One of the biggest keys to success in life is being able to communicate clearly. If you’re the smartest person in the world, but can’t explain your ideas to anyone else, it doesn’t matter. Many people struggle translating their ideas into actionable chunks. Others struggle with getting up in front of a crowd. They talk too fast, use jargon, business buzz words and end up losing their audience. The best public speakers I’ve seen talk slowly, clearly and have broken their ideas into small pieces that people can understand. I left the startup panel at SXSW 2010 thinking that Naval Ravikant knew what he was talking about. He talked slowly, clearly and delivered insight. If you watch the best TED Talks, they all do the same thing.
I’ve always been interested in trying to improve public speaking, but never had a good idea until I came to Chile. We were at an entrepreneurship panel held completely in Spanish with four speakers. Most of the speakers talked slowly and clearly, but one was clearly nervous, making her speak even faster than normal. I had trouble understanding her for awhile until she worked out her nerves.
So pretend your audience is made up of people who know your language as their second language. If you do this, you’ll speak more slowly, use smaller words and break your ideas into chunks. I’m not suggesting you dumb down your presentations. Speaking simply and clearly is not dumb. In fact, many times it’s even harder. That’s why you often see websites with a full paragraph of text without having any idea what they actually do. But that’s for another blog post.
Public Speaking Keys
Slow down. Then slow down again. You’re probably still talking too fast.
Avoid jargon and business buzzwords. Communicate simply and clearly
Relax. You know more about your subject than your audience.
I’ve been in Santiago for the past five days for Startup Chile and finally had a chance to write down some initial impressions. Jesse and I have been really busy getting our IDs, a bank account and searching for an apartment. The Startup Chile program has helped us cut through all of the red tape that others might have to go through and it’s been super efficient so far. Jesse and I have been walking all over the place, getting a feel for the city. I’ve been really impressed with all of the other entrepreneurs in the program I’ve met so far.
It’s been 70-80 degrees and sunny every single day with low humidity. The weather reminds me of Palo Alto so far. Santiago is a huge city with about 6m residents. It’s in a valley, so there are some problems with smog, but I haven’t had a problem yet. There are a few days when the mountains are a bit obscured, but for whatever reason the smog doesn’t seem to get down into the valley and has not bothered my lungs.
Santiago sort of runs west to east and as a general rule, the farther east you get, the better the neighborhood. We’ve only explored comúnas (districts) Providencia, Las Condes, Vitacura and a bit of Nuñoa and the downtown around our office.
Eastern Santiago very developed and clearly first world. If it weren’t for everyone speaking Spanish, I could be in any other mid to large city in the US or Europe. The center, where our office is located, is a little older and really busy, but still nice. There’s people everywhere during the day. It’s filled with shops, restaurants and businesses. We’re not sure what it’s like at night, but people have told us it can get rough downtown. There’s got to be at least 6-7 universities headlined by Universidad Católica and Universidad de Chile, so there’s lots of young people seemingly everywhere. We haven’t checked out the Western side and everyone’s told us to stay away.
The metro is modern, efficient and cheap. It costs about $1.25 to use it and you can get just about anywhere you want using it. There’s wifi everywhere, probably more than in Madison. There’s public wifi hotspots all over the place. People eat dinner between 830-1030 and go out to bars/clubs at 12-1, which stay open until 6am.
Not many people speak much English, but they love it when we speak Spanish, even if it’s bad. Our goto phrase has been estoy tratando de hablar español, pero hablo como un niño de cinco años, which means I’m trying to speak Spanish, but I speak like a five year old. That usually gets a laugh and then we’re free to practice. I can still understand pretty much everything people are saying, but I’m still struggling to speak quickly. I can tell I’m already getting better though.
Everyone here looks younger than you’d expect and I have a feeling it’s because Santiago is a walking city, the weather is awesome and the food is really healthy. Chilean food uses awesome ingredients, has correct, non American portion sizes, but is sort of bland. We’ve had a bunch of chicken/rice, pork chop/mashed potatoes etc for main courses. There are tons of Peruvian restaurants in Santiago and we’ve found that it’s the place to go for a good meal. It’s like Chilean food, but with more spices. I had some top notch ceviche last night. If you’re in Madison, go to Inka Heritage to get a feel for some of the stuff we’ve been eating.
Chileans excel at making sandwiches. They use really good, fresh bread, avocado, tomato, fresh wet cheeses, lime mayo and all sorts of fresh goodness. If I wanted, I could survive on the diverse array of Chilean sandwiches.
The fresh fruit and veggies are awesome and cheap. I bought medio kilo (1lb) of fresh strawberries for about $1.25 from a fruit stand and really flavorful avocados cost between $.10 and $.20. It makes buying a much worse quality avocado for $1-$1.5 seem insane in the US. I can’t wait to start cooking with these ingredients once we get an apartment.
I’m not a fan of fruit juice in the US, but the juice here is unreal, cheap and is sold everywhere. So far, my favorite is frambuesa (raspberry), followed closely by frutilla (strawberry) and piña (pineapple). It costs about $.50 for a really big glass. The raspberry juice tastes like the fresh raspberries we used to get out of my grandma’s garden and put on top of schaum torte. My family probably only gets this part, but you’ll have to take my word for it.
jugo de piña
Dominó is how fast food should be. They are everywhere here and always busy. They sell sandwiches and hotdogs, but use really fresh, good ingredients. It’s still cheap and fast, but it doesn’t taste like fast food. Dominó would do really well on any college campus in the US. My favorite thing from Dominó so far is a hotdog with crushed avocado, tomato, cheese and a little mayo.
I’m much less hungry here than I was in the US. Part of it is that it’s warm, so my body needs less food, but I think another part of it is that all of the food is very healthy and therefore more filling than in the US. I bought an orange soda yesterday and there were only four ingredients: carbonated water, sugar (not high fructose corn syrup), orange juice and I forget the last one. Even being here a week, I already feel healthier.
I’ll have more blog posts coming about the Startup Chile program and some of the interesting people we’ve met so far. I promise my next post will have lots more pictures. I had problems with my iPhone for a few days, so I’ll be sure to put more in next time.
I’m an entrepreneur and investor doing everything I can to stay out of the cubicle. I love sports (especially soccer), food and traveling, or any way to combine the three.
I’m currently the managing partner of Magma Partners, a seed stage investment fund and accelerator based in Santiago, Chile that invests in startups that put technology into large businesses and companies that have their tech base in Latam and attack the US and European market.
In 2005, I bought ExchangeHut.com, after my freshman year at the University of Wisconsin, and transformed it from a local tickets and textbooks trading site with under 2,000 users to a profitable national business with over 125,000 users by the time I was a senior, leading to its acquisition by a publicly traded company in 2008.
A few months later, during my 2nd senior year, I teamed up with Jesse Davis to co-found Entrustet. Entrustet helps people access, transfer and delete online accounts after someone dies. We were featured in the NY Times, The Economist, TechCrunch, Mashable, Forbes, BBC and hundreds of others. In April 2012, Entrustet was acquired by SecureSafe, the market leader in digital estate planning and online data safes.
I love speaking with entrepreneurs and showing people that entrepreneurship is a potential choice for young people and that college can be the best time to start a company. I enjoy talking with people to try to give them the entrepreneurial push toward either starting a company or working for a startup. In May 2009, I founded Capital Entrepreneurs to bring the burgeoning startup community in Madison closer together. I’m also the cofounder of Madison’s Forward Technology Conference and am a founding member of The Young Entrepreneur Council. To see what else I’ve been up to from 2000-2010, check out my decade in review.
In 2012 I came back to Chile to learn Spanish and look for business opportunities in Latin America and worked as head of marketing at Welcu, a Chilean startup. I also taught entrepreneurship at three chilean universities.
