Carmine Gallo - Five Stars: The Communication Secrets to Get from Good to Great

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To Josephine and Lela, the shining stars who brighten my world

I am not throwing away my shot.

L IN- M ANUEL M IRANDA, Hamilton

Alexa, who was Alexander Hamilton?

Alexander Hamilton was an American statesman and one of the Founding Fathers of the United States.

Lin-Manuel Miranda, who was Alexander Hamilton?

A bastard, orphan, son of a whore and a Scotsman, dropped in the middle of a forgotten spot in the Caribbean by providence, impoverished, in squalor

Siri, who was Alexander Hamilton?

Alexander Hamilton was an American statesman and one of the Founding Fathers of the United States.

Lin-Manuel Miranda, who was Alexander Hamilton?

The ten-dollar Founding Father without a father. Got a lot farther by working a lot harder. By being a lot smarter. By being a self-starter young, scrappy and hungry.

Siri and Alexa are digital personal assistants that live in the cloud; Lin-Manuel Miranda is a human composer who lives in our hearts.

Powered by artificial intelligence, Siri and Alexa do their jobs remarkably well. They retrieved the same answer to the question in the blink of an eye. By turning breath into bytes, encoding speech into digital packets, identifying key words, and matching those words against a vast amount of retrievable data, these digital assistants came up with an answer that had the highest probability of being accurate. And they both agreed on it.

Alexa, Siri, and their more cognitive cousin, IBMs Watson, respond to queries much faster than any human ever will. But Mirandas job is different; his job is to make you feel .

Miranda combines words and ideas in a way no human has ever done and no computer can ever match. For example:

On vacation in Mexico, Miranda visited a bookstore and randomly chose Ron Chernows biography of the American Revolutionary War hero Alexander Hamilton. Miranda was thunderstruck. He imagined a direct line between Hamilton writing his way off the island of St. Croix and the pioneers of rap music writing their way out of poverty.

Miranda chose to write his famous musical Hamilton as hip-hop because its the language of ambition, defiance, and rebellion. It has the most words per measure of any musical genre, which makes it uniquely suited to reflect the density of Hamiltons writing.

Americas Founding Fathers were white men, but Miranda deliberately cast black and Latino actors to play them. Hamilton is the story of America then told by people who live in America now.

Each character raps or sings in a distinct vocal style that reflects their personality. George Washingtons style is deliberate and controlled, a combination of the hip-hop artist Common and the singer-songwriter John Legend. Hamilton is modeled after Mirandas favorite polysyllabic rhyming heroes, Rakim and Eminem. The character of Lafayette (who left the French aristocracy at the age of 19 to join the American Revolution) is unsure of himself early in the musical. When we first meet Lafayette, he raps in a simple, early 1980s rap cadence. As he grows in confidence, the character of Lafayette becomes a Rap God, singing rhymes in double and triple time. The character of King George III does not rap. Why would he? Hes not rebelling. King George walks on stage as though hes wandered in from another musical. He sings his ballad Youll Be Back in a throwback British pop sound.

Alexander Hamilton wrote in long paragraphs. Miranda wrote the first verse of Hamilton as a crazy, run-on sentence of 37 words.

Miranda spent more than one year writing Hamiltons signature song, My Shot. Miranda says its the Rosetta Stone of Hamiltons brain, and, to prove that Hamilton was the most fearsome intellect in the room, Miranda felt that every couplet, every verse, had to live up to Hamiltons verbal dexterity.

Hamilton is a leap of imagination, a somersault into the world of creativity. Miranda has a gift. He makes us feel differently about ourselves and the world we live in. In this book, Ill build the case that we all have that gift: the potential to move people, excite them, and ignite their imagination. You will also learn why the worlds most successful people say that accessing the gift is the key to thriving in an ultra-competitive global economy in which rapid technological advances are disrupting every industry, business, and career. The scholars, neuroscientists, economists, historians, entrepreneurs, investors, and leaders who you will meet all agree: Mastering the ancient art of persuasioncombining words and ideas to move people to actionis no longer a soft skill. It is the fundamental skill to get from good to great in the age of ideas.

Master the Ancient Art of Persuasion to Thrive in the Modern World

This book evolved from conversations with people who are stars in their fields, and who credit superior communication skills for much of their success. They lead companies like Google, Airbnb, and McKinsey. They are investors who have funded the worlds most admired startups. They are astronauts who look down at the Earth from 250 miles in space, and they are scientists on Earth who look up at the stars to explore worlds outside of our solar system. They are recent college graduates thriving in their first jobs, mid-level career professionals getting promoted above their peers, and people leaving their jobs to start successful businesses or nonprofit adventures. They are Navy SEALs and CEOs, scholars, writers, adventurers, explorers, and trailblazers. They stand out. They are exceptional.

While writing this book, I was invited to join a team of elite U.S. military officers attending a secretive class in a remote air force base in the desert. Carefully selected from the top 1 percent of the air force, army, and navy, the students were being trained to help the country avoid massive conflicts. Two of my previous books were among the assigned course material: Talk Like TED and The Storytellers Secret . These men and women will be asked to analyze, write, and present their findings to political leaders, generals, admirals, and the president, an instructor told me. In many cases, theyll get ten minutes or less. Theyre often the smartest people in the room, but if they cant make a persuasive argument quickly and concisely, it could have catastrophic consequences. Its worth repeating: The ancient art of persuasion is not a soft skill. Its fundamental.

Why ancient? In the last 20 years, the advent of functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) has given researchers the ability to see brain activity in real time. Scientists studying blood flow in the brain have now discovered the secrets to effective communicationthe exact reasons why certain words, speakers, and styles make an emotional connection with the rest of us. According to scientists, while the tools we use to communicate have evolved, the way our brains are wired to consume information has not. Become a great communicator by mastering the art and science of persuasion and youll thrive in the modern world.

At no time in history have interpersonal communication skills been as important as they are today. In the Agrarian Age, a farmer who ploughed the field a little better than their neighbor could not acquire significantly more wealth. In the Industrial Age, a factory worker who assembled widgets a little faster than the person next to them could not acquire significantly more wealth. Today, anyone, anywhere in the world, who is a little better at expressing their ideas can see a sudden, massive increase in wealth that is unprecedented in human history.