A friend recommended this talk to me, which is admittedly in my wheelhouse because it deals with two things I know well:
McDonald’s and existential dread.
It’s an excellent talk—complete with suspense, humor, and surprise. It’s beat-by-beat storytelling at its best, told by someone genuinely enthusiastic about the subject. The use of visuals is outstanding, and the misdirection deployed is impressive. It’s a mystery of sorts and culminates in a moment that I will remember for a long time.
One problem:
The first four minutes are not good. They are pretty terrible. The first four minutes have nothing to do with the talk. They are essentially used to answer a question that was not asked:
“What have you been doing since we saw you last?”
No one asked, and even if they did, don’t answer that question. The answer is boring, self-congratulatory, and, worst of all, not entertaining.
This is a mistake because beginnings are critical:
They are the opportunity to capture your audience’s attention or lose it forever. It can also effectively frame everything that follows and establish the speaker as someone who can be trusted.
A poorly crafted beginning can ruin otherwise outstanding content.
I would’ve quit on the talk around the one-minute mark had the friend recommending the talk not been so reliable in their recommendations.
I’m glad I stuck through the awfulness to get to the brilliance.
So you have three choices:
- Don’t watch the talk. That would be dumb.
- Watch the entire talk and learn from his four-minute mistake.
- Advance to the four-minute mark and watch something great absent the catastrophic blunder.
