You have the power to change the world.

I’m not saying that to be cliché,

you really have the power to change the world.

Deep inside of you, every single one of you

has the most powerful device known to man.

And that's an idea.

So a single idea, from the human mind,

it could start the ground swell,

it could be a flash point for a movement,

and it can actually rewrite our future.

But an idea is powerless,

if it stays inside of you.

If you never pull that idea out for others to contend with,

it will die with you.

Now maybe some of you guys are trying to convey your idea,

and it wasn't adopted, it was rejected

and some other mediocre or average idea was adopted.

And the only difference between those two is in the way it was communicated.

Because if you communicate an idea in a way that resonates,

change will happen, and you can change the world.

In my family, we collect these vintage European posters.

Every time we go to Maui, we go to the dealer there,

and he turns these great big posters.

I love them. They all have one idea,

and one really clear visual that conveys the idea.

They are about the size of a mattress. They are really big,

they're not as thick as a mattress, but they are big.

And the guy will tell the stories as he turns the pages.

And there was one time I was flanked by my two kids,

and he turns the page and this poster is underneath,

and right when I leaned forward and say,

"Oh my god, I love this poster,"

both of my kids jumped back and they are like "Oh my god, mom, it's you."

And this is the poster. (Laughter)

See I'm like "Fire it up!"

The thing I loved about this poster was the irony.

Here's this chick all fired up, headed into battle,

– as the standard there, –

and she's holding these little Suavitos baking spices,

like something so seemingly insignificant,

though she's willing to risk, you know,

life and limb to promote this thing.

So if you are to swap out, swap out those little Suavitos baking spices

with a presentation.

Yeah, it's me, pretty fired up.

I was fired up about presentations back when it wasn't cool

to be fired up about presentations.

I really think they have the power to change the world

when you communicate effectively through them.

And changing the world is hard.

It won't happen with just one person with one single idea.

That idea has got to spread, or it won't be effective.

So it has to come out of you

and out into the open for people to see.

And the way that ideas are conveyed the most effectively is through story.

You know, for thousands of years, illiterate generations

would pass on their values and their culture from generation to generation,

and they would stay intact.

So there's something kind of magical about a story structure

that makes it so that when it's assembled,

it can be ingested and then recalled

by the person who's receiving it.

So basically a story, you get a physical reaction,

your heart can race, your eyes can dilate,

you could talk about, "Oh I got a chill down my spine"

or, "I could feel it in the pit of my stomach".

We actually physically react when someone is telling us a story.

So even though the stage is the same, a story can be told,

but once a presentation is told, it completely flatlines.

And I wanted to figure out why.

Why is it that we physically sit with wrapped attention during a story,

but it just dies for a presentation.

So I wanted to figure out, how do you incorporate story into presentations.

So we've had thousands of presentations

back at the shop – hundreds of thousands of presentations actually,

so I knew the contexts of a really bad presentation.

I decided to study cinema, and literature,

and really dig in and figure out what was going on

and why it was broken.

So, I want to show you some of the findings

that led up to what I think of – I've uncovered as a presentation form.

So it was obvious to start with Aristotle,

he had a three act structure, a beginning, a middle and an end,

studied poetics and rhetoric,

and a lot of presentations don't even have that in its most simple form.

And then when I moved on to studying hero archetypes

I thought, "OK, the presenter is the hero,

they are up on the stage, they're the star of the show."

It's really easy to feel that way, as the presenter, that you are the star of the show.

I realized right away, that that's really broken.

Because I have an idea, I can put it out there,

but if you guys don't grab that idea and hold it as dear,

the idea goes nowhere and the world is never changed.

So in reality, the presenter isn't the hero,

the audience is the hero of our idea.

So if you look at Joseph Campbell's Hero's Journey,

just in the front part, there was some really interesting insights there.

So there is this likable hero in an ordinary world,

and they get this call to adventure.

So the world is kind of brought out of balance.

And at first they're resistant,

they're like "I don't know if I want to jump into this"

and then a mentor comes along

and helps them move from their ordinary world

into a special world.

And that's the role of the presenter.

It's to be the mentor. You are not Luke Skywalker, you're Yoda.

You're the one that actually helps the audience

move from one thing and into your new special idea,

and that's the power of story.

So in its most simple structure, it's a three part structure of the story.

You have a likable hero, who has a desire,

they encounter a roadblock, and ultimately

they emerge, transform, and that's the basic structure.

But it wasn't until I came across a Gustav Freytag's pyramid

– he drew this shape in 1863.

Now he was a German dramatist,

– he was a German dramatist –

and he believed there is a five act structure,

which has an exposition, a rising action, a climax, a falling action and a denouement,

which is the unraveling or the resolution of the story.

I love this shape. So we talk about shapes.

Story has an arc, well an arc is a shape.

We talk about classical music, having a shapeliness to it.

So I thought, hey, if presentations had a shape, what would that shape be?

And how did the greatest communicators use that shape

or do they use a shape?

So I'll never forget, it was a Saturday morning.

After all this study, – it was a couple of years of study –

I drew a shape.

And I was like,

"Oh my gosh, if this shape is real,

I should be able to take two completely different presentations,

and overlay it and it should be true."

So I took the obvious,

I took Martin Luther King's "I Have a Dream" speech,

and I took Steve Jobs' 2007 iPhone launch speech,

I overlaid it over it, and it worked.

I sat in my office, just astounded. I actually cried a little,

because I was like, "I've been given this gift,"

and here it is,

this is the shape of a great presentation.

Isn't it amazing? (Mock sob; laughter) I was crying.

So I want to walk you through it, 'cause it's actually pretty astounding.

There is a beginning, a middle and an end and I want to walk you through it.

Because the greatest communicators of all times, – I went through speeches, everything, –

actually I can overlay the shape,

even the Gettysburg Address follows the shape.

So the beginning of any presentation, you need to establish what is.

You know, here's the status quo, here's what's going on.

And then you need to compare that to what could be.

Now you need to make that gap as big as possible,

because there is this commonplace of the status quo,

and you need to contrast that with the loftiness of your idea.

So it's like you know, here's the past, here's the present,

but look at our future.

Here's a problem,

but look at that problem removed.

Here's a roadblock,

let's annihilate the roadblock.

You need to really amplify that gap.

This would be like the inciting incident in a movie.

That's when suddenly the audience has to contend with what you just put out there

and they have to say "Wow,

do I want to agree with this and align with it or not?"

And in the rest of your presentation should support that.

So the middle goes back and forth,

it traverses between what is and what could be, what is and what could be.

Because what you are trying to do

is make the status quo and the normal unappealing,