Episode 72: What makes Steve Jobs’ Stanford Commencement Speech so powerful?

Michael Mioduski 00:21

Welcome back to presentation thinking aka the storyteller Study Club, aka pitching ain't easy. But today, with any luck, as we study the one of the greats, our pitching might get a little bit easier. It's graduation season, you might just be fresh off of a high school or a college graduation. Maybe you're the commencement speaker. Today, we're going to reflect on one of the greatest, most viewed commencement speeches of all time ever in our recorded history. 42 million views on YouTube, the most watched commencement speech of all time, Steve Jobs, Stanford 2005 commencement, it is cited as one of the best look, if you are preparing to give a speech, namely one to a bunch of students who just graduated. It's one to get familiar with. And honestly as presenters and people who take business communication and persuasive communication seriously, and we were on this path, and this mission together to level up, study some of the best and apply it to our own lives and communication. The jobs Stanford speech is definitely one to check out. I think I'd seen it once and we hear about it. It's cited a lot in communication, you know, best practice kind of stuff. So it was cool. You know, Molly, she's got her head down right now. grindon To give a first new version of a workshop, a webinar. So Michael, Shawn here is going to take this one, try my own deep dive in analysis of the Steve Jobs, Stanford commencement. I really miss Molly. She's the extroverts out of our partnership. So wish me luck. But honestly, I'm just stoked to talk about this stuff. And honestly, I'm about to shove off on a little eight week sabbatical. So I'm putting the onus back onto Molly to carry the torch, you're going to enjoy it. She's got a lot of fun content planned. But for me, super excited to take my wife and the girls down on a super exciting bucket list trip down under, we're gonna check out Australia. For the next couple of weeks, June and July, we'll be down there, tinkering around getting into some new discoveries and adventures. So Molly is going to be carrying the torch. keep tuning in. It's going to be better and better. And I'll be tuning in to from afar. In the meantime, why don't you take a break? Go Google. Steve Jobs commencement speech, Stanford if you haven't seen it yet. I'll pause for 20 minutes while you go watch that. Welcome back, if you just watched it, Steve Jobs, let's talk about it. Let's get into it. So 2005, Stanford, a lot of Smarty smarts out there, right. What stood out to me is, well, Steve Jobs. One of the first thing he gets off his chest. This is the closest I've ever been to a college, commencement speech or any graduation because, you know, one of the first things he comes out with is that he never made it through college, he, he started at Reed College. And after I forget what he said, a semester, couple of semesters, he dropped out, hung around for a little while dropping in kind of auditing classes popping around live in the college life without wanting his parents to go into too much debt to afford it while he was trying to really just figure things out. I think that's one of the ways that Molly and I discuss in the presentation space, you know, giving a speech, the whole vulnerability thing, but really opening up pretty personal information, right? The fact that Steve was a college dropout, he did all right. But you know, as you're speaking to one of the elite colleges in the world, and one of the first lines out of your mouth is that I'm speaking to you and I never finished college was was pretty funny. So he got some laughs there and went on to deliver this just absolute masterpiece of a speech. So I want to talk about three takeaways that I got out of this and I'm sure you can get plenty more. Number one, Steve Jobs did not mince words. Turns out I don't think this is any news to anybody. But you could actually count the arms in his in his speech, and I think, honestly, they were intentional. So right at the beginning, he's kind of pretending like he's fumbling around. He says, I I'm honored to be here. Truth be told. I never graduated from college and I, this is the closest I've ever been to a college graduation. In hindsight, I think he kind of planted those us. There's like three of them. That's it from that point on for the remaining 14 solid minutes of that speech, he did not have any single extra fat, or words or likes any of that stuff, no filler. unless I'm mistaken, you watch it, you tell me. I'm 99.9% sure there was no excess, no fat to trim no tangents. Nothing. Every single word in his speech seemed to have been there with intention. This should not surprise us. You know, I think from everything we've we've known about the products that he was behind. He was all about, what can we delete? What can we remove? What can we simplify, simplify, simplify, and I think he put in into practice with this speech. So yeah, honestly, the first thing that hit me was holy cow. That was succinct. And every single word in there was intentional. Number two, the message itself, I mean, the concept, the the greater overarching big idea, follow your heart, listen to the signs around you listen to the universe, take some, some risk, follow those calls, those weird feelings that you've got, and just go for it. And I think this was just a really cool message, I think, to an audience of elite, you know, college kids at Stanford, I imagine it feels like they have a lot to lose, maybe I don't really know. But they've probably been at the top to be at that level of such a university. And so to come in and say, Look, you're going to stumble, and that's okay, you're gonna it's okay to fail and to to follow these hunches as long as you're able to, as he says, connect the dots. And I love that message personally, can kind of resonate with that. And I do think there's really immense value in and following those hunches as long as you're observing, and paying attention to the signs along the way. So that as he says, You can connect the dots, you know, when you're looking back at things, if you can put two and two together from these lessons that you've made along the way you can get really far in life. And I think I really love that message from from jobs. He also talks a lot about death. It's the third of his three stories. And one of the most famous lines in his speech, remembering that you are going to die is the best way I know to avoid the trap of thinking you have something to lose. What stood out to me was my own connection of some recent diets. A good friend of mine told me to read this book called The comfort crisis by Michael Easton. And, you know, if you're on this kick to try to get get healthier reboot or anything like that, it's pretty good and motivating. But one of the weird chapters I didn't expect to read about was Michael Easterns trip to the country Bhutan, where, as you know, like a lot of travel bloggers kind of regurgitate this fact that Bhutan is cited as like the world's happiest nation. But I think Michael Eason goes a step further to investigate sort of why. And what he comes away with is, is that the people in that country just have a really good embracement and grasp of death, they accept it. And what Easton kind of lands on is that, because these people have embraced death, they live a little bit more authentically and true to themselves. And, you know, he talks about the fact that on most people's deathbed, or, you know, if they went through something traumatic, they'll near a near death experience, people come back, and they, they live a little bit differently, and a little bit more true to what they want to do and be. And I think, Steve Jobs, his message is wrapped around a similar idea to where, you know, he talks about looking at the mirror every day and say, hey, you know, if today is the last day, am I excited to be doing what I'm doing? And, you know, just to say this stuff to some 2122 year olds, who have all the world ahead of them. It's pretty cool, because I think a lot of people that age think they're supposed to be doing something. And so for a guy as successful as jobs to come in and say, Look, you don't have to, you can, you can choose your own path is pretty, pretty damn cool. Three, number, the third thing I really took away from the jobs commencement is exactly that. Three, the real lesson in his speech, the one that's often cited by sort of like presentation, pundits like Carmine Gallo, they in his book talk like Ted and the presentation Secrets of Steve Jobs. Three is a magic number. We hear it all the time. And it's so true, and I love the format of this speech is so perfect think it's about 1415 minutes, three stories. You know, Steve starts from the top. Today, I want to tell you three stories from my life. That's it, no big deal. Just three stories. And then what I really like, you know, he jumps right into Story number one, and then goes into Story number two, and when he gets there, he says My second story is about love and loss or when he gets to the third story, my third story is about death. And I love that term signposting. But basically like we've been in an audience where we don't know when the heck the presenters can be done. And honestly, like, if we don't know that they're nearing the finish line, we, we start to wonder like, Oh, is he or she on this last point? How long is this thing going? So I think there's something powerful in setting someone's expectations to say, I've got three things, and I'm going to stay true to that, you know, and here's one, here's two, here's three, and kind of calling out when you're there. Keeps us like, alright, we're at the beginning. All right, we're at the middle. All right. This is it. Here's the big finale, I think that keeps people engaged in one of the big points here is, you know, this is the presentation thinking podcast, a lot of times, myself, my team, we come from a design background, we're talking a lot about presentation design, and the slides and the visuals, the visual story, the commencement speech, as many of you know, who've had to go give a toast or, you know, maybe some kind of speech, it's sort of a naked speech, you don't, you're there, there's no nothing to support you everyone's hinging on your words and your body language. And that's it. So, you know, even even bigger props that jobs was able to engage an audience that well, without, you know, leaning on a crutch of like some some beautiful imagery of gorgeous product, you know, that that we seen on the keynotes, all those years. So, the the naked presenter, the orator, you know, devoid of any slides to lean on. I think this is sort of the mic drop moment for Steve, when he's able to get up there and command that entire crowd and go on into just speech, legacy and to be talked about for years to come as one of those just wonderful, highly impactful speeches. So I hope you get a chance to check it out. If you do have to give a grad speech or even like a little toast, cheese, there's power in that that three story structure. But what's important, you know, and as Carmine Gallo calls out in his book, those three stories, they're not just three random stories, they all point to something bigger, right? It's important to know that those all map up to this greater overarching narrative, which is really, you know, do what you love. Carmine Gallo calls it, like creating a message map, you know, in his book, The think of this big bubble that says, do what you love. And it's got three arrows pointing down to like these three pillars, connect the dots, love and loss, and then death. So he said, kind of mapped out those, the story, they'll ladder up to that greater message, do what you love that they all have in common. And each of those three pillars has three sub stories within it. So three really is this magic number. But remember, there has to be some connective thread, some sort of red thread through line, to bring it all together. And that's what jobs does so well to with his online, you know, he ties it back in sort of a master storyteller move. He talks about this catalog that he used to read called the whole earth catalog, this magazine or zine kind of thing when he was, I guess, in his teens or something. He was reading it. Everybody in his his age was reading it. It was, I don't know, like had the zeitgeist, you know, is for young teens, it was it was interesting, it was fresh, but he says it was the mid 1970s. And I was your age. So right, then that ability still to relate to the audience and say, look, it's not all about me, I was you back then. Right. And he keeps relating to them. And I love his ability to again, without any slides to lean on sort of a tip from the Mehta stick, you know, school of thought is he's able to paint this like really clear vision in our heads. And because he uses like these details that are pretty concrete, and they help us like, I don't know, just kind of see what he's saying. But I'll just kind of quote this. He talks about this whole earth catalog. And their last issue. When it had run its course they put out a final issue. It was the mid 1970s. And that was your age on the back cover of their final issue was a photograph of an early morning country road, the kind you might find yourself hitchhiking on. If you were so adventurous. Beneath it, were the words Stay hungry, stay foolish. It was their farewell message as they signed off, Stay Hungry. Stay Foolish, and I've always wished that for myself. And now as you graduate to begin anew, I wish that for you. Stay Hungry. Stay Foolish. Thank you very much. You know, that's that's it. So, okay, the power of repetition, right? How many times back to back to back did he say Stay Hungry? Stay Foolish. That again, kind of closes up saying like, Look, don't be too precious with this life. Be true to yourself. Go for it. Get out there. You're gonna make mistakes, but better yet, you're gonna learn from them. If you're paying attention. It's great. Check it out. out, that's enough blabbering from me about it better yet to just go go absorb it yourself and learn. And we're gonna jump into the spice cabinet. Because I've got some takeaways here I want to share, first of all, some analysis. So 2255 words, in that great speech, it's about 14 minutes, 10 seconds total, if you cut out sort of the the claps, leading up and walking out. So that all equates to about 159 words per minute. If you go Google like, hey, you know, what's a good word per minute count for a speech, you'll see it's anywhere from like, 140 to 160 words per minute. So, jobs obviously, plan that right in the sweet spot, or really, it felt like a really good cadence and not too fast, not too slow. For that audience, it seemed about right. And again, everything was there with with much intention. I also noticed his very first two words, thank you, you know, he's getting crapped on. And then of course, he ends with thank you all very much. Just love that gratitude, you know, person who dropped out and you know, did not even come close to finishing college. Pretty cool. And maybe humbling to be there for him. Probably a pretty big moment, I'd say even bigger for the people in the crowd. Holy crap. The other takeaway, just mind blown when he kind of talks about how after he left, Apple kind of got out there for a second and kind of talked about that role, what would be a almost humiliating moment, and that he just fell in love with building stuff. And he went on to found this animation studio called Pixar. Before going back to Apple. Turns out Pixar went on to become the most successful animation studio in the world. And we know Apple is like has more assets than most countries in the world, though to say one successful Midas Touch kind of fella and who truly loved what he did found passion, it was his life's work just to make great products and talk about him. I also did a little some word counting. Just curious and I didn't look this up, I was just I had the I had pasted this into a word counter. And then I use my handy Command F key to look up a few variations of words that he talked about. The one that I find interesting though word other than like, and or that are the key words. Death was used six times dead once deaf die four times so dead death die use 11 times. Love 10 times, Apple nine times work eight typeface type typography eight story stories seven Mac Macintosh six connect five heart for cancer for trust three designed to not sure what that means to you. But I thought it was interesting that love and death were the two highest use to like kind of keywords as far as I could stir up. Finally, let's talk about walkout music. It's not a graduation without pomp and circumstance, right? Like I imagine that was played maybe not right when Steve walked up, but had to look this up and Molly, I'm gonna let the send you a link to this really interesting NPR article about like, Where the heck did this whole Pomp and Circumstance song come from? What does that even mean? According to Merriam Webster, it's it means impressive formal activities or ceremonies. But the story in that NPR article is about how it came to be used at all these graduations and it's about the composer of pomp and circumstance. And the title comes from a line in Shakespeare's Othello, pride, pomp and circumstance of glorious war. Funny, right like that full circle, coming back to our muse, Billy shakes. And so Sir Edward L. Gar, composed pomp and circumstance. And let's see, he received an honorary doctorate from Yale University in 1905. And it was played actually, as a recessional not a processional at the ceremony. But after Yale use the tune then Princeton jumped on board, University of Chicago and Columbia. Eventually, everybody started using it for graduation ceremony. So pretty funny. Check out that, that link from NPR, shout out Bill shakes, pride and pomp and circumstance. Okay. But if I had to say, if I were to walk out to give Steve Jobs his Stanford graduation, first of all, that'd be the closest I've ever come to getting into Stanford. Second of all, it would have to be three It's a magic number as performed by blind melon, their rendition from that Schoolhouse Rock revamp. As a magic to God that that Shannon Hoon, is that his name? A reskin piece of voice. Incredible. Thank you, editor. We'll all right. Yeah, well, that is all I've got for today. Thank you so much for tuning in. As always, there's much more to come. Molly. I miss you illustrator. No, no Our incredible work is always presentation nation. Thank you so much for coming along to head down this, this storytelling rabbit hole with us. Until next time, keep on pitching