Talk Like TED: The 9 Public-Speaking Secrets of the World's Top Minds

If you can’t explain your big idea in 140 characters or less, keep working on your message. The discipline brings clarity to your presentation and helps your audience recall the one big idea you’re trying to teach them.

You’ll become a more interesting person if you’re interested in learning and sharing ideas from fields that are much different from your own

True persuasion occurs only after you have built an emotional rapport with your listeners and have gained their trust.

I am urging you, however, to embrace a personal story that has meaning to you and to your topic, own it, and share it.

Vonnegut’s writing advice: “give the reader at least one character he or she can root for.”

When you tell a story, by all means use metaphors, analogies, and vivid language, but eliminate clichés, buzzwords, and jargon. Your audience will tune out phrases they’ve heard a million times.

people don’t know what they want and, if they do, they have a hard time articulating what they truly desire.

People are more engaged with products when they know where those products come from and if they get to know the real people behind those products.

Empathy is the capacity to recognize and feel emotions experienced by somebody else. We put ourselves in the shoes of the other.

When God puts a dream in your heart, you know you’re going to succeed. Every ‘no’ means you’re one step closer to ‘yes.’