This is the second part of my interview with Dorie Clark. Clark is one of the most successful marketing consultants and a frequent contributor to Harvard Business Review, Time, and Entrepreneur. In the first part, we talked about strategies that can help you to write guest posts that major websites will publish. Click here if you’d like to read this post from the beginning.

How long could it take to see results from blogging?

It is almost certainly going to take longer to succeed than you think it will.

It’s not realistic for anyone to expect that within the first year their content creation efforts will show much traction. It took between two and three years for me to start getting significant inbound attention.

And in the first few years, you didn’t get any relevant traffic?

I was blogging on other people’s sites, so traffic, per se, wasn’t necessarily my goal.

I was more into the social proof that came with blogging for those publications. And it served that purpose, so it was not without benefit to me. But in terms of things that I hoped would happen as a result of writing articles, for instance, speaking inquiries or consulting inquiries and things like that, I had to wait longer. It took several years for that to happen.

There’s such a surfeit of content now that people need to see your name again and again and again before they say, oh, this person is doing something interesting, let’s reach out.

It can be incredibly frustrating, and the only advantage is that the vast majority of people give up and drop off. If you’re not that person and you are persistent enough, then your competitive field will be much smaller. You are not competing against a hundred thousand people at step two or step three.  You are competing against a hundred people.

With so little feedback at the beginning, how can you decide if you’re doing a good job?

I would say I offer three things for that.

The first one is to have a core trusted group of people around you that can provide feedback. You need to find people inside and outside your industry whose opinion you really respect.  

It can be incredibly hard for us to have the perspective to tell if something’s good or not. So talking things over with people who shoot straight with you and can give you insights can be enormously helpful. If you have half a dozen people that you trust saying, no Peter, this is good stuff, then it will be a lot easier to overcome the difficulties.

It’s also very important to get some benefit throughout. In my case even if three people read my blog posts, I was still able to say that I was writing for Forbes and the Harvard Business Review, and that was valuable as a credibility tool in my business. It also took the pressure off readership because that just takes time to grow. So if you’re able to find an immediate win, it will be much easier.

Finally, the third thing is to come up with intermediate metrics.

I’m working on a book, which will be published next year by Harvard Business Review Press. Stephanie O’Connell, the woman that I interviewed for it is a personal finance blogger, and we talked about the early days of her business.

Like everybody else she wasn’t getting huge traffic, but she created these sort of stepping stones metrics to help keep her engaged and feeling good about what she did. And the things that she got excited about were things like going from doing all of her posts free to getting paid for her first blogs, or having somebody that she really respected follow her on Twitter, or being invited to be a guest on somebody’s podcast.

Those are the kind of things that you can look at and say, all right, I may not have reached my ultimate goal, but at least there’s proof that there’s some traction.

You said that the credibility that came from writing for sites like HBR.com had helped you to go forward even though you didn’t have a large readership at that time. Can you name a few other results that you would consider an immediate win?

One of the chief virtues of creating content that you might look to is the networking value of what you’re doing, because presumably if you structure it right, it can bring you in contact with people you want to meet.

Another important benefit of blogging that you can experience early on is that it will make you more convincing.

Even if your posts are not read by a lot of people, they are going to help you simply because they can give you more credibility among the people you know. Let’s say you meet a potential client at a cocktail party and he says, Peter, I’m having a problem with this. And you say, oh, I just wrote a white paper about that issue, let me send it to you.

This will make it far more likely that you close that client because he will say, oh, he obviously thought about my problems.

Awesome thoughts! I only have one last question. If you started something new out of the blue, what would that be?

Well, I can tell you about a thing that I’m doing right now, which is a new thing for me that I just started this summer. It is stand-up comedy.

It’s been really fun for me. I took a stand-up comedy class, and I’ve done about half a dozen performances so far. I think that the art of comedy is very interesting and sophisticated.

It has a unique structure, and I’m very interested in trying to learn and understand that structure.

Because it’s a new way of thinking.   

Writing guest posts for major publications can give you credibility, get your name in front of prospective clients, and eventually bring you paying customers. But not many bloggers are able to achieve this. Actually, most of them fail somewhere along the road and abandon content creation altogether.

Dorie Clark is a marketing strategy consultant, professional speaker, and frequent contributor to Harvard Business Review, Time, and Entrepreneur. She consults and speaks for a diverse range of clients, including Google, The World Bank, Microsoft, and Morgan Stanley.

Clark started to write posts because she realized that success in blogging could help her in everything else that she wanted to do. It took two or three more years than she expected, but her efforts ultimately paid off.

She talked to me about her journey on Skype and also gave several tips that I believe any blogger will find useful. The first part of my interview is about the ladder strategy and the steps you should take if you’d like to write for the most popular sites. The second part is about the importance of persistence, and the things that will keep you going even when you feel like nobody’s listening to what you want to say.

What do you think is the best approach if you’d like to write guest posts for publications like Forbes or The New York Times?

First, you should create content on your own site. This way you are able to get clips, meaning you have done some writing so that you have samples that you can show to other people. Writing on your own site or on LinkedIn is a very low-risk way to find your voice and improve your skills.

The next step, once you have those initial clips, is to reach out to slightly higher profile publications. Ones that are not necessarily household names, but are run by people or institutions that are not you and have an increased level of credibility.

Essentially what you want to be pursuing is a so-called ladder strategy, where you’re reaching out in writing for incrementally more prominent publications, because it’s very hard to go from just having a small blog to Forbes. But if you are writing for local or regional publications or business publications that they have heard of, then that gives you an additional level of credibility when you try to get in the door there.

So, I should try to reach major publications by writing to more and more sites, and preferably better ones as the time passes…

Basically yes. But here’s one more thing that you should keep in mind. Try to familiarize yourself with the editorial voice of the publications. Even people who ask me to introduce them to editors often don’t take the time to do this.

For example, they write a piece about five mistakes that you might make in doing something, and ask me to send it to the editor at Harvard Business Review. But the Harvard Business Review doesn’t publish these kinds of articles, they are allergic to these posts… And anyone who has spent some time studying it would know that.

When you’re being presented to a publication, you want everything to be tied up and you want everything to be as perfect as possible. Which will only happen if you’re able to convincingly write in a voice that fits the medium.

There are not so many pieces covering the second step of the ladder. Can you name a few publications that you’d recommend sending articles to, after publishing a few posts on your own blog?

There’s a number of different directions that you could take it.

One is to write for the blogs of regional newspapers, like the Boston Globe, or The Baltimore Sun. They have regional rather than national readerships, but people have heard of them, and they are respectable publications. That’s one way to go up the ladder.

There are also a lot of local business journals in the U.S. that you could send articles to.

Another example would be to write for niche sites. If you’re a technology entrepreneur, you might be able to break in on a site that is respective for Macintosh users. It might not be a household name, but people that are in the know about technology would respect that.

There could be a big difference between publications in a certain niche, and it could be really hard to get into the most popular technology sites like The Next Web or Mashable. What do you think is the best way to find professional sites that are more likely to publish your first guest posts?  

There’s a strategy that you might find useful when you’re looking for these types of sites.

We have a frame that institutional sites carry the most prestige. In some cases, that’s still true. But in this post gatekeeper era, some of the most influential or highly trafficked sites are actually run by individuals rather than media corporations. And you could try to make connections with them, for example, on Twitter, or at conferences, and offer to write guest posts.

Publishing on their blogs will help you to get traffic and credibility, but it is also a networking tool.

If you’re writing for people who are relatively well-known in the space that you want to enter, there’s a high chance that they will have connections at other publications. And later, as you build a relationship, you may be able to turn to them and say, oh I see that you also write for these sites as well, would you be willing to introduce me to your editor? And if you’ve been doing a good job for them, and they like your writing enough to publish it on their site, they will do it.

To be continued…

Neil Patel is the co-founder of two web analytics companies, Kissmetrics and Crazy Egg, and has helped large corporations like Amazon, HP, and Viacom to grow their revenue.

He is also a popular blogger. His works have been featured in publications including TechCrunch, Forbes, HubSpot, and Entrepreneur.

I talked to him about hiring the right people, guest blogging and other content marketing tactics at the Pioneers Festival in Vienna.

We’re a huge fan of all the content that you’re creating, and I believe the way you’re helping people to succeed is amazing. I suppose you’re not a lone wolf, there must be a team behind you. Can tell you us how did you develop your team?

I have a business partner, and he helps me with a lot of stuff. He does a lot of product, while I focus more on marketing and sales.

I enjoy helping other people, and I have two assistants who work with me and they manage my schedule. They organize what I have to do next, where I have to go, and from there I just work a lot.

Yesterday I sat around for hours, just responding to comments helping people out and telling them how they could grow. And most of these people are individuals, not businesses. There’s nothing in it for me, I just enjoy helping others.

You have to trust the people who manage your time, it’s a very serious job. How did you select your assistants?

One of them I’ve known since I was a child. He is a childhood friend, I trust him and I know he won’t do anything wrong.

He also works seven days a week. Not eight hours a day but he works around the clock, and he’s just good and he’s on top of it because I had that trust factor working for all the years.

But when I hire people I do it based on whether they are fit with my personality, with my culture, and my company’s culture. I consider questions like, do they work hard, do they have the properties, what are they likely to do in the future. And if everything can align, then I test them out.

I usually test them out for a week, and if they work, great. And if not, at least I give money for a week. But I let people going fast. There is always a profit.

How do you test people? Do you have a special method?

It’s more like I just throw them in and say, I’m going to pay you for this one week and you’re going to get paid well, but you’re going to be thrown right into the water.

Let’s see how you do, and if you have questions, ask them as you have them, but before you ask them, see if you can actually figure out to answer on your own by doing research and looking things up. And let’s go from there.

You have been working with these amazing Fortune 500 companies. Do you have any suggestions for startups who would like to sell their products or services to them?

Sure. It all comes down to providing feedback and advice. A lot of these Fortune 500 companies have pains, and they are usually looking for external companies because they know they are so big that it’s going to take too long to do it internally.

If you can help them solve these pains, they will gladly pay you and use your products. First, of course, you’ll have to get access to them, but there are several ways you can do that.

One. You can go to conferences and speak with them.

Two. You can write blog posts. You can create your own blog, and you can also leverage the existing properties out there.

There’s newspaper sites everywhere, around the world there’s popular blogs like Forbes or Entrepreneur, and each country has their own versions of it. By being on these types of sites and educating and helping people, eventually you will end up getting paying customers from it. Inbound marketing is a very great tool for B2B.

What is the best place to publish your content if you’d like to reach entrepreneurs? Do you have any other suggestion for reaching them online?

If you plan to write guest posts, go after the big sites like we talked about and get your content published there. They are looking for more content, you’ve just got to convince them that your content is good.

Give them suggestions! Show them other articles you’ve written. If you haven’t written any articles, just write a few samples and show them.

Webinars are also a great way to get the big customers.

You can do targeted ads on Facebook to people who are connected to the kind of companies you are looking for and get them to a landing page that talks about your webinars. Get them to someone who will sign them up, and then do the webinar.

From there, your sales guys will be able to reach them, talk about their experiences, and see if they can end up closing.

How should you contact media companies if you’re looking for guest blogging opportunities? Do you have any recommendations for grabbing their attention?  

Emails.

Find the papers or the websites that are most relevant to your audience within your region. Select an author, send an email to him and give him suggestions.

So the first email would be like, hey John, great article on so and so topic. I know what you’ve written, have you considered actually talking about this and this and this? I think it would resonate with these kinds of readers or businesses and help to understand the problem better. At first, just give a few suggestions.

Second email to John next time he publishes an article. Hey, John, I just wanted to let you know keep up the great work, I’m loving your content, it’s really good. Just as a quick suggestion for you, if you did A, B, and C, you might get more traffic and your readers would probably love it.

At this phase, you’re still just giving suggestions how they could modify the content. For example, you could also say that your paragraphs are really long, and if you just cut it up into more bite-sized text like three to four lines, it would be easier on the eyes to read.

Then the third email would be like, I’ve noticed you blogged about A, B, and C, but have you thought about X, Y, and Z? If you blog about it, I think it will appeal to your reader base and they would love it. Here is what, I know you’re also busy so if you want I can go write it for you if you introduce me to the editor.

And what you’ll find is that he is likely to introduce you.

Can you use the same approach if you’d like to contact corporations? Like sending an email to them about how great their product is and how could they improve it…

Yes. It works for companies as well. And it’s extremely useful to email up quite a bit of companies, and you can’t hear any salesman try this way.

Although It would be a bit more difficult, as most entrepreneurs are lazy and don’t want to take the time to answer emails.

Do you have any other recommendations that I haven’t asked you about but you think would be very valuable for the folks in Budapest to hear from you?

No. Keep up the work. If you keep working hard and executing fast, you can increase the chances of succeeding.

One thing to really do is to learn from other people’s mistakes. Understand what kind of similar mistakes you could be making, and try to avoid those. By learning and not repeating other people’s mistakes, you’ll increase your odds of success.

The first thing you’ll need to produce content that will help your organization is a strategy. Without it, your posts, guides or videos will have only a small chance to increase brand awareness and the number of leads.

A good content strategy defines who you are writing for and what needs your content satisfies. In most cases it also describes the style that your writers should use, as it helps create a consistent voice for your brand, that the users will recognize.

Besides the style guides, content strategies may include a list of your most important keywords, a detailed description of the buyer personas you are targeting, tips on distributing your content, and a short brand brief.

Once all is done, and you haven’t made serious mistakes in this phase like targeting the wrong keywords, there’s only one thing left before you can launch a successful content machine.

Someone’s got to do the job.

You’ll have to build a team and make each team member understand the goals of your strategy. You’ll have to specify the tasks that need to be completed before and after publishing. You’ll have to assign roles and define the responsibilities of your team members. And you’ll have to find the most effective way of communication between your co-workers.

This is what a good content workflow can help you achieve. Content workflow management is not about managing content. It’s about managing people.

Online content marketing and web analytics concept

What can you avoid with the content workflow?

If the roles and responsibilities are not defined clearly, your content creation could enter a spiral of approval chains. Especially at larger corporations with complex mechanisms for communication, it could take 15 to 20 emails to move a single blog post from concept to publishing.

This means that more time is spent on reviewing, changing, and approving content than it takes to create it. This can be extremely frustrating for writers; and if it happens regularly, it means that you’re on the wrong track.

In the end, your content will suffer. There is a limited number of changes that any piece of content can tolerate before becoming inconsistent or flawed

Roles and tasks

If you’d like to create an effective workflow, you should get started by identifying the tasks your team will have to complete in connection with a post before they could move on to another project. Then try to find the right person for each of these tasks.

The number of the needed steps can change from organization to organization, as the number of people firms can dedicate to each of the tasks. Only large companies are able to assign an individual team member for every task. With that said, even a smaller blog could benefit from defining them.

I created a short list of the steps I believe most content teams should go through. I also listed the various roles associated with them. In most cases, it makes sense to complete these tasks in the listed order.

1. Find out what to write about. This task is rather self-explanatory, and any team member could take part in it. Among other sources, you can use your keyword research, competitor analysis, social media channels, and forums related to your industry to find stories that your audience might be interested in.
   Feedback from your readers or colleagues working in other departments can also help you decide what to spend time on.

2. Approve the idea. Based on your strategy, editors, content managers, or the team of writers could decide what to post about. Creating drafts from the ideas can make their job easier, but on the other hand, it could be time-consuming.

3. Research your topic, and create a copyMost of the time posts are created by one writer, but in-depth articles are sometimes written by several authors. Collaboration could speed up the process if you need to ask experts or move out of the office to create the story. Try to find out which method is the most effective for your content team!

4. Create images and graphics. This is the work of the graphic designer. If your team doesn’t have one, you can outsource this work, or use stock images for your posts. Stock images are not a really good solution, because they are rarely relevant, and can’t help you to create a distinctive style.

5. Review the post. As the approval of the idea, this is the job of the editor or the content manager. He or she has to fact-check the post, look for copyright issues, and decide whether it’s up to your standards.

6. Proofread it at least once. Ideally, this is done by a proofreader. If you can’t afford to hire one or outsource it, editors or writers can also look for grammatical errors or misspellings in the text. The authors of the posts shouldn’t be assigned with this task, as usually they’ve read it so many times that they are unable to find errors in it at this stage.

7. Publish the post on your website. This is the job of a website administrator, but anyone else can do it too. If your website is not outdated, you won’t need programming skills just to publish a story.
   Someone, who is good at SEO should write meta descriptions and titles for your posts at this stage if they are not created automatically.

8. Promote it and measure the effects. Many people can work on these steps. Ideally a social media manager shares your posts on the suitable channels, email experts send it to your subscribers, and Google Analytics experts measure the impact.
   If you have a smaller team you should find the suitable people for each of these tasks. If people in your industry could be interested in your new content, you can contact them and look for guest blogging opportunities after you’ve published a story.

9. Update it after a while. Older posts, in many cases, generate more traffic and leads than new ones. This is why it’s a good idea to regularly review and update older posts that are still visible for searchers. The easiest way to keep your site up to date is to task the authors with rewriting their posts when needed.

I hope my list gives you an overview of the most important tasks and roles in content creation. After a while, you will need to refine your system and give more weight to certain elements, or change roles if something doesn’t work as intended.

But a content workflow is not only about dedicating tasks, it should also help team members communicate effectively and understand when they should start working on any given tasks without sending emails to each other.

Choosing the right tools can make this happen.

What tools should you use?

A large number of firms still manage their content marketing with a combination of Word, Excel, and email. On the other end of the spectrum, you can find companies that create fluid workflows by developing unique software solutions

In between them, there’s a large number of subscription-based and free tools that companies can use to simplify content creation and distribution.

We use a combination of Google Drive, Trello, Slack and Asana for this purpose.

Drive allows us to edit documents collectively and track changes without troubles. We use Trello to notify team members about the progress of our projects and the tasks they need to start working on. Slack is for internal communication and file sharing. Finally, our deadlines and the editorial calendar are stored in Asana.

This combination works well for us, but this doesn’t mean it’s a perfect solution for every other team. Cloud-based services and collaboration tools can make things easier, but they come with a learning curve. So if understanding how new tools work would take more time from your team than it could save, stick to what is working for you.

The point of creating, documenting, and explaining a content workflow is to make life easier for you and your team, and to eliminate the need of for a great deal of oversight by any one member during content creation.

Once you get there, you can get rid of many frustrations that come with this work, and spend more time on what is really important: to create great content.

A balanced composition feels right. It feels stable and aesthetically pleasing. While some of its elements might be focal points and attract your eye, no one area of the composition draws your eye so much that you can’t see the other areas.

Balancing a composition involves arranging both positive elements and negative space in such a way that no one area of the design overpowers other areas. Everything works together and fits together in a seamless whole. The individual parts contribute to their sum but don’t try to become the sum.

An unbalanced composition can lead to tension. When a design is unbalanced, the individual elements dominate the whole and the composition becomes less than the sum of its parts. In some projects, unbalanced might be right for the message you’re trying to communicate, but generally you want balanced compositions.

Note: This is the seventh and final post in a series on design principles. You can find the first six posts here:

Physical And Visual Balance

Balance is easy to understand in the physical world, because we experience it all the time. When something is unbalanced, it tends to fall over. You’ve probably been on a seesaw or a teeter-totter at some time in your life — you on one side and a friend on the other.

Assuming you were both about the same size, you were able to easily balance on the seesaw. The following image appears to be in balance, with two equally sized people equally distant from the fulcrum on which the seesaw balances.

The person on the left makes the seesaw rotate counterclockwise, and the person on the right makes it rotate clockwise by an equal amount. The force of each person acts in a different direction, and their sum is zero.

If one of the people was much bigger, though, the balance would be thrown off.

Here, the force of the larger person is reduced by being closer to the fulcrum on which the seesaw balances. I’ll trust you’ve been on a seesaw before or at least watched others play on one and that you have a pretty good sense of what’s going on.

Visual balance is similar. Physical weight is replaced by visual weight. The direction in which the physical weight acts is replaced by visual direction.

As a reminder, below are definitions for visual weight and visual direction, although I’ll refer you back to the fourth post in this series for more details.

• visual weight
  This is the perceived weight of a visual element. It’s a measure of how much anything on the page attracts the eye of the viewer.
• visual direction
  This is the perceived direction of a visual force. It’s the direction in which we think an element should be moving if it were given a chance to move according to the forces acting on it.

You don’t use instruments to measure the forces. You don’t use formulas to calculate whether everything is in balance. Rather, you use your eye to determine whether a composition is balanced.

Why Visual Balance Is Important

Just as in the physical world, visual balance is a good thing. It’s desirable in and of itself. An unbalanced composition can feel uncomfortable for the viewer. Look back at the second of the three seesaw images — it looks wrong because we can tell that the seesaw shouldn’t be in balance.

Visual weight is a measure of the visual interest of an element or area in a design. When a composition is visually balanced, every part of it holds some interest. The visual interest is balanced, which keeps viewers engaged with the design.

Without visual balance, viewers might not see all areas of the design. They probably won’t spend any time in areas with less visual weight or interest. Any information in those areas could easily go unnoticed.

You would balance a design visually because you want to balance the points of interest in your composition, so that viewers spend time with all of the information you want to convey.

ince launching a furniture design studio in 2006, Stine Gam and Enrico Fratesi have split their time between Denmark and Italy. Although their growing business,requires a wayfaring lifestyle, they’ve found ways to keep themselves grounded thanks to the daily rituals they engage in while traveling and the time they set aside for family.

Stine Gam and Enrico Fratesi have managed to achieve a lifestyle many of us only dream about: The founders and designers behind the furniture studio GamFratesi travel regularly between their hometowns of Pesaro, Italy, and Copenhagen, Denmark. While the couple often misses the comforting rhythms of daily home life with their three-year-old son, Frederik, traveling has been a fertile ground for creative inspiration. Their designs, though rooted in the stark and practical Scandinavian tradition, incorporate conceptual elements that add a touch of playfulness to their minimalist aesthetic. Running a young company keeps Stine and Enrico busy, but they still make it a priority to carve out time for friends, family and lingering over scrumptious breakfasts each morning. We spoke with Stine and Enrico about how their family stays in the present while hopping between homes.

What kind of families did you grow up in? Were there any life lessons your parents passed down to you?
Stine: We grew up in two very different environments. We recently found an old black-and-white photograph of Enrico’s father at the age of six, sitting in a workshop while his father made shoes for postwar survivors. We inherited a sense of discipline and a pure dedication to our work from him, as well as the knowledge that everything is possible if you’re committed and put in the work. We also found a photograph of my father at age 30 when he had long hair and was climbing a tree with his guitar. We got the freedom to dream and express ourselves without boundaries from him. These are two very different lessons, though both are equally important to us.

What are some of the differences between the Italian and Danish approaches to life?
Enrico: The Danes are true masters of creating intimate and welcoming domestic spaces. Perhaps this is due to the adverse Scandinavian weather conditions that force them to stay indoors all the time and encourage them to create warm and inviting home environments. They have a knack for adapting their homes to accommodate natural light, have a great eye for color and know how to bring aspects of nature into their everyday lives. In Italy, people seem to gravitate more toward gathering in communal areas such as large city squares rather than staying inside. More attention is paid to quality and developing these spaces rather than focusing on interiors. That said, we sometimes come across interesting historical interiors that mix unexpected styles and objects with sophisticated design solutions.

How do the work ethics in Denmark and Italy differ?
Stine: When we’re in Copenhagen, we allow ourselves to linger over breakfast in the kitchen, making conversation and enjoying the food and each other’s company. This is less common in Italy, where morning meals usually consist of a quick espresso and a croissant at the bar. The Italians prioritize lunch instead and tend to spend a long time partaking in this meal.

Please tell us a bit about your weekday morning routines at home: Do you have any personal rituals?
Enrico: I’m quite grumpy in the morning while Stine is calm and very good at gathering the family around the table for a wonderful, cozy breakfast. Our days often begin with homemade bread and cookies, fresh juice and chatting and playing with our son, Frederik, before we start our day. Stine loves mornings as she feels like she has the entire day in front her. I’m more partial to evenings as they feel like the calm after the storm of the day’s activities. How do you like to spend time when you’re at home?

Stine: Listening to music, preparing some nice food in the kitchen, reading books and playing with our son. Our home is located above a busy street and we enjoy people-watching from our window. We also like going on long walks around Copenhagen if the weather outside is nice.

What are your after-work hobbies?
Stine: We’re lucky that our work is also our passion and that our hobbies are all somewhat art- or design-related. Many of them become inspiration for our work, such as reading or listening to good music. We love these art forms for their expressive abilities and how they’re able to convey a wealth of emotions in just a few words or notes.

How do you like to spend your weekends?
Enrico: Apart from certain situations where an imminent delivery forces us to work, we devote our weekends to the family, experiencing the city and meeting friends. We’ve hoped for and have been working toward having nonworking weekends for so many years, but we’ve only recently achieved this goal.

How often do you host dinner parties?
Enrico: We love having our friends over to our house for fortnightly meals. We often serve a simple, family-style meal made using a small selection of high quality seasonal ingredients. Lunch is often Danish-style and consists of bread and an assortment of Scandinavian root vegetables. For dinner, we like serving well-made Italian pasta with a slow-roasted tomato sauce.

What are the most important components to running a business?
Enrico: Passion and patience.

What do you enjoy most about traveling?
Stine: It’s always been an integral part of our working process. We used to have more freedom and flexibility in the early stages of our company, but growing business opportunities in Copenhagen have required us to establish it as our primary work base and Pesaro as a refuge for when we need some time away from the city. We allow ourselves to make the trip to Pesaro when things get too hectic. It’s a lovely city nestled between the sea and the hills. Everything is within walking distance and the rustic buildings provide a welcome contrast to the highly stylized and modern architecture you find in Copenhagen. It’s essential for us to maintain a strong relationship with each location, and each has a special place in our hearts.

Are there any simple traditions you try to preserve when you’re traveling around in different cities?
Stine: A key part of our everyday routine is valuing the little things and individual moments in the day. We try to implement this philosophy regardless of where we are in the world.

What do you miss most about home when you’re traveling?
Enrico: We miss our son like crazy when he’s not with us. We don’t long for any material things when we’re away, though we do miss the everyday routines that come with being in your own home, such as walking around barefoot in the kitchen or preparing a bowl of yogurt and muesli and enjoying it on the couch while chatting for hours. The first thing we do after returning from a long trip is to whip up something to eat, often a dish that’s simple and homey.

How do you strike a balance between the time you spend at work and the time you spend with friends and family?
Enrico: While the fact that we’re self-employed means that we invest tons of passion, dedication and time into our work, family comes first. We’ve had to make many personal sacrifices over the years for the sake of our business, but we make it a point not to let work compromise family time.

Mostanában egyre többször adok elő és sokszor kérdezik barátaim, ismerőseim, hogy milyen praktikákat alkalmazok. Igyekeztem itt néhányat összegyűjteni.

Betanulni az egész előadást, mint egy verset.

Nem ment, mert valamit mindig elfelejtetem és közben ráfeszültem, hogy ha nem pont úgy mondom, ahogy megtanultam, akkor az milyen ciki lesz.
Csak azt nem vettem számításba, hogy rajtam kívül senki sem tudta, miről szeretnék előadni, ezért nem kell izgulni, hogy mit mondok vagy mit nem: csupán egy élményt kell átadni a hallgatóságnak

20 másodpercem van és jöjjön a videó.

Mivel nagyon gyorsan kezdett el dobogni a szívem, elakadt a hangom és nem kaptam levegőt, tudtam, hogy egy lélegzettel kb. 20 másodpercnyi információt tudok elmondani, mielőtt kívülről látszik, hogy nem kapok levegőt. Ennyi időm volt felvezetni az előadást és elindítani egy videót.
A videó jó, hiszen mindenhol halljuk, hogy az audiovizuális kiegészítés emeli az előadást. Ez így is van és így senkinek nem tűnt fel, hogy ez nekem az egész prezentációt megmentő eszköz volt. Miért? Érdekes mód, az első fél perc után visszaáll a szívverésem és a videó után már lazán tudok előadni. Történt valami: elkezdtem élvezni az előadásokat. Minimum 5-10 perceseket kellett tartani, az elején felvezetni majd egy videót benyomni és utána újra átélhettem azt a felemelő érzést, mit gyerekkoromban a színpadon.

Aztán jött a többi, amit használok:

Szemezz

Megkérni barátainkat, hogy össze vissza üljenek le a nézőtéren, így lesz kivel szemkontaktust tartani. Általa úgy érzi a közönség, hogy mindenkihez beszélünk. Nem fókuszálunk be csupán egy pontra és nem is a padlót, plafont vagy a mögöttünk lévő kivetítőt nézzük

Tied a színpad

Megvannak azok a koncertek, ahol a rock star-ok az egész stadiont áthatják? Mit látunk? Járnak kelnek össze vissza és mozgosítják a tömeget, aki együtt él velük. Ugyanezt tette Steve Jobs is a beszédeiben. Ąmikor fent vagyunk, miénk a színpad, csak ránk figyelnek. Ne bújjunk el egy szegletében és ne is csak egy helyen legyünk. Nem a ppt-nkről szól (ami sokszor full felesleges is), hanem rólunk. Így járkáljunk, tegyük magunkévá a pódoiumot és a közönséget is.

Szünet

Képzeljünk el egy témát… … … Egy témát, amit imádunk és órákig tudnánk beszélni róla… … … Az órákból pedig a legjobb infókkal … … … Perceket faragunk … … … Ezt pedig előadjuk. — A szünet néha lehet hosszabb, mint maga a beszéd része. Óriási hangsúlyt tud adni, NE féljük tőle. Egyrészről segíti az előadás dramaturgiáját, másrészről ha szép lassan beszélünk és szünetet tartunk, nem tűnik fel senkinek ha éppen elgondolkodunk valamin közben.

Lassan fuss

Winston Churchillt felkérték egy egyetemi előadás megtartására, amit ő el is fogadott és csak annyit kérdezett, mennyi ideje van. A megtisztelt hallgatók válaszolták, hogy amennyit csak akar. A Miniszterelnök mondta, hogy nem úgy van az, mert ha valóban bármennyit beszélhet róla és ott lesznek három napig, már most indulhatnak, azonban ha egy órában össze kell foglalnia, kér két hét felkészülési időt. — Tudjuk, hogy mennyi idő áll a rendelkezésünkre és mennyi információt adjunk át. Nem kell gyorsabban beszélni, csak hogy többet mondhassunk el.

Én ezt akkor értettem meg, mikor a prezentációs tárgyamon kaptunk egy témát, amiről fél órában kellett beszélni. Sikerült. Ez a tárgy heti kétszer volt és a második órára mondták, hogy ugyanezt 15 percben adjuk elő. Oké, furcsa volt, de NAGY nehezen sikerült. Meg is dícsértek minket, az ajándékunk pedig az volt, hogy a következő héten 5 percben adhattuk elő ugyanazt. Hát ez mekkora baromság, ezt nem lehet – mondtam. De ment. És ugynaúgy, ugyanannyi lényegi infót átadtam. Majd levittük 2 percre és a végén !!!! fél percre, 00:30 perc, 30 másodperc. SIKERÜLT. Mindegyikben szépen lassan beszélve, szünetet tartva, a legfontosabb érzést és infót átadva. Ez az egész pitch filozófia alapja

Testbeszéd

Álítólag a testbeszéd és a tonalitás (hangsúly) adja az egész előadás 90%-át. Szintén álítólag Kenedy ezért nyerhette meg a választásokat. A TV miatt. Kezünk sose legyen zsebben vagy összekulcsolva. Ne legyen nálunk papír. Kezeink derék és nyak között legyenek (kivéve ha szavazásra buzdítjuk az embereket és felemeljük a kezünk, jelezve, hogy ők is emeljék).

Steve Jobs hónapokig gyakorolt

Mindenekfelett pedig gyakorlás teszi a mestert. Minél többet adok elő, minél gyakorlottabb leszek, úgy tágul a komfort zónám és fejlődhetek

Struktúra (jó akár kronológiailag vagy in medias res is)

1. Figyelemfelhívó mondat
   1. Alátámasztó kijelentés, témameghatározás
2. Fő üzenet átadása
3. Első alátámasztás
   1. Első alátámasztás indoklás 1
   2. Első alátámasztás indoklás 2
   3. Első alátámasztás indoklás 3
4. Második alátámasztás
   1. Második alátámasztás indoklás 1
   2. Második alátámasztás indoklás 2
   3. Második alátámasztás indoklás 3
5. N alátámasztás (amennyi kell)
6. Fő üzenet kiemelése
7. PONT. Nincs thank you, csupán egy hangsúlyos befejezés, amivel jelezzük, hogy vége. Várunk a tapsra és csak alatta köszönjük meg.

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