New Perspectives on PowerPoint - Geetesh Bajaj

Speaking with TJ Walker, dissecting the communication skills and practices of world class leaders.

Our special guest this episode is internationally renowned PowerPoint expert Gitesh Bajaj. He is the founder of InDesign, one of the most well known websites and newsletters read by millions each month on all aspects of the technology of PowerPoint. In this show you're going to learn some real insights. I know I learned a lot. Like what is the foolproof way of actually starting a content website and making money? It's very different from a lot of strategies you typically hear. He goes into exactly how he uses technology when creating PowerPoint presentations and has some interesting frames ways of looking at this. He says you should look at a PowerPoint slide the same way you look out a window in your own home. A fascinating perspective and he has insights that you may have heard before, but he just says it in an intriguing, memorable way. Just simple tips like when you're giving a PowerPoint presentation, don't impress form. It sounds simple and yet most people don't do it. Now he's a guy who has published half a dozen books, speaks trains all over the world, has millions of readers, viewers, consumers of his content and he does it all from Hyderabad, India. Fascinating personal story how he rose from a family business making food products in India in a time when it was hard to even get a landline, to now becoming a true technology and communications leader around the world. Please settle back and get ready for a great interview.

Gatesh, thanks for being our guest today.

It's wonderful being here today, tj.

Now a lot of our listeners are familiar with your name and who you are because you've done short sort of guests appearances here before where we talk about specific niche issues with PowerPoint. But today is a little different. We want to really go deep, find out more about who you are and how did a guy who lives on the other side of the world, you now live in Hyderabad, India, become so influential throughout the world and especially in the United States when it comes to PowerPoint presentations. As noted in the introduction, you are a Microsoft MVP, a most valuable professional with respect to PowerPoint. You've written half a dozen books on communication. PowerPoint, your cutting edge PowerPoint for dummies is still an extremely popular book and hundreds of thousands of people are reading your newsletter every single week and going to your indesign site. Where did this all start?

I never planned this tj and it just happened. And one thing led to the other. I was fascinated by what I was doing. I was passionate about what I was doing and that's how I got here. It's a journey and I'm on the journey now.

Now what were you doing in say high school or college? Because I remember 10 years ago when I was in Bangalore working with executives at Emphasis, they were telling me that 10 years earlier they had to wait 18 months just to place an order for a phone line. Forget Internet, computer, high speed access. And it was another 18 months before the phone line got put in. So what was your life like growing up in, in a relatively small town in India?

Not, not really a small town. Even, even in those days Hyderabad was the sixth largest city in India and Indian cities are huge. So it was not, probably not as well known outside India. 1.

Well, okay, there goes my, there goes my American bias ignorance. If I haven't heard of it, it must be a small town. So excuse my American ignorance.

That's okay. It's like the world was actually islands of knowledge, I would say segregated away from each other and now everything is just merged and become one big thing. So I think that's changed a lot of things for people all over the world. In the us, in India, elsewhere. So that's how it is. But growing up in India during that sort of environment, see what used to happen, that's true, you had to wait 18 months for a phone, sometimes even more. But that was something like 25, 30 years ago. And I think since 20 years ago a lot of things have been changing. And today it's really important that you put a cross focus on the situation today in India. You can actually walk down, get a phone and probably the phone that's probably the cheapest in the world as far as phone costs go. And everybody has a phone and they have like billions of phones over here. So that's how it's changed over the years.

You've had countless people skip the whole PC generation and just go right from nothing to cellular and mobile technology, which in some cases could be an advantage.

And in some cases not an advantage. Yes, you're right tj.

So what were you doing out of high school, early 20s? And how did you get into the whole PowerPoint world?

Okay, you know something, when I was in the early 20s, we did not really have Internet as we take for granted nowadays. We used to have dial up connections and you could see a black screen DOS like window where you would just go and type something in a terminal style window. And that's how it would work. We would get email and probably go and participate in news groups. That was how the Internet was for me first when I encountered it and had Internet working for me at home. And that gradually changed and now we have really high speed connections so everything's changed. But the important part is that the grounding and what I learned from working on the Internet that way in a more prohibitive way, you know, is something that helps me even today. And a lot of people who just jumped that generation and got straight to mobile technologies, a lot of stuff that they are not aware of and especially when they're troubleshooting, they really get. They don't know what to do. And that sort of grounding really helps me doing troubleshooting and getting out of problem areas.

Now you started InDesign, a website that's also a newsletter a long time ago. That in and of itself is not impressive but what is impressive is you've stuck with it because confession. I've started things like thespeakingchannel.com and the pitching. Well, I've started various online ventures and after about six months, eight months, I found it doesn't get traction, I lose interest and next thing you know you haven't touched it for a year and a half and it's a distant memory and the domain name lapses and that's. That's really the reality of what 98% of people who buy domain names. You're different. How did this happen?

That's probably about the person I am. I really like to. When I do something, I have to do it completely and I just can't leave things. And that's actually a problem for me because other than InDesign I have a whole lot of bunch of other sites which probably don't do half as well, really don't do that well. But I just stick onto them. It's very difficult for me to let go of stuff and as far as InDesign is concerned, that's really been an advantage, as you said.

Now we've linked to InDesign in the show notes. People can check that out for people who haven't been there. Walk us through the site, what it's all about.

I spoke to you a while ago about getting on the terminal like Windows and getting onto newsgroups and that's actually how InDesign started because I would get on newsgroups and have people asking questions on PowerPoint and I was always fascinated by presentations in PowerPoint and I had a bunch of questions that I wanted to ask people and I did not know whom to ask. So those news groups were wonderful and I would just go and ask Questions there and then I found out a lot of questions other people were asking that I could answer and that's what I did.

But then, time out a second. How were you able to answer them? Were you already creating PowerPoints? Were you giving speeches? How did you, you know the answers?

No, not giving speeches at that point of time. I was more of creating PowerPoint presentations then. And there were a lot of things that I wanted to work with PowerPoint and I wanted to know more about it. And asking questions was easier because there are a bunch of wonderful people online answering those questions and called the MVPs. And then I became one of them.

Now what is that? Because I'll be honest with you, I have been in the public speaking world for three decades. I've taught people PowerPoint. Until six months ago, I'm not sure I had ever heard of this phrase mvp. What does it really mean? Why is it significant? Why should people care or respect that?

It's for people to respect that. But the fact is, MVP stands for Most Valuable Professional. It's an award that Microsoft gives out to people who represent some of their technologies. PowerPoint being one of them. There are many, many MVPs all over the world and there are like 30 English speaking PowerPoint MVPs. A lot of them in the US, Canada, Europe.

So when you say many, it's not giving out like party favors. It's not like just being an authorized service technician for a Microsoft computer where thousands and thousands of people can get that. This is a relatively select, small group.

Certainly you cannot become an mvp. You don't decide to be an MVP because it's an award. TJ so you have to be selected and be awarded and you have to be passionate about the technology. And a lot of people ask me, what does it take to be an mvp? And I tell them, if you want to be an MVP and if you want to always continue being one, then what you would do and what you're passionate about and what you're working and how you're sharing your knowledge and being involved with the technology, you would do the same even if you were not an mvp. If that level of passion is there, then that's what sets you apart as an mvp.

A lot of people, young people, myself included, get interested in speaking public, speaking, presenting. Once there's an interest, there are a lot of different avenues to go down. You can obsess over being a motivational speaker and being the next Anthony Robbins. You can focus on being a humorist, maybe even go the stand up comedy route. You seem drawn to the technology side, the slide creation, the PowerPoint slide. How did you get drawn onto that particular aspect of presentation?

I always love to write one and I always love to draw and create designs. I think PowerPoint was a wonderful option for me because it brought my talents together. One and I always like the fact about PowerPoint is that PowerPoint is like a scrapbook where you get content from everywhere and put it all together. You can get a chart from somewhere, you can get your text, you can get video, you can get pictures and you know you can, and even audio stuff and get it all together and make a cohesive pitch to go and present to someone else and go and try and convince them along with your slides. So I think that's something that really made me like PowerPoint a lot.

I never thought of it quite like that. Almost like scrapbooking, which I'm not into, but is a huge, huge worldwide phenomenon where people spend fortunes on scrapbooks.

Absolutely. I've seen that. And I'm not really talking about crafting scrapbooks. I'm just using scrapbook as an analogy here.

Sure. So many people in our audience are communications professionals. They either are giving speeches with PowerPoint or they are responsible for creating PowerPoint or at least overseeing the creation. And the dilemma most of them face is on the one hand, they read books, they go to seminars. You hear people like me say, pictures, pictures, pictures. Focus on one idea per slide, don't use text. But they're in their corporate arena and before you know it, the big boss has said, you know, give me a draft of that PowerPoint. Someone starts writing, someone else adds to that someone else. Before you know it, two months have gone by, 100 man, woman hours have gone by. You've got a 30 page deck that is dense with lots and lots of words, bullet points and complex graphs. That's their reality. If you could step in and have a day to really help them, given that corporate reality, what is your basic advice on how to use PowerPoint effectively?

First of all, when they actually ended up creating a huge slide deck over a period of days or months, and with influences from a whole lot of people, they just bothered about what they want to say and they've left out the most important part, and that is their audience. And they have to start thinking about what the audience wants to hear. Okay. And once they start thinking in those terms, it will make it a whole lot easier for them to understand what to remove from the existing content and what to retain. I'm going to put an analogy Here and try to make it, explain it in an easier way with a real life everyday sample that we all people encounter. And that's a window. And when you have a window in your room and you look out of the window, you only look what's right in front of you. You cannot see what's on the left, what's on the right, what's above you, what's below you, what's behind you. Because the window actually restricts your view to only a certain area that you can see beyond that window. So that's the audience, that's what they want to see. So you have to remove everything that the audience need not see because you have a view of the window and you associated that with a view that the audience is going to get. So the windows are going to act like a framework and then you realize what you want to retain and what you want to remove, and that is what you need to actually make. Because ultimately no one makes a presentation for themselves, they make it for the audience.

Well, ideally they're making it for the audience. Quite often people are making it for themselves. They're thinking, oh, I don't have time to remember or memorize. I'll just use this as my poor man's poor woman's teleprompter. Right?

Yes. Unfortunately, yes, that's the way you're right. But it's not the right way to do it. And you also spoke about text and pictures earlier and that's a very good definition. And it's really good to use more visuals than text. But even more important than anything, I'd rather have a presentation which has got more text and is geared to the audience, rather than having a presentation that has less text and more pictures, but more geared towards what the presenter wants to tell them rather than what they want to hear.

You are listening to Speaking with TJ Walker. This is the program that talks to world class leaders and dissects how they communicate and what they are communicating. Our special guest today is Gitish Bajaj. He is the founder of InDesign, one of the most prominent sites in the world for PowerPoint, PowerPoint templates, PowerPoint presentation skills and tips. He's also the publisher of the InDesign newsletter that goes out to hundreds of thousands of people all over the globe. Giddish, Is there a particular PowerPoint that you can put your finger on that you think, wow, that's the best PowerPoint I've ever seen. And I'm using the term PowerPoint to mean just generically computer graphics. So I'M including, of course, Apple's version of that. So when I asked that question, some people mentioned various Steve Jobs presentations. But is there a particular presentation that you can think of, and it doesn't have to be somebody famous, or certainly it doesn't have to be an American that really stands out in your memory, is just a great presentation and a great use of PowerPoint?

Frankly, no. And I'll tell you why I don't restrict myself to something that's been used as a presentation. Why? Because every audience is different. I just can't go and say that this is going to work for this particular audience or this is going to work for me or. Or this is going to work for someone else. At the end of the day, the most successful presentation, the best presentation has a few characteristics. One, it is geared to the audience. Two, it's got a simple message that the audience can understand, and three, they'll remember that when they step out of the room. So any presentation that fulfills those three parameters, I think it's got a chance to be among the most successful presentations in the world.

I have a hard time with a question too. Although when pushed, I will point out Steve Jobs presentation when he was unveiling the iPhone, because I do remember very distinctly, he said, basically, why are we here? And he put up a picture of an ipod. He says, you know what that is? And then he said, you know what this is? That picture came down and he put up another picture of a flip phone. He says, you know what that is?

Yes.

What are we going to do today? And the two pictures merged together into an iPhone. He says, introducing the iPhone. So it was one image at a time. You knew what one thing was, you knew what the other thing was. And when you saw them blend together, you could figure out, oh, it's now a phone that's also an ipod for all your music. Isn't that neat? So here it is. What is that 12 years later and I can remember exactly what's on the slides. Whereas most PowerPoint presentations, if you paid me a ton of money to say what I saw two minutes earlier, I wouldn't be able to tell you. To me, that's sort of the ultimate test. Can you remember it?

I agree with that. And I think Steve Jobs presentation of the launch of iPhone was definitely among the biggest, best presentations ever done. And the success was in no small measure to his personality, his delivery, and the way he got the message across. And you remember the three top things that I spoke about that any presentation which has to be Successful. The best presentation needs to have Steve Jobs presentation had all three of them. It was for the audience. It had a wonderful message that he gave out and it's remembered even up to today. Okay, so definitely what Steve Jobs presented that day is something as a lesson that all of us have to understand and try and implement it in our presentations. But it needs a lot of work. You also spoke a while ago about, I don't have time and I'll just go and present what I have. But Steve Jobs, even being one of the best presenters in the world, would practice for days at the end for every presentation that he gave.

And he was a pretty busy guy because if you're managing either the largest or one of the top 10, depending on when you're pinpointing his tenure, one of the 10 largest companies in the world, there are a lot of demands on your time. So I always like to ask people, you say you're busy. Are you really busier than Steve Jobs was? Ronald Reagan rehearsed his speeches. Are you really busier than the President of the United States? What people really mean is, I place a low priority on public speaking because my email is more important. That's really what people mean.

They mean a lot of other things. There's another analogy that I typically use is like when a company has got to make a website, they get a high level design agency and they'll pay them a huge amount of money and make sure that it works. And it gets to probably millions of people, okay? And then when they want to make a company brochure, they probably print a few thousand copies and again, they'll get a nice high level design agency and pay them a large amount of money to create them and get it across to there. But when they want to make a presentation, and that presentation is going to be delivered only to one person, and that one person is going to decide the future of your company. And then what do you do? You get someone in house to just create a bunch of slides and give it to you.

And that person maybe just learned how to create basic text on a PowerPoint slide the week before at lunchtime, spending a half an hour doodling around. Now smarter companies will hire experts, and that's part of your business. Companies all over the world, major institutions, come to you for help with their PowerPoint slides, their creation. Walk us through, what is it you do, what's the starting point and what's the final product?

The starting point is, I'll just put it in very simple terms, is to make the presenter the company who's making the presentation understand what they want to say. A lot of times they know what they want to say, but it's hidden somewhere in the back of their head to get that out from them, to do brainstorming with them to get a story out of that and to find out what their audience wants. And then there are two stories. There's a story that they want to tell, and there's a story that the audience wants to hear. To navigate them from what they want to say to what the audience wants to hear is the bigger challenge. So that's what I do. And craft a message with them. And once you have a proper message, it's like this example I gave you, that you're looking through a window. You can't look what's left, what's right, what's top, what's bottom. You can only look at what you can see through the window. When they reach that stage, then I think that's a time when you actually have to go to the design stage of the presentation and then create the slides.

And are there any axioms you feel that, if not ironclad, need to be followed most of the time? Guy Kawasaki, well known advisor to startups, angel investor, venture capitalist, but also presentation expert, famously recommends no more than 10 slides, no more than three bullet points. I think no more than 10 words per bullet point. Do you have any axioms that you feel maybe aren't ironclad but you should follow most of the time?

I have seen Guy Kawasaki present, and he does an amazing job. But, you know, the rule that he talks about, 10 slides, it's not something he follows all the time. And what he's actually, what I think he's trying to tell is try to keep your slides to a minimum. Okay. And that's definitely very, very sound advice because having too many slides is one of the worst things you can do to your presentation about putting axioms there. I think don't try to impress people, just try to inform them. When people try to impress rather than inform, that's where the problem starts. When they try to impress rather than inform, they end up putting too many more slides. They end up spending too much more time. They end up diluting their message, and they end up creating something that people will forget when they step out of the room.

But I want people to think I'm smart.

You can't do that.

I mean, that's the problem. It's, I believe, rooted in insecurity. People feel like, oh, I want to make people think I'm smart. So I'll tell them everything I know and I'll use big words. And if they don't remember it, if they think I'm smart, that'll still be great.

Isn't it better to think that your audience is smart?

Yes. And for them to feel smarter after listening to you, I would say is the ultimate goal.

Yes, definitely.

How do you do that? How do you do that on a regular basis? Because you've been publishing InDesign in your newsletter now for well into your second decade. How do you keep coming up with new stuff? How do you engage people on a topic that some people rightly or wrongly feel like it's a checkbox. Okay, I know word processing. I know Excel spreadsheet. Check, check. Okay, I know PowerPoint. How do you keep coming up with new material, new innovations?

Well, I have the opposite problem. I have so much new material, new content over there, then I have to decide what to actually go and work on and what not to. Okay, so that's how it is. So I really don't have that problem of how to come up with new material.

And for people who are interested, we are linking in the show notes to InDesign and the place where you can sign up for the newsletter. Walk us through what's in a typical week of the newsletter.

It depends on week to week. Some weeks we have too much content, a lot content, more than what we have in other weeks. There are some weeks where I'm not able to put up too much content and that's okay. So as long as I can get across some content to them and be honest and be sincere about what I'm going to get across, I think that's okay because that's what people wanting you to be human and just pull up.

And if you have in front of you pull up this week's or the most recent newsletter and walk us through what is in this most recent newsletter so people can figure out is this something I need or is this something that I should look at once a month? Is this something I should be consuming every chance I get? Or is this something I should recommend to a different person within my organization?

See in this week's newsletter we have an interview with Carmen Simon and she talks about how you can create memorable content and she's written this wonderful book, impossible to Ignore and she's going to be one of the keynote presenters at the upcoming presentation summit 2016 in Las Vegas next month. So I'm speaking to her about what she's going to speak in the conference and this is not only important for people who are coming there, but a lot of knowledge is there for people who are not even going to attend the conference. And then I have a feature with.

A convoluted I should point out for our listeners if they want to know more information about that conference. We did a full in depth, hour long interview with Rick, the conference organizer several weeks ago. So you can look at that in our archive if you're interested in learning more about the conference and you'll be speaking there as well.

No, I don't speak there. I've ended up having so many wearing so many hats there that I'm a sponsor. I also am also at the help center and I don't want to speak there. I have spoken there in the past, but this year I don't want to speak because I want to do a lot of other things over there. So I want to have time to go and meet other people. So that's one of the things that you do over there. And if anyone wants to come to the Presentation Summit in Las Vegas, I think Rick's only got a few slots available and I highly encourage you all to come there. And we actually have people from all over the world coming there. And Rick's got a really amazing thing going and he done this conference for many, many years now I think is the 14th year and have attended each one of them and it's a wonderful place to be.

And unfortunately I won't be at that conference. But you know, anytime you find an excuse to go to Las Vegas, I say take it. There's two types of people in the world. I find those who love Las Vegas, those who hate it. If you hate it, there's no convincing you otherwise. If you love it, it doesn't take a lot of convincing. I'm, I guess, one of these rare birds where I don't like gambling at all, but I love Las Vegas. And I'm going there later this week to give a speech at a conference and to do a workshop. But I'm extending my stay another three, four days taking my wife and we're having a nice time there. My only worry is can I stay away from the buffets so that I don't come home 10 pounds heavier?

So that's my, that's, you know something, I've never been to Las Vegas, so it's the first time for me and I'm looking forward to going there. But you know something for those people who really don't like getting to Las Vegas and the hotels are the Same. Especially if you're in a conference and you don't want to step out and be part of the help center. Learning, knowledge and all that stuff. It's the same everywhere. So once you are within the four walls, it really doesn't make any difference where in the world you are.

Well, but that's the thing that's unique about Las Vegas. It really is different. The hotel there is 20 times bigger than the biggest hotel in New York City. Everything is bigger, tackier, gaudier, larger spectacle, flashier. It's a fun place to just walk around and look at things and, you know, Elvis impersonators. You see, you'll see the fattest, ugliest people in the world. You'll see some of the most beautiful people in the world walking around there, too. You see a greater range of extremes. In some ways, that's what I like about New York City is you just have such a different range of experiences, architecture, people. But Las Vegas is different. I mean, everything is sort of new in synthetic and a little bit fake and phony. But there's a lot of beautiful stuff, too. And the shows are bigger. I love Broadway shows, but the Cirque du Soleil shows are on stages 10 times bigger than New York. So it's a great spectacle and in some ways relevant to what we're talking about with PowerPoint, because we do live in a world where not only do most cities in America and in the world look the same, the roads look the same, the chain restaurants look the same, they all blend together. So when you do go to a different city or you do watch a PowerPoint presentation, that's different. Whether it's gaudier, bigger, flashier, it does stand out and it is memorable. What other techniques do you have for making PowerPoint presentations just not get instantly forgotten? To me, that's the biggest problem most business presenters have. It's not that they forget what they're going to say or have fun, flop sweat, or can't answer a question. The biggest failure, most likely scenario for failure for most people, in my view, is just that everyone thinks, oh, perfectly fine presentation, but instantly forgotten.

You know, I'm going to take the analogy back to Las Vegas. Las Vegas is what it is because other cities are not like Las Vegas. Okay? If every city in America was the same like Las Vegas, then Las Vegas wouldn't stand apart.

And it would be a horrible world.

Absolutely. And that's. That's probably what's happened with PowerPoint. It's become a horrible world because people use flashy elements and lots of animation and loud slides with, you know, every time. And that gets you to the term death by PowerPoint. And I'm sure you heard that. And just Google it and you'll run thousands and thousands of pages. So that's exactly the problem with PowerPoint at times where people go and use everything. So what they have to do is they have to keep that flashy part for maybe one slide or two slides. The important part where they want to draw attention rather than having it in the whole presentation or maybe not even in every presentation in some presentations. So get that last vagus in PowerPoint at some parts, don't get it everywhere. So that's a similarity and analogy that.

I can think of and only the parts that are consistent with your brand. I have to share this one story about Las Vegas, which you, I hope, find amusing, but may find equally distasteful. My first time to LAS Vegas, maybe 18 years ago, I was struck by one big difference. Because if you go in, most especially back then, you go in any town in America, whether it's New York City or other towns. On street corners, you have vending machines that sell the local paper, USA Today and the New York Times, and maybe a weekly business publication. That's how it was 30 years, 20 years ago, 15 years ago, in a lot of places you still see some of that. Las Vegas is different. I remember getting up the first day looking for a newspaper, went out the street, didn't see it. I finally had to go like around the corner, sort almost like a dark alley behind the hotel to find a newspaper. What was on every street corner? On every street corner, they had these big, bold, full colored picture tabloids that were nothing but ads for prostitution services. That's what was on the corner of every single street corner in Las Vegas. Newspapers advertising prostitution services. And in most towns in America, that's especially back then, that's what's hidden in sort of the deep recesses of, you know, an adult bookstore on the bad side of town. You had to really work hard to find that the news was right out front. Las Vegas, it was exactly the opposite. Traditional news was hidden in an almost shameful way. To me, that summarized the big difference in Las Vegas. But enough Vegas, if you don't hear me back on this show in two weeks, it means I changed my position and started gambling again and lost, lost the house and studio. So let's hope that doesn't happen.

No, I'm sure that won't happen. So that's how it is. I think there are similarities in everything in life. We can compare a city with a presentation program and we can do a lot more comparisons. But that's the whole thing. And that's true of not only PowerPoint, but anything in life. You just have to keep it simple and do everything in moderation, not go overboard with anything. Think about your audience, get your message across well in a way that they can.

Remember you're listening to Speaking with TJ Walker. If you want to get better at your own speeches, presentations, even PowerPoint presentations, then all you have to do is click in the box in the show notes on mediatrainingworldwide.com and I'll send you at no charge access to my online public speaking training course. That includes how to give PowerPoint more effectively so there's no risk, there's no obligation. You don't have to give a credit card, you just get the online course that normally goes for about 300 bucks and you can start learning today how to be a better presenter. If you like this program, please make sure you've subscribed to it. Don't just listen to it on our website once and forget about it. Subscribe in itunes and if you really like it, I'd ask a personal favor and go ahead, leave a review. Better yet, leave a review and recommend it to a handful of friends and colleagues would be much appreciated. Our special guest today is Gitish Bajaj. He is the founder of InDesign and that is a website and service that gives information, insights, how to on everything and all aspects of PowerPoint design, creation and delivery. Giddish, we haven't talked about delivery that much, but you in fact deliver PowerPoint presentations yourself throughout India, Asia and other parts of the world. You also train people how to give more effective PowerPoint presentations. What's it like? What does someone experience if they're in the audience watching you present?

First of all, I need to know who the audience is and I do my homework and find out more about the audience, get to know them better and then I would gear my presentation based on what I think my audience would want to know.

Let's say for example, the situation is you're speaking to 30 engineer tech managers at either Wipro or Infosys, two well known companies that some of our audience is familiar with and they they're all professionals who give presentations regularly, within their company, outside their company, have let's say their mid-30s, have long careers ahead of them and want to get better and better. What are you going to teach them? Show them, bring to them first of.

All what I would do, I would assume that they actually are up to steam and presentation techniques. So I would actually go and talk about the content and delivery with them. I would do a storytelling session with them and appeal to the human factor in them and show them visuals and tell them to find a story over there and see what they come up with and make it interactive. And that's something that's worked a lot of times, and that's certainly what I would do.

And when you're giving your own PowerPoint, are you using a lot of slides? Is there a particular image you use? One of the things I do when I'm giving a PowerPoint presentation on PowerPoint is I purposely use not only simple images, but cheap images. So if I want to convey the idea that you really should not be greedy and do a data dump, and you should. You should really just focus on a handful of ideas for your whole speech. I put up a picture of my hand, and it's just a snapshot from a cell phone. It's bad photography, but people remember it. So I try to use that as a learning moment of even a cheap, bad photograph. If it's on point and people remember it is better than the fanciest, slickest, complex graph that spent $10,000 on. Are there any images that you have that really resonate with audiences?

So let me put it across this way and let me get back to your image of your hand. Now, the image is not important, E.J. over there. What's important is the narrative, how you weave it as part of the story of your presentation, how you present it, how you involve the audience with that. And that picture is telling a story over there. So I think that's the reason why it works rather than just using any other image, because then you will not be able to explain it the same way and create a story around that in the same way that you would do with a picture of your hand. Okay, and now let's come to what sort of images work. It's individual. It's different for everyone. Now, I always say that you should only use images that you can, you know, you believe in and something that you can speak about and something you can weave a story with, just going and putting up an image. And you hear that axiom that a picture is worth hundred words or a thousand words. It doesn't help because a picture that you cannot relate to is not even worth a single word. Okay? So use pictures that you believe in. It's not important to go and go to the most famous Stock image sites and get a picture from there. Although sometimes you can get really good pictures from them. But the important part is not where you got the picture from. You got it from. You paid a lot of money to get that or you clicked it yourself or you got it from some of the other sites. It really doesn't matter. It's important how you relate to that and how you can take your relation with a picture, weave it into a story and get a message to your audience. That is what's going to make a picture successful. That's what you need.

What stories do you have that resonate the most with your audiences? And do you have a. I mean, certainly you, like me, you tailor each presentation to your audience, but there's typically some overlap. Do you have a signature story that people really relate to?

No, I don't have a signature story, but I have to create a story depending on what they want and what the audience would, you know about, what they associate with, what they will relate to. My biggest story is probably the audience and I have to make sure that they are part of the story. They relate to the story and everything I do is for the audience and it has to be customized to that audience, thought about for them so that they have a benefit from that story. And picture is just an accessory as part of that story. The picture is not the story. The picture is just an accessory to the story.

I think that's great insight. Everything I do is for the audience. People say that, but most people get up and do the opposite. The example I always give it with my training groups is how many of you have seen this? Someone stands up. Good morning. I'm happy to be here today. My name is this. My title is this. Before I start today, let me tell you about the boring history of my company. When I was thinking about what I want to say in my presentation today, I, I and everything I just said is boring. It's all about me. I always ask people at this stage of the relationship, why do you care if I'm happy to be here? Yet people feel obligated to say that it's not interesting. People always ask me, what's the best way to start a speech? Is it, does it need to be a joke? I said, no, the best way to start a speech is to say something that is for the audience, that's interesting for them, that's giving them value and isn't about you. Sounds like you subscribe to the same theory I do.

And I really love how you expressed and put your thought across there TJ and it's very important because at the end of the day, the audience wants to, you know, if you have an attitude that says that this is what I am, this is what I am, they are not interested in that. They are just worrying about what is in there for them. So at the end of the day, how are they going to benefit from that? It's okay, because at the end of the day, you are presenting to benefit in some way, and the audience understands that and they accept that fact. But they don't want just you to benefit. They want to benefit as well. And their benefit has to be larger than yours. And so their benefit has to have the more time. And when you want to speak about yourself as far as possible, if there's nothing that's going to help the audience in what you speak, then don't speak about yourself on that level. But if you have to speak about yourself as a human being, as someone who prescribes to some aspect of the story that you're putting across your audience, or as living proof of something, then I think that's going to add value to the presentation. Otherwise, it's not going to help. But actually, you have to go and speak about yourself, but you have to speak about yourself in a way that relates to them, that makes it more interesting for them. And that's the reason they have come there as part of the presentation to hear you. Otherwise, you could have just emailed a presentation to them or just written an email to them. The fact that they are there, that means they are interested in you, but in a way that's going to resonate with them and work with them.

Could have just emailed it. How many times have we sat in an audience and heard a speaker thinking, why did I even come? They could have just emailed this. All they're doing is reading. And that's not to knock email. Email has its place, in fact, in your own communication empire. Email is a critical part. You have hundreds of thousands of subscribers, which frankly makes me hate you, because I'm so jealous, because you have more than 10 times as many subscribers as I do. How did you get so many subscribers? I want you to put your publisher's hat on. Now, as the publisher of a website and a newsletter, how did you build subscribers? How did you put all the pieces together? How did you sustain it? How did you get advertising? How do you make it all work?

I did not. Okay, so let me be honest with you. You see, I've been running this site for like, 16, 17 years, and the Number of subscribers that I have are directly related to the amount of time I've been online. One, and we have like 110,000 plus subscribers now. And there was a time when I had 200,000 subscribers. And I've actually been proactive in finding out the people who are not opening those emails and stuff like that and actually removing them because I did not want too many subscribers because I was paying for all the subscribers who were not reading my mails. Okay. So I actually keep trimming my mailing list all the time because I want good subscribers. So it really is not important how many subscribers you have, but what is important is how good they are. Okay. And how much they interact with you, how much they relate to what you say.

And that's true. I mean, that's really true in any media platform, social media platform. I have people pitch me to be guests on this show all the time, and I'll check them out on Twitter and I think, wow, they've got 200,000 subscribers. And then I look and they average zero retweets. And then other people only have 5,000 subscribers, but they're averaging 50 retweets. Well, guess who I want to have on as a guest?

Perfect. And I'm sure that's how it is. And ultimately it's different from person to person. Tj we really just can't go and create a pattern there because human beings are typically different.

But at some point, you got over an initial hump. Many people, myself included, think, hey, I have a particular interest, I have a professional interest. I have expertise. Let me start a website, let me start a newsletter, and they start it. And whether it's six months later, a year later, it just doesn't seem to be going anywhere. And they give up. Did you have any hurdles initially where you thought, I don't know if this is working, or has it been somewhat slow, steady growth throughout?

To answer your question, I'll have to continue a conversation that we had at the beginning of this call. Okay. So I told you that I started a site because on the news group, people were asking the same type of questions. And rather than type a long answer all the time, I would just send them to my site where the information was there. So the site did not start with any financial benefit in mind. So it was just a passion and a hobby, and I developed it that way.

And at some level, it sounds like it was a time saving measure. Rather than rewriting the same thing on all these news groups, you could just send people to your website.

Absolutely. You're right. That's what it was. And I also was working in a family business at that point of time, so I really did not have to worry about who's going to pay the bills next. And my family business was of a nature where I needed to be at a certain physical location and be there. And I did not have to work all the time over there. I just had to be present over there. So what I started doing is I started working with presentations and stuff like that, and the site evolved out of that experience. And since I did not have to worry about if I'm getting any financial benefit out of this website, I think that was very, very important a factor in getting it to the level that it is today. But definitely later on, I left that business and I got full time into the website because it became a larger thing.

And.

And it continues to this day. And definitely today it is a financial benefit for me as well, and that's my primary revenue source.

And curious, what was the family business you were in?

We used to do food products.

Okay. And I will confess, there's nothing in the world I love more than Indian food. Is it anything I might have seen on the shelves of Costco? Because they do stock Indian food food now.

Yes, I've seen that too.

Yes. So the issue is how for a lot of people, how do you go from, okay, I've got this site, this newsletter. I have a passion, interest. Some people ask me questions, I talk about it. How do you get to the point where you have the confidence to either look someone in the eye or talk to them over the phone or even send an email saying, hey, I have content so valuable and an audience so valuable, I want you to pay money. How do you get to that point where you are comfortable and confident and successful at getting sponsors?

You know, sponsors come, you don't get them, really speaking, people would only come and spend money when they want to spend money, rather than you wanting them to spend money. Okay. And this is how it's actually, I've been lucky and fortunate that it's happened that way for me. Otherwise, I'm not the type of person who could go and get people to come and spend money on the site. So for me, it's been fortunate being the other way around.

So you're saying you literally wait for sponsors to contact you first?

Yes. Most of the time, that's what happens.

Okay, well, that's a testament to your product because most people, whether it's podcast, websites, the whole mantra is go out there aggressively hustle Hustle, Hustle sponsors. You're actually focusing on content and the old axiom from the Kevin Costner movie, build it and they will come. Although that's not the literal quote, doesn't work for most people in most industries, it does seem to have worked for you and your website.

It doesn't work for a lot of people because the fact is that you really need to make sure that you can spend a few years and work on something, and if you don't have any financial compensation for that, it should be fine with you. But unfortunately, it's not possible most of the time. I'm just saying that I was fortunate enough that it was possible for me, and that's how it evolved.

And the way you described it, it was a true organic beginning in that people were asking you questions. They were already seeking out your information because you were already an active member of newsgroups. And is it bulletin board? Let's take just a second now for some of our younger audience members and millennials listening. They don't necessarily know what a newsgroup or a bulletin board was. Let's go back in time, 17, 15, even 12 years ago on the Internet. What are you talking about?

A news group? Now, this typical news group that I was being part of and frequently visiting was Microsoft had news servers where they had news groups dedicated to their main products, including PowerPoint, where people would come and post questions. And those kinds of questions were all text. You really couldn't put too many attachments or visuals in newsgroups, and then someone would go and type them over there and write answers. And the forums that you see nowadays on web browsers are an evolution of those news groups. And naturally they are much, much more advanced than what news groups were there at that point of time. But, you know, there were some advantages of news groups as well, because they loaded fast, you only had the content, no advertisements, and you could take your time to respond to them, and they worked a whole lot better with less distractions.

Girish, I want you to look into your crystal ball and make predictions for five years from now on how major corporations at major conferences are going to be using technology in their presentations. Recently, you probably saw it too. Elon Musk was giving a presentation and he had a screen behind him that looked like it was maybe 20ft tall, but maybe 50ft wide. It filled up the whole stage. Certainly people are buzzing about virtual reality, although I haven't seen people giving out virtual reality goggles to a thousand people at a convention. Do you have any predictions on any major Technology changes that we're going to see the corporations and trade associations with the biggest budgets using.

I think a whole lot of things is going to happen. And what's going to happen now in the near future and even in the larger future is there's going to be a whole lot of technologies that are really going to expand in an amazing way. But there are also going to be a lot of small changes that are going to happen that a lot of people will miss out. And they may think that they are not important, but they are going to be equally important. And there's going to. So if I have to put across what's going to change, there's going to be an evolution in technologies and there's going to be a revolution in technologies, but they're going to happen at the same time and they're both going to complement each other. And I don't think everyone can be everywhere as long as they keep up to date with a few technologies and see how it evolves and works on them and is happy about what they're doing. I think that's important.

Is there any technology you're most excited about for your own personal business? Because you've been in every medium, you've published half a dozen traditional books and paper, digital books, electronic books, you publish newsletters, you publish websites, you do in person workshops, you do in person speeches. Where do you see your own business evolving with respect to any media change or technology change?

We have spoken about this in the past, tj and I think video is a very, very big thing that's coming up now. Video is already everywhere and high bandwidth capacity available everywhere and a lot of video content being developed and it's very easy to consume. I think video is going to be get even better and bigger in the days to come. And the technologies that go with video are the ones that are going to expand. And even with PowerPoint, I mean like a few years ago, four, five years ago, among the most asked for feature request in PowerPoint was to convert a whole PowerPoint presentation into a video clip, which is a reality today. And even if I just go to a website like YouTube, I'm amazed that a very, very large amount of videos on YouTube are all created in PowerPoint. Let's go to that scrapbook analogy again. They take their pictures, video, even video clips and voiceovers, animation, text, put them all together, export everything to a video clip, and then Post it on YouTube, Vimeo or anywhere and share that content. So as I said earlier, there are going to be larger experiences and small important stuff that's going to happen together at the same time. Now video is a larger experience. A lot of stuff is going to happen with video but with PowerPoint being able to export to video, that small factor is also going to play a very large role. So I think both of these large aspects and the smaller aspects are going to complement each other.

The website is indesign and folks if you haven't signed up yet or you're just hearing about it for the first time in this program, take a moment and either go into the show notes or just type into your browser right now I N D E Z I N E and sign up for the newsletter. It's chock full of valuable information. I have subscribed for years and years so I heartily endorse it. Giddish Bajaj thank you for being our guest today.

It's been a pleasure tj.

Thanks for listening to speaking with TJ Walker where the communication skills and practices of world class leaders are dissected.