The lessons we can learn from actors go way beyond how to communicate more successfully. The world of performance offers lots of important life lessons as well. Acting is about taking risks, making clear choices and doing ridiculously embarrassing things in public and living to tell about it. (A particular career lowlight of mine was … Read more
Humor can be most effective when it surprises you — when it comes from an unexpected source or during an otherwise serious occasion. (If you’ve ever gotten the giggles during, say, a funeral, you know what I mean.) This weekend I was scanning the site of a local charity, looking for donation guidelines. I’m in … Read more
With Mad Men finally, finally returning Sunday night, it’s got me thinking about the show’s most memorable moments. Moments that are not just memorable, but instructive. I talk a lot about the lessons we can draw from Mad Men. In a world so often full of needless jibber-jabber, Mad Men reminds us of the power … Read more
Yesterday I had the privilege to speak to about 270 Georgetown University alumni, offering them some of the top lessons from the book — how to connect with an audience, tell better stories, express yourself visually and stand out in the marketplace and workplace. You can watch it here. They asked a lot of great … Read more
If you want to see the lessons from my book presented live and you can’t spring for a trip to Denver next week (where I’ll be keynoting PRSA’s Western District Conference), you can check out a free webinar I’m doing the week after next. It’s being done through Georgetown University’s Alumni Career Services office, but … Read more
The worst kind of client is the one who sees the cost of everything and the value of nothing. The second worst is a client who treats you like a vendor instead of a partner. Combine those two and you’ve truly got the client from hell. Consider these two experiences. Totally hypothetical. Client A: The … Read more
Google+ is the weirdest social network there is. When it was launched last summer the Internet world was atwitter (so to speak). Afraid of being left behind, people rushed to get on board the new new thing. So it grew at a ridiculously fast rate. And it now has 90 million users. But how many … Read more
There’s plenty of advice to be found on how to prepare for a TV interview. Talk in concise soundbites. Look at the interviewer, not the camera. Don’t wear crazy patterns. But sometimes it’s the little things they don’t tell you that can make or break the interview. Here are seven practical lessons I’ve learned from my … Read more
From finding the perfect mate online to delivering a killer presentation to nailing a job interview — it’s all about “show/don’t tell.” Here I break it down for Stefan Holt on NBC Chicago this past weekend. With references to The Office, Ricky Gervais, Steve Jobs, match.com, Second City, and more. All packed into three minutes, … Read more
A job interview, like every other interaction, is a performance. If you want to succeed, you need to put your heart and soul into it. As usual, Hollywood provides a lesson in how to do that. Among the many classes I took at Second City’s training center was a course on writing for TV and … Read more