Steve Jobs was a legendary keynote speaker known for his insanely great presentations. In his book, Carmine Gallo analyzes the 10 secrets behind Steve Jobs' amazing presentations, which included planning visually without bullet points, introducing a "villain" to set up the hero product, and practicing extensively to make the presentation look effortless. Jobs' presentations followed a three-act story structure and always included a "holy smokes" moment to leave audiences feeling inspired.

1. Ten Secrets that Made Steve Jobs' Presentations
the World's Best
And How You Can Use Them to Astound Your Audience
Genius. Legend. Visionary.
These are but a few of the
superlatives that have been used to
describe the late, great Steve Jobs.
But beyond his business acumen, the
man behind Apple®
computers and
Pixar Animation Studios was perhaps
the greatest keynote speaker of our
time. There are more than 57,000
links to his presentations on
YouTube.
What made his presentations so
amazing that people all over the
world want to see them? More
importantly, how can the rest of us
learn from Steve to inspire our
audiences the way he did?
In his excellent book, The
Presentation Secrets of Steve Jobs:
How to Be Insanely Great in Front of
Any Audience, Carmine Gallo takes us
behind the scenes and offers Steve's
ten secrets that you can use for
presentations that will inform, engage
and, yes, astound your audience.
"My presentation was supposed to
knock your socks off. I guess I got
carried away."
Holy Smokes, Bullets Kill! (And Other Presentation
Tips)
Before planning your presentation, according to Carmine Gallo, it is critical to
know the question that matters most to your audience: "Why should I
care?"1
You need to think about how to inspire your audience. Simply trying to
sell them something doesn't cut it. As Carmine writes, "Your widget doesn't
inspire me. Show me how your widget improves my life, and you've won me
over."2
Here are Steve Jobs' ten secrets for insanely great presentations.3
1. Plan in analog. Brainstorm in advance of creating your presentation.

2. You can use pen and paper, a whiteboard or, better yet, a mind map.
DO NOT use PowerPoint®
to create your presentation—it will be used
only in the final step! (More on this later.)
2. Create Twitter-friendly headlines. Describe your product or service
in 140 characters or less. Preferably, a lot less. Steve introduced the
MacBook Air®
as simply, "The world's thinnest notebook." About the
first-generation iPod®
, he tweeted: "It's one thousand songs in your
pocket."
3. Introduce the villain. Steve saw a presentation as a three-act play
that must tell a story, but what is a story without a hero and a villain?
Before he introduced the famous 1984 ad to a group of Apple
salespeople, he set the stage, casting "Big Blue" as Goliath. "IBM wants
it all," he warned, and defiantly asserted that only Apple stoodin its way.
His dramatic moment sent the crowd into frenzy.
While the villain doesn't have to be a competitor, it must be a common
foe that your audience will want to join with you in rallying against. Your
product is then revealed as the conquering hero.
4. Create visual slides. As Carmine writes, "Neuroscientists are finding
that the best way to communicate information is through text and
pictures, not text alone." As for bullet points, Steve never, ever, used
them and neither should you. Carmine has a section in his book titled,
"Bullets Kill" that describes why you should avoid using PowerPoint to
create your presentation.
"Think about what happens when you open PowerPoint. A blank-format
slide appears that contains space for words—a title and subtitle. This
presents a problem. There are very few words in a Steve Jobs
presentation. Now think about the first thing you see in the drop-down
menu under Format: Bullets & Numbering. This leads to the second
problem. There are no bullet points in a Steve Jobs presentation. The
software itself forces you to create a template that represents the exact
opposite of what you need to speak like Steve!"4

3. Take a look at the following comparison of bullet-point slides compared
to the same information, presented
visually.
5. Practice, a lot. Most people read their presentations off of their
PowerPoint slides. This is why most presentations are boring. Steve
treated every slide as piece of poetry and every presentation as a
theatrical event. He wasn't a natural presenter; he worked very hard at
it. Rehearse your presentation, toss the script and look at your
audience. Practice at making it look effortless.
6. Obey the ten-minute rule. It's a scientific fact that the brain gets
tired after ten minutes. Steve's presentations typically lasted an hour
and a half. He would break them up into short intervals of ten minutes
or less by interspersing videos, demonstrations, or guest speakers.
Don't let your audience get tired or you'll lose them.
A great way to keep your audience's attention when presenting
information is though sequencing, which builds the story within a visual
one step at a time, making the information much easier to digest.

4. 7. Dress up your numbers. We often deal with large numbers or data
that an audience can't comprehend without context. Breaking them
down and presenting numbers visually can overcome this. Notice how
much more effectively the chart below illustrates sales figures as
opposed to a matrix of
data.
8. Reveal a 'holy smokes!' moment. Maya Angelou said, "People will
forget what you said, people will forget what you did, but people will
never forget how you made them fe el." Steve Jobs always produced a
memorable moment in a pre sentation. When he introduced the
MacBook Air, he told his a udience that while everyone had seen manila
envelopes floating around the office, what they had never seen was
someone pulling a notebook computer out of one—which is precisely
what he did. The audience went wild and images of that moment remain
emblazoned in people's minds four years later.
9. Sell dreams, not products. When it looked at the iPod, the world saw
a music player. What Steve Jobs saw was a tool to enrich people's lives.
Howard Schultz of Starbucks didn't have a passion to sell coffee; his
vision was to create an experience: a 'third place' between home and
work where people would want to gather. The dream met the
customer's need and the product sales took care of itself.
10.Have fun! When was the last time you saw someone enjoying giving a
presentation? Steve Jobs had fun in every keynote. He made jokes at
his own expense. While most people give presentations to deliver
information, Steve always created an experience that his audience
would enjoy and remember. Most importantly, he sold them on
becoming a part of his dream, not his product.