• Home
• Tom's books
• About Tom
• Contact

 

Watch highlights from Tom's speeches

 

The Business of Belief: Why We Believe What We Believe in Business and Life

 

• Top posts

1. The marketplace is deaf

2. Breakout, breakthrough or breakdown

3. Branding is a dangerous concept

Why do you do what you do?

Walt Disney's mantra was, "I don't make movies to make money.  I make money to make movies."  What about you?  Why do you make money?

Think really hard and long about that simple question.  If you've been putting off being passionate about your work in order to make a lot of money, now may be the time for you to make a change.  Why?  Because it appears to me that the business of making money simply to make more money may be quickly coming to an end.

I don't write and speak to make money.  I make money so that I can continue to edutain people about how best to connect their products, services, causes and ideas with their chosen audiences.  And the day my intellectual curiosity and passion pulls me in a different direction is the day that I stop doing what I do.

I wrote "edutain," because I know perfectly well that most people who've heard me speak over the past ten years have not changed their behavior.  I've watched.  :)  And that's why if you're trying to get people to change their behavior, you should not emulate the presentation styles of people like me, Godin and Peters.  We don't present to gain consensus.  We present to inspire the crowd, and hopefully transform the thinking of the handful of inquisitive and receptive listeners.

If you're interested in creating communication that does drive group consensus and specific action, I suggest you read my friend Andrew Abela's new book, Advanced Presentations by Design. It shows you "how to adapt your presentation to different audience personality preferences, what role your data should play and how much of it you need, how to turn your data into a story, and how to design persuasive yet comprehensible visual layouts."

And once you've finished it, simply follow his sage advice and this advice from the great English photographer Cecil Beaton, and you will compel your audience to act:

"Be daring, be different, be impractical, be anything that will assert integrity of purpose and imaginative vision against the play-it-safers, the creatures of the commonplace, the slaves of the ordinary."

Have a great week and stay passionate!

Posted September 29, 2008
Email this post     

The comments to this entry are closed.