Carmine Gallo
Keynote Speaker, Bestselling Author, Communication Coach at Gallo Communications Group
Carmine Gallo is a popular keynote speaker and internationally bestselling author. His new book, The Storyteller's Secret: From TED Speaker to Business Legends, Why Some Ideas Catch On And Others Don't, features famous TED speakers, business legends and successful entrepreneurs who reveal why some ideas catch on and others don't. Gallo is also the author of The Wall Street Journal bestsellers Talk Like TED and The Presentation Secrets of Steve Jobs. For more information or to sign up for Gallo's newsletter, visit CarmineGallo.com
Articles by Carmine Gallo
Steve Jobs’ 7 Principles for Unstoppable Success
Opinions expressed by Entrepreneur contributors are their own. Steve Jobs’ impact on your life cannot be overestimated. His innovations have likely touched nearly every aspect of your daily existence—computers, movies, music, and mobile. As a communications coach, I learned from Jobs that a presentation can, indeed, inspire. But for entrepreneurs, Jobs’ greatest legacy is the set of principles that drove his success. Over the years, I’ve become a student of sorts of Jobs’ career and life. Here’s my take on the rules and values underpinning his success. Any of us can adopt them to unleash our “inner Steve Jobs.” 1. Do What You Love Jobs once said, “People with passion can change the world for the better.” Asked about the advice he would offer would-be entrepreneurs, he said: “I’d get a job as a busboy or something until I figured out what I was really passionate about.” That’s how much it meant to him. Passion is everything. 2. Put a Dent in the Universe Jobs believed in the power of vision. He once asked then-Pepsi President, John Sculley: “Do you want to spend your life selling sugar water or do you want to change the world?” Don’t lose sight of the big vision. 3. Make Connections Jobs once said creativity is connecting things. He meant that people with a broad set of life experiences can often see things that others miss. He took calligraphy classes that didn’t have any practical use in his life—until he built the Macintosh. Jobs traveled to India and Asia. He studied design and hospitality. Don’t live in a bubble. Connect ideas from different fields. 4. Say No to 1,000 Things Jobs was as proud of what Apple chose not to do as he was of what Apple did. When he returned to Apple in 1997, he took a company with 350 products and reduced them to 10 products in a two-year period. Why? So he could put the “A-Team” on each product. What are you saying “no” to? 5. Create Insanely Different Experiences Jobs also sought innovation in the customer-service experience. When he first came up with the concept for the Apple Stores, he said they would be different because instead of just moving boxes, the stores would enrich lives. Everything about the experience you have when you walk into an Apple store is intended to enrich your life and to create an emotional connection between you and the Apple brand. What are you doing to enrich the lives of your customers? 6. Master the Message You can have the greatest idea in the world, but if you can’t communicate your ideas, it doesn’t matter. Jobs was the world’s greatest corporate storyteller. Instead of simply delivering a presentation like most people do, he informed, he educated, he inspired and he entertained, all in one presentation. 7. Sell Dreams, Not Products Jobs captured our imagination because he really understood his customer. He knew that tablets would not capture our imaginations if they were too complicated. The result? One button on the front of an iPad. It’s so simple, a 2-year-old can use it. Your customers don’t care about your product. They care about themselves, their hopes, their ambitions. Jobs taught us that if you help your customers reach their dreams, you’ll win them over. There’s one story that I think sums up Jobs’ career at Apple. An executive who had the job of reinventing the Disney Store once called up Jobs and asked for advice. His counsel? Dream bigger. I think that’s the best advice he could leave us with. See genius in your craziness, believe in yourself, believe in your vision, and be constantly prepared to defend those ideas.
The CMO's Dilemma: Why 'Awareness' is a Vanity Metric
If I had a dollar for every time a CMO proudly displayed a chart showing '10 million impressions,' I could retire. Impressions are easy. Attention is hard. But Equity? Equity is everything. The modern CMO's dilemma is that we are addicted to metrics that stroke our egos but starve our businesses. 'Awareness' is the first step, yes, but treating it as the goal is a strategic error. The Awareness Trap You can buy awareness. Super Bowl ads, billboards, programmatic display—if you have the budget, people will see your logo. But do they trust it? Do they value it? Awareness asks, 'Do you know me?' Brand Equity asks, 'Does knowing me matter?' The difference between the two is the difference between a commodity and a premium brand. Metrics That Actually Pay the Bills Stop measuring likes and start measuring leverage. Can you charge 20% more than your competitor because of your brand name? That is Price Premium. Do your customers forgive a mistake because they believe in your mission? That is Resilience. Do they recruit their friends? That is Advocacy. These are the metrics of Brand Equity. Moving from Noise to Signal In a noisy world, being 'known' isn't enough. You have to be understood. The brands winning today aren't just loud; they are resonant. They don't just interrupt the conversation; they lead it. As leaders, we need to have the courage to report smaller, deeper numbers to our boards. Because 1,000 true advocates are worth more than 1,000,000 passive impressions. It's time to stop counting eyeballs and start counting hearts.
Stop Hiring for Busy: The Difference Between Activity and Impact
We have an addiction in the corporate world. We praise the 'grinders'—the ones who send emails at 2 AM, who attend twelve meetings a day, who are always 'swamped.' But when you look closer, are they actually moving the needle? Or are they just spinning the hamster wheel? There is a massive difference between activity and impact. And most companies hire for the former. The Illusion of Motion I call this 'Performative Busyness.' It’s the art of looking productive without creating value. When you hire for capacity ('We need hands on deck!'), you get motion. When you hire for impact ('We need to solve X problem'), you get results. Automation forces this distinction. If a job can be automated, it was likely 'activity.' If it can't, it's 'impact.' Hire for Curiosity, Not Capacity In my hiring process at JotForm, I don't look for someone who can grind through a todo list. I look for the 'lazy' person—the one who hates the todo list so much they find a way to automate it. I hire for curiosity. I hire for empathy. I hire for the soft skills that AI cannot replicate. These are the people who drive impact. The 80/20 Rule of Human Talent Your goal as a leader should be to automate the 80% of work that is maintenance (busy work) so your team can focus on the 20% that is innovation (impact). If you hire people to do the 80%, you are building a legacy workforce in an automated world. Stop rewarding the busy. Start rewarding the impactful. Your P&L will thank you.
The 'No-Code' C-Suite: Agility without Engineering Dependencies
Here is a scenario every executive knows: You have a brilliant idea for an internal tool that would save your operations team 20 hours a week. You outline it. You pitch it to the CTO. And then you hear the dreaded sentence: 'We can put it on the roadmap for Q4 next year.' Agility doesn't die in the boardroom; it dies in the engineering backlog. The Rise of Citizen Developers We are entering the era of the 'No-Code' enterprise. Tools today allow non-technical staff—marketing managers, HR directors, even CEOs—to build sophisticated apps, workflows, and databases without writing a single line of code. This isn't just a tech trend; it's a leadership imperative. If your marketing team needs to wait for engineering to update a landing page, you have already lost. Speed is the New Currency At JotForm, we empower every department to be self-sufficient. Our HR team built their own applicant tracking system. Our support team built their own ticket routing logic. This frees up our expensive engineering talent to work on the core product—the stuff that actually requires code—rather than fixing internal forms. Democratizing Innovation When you remove the 'code barrier', you democratize innovation. The person closest to the problem is usually the best person to solve it. By giving them no-code tools, you turn every employee into a problem-solver. The 'No-Code' C-Suite isn't about executives learning to code; it's about executives building a culture where dependencies don't exist. Stop waiting for Q4. Build it today.
Decoupling Growth from Headcount: The New Unit Economics
In Silicon Valley, asking 'How many employees do you have?' is a proxy for 'How successful are you?' It's a vanity metric. If you have 1,000 employees and linear revenue growth, you don't have a scale problem; you have an efficiency problem. The most valuable companies of the next decade will be those that decouple revenue growth from headcount growth. The Hiring Trap When I started JotForm, I made a rule: avoid hiring until it hurts. Why? Because every new hire adds complexity. Communication lines multiply. Speed decreases. Culture dilutes. Instead, we focused on building systems. If a support ticket could be answered by a bot, we built the bot. If an invoice could be auto-generated, we wired the API. We reached millions of users with a team that fit in a single conference room. Revenue Per Employee: The Only Metric Forget 'unicorn' valuations. Look at Revenue Per Employee (RPE). The industry average for SaaS is around $200k. Top automation-first companies push this to $500k, $1M, or even more. High RPE means you have leverage. It means your margins are bulletproof. It means you can weather a downturn without mass layoffs. Automation is Your Digital Workforce Think of automation not as software, but as a digital workforce that works 24/7, makes zero errors, and costs pennies. Your human team provides the vision; your digital team provides the execution. This hybrid model isn't just cheaper; it's faster. We release features in days, not months, because our engineers aren't bogged down in maintenance. Growth is good. Bloat is bad. Scale your impact, not your org chart.