OwenBloggers: Peter LaMotte

Do you have a fear of public speaking? So did I.

Ok lets be honest, there are some of you who are afraid to speak in public.  I plugged in "most common fears" into the ole' Google and found a list of the top 9 fears. Not sure why 9 vs the usual 10, but 9 was the best list I could find.  So one through nine are: (1)Bugs, Mice and Rats(2) Heights,(3) Water, (4)Public transportation, (5)Storms, (6)Closed Spaces, (7)Bridges and Tunnels, (8)Crowds, and finally (9)Public speaking.  I am only going to address the last one, but as an aside I was thinking that if you were to avoid any major world city you could have a better chance of bypassing numbers 1, 2, 3, 4, 6, 7, and 8.  Just a thought.

Regardless, I suppose public speaking is something that I can talk to.  I came to Owen with very limited public speaking experience.  Maybe I had stood up at meetings, maybe at family events, or the one time I had to give a speech to a group of a few hundred for a public fund raiser  The one thing I remember about all of these events is that I remembered nothing once it was over.  I am sure many of you can relate, but when you are standing at a podium looking across the faces of those who are now waiting for your next word, you sort of go numb.  We are so overtaken by fear that every word and every sentence seems like we might say something causing endless public embarrassment. So maybe as a defense mechanism we block out every second of the delivery.

I would like to think I have come a long way since those days. Yes I took the core class at Owen that made me stand up and give a 30 second comedy routine, and yes I know that I learned quite a few things about public speaking, but in the end there was so much more to learn and yet experience is the best  teacher.

If I were to boil my job after B-school into one phrase it would be executive educator.  My job was to deliver research to executives primarily in the format of a presentation.  Whether it was wearing the research hat, the sales hat, or the marketing hat it was always standing up in front of total strangers.  On the job training was by far the best teacher and when I was talking to another Owen alum about this they suggested that I throw out a few of the key lesson onto the blog.  So here they are...

1. Know it Cold: This seems like simple idea, but think how much easier it would be to stand up in front of a group of strangers and tell them your name, you family members names, and where you grew up.  You need to have that level of familiarity with your material.  So if you are reading off a script know the script inside and out.  If there is no script, be able to talk through every important point of the story inside and out in any situation and setting.
2. Learn Your Mannerisms: If you have taken a communications class (as we all did at Owen), chances are the teacher recorded you.  Create a video of yourself, at least 5 minutes long. Go back and watch the video.  Forget about what you are saying (we will talk about that in a bit).  Just notice after a few minutes... do you start to rock back and forth or side to side, maybe you lean on the podium, maybe you maybe you look down to your shoes at the beginning of a new paragraph.  All of these will be seen by the audience.  Unless you are announcing the cure for cancer chances are a few people in the audience have lost interest, and now they are just watching and waiting for your ticks or mannerisms to start again.
3. Kill the Filler Words: We all add filler words to our sentences during every day conversations.  Its the way that try and hold conversation in our possession while we are thinking of the next thing we are going say.  This habit is exacerbated when you are standing in front of a crowd.  Maybe you do it because you are looking for a more articulate way to say something, maybe you are just trying to remember the point you are going to make.  Either way, its better to be silent that break out the “ums” and “ahs”.
4. Use Silence to Your Advantage: As I mentioned before, no matter how important I may have thought my research was, the people standing in front of me where bound to be skeptical.  So you need to figure out ways to catch their attention through out the speech. One of the most effective ways to instantly capture a room, is to look out into the audience at important times, and just stop.  Especially if you are providing material for others to read, a three second pause will have them looking up to make sure they aren’t not missing something. Three seconds is just a number, wait until you see people starting to look up, thats how long you pause for.
5. Speed: Not everything you say is equally important.  If you delivering a message that has an important conclusion, you are most likley going to stress that conclusion.  That same idea applies to every topic.  Some aspects are throw away, just the set up for the main  message, so skip through those.  It makes it a lot easier for someone to listen and understand to what you are trying to say.
6. Inflection Upward, Downward: Much like speed, inflection is also very important to making a presentation easier to listen to.  Not everything is important, so don’t stress  every sentence.  It will not only tire out your audience, but it will tire you out.  Also and possibly more important is the upward and downward inflection.  All that simply means is end your sentences strong, but not with a question (upward) or fading off (downward).  Now do you see why the video recording is such a key part of the process.
7. Practice with a person and a mirror: Finally, just seeing yourself give a speech can be intimidating, so stand (key that is seems somewhat formal) in front of a mirror and run through the speech at least a half dozen times. Remember the key is to get you over a fear of public speaking this is just one safe step towards that. And while reading a speech or practicing a presentation by yourself is great, it will never get you ready for the actual live presentation.  So find someone whose opinion you value, who may even make you a little uncomfortable to speak in front of.  Get them to ask questions, and be as critical as possible.  If you can make them happy than strangers shouldn’t bother you whatsoever.

Ok clearly this is just the seven that came to me on a flight from San Francisco to Washington.  There are plenty of tricks to delivering a great speech.  And by the way trying to picture the audience naked doesn’t work, especially depending on the audience.  There are also a lot of great books out there too. 

If this has been valuable or you have any questions I would be happy to help anyone out.  However, I would recommend that you take as many of the Fred Talbot and Kim Pace classes you can (time allowing).  When I look at job postings, the requirement of "presentation skills" is on just about every one, now matter the industry or role. I think in the last two years I have probably delivered a few hundred speeches to probably thousands of people, and its probably one of the most powerful skills I have on my resume.

The career path less travelled

    So its been almost a year since I last posted to Owen Bloggers, and when I was updating regularly last year I was long winded, so with a year to catch up on I will try and keep this as short as possible.  But I have to admit, I think I may be on the verge of some quality if not entertaining posts. 

Why? 

    Because I am back on the market for a new job.  Oh yes, I fall into that category that is often whispered about in B-School (however never by career services), that there is a large percentage of people that leave their first job out of business school in less than two years.  I am sure there are lots of reason that people do it, I left for a few reasons myself. 

    In my case, I had possibly one of the best jobs in the world at one of the most mismanaged companies in the world.  There is the ole’ adage which say's  "people don't leave bad companies, they leave bad mangers" well it turns out they leave bad managers at bad companies pretty darn quick.  And in a short of amount of time I knew I wasn't in a heathy work environment.  I was miserable, but didn’t really know where I would or could go. So there I was in a really bad situation, and it took another terrible situation to result in the best career move of my life.

    On October 1st my father had a massive heart attack in South Carolina, and for lots reasons too complicated to go into here I decided to place all my earthly possessions in storage and move back in with my parents.  I spent almost every day of the next six weeks of my life taking care of my Dad.  That meant driving him to physical therapy, taking him too lunch, giving him medication, and making sure he didn't eat this, or drink that.  Sounds pretty lousy I realize, and at no point did I ever deal with anything I leaned in B-School.  And I will admit that there were times I was questioning why I was playing male nurse with only a year and a half since I received my freshly minted MBA.  But all that changed on November 15th.  Without going into the nitty gritty, one morning my father fell down a flight of stairs.  We will never know what cased the fall, but the fall resulted head trauma, that ended in a coma, that led to his subsequent death over two weeks later. 

    My point is not to depress everyone that reads entry.  I suppose I am suggesting a brief moment of reflection.  If I look back on the last six months of my life the best thing that every happened to me was disillusionment and eventual departure from my first job out of business school. And so far the best job of my life didn’t pay me dime and gave me six weeks with my father than no one can ever take away.

    As you start applying for jobs, accepting jobs, or maybe its just reevaluating the one you have... make sure there is more to that job than just a title or a salary.  Look for personal satisfaction in everything you do.

    In the meantime, I am pulling things out of storage, donning the dark suit, cleaning up the Resume, rereading Right Job RIght Now (Plug!), and hoping that this time around I don’t make the same mistakes.

Looking to make a few 100K?

Nice hook huh?

Ok here is the deal. My compnay is looking to hire some folks before the end of the quarter. They are looking for MBAs, and the base pay is six figures. Because its sales, the incentive package is huge! Whats the catch, well its sales. I work for a research consulting firm, and someone has to do the sales side of the house. There are people who have made close to half a million in this position year after year. But it is sales and I know that not everyone is cut out for that job. Here is my pitch to you, if you are looking for the money and travel all over the world to meet with executives while selling them on our services, let me know.

This could be a great way to pay off school debt. If you are interested just email me, and I will give your resume to a friend of mine who is heading up the hunt.

Also if you are thinking a sales job isn't for MBAs, there are HBS and Wharton grads who they hire on a regular basis for this job. This would also be a mangement job, you would have a team you would be responsible for. You would also be based out of DC.

I thought this would be a great way to pass on the word. If you know anyone who may be interested than pass on the word to them as well.

A little market research

Ok OwenBlog readers, I am going to put you to work. I have below a link to a product from Kingston technology. A friend of mine is interested in seeing what people think about it. He doesn't work for Kingston but rather the company that makes the software on the card.

Here is the gist of the card as I understand it. Its a simple SD card for your digital camera or cell phone. However, this card will automatically upload your photos onto your laptop and on to shutterfly. At its core its sounds pretty cool, I mean it saves a lot of people who use shutterfly that extra step. And of course Shutterfly gives you a bunch of free prints.

I'm just curious what you think, I have my opinions, but would be curious to see how a tech savy group reacts to the product.

http://www.amazon.com/Kingston-PHOTO-LOADER-1GB-Memory-Card/dp/tech-data/B000P421IK/ref=de_a_smtd/104-9307131-5175945

Fun facts from my job!

Ok here are two little quick fun facts that I learned through my new job:

• 40% of Amazon’s sales come from products that have a sales volume rank of higher than 100,000 (and just to clarify this, high is worse.
• A new product is launched into the market every 3 minutes.
• 57% of people can’t name one new product launch from the last 12 months.

Pretty interesting, huh?

Where did I go, and do you really care?

Sorry I kind of fell off the face of the earth for a while. I’m not exactly holding up my end of this bargain on this whole blog thing. Yet I will say for those second years out there that think they will be able to hold a job and continue to post on a very regular basis next year, you have another thing coming.

Well the main reason I disappeared for a while is that I took on a new job at my company about a month ago. It’s the same roll, but dealing with a whole new group of executives. In the past I had been consulting to contact centers and customer support executives. Which really wasn’t as bad as it may sound. As departments go in a corporation, the contact center (whether it is sales, support, or logistics) has changed more in the past ten years than probably few others. Just think about how different it is to call a 1-800 number today compared to ten years ago. Technology has played a big part, and as a result the whole dynamic of who they hire, how they retain these employees, and how they up-skill these front-line folks has changed dramatically. But as interesting as that may be I was still dealing with executives of contact centers.
So thanks to a little luck, good timing, and some quick success on the call center team I was promoted over to the marketing side of the house. So now I am part of consulting team that meets with marketing executives. The upside is that I now get to work with my concentration from Owen. But the down side, with all due respect to call center executives, is that the Marketing execs I am dealing with now are a heck of a lot smarter. Most, if not all, the marketing executives are MBA grads, and because these are almost exclusively Fortune 500 companies, they are typically Kellogg, Harvard, or Wharton grads. These folks report directly to the CEO, and have a lot more on their shoulders and are therefore less likely to interested in anything beyond your presentation. Keep in mind most contact center executives loved the attention, and would take you on tours of plants, take you to lunch, and often give you fun little gifts. Marketing executives have budgets for consulting that is probably larger than the whole operating budget of most contact centers. So we are usually competing for their attention against many other consulting and market research firms.

Anyway, it may be more difficult, but it’s a lot more fun. For example, I am giving a presentation next week in California to a major automobile manufacturer on how they can better utilize the web and blogs to promote their brand. I think that’s a heck of lot better than how to optimize self-service in a call center.

Not the best of times

Ok, most flights I make are pretty non eventful but I wanted to share the pleasurable experience I had flying out of Rochester New York last Monday.  I wont go into details because after all, pictures do tell a thousands words.  But I will tell you three things about this photo, one, this is the view from the gate window, two, the winds were gusting to 40mph, and three, we took off about 10 minutes after I snapped this shot.  Ah the joys of travel. (Sorry for the low quality, my blackberry doesn't take very good photos)

Change of opinion

Being on the verge of one year out from Owen, I have to say in retrospect my attitude towards my MBA has changed considerably. If I look back to my evaluation of business schools three years ago, I remember seeing Owen ranked above Darden (UVA), another school that I considered attending. In the end the class size of Owen won me over to spending two years in Nashville. However, since we have been in what I hope is a temporary plunge down the rankings I started wondering soon after my arrival whether or not I made the right decision. I remember at one point looking into the idea of transferring, and starting from scratch at Darden or Duke. But I have to say, now more than ever, I am happy I didn’t.

We hear a lot of examples about classmates who worked with Darden, Wharton, and Harvard students over the summer who, at best were on par with Owen students. But in all honesty it doesn’t remove the insecurity that maybe their lives are going to be better or maybe easier because they have that degree from the school that looks down on us from 20 or 30 ranks above. Well for a brief moment that may be true. I can’t imagine that anyone wants to argue that, on average, a typical Wharton grad has no difficulty finding people who are interested in them come recruiting time. It’s just a fact. But the question is… are they more deserving? Not just Wharton versus Owen, but also Duke, and Harvard, and pretty much any decent business school. Because, with few exceptions, we are all learning the exact same thing.

Case in point, I was giving a presentation at University of Chicago’s business school last week, and due to a mix up in timing I arrived an hour early. The bookstore happens to be located right near the entrance to the school, so I stopped in. I was curious to see what books students used (for at least their core classes), I would say that 80% of the books were the exact same ones Owen uses. I did find it funny that one of the books they use for core stats teaches via hundreds of comic strips. (Maybe that’s what I needed to get that stuff to stick.) It all just led me to believe even more that Owen is a good as any other top tier school. Just to reinforce this point, I was speaking later that day with one of the executives at the seminar who’s company was bought by Berkshire Hathaway about 4 years ago. We were talking about Warren Buffet and all his bits of wisdom he had passed on to this company in meetings and the question of “is an MBA worth it” came up (because this gentleman had posed that exact question to Buffet). And Buffet’s response (and keep in mind this is a second hand paraphrase) was that no one school is better than any other, its only the professors that matter. And I do believe that Owen still has some of the best faculty around. For me Dave Owens, Neta, and a handful of others are best professors I have ever had hands down, across all my years in education.

 

And if you haven’t heard it already, let me just throw it at you more time… once you get past the first couple months of your first job out of school the name of the school you went to doesn’t matter one bit. So be proud of the Owen name, know that you are still learning from one of the best educational institutions in the world.

Using technology to promote Owen, and maybe even learn something

I thought I would share a pretty interesting source of brain candy that I came across recently. Last year I was speaking with Barry D. about Stanford and a few select school’s participation in Apple’s iTunesU program. My particular interest was that Stanford and Duke Universities were offering audio versions of some of their classes online through Apple’s iTunes. By the time I graduated last May, Vanderbilt was still in the discussion phase of joining the program and it looked as if it may incorporate grad school content.

Well long story short, I remembered this conversation a few days ago and went looking to see if anything had happened with the iTunesU program at Vanderbilt. Well the good news is yes, Vanderbilt did in fact roll out some content (primarily speakers) online. The bad news is that Owen is nowhere to be found. What is even worse is that a lot of top MBA programs do have dedicated iTunesU content, or at a minimum podcasts. I personally have looked at MIT, Wharton, Chicago, and Duke’s content and have to say I am impressed. And we are not talking about a massive technological or even intellectual commitment. In fact a lot of the schools podcasts were mediocre when it came to the quality of the recording or video. Duke, who probably has the most robust offering, has their distinguished speaker series through iTunesU (the more recent are offered in both Video and Audio). They have also put their marketing events (similar to our Marketing Camp) on the service as well.

So ask yourself, what is the downside? I can’t think of any substantial ones. If Owen were to start slow and put similar offerings (like the two mentioned above) online where would we be hurting our school? I know for starters as an alumnus I would be interested to hear DSS speakers from this year. It would also give prospective students the possibility to hear the strong caliber of speakers that we can bring to Owen. What about further down the road, what about certain classes? The first day of some classes could be marketing tools in their own right. If you were a prospective student interested in HOPA, you could hear Neta’s first day of Human Capital class where she overviews the class and the reason subject matter. I think it would not only give me as a prospective an idea what class discussions were like, but also overviews of the curriculum.

But think about it for a while, because there are some really great opportunities that I think might only help the Owen brand.

I would be interested to hear your thoughts. In the meantime, if for nothing else than to just expose yourself to other school’s content check out the links below to podcast programs.

Directory of School Podcasts
Apple's iTunesU Page
Duke iTunes Link

Travel in style... someday.

I thought I should write the type of entries that I was originally asked to, which is more about the random thoughts and daily life of an Owen graduate. So what did I decide to write about today as I sit on my latest flight, this time headed to Atlanta. Leg Room!

I think I mentioned in my last entry that much of my life is spent in the always satisfying, always enjoyable, warm glow of air travel. (Feel the sarcasm!) And until I make enough money to afford that Gulfstream jet I’ve been eyeing, air travel for me is all about looking out for number one. The good ole' days of free upgrade, or free anything for that matter are long gone, and customer service is bad on every airline (no matter what your Southwest case studies may say).

So if I have learned anything outside of work since I left Owen, it’s primarily about how to work the airline system. There are a few rules I live by when traveling and here the are:

Pick an airline, and stick with it. Just ask Adam Schlesinger (‘06) when the last time he flew coach to Denver was. Of course it’s all about where you live that narrows down the field. Personally I live in DC so my choices are pretty abundant. I chose United because of “Economy Plus” because at 6’3 I can tell you 3 more inches of legroom makes all the difference. I also happen to work for possibly the only consulting firm in the world that doesn’t fly anyone first class, not even the CEO. (But I guess that’s how they get those nifty profit margins.)

“www.SeatGuru.com” If this website means nothing to you, then you probably don’t travel a great deal. I do not book a flight without first looking at this website. Once again, I am relatively tall so legroom matters. But this site breaks down every seat, on every plane, in every configuration, on every airline, by legroom, width, proximity to bathroom and so on. It even breaks the seats down into a nice red, yellow, green color coding. Check it out before your next flight.

Once you have picked that airline that you are willing to stick with, get their credit card. If you were going to get a credit card anyway, you might as well get the one that flies you to Europe once a year. This also goes for hotels as well. Now, personal debt is a bad thing, and maybe someday I will tell you how I spent too much on my Starwood Amex. But I will leave you with this, a friend of mine just paid for her entire two week honeymoon in South Africa at five star resorts and flying first class using Starwood and Star Alliance points.

Oh and one more thing, I have learned that some stereotypes can be true. Airline food is bad, Southwest makes you feel like cattle, and if you fly USAir to Philadelphia, it turns out they actually ARE the rudest people in the world. Even USAir employees have agreed with me on this.

Ok that’s it from 30,000 feet. Maybe if I stopped writing these things on planes they wouldn’t be so long.