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Kindle Notes & Highlights
by
Bill McGowan
Read between
February 18 - February 19, 2023
Speak little, do much. —BENJAMIN FRANKLIN
Think twice before you speak, because your words and influence will plant the seed of either success or failure in the mind of your listener. —NAPOLEON HILL
Every time you speak, it’s an opportunity to inform, influence, and inspire.
Communication skills make you more promotable.
Your listener is capable of absorbing 400 words per minute, yet you are capable of voicing only 125.
Winston Churchill said, “You’ll never get to your destination if you stop to throw stones at every dog that barks.”
It’s the ole Don Draper adage, “If you don’t like what’s being said, change the conversation.”
On average, five times as many people read the headline as read the body copy. When you have written your headline, you have spent eighty cents out of your dollar. —DAVID OGILVY
HOW NOT TO OPEN A CONVERSATION
Agenda Setting
Clock Watching
Gratuitous Gratitude
The Buried Lead
“I’m So Excited, and I Just Can’t Hide It!”
Falling Flat with Stand-Up
Your Conformity Zone
BEING PITCH PERFECT MEANS NEVER HAVING TO SAY YOU’RE SORRY
The one thing you have that nobody else has is you. Your voice, your mind, your story, your vision. So write and draw and build and play and dance and live as only you can. —NEIL GAIMAN
In this way, good communicators are a lot like film directors. They tell stories that paint visual pictures in the minds of their listeners. They provide rich detail but also manage to keep it tight.
When formulating your build: Don’t assume your audience knows everything.
Try to keep the number of moving pieces in your narrative as few as possible.
Make the build collapsible.
No matter how long or short your build, you want it to create a sense of anticipation.
Your voice has three tools: pitch (the tone, high or low), pace (the speed), and projection (the volume).
. . . no word was ever as effective as a rightly timed pause. —MARK T
. . . state your position with utter conviction, as the French do, and you’ll have a marvelous time! —JULIA C
Wisdom is the reward you get for a lifetime of listening when you’d have preferred to talk. —DOUG LARSON
In all the seasons Mad Men has been on the air, one Draper mantra has risen above all others: “If you don’t like what’s being said, change the conversation.”
Robert McNamara said one of the things he learned as secretary of defense during the Vietnam War was “Don’t answer the question you were asked. Answer the question you wish you were asked.”
Don’t find fault, find a remedy; anybody can complain. —HENRY FORD
Fairness + Honesty + Empathy = Good Outcome.
you always meet people twice in this business, once on the way up and again on the way down.
His feedback on the stories we produced was about as helpful as the emperor’s critique of Mozart’s operas in Amadeus: “Simply too many notes.”
Everything is practice. —PELÉ
