Review: Great book with great insight that came at the right time in my life!
Rating: 5 out of 5
Date: 01 5, 2013
I actually liked the approach to public speaking in this book. I've read so many public speaking books that treat public speaking as something that required certain skills or a certain attitude. This book dispelled all of that with a simple insight: Every opportunity you have to do a public presentation involves a "sale", whether it's a sale of your skills, your company, or your religious beliefs. We are all influenced and influence each other in presentations. That was pretty novel to me!I also like the fact that the author came from not a non-speaker background. Almost every other book on public speaking was written by a "professional". The author is definitely an expert now, but what I found refreshing was that he didn't start off the way. This experience, I think, allowed the author to speak from a conversational, yet informative work. For example, the author goes into detail about issues that I thought would never be covered in a "public speaking" book like how to deal with your "voice cracking", how to remember your lines, or if you get "tongue-tied". Most books I have read, already assume you won't have these problems. Their focus is how you should present the information. This book is more on how to prepare "you" to present the information.The author also did something that I have never seen in a public-speaking book. He talks about how to make money from speaking. Actually, it was on a broader topic-how to make money as an information business. This was something I was really interested in!My only tiny complaint was with the chapter titles. I liked the way the book is section headings are set up; however the chapter titles kind of went on a different tangent. That made it a little harder to get back to particular section of the book. I would have made the section headings: Primary School, Secondary School, College, and Graduate School with the chapter headings either based on topic or listed as different "grades". Also, I would put a few more bulleted lists. I am a visual person and like to see lists rather than text sometimes. The author has a couple, but a little more wouldn't hurt.In either case, this is a great book! I actually want to add this to my "Marketing Books" library because I have so much to learn from it.After reading this book, I found the author's Twitter profile and contacted him because I wanted a print copy of this book.