WomenEntrepreneur.com recently had a feature on Francesca Kuglen, HairZing: Social Responsibility in Action.

Francesca Kuglen is not only a client, taking The Henderson Group Art of Presentation workshop in 2005, but she is also the sister of our very own sales guru, Chuck Kuglen.

HairZing has a fresh, innovative and socially-responsible approach to both hairstyling and manufacturing.

HairZing Mission: bring business to female entrepreneurs in areas with limited resources and economic infrastructure.

Advice for would-be social entrepreneurs:

1. Do not pick a recession. "Timing is everything," Montgomery says. "Be sure you not only have your own life savings but about four other people's life savings," she jokes.
2. Have an open mind and be willing to adjust as needed. Kuglen and Montgomery figured they could communicate and make business work halfway around the world. "The answer is, we couldn't. They need managers," Montgomery says.
3. Be consistent. Kuglen and Montgomery want to help needy women everywhere, and they want to do it in an environmentally responsible way. See even in the U.S., those who sell the product tend to be single women or women who are struggling. Consistency also demanded that HairZing change its packaging to be more ecological. "We changed from a toxic plastic to a biodegradable plastic," Kuglen says. "That took a tremendous cost. We'd already designed a fabulous package. And we said, 'Let's go back and redo that.' "

- WomenEntrepreneur.com, Eve Gumpel      

Read the whole story >>

Focused individuals and groups like the Beatles, Tiger Woods and Tony Robbins have made the efforts to make the correct muscle movements to become very good at using their fingers to play an instrument or playing a sport and even speaking effectively.   Yet, some folks do the same thing repeatedly without changing.

What is the difference?  Having someone scoring you via a scorecard or placement in sports; having an audience that gives feedback or an audio-recording that indicates when unwanted notes were played.  Scoring yourself……

Yet, in speaking another language, especially English, we often do not get the quick feedback of how well we are using our motor speech system to hit the target pronunciations.

Our listeners often consider reminding another of the mispronunciation or asking for clarification as being  “rude”.  Rather, our listeners go ask other folks what we just said or just ignore what we said entirely…..

The speaker only begins to realize that they have not spoken to be understood after they get ignored for a promotion, a prime project or have received a smaller than expected raise.  For some ESL speakers, this can take several years to become apparent.

In Malcolm Gladwell’s popular new book, “Outliers: The Story of Success”, Chapter 2, he cited research showing that even though one may have talent, it will take practice….around 10,000 hours of practice….to become Extremely good at anything. This is two to four years of daily practice.

How to Harness the “Power of the 10,000 Hours”: Three of Ten Strategies:

1. Speak English only every waking moment for 2-4 years.  Using 16-8 hours/day at 365 days/year, this adds up to about 10,000 hours.  Considering that many folks have been in English working environments for over 2-4 years, this should not be too much of a problem.

2. Become one of your own coaches….. Audio-tape yourself DAILY when speaking on the phone. Rewind, put your earphones in and listen to yourself.  Put yourself in the other person’s place.  What did your colleague hear?  Dropped articles? Dropped syllables? Stress on the wrong syllable? Sound substitutions? Speaking at the speed of light?

3. S-L-O-W Down!  Listen to an audiotape you made of yourself (See #2). Time yourself for a minute from the middle of the tape.   Count EVERY –uh; -ah; as well as EVERY word. Do this in 2-3 second segments. It may take an hour to get it right. And . . . It is worth the effort.

This is VERY Important.  If you are over 110 words/ utterances in a minute, you are way too fast for your listeners to understand you and your accent.

Recap:   Speak English EVERY DAY for 16 hours.  Audiotape and Listen to yourself.  SLOW Down!

Remember, do you want to be passable or extremely good at speaking English?  Just one of the team or a top manager?  -The Articulate Advantage

Looking to keep your skills sharp for job hunting or career advancement?  PresentationCampLA is a grassroots, do-it-yourself event that aims to help individuals better present themselves and their ideas.

On Saturday, June 20, from 10 a.m. to 6 p.m., participants will gather at BlankSpaces in Los Angeles for a unique collaborative experience: creating a public speaking conference from scratch. The group will decide collectively at the start of the day which topics they would like to hear about, who will teach them, and the order of sessions for the day.

PresentationCampLA is a great opportunity for participants to learn from, teach to, and network with professionals involved in improving presentations in the Los Angeles area - and around the world!

PresentationCampLA website: http://barcamp.org/PresentationCampLA
Register here: http://presentationcampla.eventbrite.com/
Twitter hashtag: #pcampla

Our work has to be experienced to truly understand its value.  We use these workshops as a way to introduce our work experientially to new prospective clients.

About the workshop:

Building rapport with an audience and moving them to action requires the ability to confidently present information that convinces and engages even the most skeptical customer. This intensive work educates and motivates participants to deliver high-impact presentations.

Using interactive methods, rather than lectured instruction, participants cultivate a personal style – a style that gains the audience's attention through confident composure and meaningful interaction. Through the Henderson Group's unique and proven feedback model, participants receive immediate feedback from instructors, peers and videotape, enabling them to rapidly learn, reflect and improve their presentation skills.

The results of this work:

• Competently present ideas and information to groups of people
• Energize and persuade audiences using stories and metaphors
• Effectively communicate with peers, superiors and customers
• Move business objectives forward by quickly engaging with customers and colleagues and creating influence.

"The skills we learned in this class can be translated into our every day life, every interview and every sales call we ever make."
- Oracle

Contact us for more information.

Click here to reserve a seat >>

Merriam-Webster’s dictionary defines 'myth' in this way:  A usually traditional story of ostensibly historical events that serves to unfold part of the world view of a people or explain a practice, belief, or natural phenomenon.

They list “parable” as a synonym.

So, a Creation Myth is also usually a teaching story that explains a practice or belief system.  It describes the central ethos that defines an organization or group.

The Henderson Group Creation Myth

It was 1990 and the high tech boom in the San Francisco bay area was just beginning.  David Henderson, our co-founder, had quit his practice as a litigating attorney because he was “soul sick.”  David had been very successful working as council to Ernest and Julio Gallo during their ascent to a dominant market share.  But he said, “I saw a lot of zeros moving from one bank account to another but didn’t see anyone getting any happier.”  David was looking for work with greater meaning.

The idea of teaching presentation skills seemed like a good fit.  He approached his friend Rand, who he’d worked with at Ernest and Julio Gallo.  Rand was now heading up Human Resources at a growing high tech company based in Belmont , CA .

Rand introduced David to the Director of Training and Development.  The meeting did not go well and the woman told Rand that she had no intention of hiring David.  Rand pulled rank.  He informed her, “Yes, we will” and out of respect for her autonomy, they’d give David one workshop and agreed that if the scores were not excellent, then she wouldn’t have to hire David again.

She grudgingly agreed to move forward and filled the workshop with friends and gave them instructions to put David to the test.

The morning of the first day of our presentation skills workshop is when the bulk of the didactic or formal instruction takes place.  It was a difficult morning for David.  The group was pushing David and calling him on every little mistake he made.

David called Linda, his wife, partner and co-founder of the company, at lunch in a state of near panic.  It was a disaster.  Linda managed to calm him enough to get him back to the classroom.

I once asked David, “Did you learn to be a good presenter as a lawyer?”  He replied, “Not at all.  I didn’t learn to be a good presenter until I started leading these workshops.”

“Really?” I queried, “So, how did you have success as a trainer?”  He replied, “One of the things I was very good at as a litigator was the ability to coach witnesses.”

David had an unusually powerful BS detector.  He’d grown up in a challenging home environment with a mother who struggled with psychological illness and an alcoholic father.  He’d learned to pay very close attention to the behavior of those around him in order to protect himself.

Having been coached by David for about 6 years, it’s clear to me that he must have been very good at coaching witnesses in their demeanor and delivery so they would be telling the story that his firm wanted to be told; the story that would support their case.

In the afternoon, the participants were required to give their presentations and get feedback from David.  This was where his experience as a lawyer truly shined.  They began to see David’s coaching as valuable.

By the end of the workshop, the afternoon of day 2, they gave David the highest marks of any workshop that had been held at the company.  The Director of Training and Development had to admit that the workshop was a success and hired David to come back again.  They eventually became friends and the workshop became the most highly rated in the history of the company.

What was the company?  Oracle.  The company went through phenomenal growth through the next decade and was our largest client, both in terms of size and the revenue they generated for 12 years.

That is the story that captures how our company began, our Creation Myth.

For more about capturing a Creation Myth see Creating a Story

Google Wave: A Complete Guide

Google Wave has a lot of innovative features, but here are just a few:

- Real-time: In most instances, you can see what someone else is typing, character-by-character.

- Embeddability: Waves can be embedded on any blog or website.

- Applications and Extensions: Just like a Facebook application or an iGoogle gadget, developers can build their own apps within waves. They can be anything from bots to complex real-time games.

- Wiki functionality: Anything written within a Google Wave can be edited by anyone else, because all conversations within the platform are shared. Thus, you can correct information, append information, or add your own commentary within a developing conversation.

- Open source: The Google Wave code will be open source, to foster innovation and adoption amongst developers.

- Playback: You can playback any part of the wave to see what was said.

- Natural language: Google Wave can autocorrect your spelling, even going as far as knowing the difference between similar words, like “been” and “bean.” It can also auto-translate on-the-fly.

- Drag-and-drop file sharing: No attachments; just drag your file and drop it inside Google Wave and everyone will have access.

While these are only a few of the many features of Google Wave, it’s easy to see why people are extremely excited. -mashable.com

The Long Version:

Google Wave: who, what, where, why, when?

Google Wave Drips with Ambition

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It's called the Flip because a slider on the side of the unit flips open a hidden USB plug.  Yes, it’s plug and play, and it works on both Mac and PC!   The unit contains (limited) editing software, but you can import footage into the editing software of your choice.  I’ve brought some of mine into Final Cut Pro and I’ve been quite pleased with the video quality, considering it’s not a professional camcorder.  It's also designed with sharing in mind and features an easy upload to youtube and other social networking sites built into the software.

Another nice feature is the price; it’s accessible at approximately $150 for the standard Flip Mino and approximately $200 for the HD Flip Mino.   Pure Digital Technologies, Inc. has recently released a new version of the Flip Mino.  Expect a 2” viewing screen rather then the original 1” screen, and 2 hours of recording time rather than the 1-hour recording time of the previous model.

Overall I’ve been highly pleased with the Flip Mino and recommend it.  Although a very simple gadget, it’s good at what it does.  Remember that recording your presentations to see yourself as others do is a great learning tool.

For more info on the Flip Mino from Pure Digital Technologies, Inc. >>

The Ever Popular "Unboxing":

On the Road Footage:

Standard or HD?

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WARNING: This has some sexual language and is NOT for all audiences.
But hey, you are a grownup.  You can make your own choices.

More Taylor Mali >>

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These projectors first appeared as freestanding, companion units to cell phones and other devices connected by standard cables. Cell phone service providers have been the driving force behind the development with the goal of embedding the micro projectors, like the common cell phone camera.

I was intrigued after reading an article on the emerging technology last year.  These micro projectors have some possibility for impromptu meetings and mobile presentations.

An Amazon reviewer says:

"We have a number of people that travel a lot for training purposes. They usually have to pack around a laptop/dvd player, projector, external speakers, and all of the wires needed to connect everything together. They are usually in smaller rooms presenting to small groups. For this purpose, the projector is going to work very well.

Here is what we have put together. Instead of packing around the equipment mentioned above, our managers now have their iPhone or iTouch, the Optoma Pico Projector, and a set of mini speakers from a company called Grandmax (Grandmax.com). The speakers are powered from the iPhone and are not much bigger than the projector (the sound is excellent for the size). They are able to show videos, pictures, and PowerPoint presentations (you need a program to convert the PowerPoint presentation to a video to do this) and not have to pack a ton of equipment to do it.

It will be exciting to see where this technology goes in the future. However, as for now, this projector does a decent job as long as you can live with the shortcomings. It's not perfect and a lot of people will not be happy with the quality, but it has the potential to be a very worthwhile tool if you have a specific need that this projector can satisfy."

"Expect LED projectors to be used in all kinds of devices, including cell phones, digital cameras, game machines, portable media players, and even laptops!!!" www.projectorreviews.com

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