We’ve all heard the song that begins, “Tis a gift to be simple…”, but it didn’t really hit me what a gift it is until two weeks ago.

I was leading a presentation workshop with a sales team, and they were each giving talks about new products for 2010. They were all fairly good presenters, as they present to clients on a regular basis.

The talks were only five minutes long, yet half of them were so complicated, I left not knowing what the message of each talk was. And the reason I didn’t know is because they lacked Simplicity.

If you embrace no other concept but this one in 2010 in your quest to present like a pro, make it be Simplicity.

Here are suggestions on how to deliver a message that is clear and succinct in every pitch, meeting or presentation you give:

- Question: What is your Main Message? What one thing would you like your audience to remember from your remarks? Is it the security of your site’s shopping cart? The importance of refinancing your home in the next 15 days? The need for your group to be prompt to meetings? If it’s not clear to you, it won’t be to your audience either.

- Open with it: In your opening remarks, state your point of view for the audience so that they know where you stand and what they can expect from your talk. It need not be the first thing out of your mouth, but it should be clearly stated in the first minute or two.

- Repeat it: Throughout your talk, return to your Main Message periodically. Repetition is a great device in speaking.

- Leave out the details: If your audience is interested, they can ask questions to drill deeper into your content. Often, however, they just want a high level view of your topic, and then they want to go to their next meeting. Seriously consider removing 25% of your content and focus on clarity and simplicity.

- Symbolize your message: Use a symbol or visual to convey your message. Steve Jobs pulled a MacBook Air out of an envelope to show how thin it is. The message of his keynote was: “MacBook Air – The World’s Thinnest Notebook.”

- Simplify your slides: Consider, for once, having one word, phrase, number or image on a slide. That’s it.

- Close with it: The last thing people hear is what they remember most. Don’t clutter your closing remarks with new information or unnecessary fluff. Close with your Main Message.

In the spirit of simplicity, I’m going to end here. Keep it Simple.

Steve Jobs is widely regarded as one of the best presenters on the world business stage. His keynote addresses at MacWold, introducing such ground-breaking products as the MacIntosh, the iPod and the iPhone, are legendary for their simplicity, entertainment and ability to raise Apple’s stock price.

I just ordered a copy of “The Presentation Secrets of Steve Jobs,” by Carmine Gallo, based on a review I read of the book. The reviewer, Loyd Eskildson (eskildsonloyd@hotmail.com), wrote such an insightful and succinct summary of the book’s main points, I am reprinting it here with his permission.

Summary of the book “The Presentation Secrets of Steve Jobs,” by Carmine Gallo.

1) What is the one big idea you want to leave with your audience? It should be short, memorable, and in subject-verb-object sequence.

2) Identify why you’re excited about this company/product/feature, etc.

3) Write out the three messages you want the audience to receive, and develop metaphors and analogies in support.

4) Include a demonstration if your product topic lends itself to such. (Eg. pull the product out of your pocket if it is ‘pocket-sized.’

5) Invite partners and customers to participate.

6) Include video clips if helpful, but limit to three minutes or less.

7) Answer the “Why should I care?” that’s in the audience’s mind. Have a passion for creating a better future.

Having an enemy (eg. IBM, Microsoft) helps visualize ‘the problem’ you’re solving.

9) Simplify your presentation (and products).

10) Make numbers meaningful - eg. “Stores 1,000 songs,” not “5 GB memory.”

11) Don’t use ‘bullet-point’ style visuals; instead, use short phrases that accompany your talk, or pictures.

12) Practice, practice, practice - and ask for feedback.

I’ll be posting my own write-up of the book soon, but these tips were too useful to keep from you. Enjoy, and let me know the best book you have read in the last year.

Be the Duck: The Key to Calm

January 10, 2007: Apple CEO Steve Jobs was rolling out the iPhone at MacWorld. It was an event that, as he correctly predicted, would “reinvent the phone.” A third of the way through his keynote, however, his slides froze. He tried his clicker. He tried his other clicker. He went to his laptop. Nothing helped.

Most people, if rolling out a franchise product in front of thousands of people and something went wrong, would panic. But Jobs is a master. He casually said, “Guys, the slides are stuck.” Then he made a joke about “Somebody backstage is scrambling,” which everyone knew to mean, “Somebody is fired.”

Next, he launched into a story of a prank he and Apple Co-Founder Steve Wozniak used to pull in high school. They had invented a TV jammer and would wander the dorms of UC Berkeley with it in their pockets. They would go into dorm rooms where people were watching Star Trek. At the critical time in the episode, Woz would “jam” the signal and the TV would go to static. Someone would jump up in a panic and adjust the rabbit ears, and when they were in their most awkward position, standing on one leg leaning over the back of the TV, Woz would un-jam it, and Spock would return. The adjuster feared that if he moved, he’d lose the picture again, and would stand on one leg for the rest of the show.

By the time Jobs finished spinning the tale, the slides were fixed, and he seamlessly carried on with his now historic keynote.

What does a Steve Jobs keynote have to do with you and me? What he displayed in that crucial moment was calm. He was calm when by all rights he should have panicked.

There are many instances in professional and personal life where something goes wrong, and our instinct is to panic:

- Your projector freezes
- You lose your place in the presentation and have no idea what to say - Someone asks a difficult or antagonizing question in a meeting, and all eyes are on you
- You get an angry or emotional call from a client
- Your wife asks you what you do all day at work

Whatever happens, if you want to give an air of calm, poise and professionalism, you must be the duck. Picture a duck swimming across a pond; it glides across the water effortlessly. Under water, however, its feet are paddling like mad.

When presenting, your mind is like the duck’s feet. At any given point in a presentation, you are thinking about five or six different things (your content, the slides, your delivery, the person texting, the noise from the next room…). Inside, you feel that people can read your mind; they know how nervous you are and are judging you harshly.

But they can’t, and they don’t, and they aren’t. You remain calm. You pause to collect your thoughts. You make a self-deprecating joke that breaks the tension. You admit that you don’t know the answer to the question and promise to get back to the hostile questioner with the answer.

And you move on. If you’ve ever seen yourself present on video, then you know the difference between how you feel (horrible, nervous, panicky) and how you appear. Usually, you appear much calmer than you feel.

Be the duck. Don’t make a big deal of the situation. If you’ve lost your place, choose something to say; they have no idea what you were going to say. Refocus and move on, because perception is reality. What’s real for your audience is not the panic you feel, but the calm, poised professional they see in front of them.

For an entertaining video of Steve Jobs making dozens of blunders over the years, click here.

What do dark chocolate, red wine, sunshine and sex have in common? They’re all good for you. And if you want more good news, here’s another one to add to the list: Coffee.

If you’re like me, you believe studies that support your actions, particularly the indulgences. I’m here to report that not only is coffee good for your health, it’s also good for business.

Coffee’s health benefits

Let’s start with the health benefits. Coffee has gotten a bad rap over the years. There’s no doubt that some people abuse it, drink it too late in the day or have health conditions that contraindicate its consumption. But many of the early worrisome studies have been refuted by bigger, more rigorous studies.

An article in the December 19, 2005 US News & World Report cited the following benefits to caffeine:
- Improves your mental acuity
- Is an antidepressant and improves your mood: 2-3 cups a day over 10 years reduced a study’s risk of suicide by 1/3.
- Improves athletic performance by reducing muscle fatigue, boosting speed, endurance, coordination and tolerance to pain.
- Is one of the highest foods/drinks in antioxidants (higher than blueberries, broccoli & most other vegetables)
- Protects against diabetes, Parkinson’s disease (it inhibits brain cell destruction that leads to Parkinson’s), gallstones and some cancers (like liver & bladder cancer).

Harvard Health Publications chimed in with the following:

- Does not increase blood pressure. Long-term studies show that coffee may not increase the risk for high blood pressure over time, as previously thought.
- Lower rates of cancer. In a 2008 study, researchers found that coffee drinkers were 50% less likely to get liver cancer than nondrinkers. A few studies have found ties to lower rates of colon, breast, and rectal cancers.
- Diabetes. Heavy coffee drinkers may be half as likely to get diabetes as light drinkers or nondrinkers. Coffee may contain chemicals that lower blood sugar. A coffee habit may also increase your resting metabolism rate, which could help keep diabetes at bay.

How, then, does caffeine work its magic? The simplest explanation I’ve found is that it binds to receptors in the brain, heart, skeletal muscle, and fat cells. It works mainly by stimulating your central nervous system. By doing so, it increases your heart rate, decreases feelings of pain and fatigue, and increases the burning of fat.

The Business Side of Coffee

Now you know the health benefits to drinking caffeine in moderation. But how, you ask, can it be good for your business? When I lived in London in 1992, I managed a high-end health club in the Financial District. My main duty was to sell memberships to people who had never seen a club of this caliber, and certainly never considered paying 600 pounds to join one.

Each morning, I made a game called “Robert Gets the Cash Calls.” At the same time each day, I poured myself a strong cup of good coffee, pulled out my list of leads and contacts, and made sales calls. All the other managers/salespeople watched me lead the company in sales from my first month at work.

What did coffee have to do with this, and why should you care? Coffee helped in the following ways:

1. It made me feel good physically and mentally
2. It gave me energy
3. It made me sharper
4. It helped me enjoy making the calls
and, perhaps most important of all,
5. It created a routine

The other managers would make their calls when they had a few minutes or when the general manager was watching. I made them every morning at 9:00 for an hour.

The most important thing you have to do each day is the one you will put off. For those of us in sales, it’s picking up the phone. Each of us knows what we are putting off. Coffee creates a ritual and gives you the lift to tackle the real work of the day.

Well, my cup is empty. I think I’ll pour just one more…

For the last 3 weeks, my family and I have been in Sayulita, Mexico. One of my goals during our stay here (even in Mexico, I feel the need to set goals ) is to become a passable surfer. During my “pre-work surf session” this morning, I was thinking about what it takes to be a good surfer and how many of those same skills apply to selling.

Surfing in Sayulita

So, how are surfing and selling similar? And what can one learn about sales from a few days of catching waves in the warm Mexican Pacific? Read on to see how surfing (or learning about it) can help you be more successful.

The Seven Surfing-Selling Strategies:

1. Go to where the waves are right for you.
Sayulita has warm water and small, slow waves, perfect for a hack like myself. I have no business paddling out in big surf and don’t really want to spend hours in 54-degree water.

Selling lesson: Position yourself in an industry and company that fits your personality, aptitude and skill-set. The best sales skills won’t get you far if you are in the wrong business or industry.

2. Use the right equipment. Nobody was catching the really big waves at Mavericks in California until they started towing people in behind jet skis. I only surf on long boards, as they are easier. You don’t want to surf in cold water without a wetsuit. These are all examples of using the right equipment for your conditions.

Selling lesson: Be prepared. Have the right training, management, CRM system, sales tracking system, and technology at your disposal to be an efficient and predictable selling machine.

3. Position yourself well. If you’re too far inside the breaking waves, you’ll get crushed. If you’re too far out, you’ll never catch them. The people who catch the most waves are the ones that paddle to the wave instead of waiting for it to come to them.

Selling lesson: Put yourself in a position where it’s easy for your customers to do business with you. Get on their radar regularly giving value, invitations, newsletters, blogs, ideas, gifts and referrals.

4. Choose your waves carefully. You can exhaust yourself and get beat up going after every ripple in the ocean. On the other hand, if you’re too selective, you will spend all of your time waiting and very little time surfing. Have patience, and when you see your wave, paddle like hell.

Selling lesson: Decide which prospects you should continue to pursue and which ones are a waste of your valuable time. All prospects are not equal, so do your homework and choose your pursuits carefully.

5. Paddle hard to catch the waves. One of the reasons the good surfers catch so many waves is that, once they decide to go after one, they paddle furiously to catch it.

Selling lesson: If you have a good, qualified prospect, go after it with all you have. Assume that they won’t call back, and go on the offensive with all guns blazing - in a gently persistent way, of course.

6. When you finally catch a wave, stand up and enjoy it. This is why you go through all the abuse of paddling out through the waves, swallowing seawater, getting stung by jellyfish and dealing with the bruises and scrapes.

Selling lesson: Celebrate your sales. Spend some money, pat yourself on the back, brag about your work (especially to your manager). Celebrate your successes; you deserve it.

7. You’re never more fired up than when you’ve had a great ride. Every time I said to myself, “Just one more good wave,” I’d catch one, then find myself paddling back out to catch just one more.

Selling lesson: There’s never a better time to make a sales call than after you have made a sale. Celebrate your success; then get right back on the phone while you are still hot, confident and feeling it and make another call.

Dropping In

Despite all of the above similarities between selling and surfing, there is one major difference: Dropping In.

In surfing, if someone catches the wave first and you get on the same wave, it’s called “dropping in.” Dropping in on someone can be dangerous and is quite frowned upon.

Selling lesson: In sales, you’re allowed – even encouraged – to drop in. Though you should still endeavor not to make enemies, you should NEVER let the fact that your competition is going after the same prospect deter your efforts. Drop in, snag the wave, and ride it all the way to the beach!

Last week, I asked a group of 25 budding entrepreneurs in a sales class I was teaching at San Francisco’s Renaissance Entrepreneurship Center how many people enjoy selling. Two hands went up. A third woman, Paula Tejeda, said she doesn’t really like selling, but she can’t wait to tell people about her Chilean empanadas she sells in San Francisco’s Mission District. (She calls herself “The Girl from Empanada”).

Paula Tejeda at Chile Lindo Delicatessen

She gushed to the class about the savory, crusty pastry shell, the minced meat and onions sautéed with paprika, cumin, salt and pepper, sprinkled with raisins, black olives and hard boiled egg that she bakes to a golden brown perfection. All of this combines to make empanadas, a Chilean staple, that are irresistible. When people walk by her restaurant on 16th Street and smell the pastries, she told us, wild burros could not keep them from coming in to try one.

If you buy one, Paula assured us, you’ll come back for more. Next time, you might buy 10 and put some in the freezer. The time after that, you may just ask Paula if she can make empanadas for your next corporate event.

Is Paula selling? Of course she is. But it doesn’t feel like selling to her.

Empanadas muy ricas

Most people think of selling the way they think of sewage work: it’s dirty and someone else should deal with it. But any entrepreneur worth her weight in empanadas knows that the success of any new business depends on their ability to promote and sell their products and services.

So what can we learn from Paula and her passion for making and moving empanadas?

1. Make sure you are involved in something that you can talk to strangers about excitedly and without hesitation, knowing that they will be better off from it.

2. Get your foot in the door. It’s great to win big contracts, but your goal should always be on closing the deal (or meal, in Paula’s case), in front of you.

3. Call it what you must; spreading the word, getting people excited, inviting or enrolling people, showing/demonstrating your goods. But whatever you do, keep selling.

And next time you’re hungry in San Francisco’s Mission on a weekend (she’ll be open weekdays in September), stop by Chile Lindo at 2944 16th Street (or email her) and ask for Paula. You won’t leave hungry.

If you haven’t read Tim Ferriss’ The 4-Hour Workweek, there’s a good chance you have heard of it. And if you haven’t, I’m here to introduce you to it because I think it can change your life. Maybe not drastic change, but there are ideas and resources in it that can help you create more time, freedom and ultimately enjoy your life more.

The 30-year-old Ferriss is everywhere these days. His book has been a best-seller for months. He speaks 6 languages, runs an international nutritional supplement company, won the Chinese National kickboxing championship and, oddly enough, was a world record holder in tango.

But what I admire most about him is that he is enjoying his life every step of the way. Of course everyone’s first reaction to the title is that he can’t possibly work only 4 hours a week. And no doubt he works 10-20 times that much often. But the difference between Tim and many of us is that he has created a lifestyle for himself where he can work from anywhere and spends large chunks of every year traveling and pursuing his passions (like motorcycle racing, learning languages and martial arts).

So here, from a book that is laden with unique ideas, inspiration and resources, are my favorite nuggets from The 4-Hour Work Week:

Who decided 40 hours is the right amount to work each week?
One of Tim’s tenets is that many of us react and follow other people’s leads when it comes to work and play. His title illustrates this perfectly; who said that 8 hours a day, 5 days a week is the optimal work schedule?

Much of his advice focuses on being more effective, not more efficient. Learn to manage your time better, get rid of tasks that are not essential, and for other things…

Outsource!
This section of the book highlights the growing world of Virtual Assistants (VAs). The idea is that there are people who can, for a very low fee, take work off our hands and do a better job than we could. Spend time doing work that you are good at and enjoy, and either get rid of or outsource the rest. This advice goes for both entrepreneurs and employees.

Tim points out that people use VAs for everything from bookkeeping, website optimization and writing marketing pieces to doing personal tasks and research. He even used a VA to help him find a date! Many of these companies are based overseas and your work often gets done while you sleep.

Here are some of Tim’s favorites Virtual Assistant agencies:
www.yourmaninindia.com
www.brickworkindia.com
www.asksunday.com

Only check email twice a day
This one is huge. Personally, I am addicted to checking email, and it is my undoing. But I’m getting better. Though my laptop downloads messages only once an hour (and I do my best not to check in between), Tim feels this is still too much.

His suggestion? Only check email twice a day. NEVER first thing in the morning. 12:00 and 4:00 are optimal. This allows you to take care of the most important tasks of the day in the morning without being distracted by what he calls the “greatest single interruption of the modern world.”

Propose
Tim suggests we “stop asking for opinions and start proposing solutions.” To increase our leadership abilities, save time and get more of what we want, he proposes we begin proposing. When your friends ask where you should eat or what movie to watch, don’t deflect by saying, “Well, what do you want to do?”

Instead, say, “Can I make a suggestion?” or “I suggest we…What do you think?”

It’s a small action, but people like to be led, and it will help you exercise a very useful skill: decision-making.

Mini-retirements
This is one of my favorite concepts from the book. Tim’s theory is that “capacity, interest and mental endurance all wax and wane,” and that we should plan accordingly. This means alternating between periods of intense activity and rest/enjoyment.

Back to the concept of not waiting for that elusive retirement day (we’ve seen too many people recently lose their hopes of a blissful retirement in the stock market) to enjoy life. Build enjoyment and relaxation into your life–now. Tim’s goal is one month of overseas relocation or “high intensity learning” for every two months of work projects.

Take Fridays off
Nuff said?

Last week, I witnessed the future of presentations, and it lives in Santa Clara, California. And Sunnyvale. And Hyderabad. And Shanghai. And one day soon, in your company’s conference room.

This “future” was used in Fox TV’s 24 to help President Taylor talk with the head of the besieged mythical African country, Sangala. It’s used by the US Department of Defense. It’s used by hundreds of companies around the world for sales presentations, interviews, client meetings, corporate training and focus groups. And then there’s my favorite use: a man in California recently met his soon-to-be bride in an arranged marriage using this technology.

The future I’m talking about is Cisco TelePresence™. TelePresence™ is arguably the most advanced video conferencing technology in the world (another noteworthy one is HP’s Halo). And it is emerging at a time when companies globally are cutting travel budgets and maximizing each (remaining) employee’s output.

Ian Griffin, the President of Northern California’s National Speakers Association chapter, arranged for a group of us to visit Cisco’s TelePresence™ Suites in Sunnyvale, California to see if the technology lived up to the hype. We split into two TelePresence™ rooms, one with six seats and the other with 18, with a Cisco expert in each, to have a virtual meeting.

The whole experience is run by a very smart phone on the desks in each room. There are mics between every two people. Cameras are mounted above the life-size screens in the front of the room and positioned to capture everyone seated at the tables. To start the meeting, you press the start button and begin the meeting as if you were in person, which you kind of are.

Cisco TelePresence™

Sound quality is perfect. So good, in fact, that Rick, the Cisco expert in our room, says that it catches many people off guard. Those under-the-breath comments are now captured for all to hear. The surround sound is so life-like that if a person walks from one part of the room to another, the sound moves with them through the speaker bank across the room. There is no delay, no choppiness and no awkward silence when switching from speaker to speaker.

The video is a bit disarming as well. If you talk to someone’s image on the screen, it looks to the speaker as if you are looking at them. But if the speaker talks into the camera, every person in the room thinks you are talking directly to them. Rick said that because the video is so inclusive and yet a bit mysterious, people stay more involved in meetings. You get the feeling that if you are sneakily checking email on your Blackberry under the desk, someone will be watching you.

We fired questions at the Cisco guys for over an hour. Of course the question was raised, “Don’t you lose something by not being in person? What about wining and dining your client?”

Rick’s answer was that of course meeting in person is important, especially in the beginning. But to not have to fly through O’Hare Airport in February and be able to sleep in your bed at night AND save the company money counts for a lot. In addition to saving time and money, Rick and Brett pointed out that TelePresence™ allows you to include more people in meetings and its simplicity means that people actually use it.

Because the technology is so new, it is still too expensive for many companies to install (one system can run over $300,000). To answer this, Cisco has public sites where, for anywhere from $299 to $899 per hour, you can have your very own TelePresence™ meeting.

When most of us want to videoconference, we still use Skype or something similar. However, TelePresence™ is clearly a glimpse of where corporate meetings and presentations are moving. And I must say that having used it, it lives up to its slogan, “Being Here is Being There.”

If you would like to experience TelePresence™  yourself, Cisco will host groups and individuals for a free demonstration hour at their Santa Clara facility. Contact Bret Chesman at bchesman@cisco.com.

“A good presentation is like a good skirt: long enough to cover all the topics but short enough to keep people’s interest.”

A few weeks ago, I saw a fascinating group of presentations at an event called “Pecha Kucha” that illustrated this statement perfectly. My friend and fellow presentation expert Terry Gault and I went to see what all the hype is about.

Though the topics didn’t all interest me, the speakers and their styles were fascinating. Watching each person amble or race (depending on the speaker) through their talks, a host of best practices were on display. These are the topic of this blog entry, and all of them are geared to helping you be a better speaker.

Watch Pecha Kucha in action

Started in Japan in 2003 by two designers, Pecha Kucha was created as a way for people to showcase their work in an interesting, controlled manner. Held at Autodesk’s museum-like office, it featured 10 speakers discussing a variety of topics. The catch is, each speaker uses 20 slides and has only 20 seconds for each one (6:40 total).

Speakers can discuss anything they like, though most have a design-related angle to them. The slides advance automatically, so the speakers have to be “on it.” Topics that night included art exhibits, modular kitchen pieces and the talk of the evening, Muni Manners.

Here, then, are your top take-aways from Pecha Kucha:

1. Use random bits of interest. One speaker peppered his talk with photos of his friends and family on the beach, drinking beer and cooking, and surprisingly, it worked. Every 90 seconds, your audience’s attention drifts. If you want to keep them, you MUST use a “pattern interrupt” (story, humor, change of voice, movement, break…) of some sort to do so.

2. Use visual slides. There were no boring, bullet-laden slides in these talks! Watch any Steve Jobs presentation, and you’ll see how powerful, even necessary, this is.

3. Make it interesting. The Muni Manners women, Angelie Agarwal and Julie Hayes, gave the night’s top presentation because they were interesting. While discussing public transportation etiquette, they discussed topics like littering, cell phone blabbing and touching oneself inappropriately, all the while showing humorous or distressing images. We couldn’t help but pay attention.

4. Be yourself. The best speakers are always the ones who come across as genuine and personable. Have an opinion, let yourself go and (try to) enjoy the process.

5. “Begin, be brief and be seated.” Still one of the greatest quotes I have heard about giving a toast, the message is the cornerstone of Pecha Kucha. Less really is more sometimes.

6. Imperfect presentation style is tolerable if your content and conviction are solid. Some of the best speakers we saw used lots of verbal crutches, looked at the screen too much and never paused. But because their message and styles were so good, we forgave them and kept listening.

7. Practice. The 20×20 format forces people to keep their messages concise, know what they are going to say for each slide and keep moving. Nothing helps you deliver a great presentation like practicing multiple times–out loud.

If you want to watch some refreshing presentations, go to the next Pecha Kucha Night in your city. And don’t forget to check out the GrahamComm website for more articles, videos and resources.

I’ve been trying to put a finger on just why I am so impressed with Barack Obama. Watching his historic inaugural speech last Tuesday, one couldn’t help but be impressed by his oratorical skills. He’s clearly one of the best, but that’s too obvious. Maybe it’s because he plays basketball, listens to Jay-Z and seems to be a great father and a down-to-earth person. But that just makes him likable and human.

Once it came to me, however, it all made sense. What I admire most about our new president is what makes him impressive in so many areas. It is, above all the others, what got him to where he is now:

Discipline.

Thinking back to the campaign, there were countless times where his sense of self discipline shone through:

- Taking the high road in the debates and refusing to engage in the type and extent of dirty politicking the other campaign used.
- Making time to exercise (mostly playing hoops) everywhere he went on the campaign trail despite his busy schedule.
- While Hillary was doing shots, eating hot-wings and chugging beers in bars (some of my own favorite pastimes), Obama stuck to his fish, rice and spinach diet (except when indulging in Chicago’s famous Harold’s Chicken, for which he can be forgiven).
- Not only writing the majority of his speeches, but committing them almost entirely to memory. Obama’s speech writers apparently have a pretty easy job.
- Generously and genuinely acknowledging John McCain during his acceptance speech and never gloating (some say he didn’t celebrate his historic win enough).
- Even as he was inaugurated in front of hundreds of thousands of admirers, his resolve and sense of discipline came through, as he kept the nation soberly aware of the situation we are in and the work that must be done.
- And finally, Obama asked each of us to help him turn this country around, roll up our own sleeves and practice a bit of discipline right along with him.

It’s this type of self discipline that put Obama at the top of his Harvard Law School class and helped him become the first African American president of our country. It’s the trait I admire most about our new leader, and I’m pretty sure all of our lives could be improved by practicing a heavy dose of it ourselves.

A few areas that could use more discipline from many of us:

• Exercise
• Eating good, healthy food
• Turning off the TV
• Checking emails once an hour at the most (some, like 4 Hour Work Week author Tim Ferriss suggest a max of twice a day; late morning and late afternoon)
• Being more environmentally conscious (bring bags to the grocery store, bring reusable cups to cafes, use cloth diapers for parents, measure the water for your coffee; one of the biggest water-wasters in the US is throwing out coffee, unplug stuff)
• Hone your speaking and selling skills while the economy is slow (I had to throw that in there)

You get the picture. Let me know how it goes.