Nancy Duarte

Lewis Howes:              This is 5-Minute Friday!!

We’ve got the one and only Nancy Duarte in the house. She is a communication expert who’s been featured on major platforms like Forbes, Wall Street Journal, New York Times and on CNN. Her firm, Duarte Inc, has created more than a quarter of a million presentations for the world’s most influential businesses, institutions, causes, and authors, and Nancy has won several prestigious awards for communications and entrepreneurship and teaches classes at Stanford University several times a year.

Also, her firm has influenced how the world perceives some of the most important brands, including Apple, Facebook, GE, Google, and TED. She’s also the author of three award winning books, and just came out with a new one, called, Illuminate.

Nancy Duarte:              We didn’t want ‘leader’ and ‘follower’, so we have torch-bearer and travellers, and the torch-bearer is someone who decides to lead. I think everyone’s called to lead, but few actually choose to accept it.

Lewis Howes:               It’s a lot.

Nancy Duarte:              And it sounds heavy, yeah. But it’s like a mantle you choose. Frodo got the ring, he was a ring-bearer, right? And he had to choose to go on this journey, or not go on it. He had a choice.

Lewis Howes:               Yeah, he could have given it to someone else.

Nancy Duarte:              Yeah! Flipped it over his shoulder, then, like, tink! And so it is, it sounds kind of heavy and I wish it sounded more delightful, to lead. But it’s like you’re the bearer of a torch. And we liked the concept because if you think about the places in which you use a torch, they’re usually a little scary and dark, maybe wet, cave, unknown.

And a leader, what they’ll do is cast just enough light to be like, “Oh, I can do that!” It’s just this short term thing. You may have this vision, the long view, but you have to communicate the short trip in a compelling enough way that makes people want to take those next few steps and get there. And so, that’s why we chose torch-bearer.

Because it’s also something about fire and the passing of fire, it kind of burns in your belly, right? When you have a vision, it burns inside of you. You’ll do everything you can to make sure that vision is realised. And so that kind of passing of fire and kind of burning in your belly is a big part of it, too.

It’s funny, because I think you actually said it, it needs to be on behalf of others, I think. I think we’re born to advocate for those less fortunate than us, and once we get to that place, we give ourselves away. So the only reason you need self-mastery is so that you can give it away. I think the happy people do that. The miserable ones don’t. I think that’s part of it.

It was funny, when we were looking at stories for Illuminate, there were these great stories of how business used to be run. People don’t realise, Watson Sr, the CEO of IBM, during the war he kept producing computers. The world didn’t need them. Didn’t need them at all, they were, I mean, you know what computers were like back then, more like calculators and they had cards and stuff. Anyway, he just kept making them, just to keep the people employed. Now, you wouldn’t be able to do that today. You’d have to return so much to shareholders. He kept them employed.

And he had to build warehouses to just put the computers in, he didn’t need them. The war was over, and suddenly the US government needed a census and he had all the computers in stock that they needed and he made this great big sale right after the war was done.

Lewis Howes:               Wow! That’s beautiful.

Nancy Duarte:              Hershey, same thing. Kept all of his team employed, during the war, doing civic projects. They would build parks and he just kept them going. You can’t make decisions like that in business, especially not public businesses today. So, I think there is this purpose. I think you have to dream, with a purpose. There has to be a purpose in mind, or your dreams will be blocked. So, I do think it’s on behalf of…

Lewis Howes:               And they can’t be self-centred, only. Of course we want to have a better life.

Nancy Duarte:              Exactly, exactly. You can have self-centred dreams.

Lewis Howes:               We want to have a better life, make more money, or be healthy, or whatever it is, but I think there’s got to be a greater good. True?

Nancy Duarte:              Right.

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