAWSUIT AGAINST HIM

AFTER HE RESIGNED TO FORM NeXT

Steve Jobs is the anti-Cher. In her Vegas concert, Cher

and her dancers had 140 costume changes; Jobs has one

costume for every performance. For presentations, Jobs

always
wears a black mock turtleneck, faded blue jeans,

and white sneakers. If you want to get more specific, he wears

a
St. Croix
sweater,
Levi’s 501
blue jeans, and
New Balance
running shoes. Not that it matters much, because you’re not going

to dress like him. He can get away with it because he’s Steve Jobs

and you’re not. Seriously. When you’re a business legend who is

credited with reinventing the entire computer industry, you can

show up in pretty much anything you want.

Although most people are familiar with Jobs’s black shirt

and blue jeans attire (even “The Simpsons” cartoon creators

dressed the Jobs character in jeans and a black mock for an epi-

sode in 2008), Jobs did not always dress this way. When Jobs was a young man trying to be taken seriously by investors and

the public, he dressed much more conservatively. The Jobs of

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1984 looked a lot different from the Jobs of 2009. The first cover

of
Macworld
magazine in January 1984 showed Jobs standing behind a desk with three of the original Macintosh computers.

He was wearing a brown pin-striped suit, brown tie, and white

shirt. Yes, Jobs once donned pinstripes. He wore an even more

conservative outfit for the actual presentation when he unveiled

the Macintosh, appearing in a white shirt, gray slacks, a dark

blue double-breasted blazer, and a green bow tie. Imagine, Jobs

in a bow tie! It’s true.

Jobs is smart. His wardrobe always reflected the leader he

wanted to become. He was well aware of the impression clothes

could leave on people. While Jobs was away from Apple, he

pitched his new company, NeXT, to Bank of America. Dan’l

Lewin, NeXT’s marketing executive, showed up at Jobs’s house

in blue jeans to accompany him to the meeting. Jobs walked out

wearing an expensive Brioni suit from Wilkes Bashford. “Hey,”

Jobs said, “we’re going to the bank today.
”1
For Jobs, jeans were appropriate for the office, but not the bank. Now you might be

confused. Jobs wore a suit to the bank and jeans in the office.

What lesson does this hold for the rest of us? A true military

hero, former U.S. Army ranger Matt Eversmann, once gave me

the best piece of wardrobe advice I’d ever heard. Eversmann led

troops in a fierce battle in Mogadishu, Somalia, in October 1993.

The battle was turned into a movie called
Black Hawk Down
. I

met Eversmann at a business conference and asked him for some

leadership advice I could share with my readers. Eversmann told

me that great leaders dress a little better than everyone else. He

said that when he would meet a subordinate for the first time,

his shoes were shinier, his whites were whiter, and his pants

were better pressed.

I never forgot that piece of advice. I later interviewed George

Zimmer, the founder of the Men’s Wearhouse clothing chain.

Zimmer agreed with Eversmann but added, “appropriate for the

culture.” It makes sense: you wouldn’t show up for the company

picnic in the same attire that you wear to the office. Also, dif-

ferent companies have different cultures. Apple is rebellious,

creative, and committed to “think different.” It’s OK for an

WEAR THE APPROPRIATE COSTUME
197

Apple employee to wear more informal attire than a Wall Street

executive.

Once you invent a product that changes the world, we can

talk about dressing down. For now, here’s the best wardrobe

advice you’ll ever hear: always dress a little better than everyone

else, but appropriate for the culture.

D IR EC TO R ’ S N OT E S

 Dress like the leader you want to become, not for the

position you currently have. Great leaders dress a little

better than everyone else in the room. Remember, when

Jobs was looking for funding at the bank, he dressed in

an expensive suit.

 Wear clothes that are appropriate for the culture. Steve

Jobs can get away with a black mock, blue jeans, and

running shoes because everything about his brand is

built on the concept of disrupting the status quo.

 If you’re going to dress like a rebel, dress like a well-off

rebel. Jobs wears St. Croix sweaters. It might look like a

black T-shirt—but at least he spends money on it.

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Toss the Script

Be a yardstick of quality. Some people aren’t used

to an environment where excellence is expected.

STEVE JOBS

Steve Jobs is the consummate presenter for twenty-first-

century audiences who want to engage in conversations,

not lectures. Jobs has a casual speaking style, an informal-

ity that, as discussed in the preceding chapter, comes from

hours of practice. Practice allows him to work largely without a

script. During demonstrations, Jobs conceals notes discreetly from

the audience but never reads them word for word. The notes serve

only as cue cards for the next step in the demonstration. Jobs per-

forms largely without notes for the majority of his presentation.

As suggested in Scene 8, most presenters create “slideuments”:

documents masking as slides. Slideuments act as a crutch for medi-

ocre presenters who read every word on the slide, often turning

their backs to the audience to do so. Jobs does have a script—largely

in his head. His slides, which are highly visual, act as a prompter.

Each slide has one key idea and one idea only.

After Jobs pulled the new MacBook Air from a manila enve-

lope in the “holy shit” moment at Macworld 2008, he explored

the new computer in more detail. As you can see in Table 17.1, his

slides contained very few words but contained just enough infor-

mation to act as a prompter for one idea—one theme per slide
.1

Jobs went on to explain that MacBook Air had the same

processor used in all of Apple’s other notebooks and iMacs. He

marveled at the fact that Intel could step up to the challenge,

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TABLE 17.1
ONE THEME PER SLIDE AT JOBS’S MACWORLD

2008 PRESENTATION

STEVE’S WORDS

STEVE’S SLIDES

”It’s the world’s thinnest notebook.”

Text only: “World’s thinnest

notebook”

“Open it up and it has a magnetic latch;

Photo of computer with the

no hooks to catch on your clothing.”