Ten million people have watched an MIT professor accidentally destroy the executive coaching industry.
He filmed the lecture once in January 2018 and died eighteen months later.
Executive coaches charge fifteen thousand dollars a session to teach a third of what he covered in one hour for free.
His name was Patrick Winston. He ran the MIT Artificial Intelligence Laboratory from 1972 to 1997 and wrote the AI textbook every computer science major in the world read for thirty years.
Every January for four decades, he gave a lecture called "How to Speak."
His entire framework fits on a napkin.
Do not read. Be in the image. Keep images simple. Eliminate clutter. Start with an empathetic connection. End with a punch line the audience can repeat over dinner. Never open with a joke. Never end with "thank you."
That last rule alone has probably cost the executive coaching industry a hundred million dollars.
"Your success in life will be determined largely by your ability to speak, your ability to write, and the quality of your ideas. In that order."
That is the actual opening line of the lecture. Winston believed it strongly enough to spend fifty years teaching computer scientists how to talk.
Founders spend $80,000 on an MBA and then hire a communications coach to teach them the same material Winston filmed once for free. Engineers write brilliant code and lose promotions to teammates who watched this lecture on the train.
The lecture is free on MIT OpenCourseWare. The textbook is free on his page.
Winston died in 2019. Almost none of the ten million viewers have actually implemented the four rules on the napkin.
The napkin is free. The willingness to actually use it in your next meeting is the entire edge.
If I got laid off tomorrow & had to replace my salary asap, here’s exactly what I’d do:
1. Go to Instagram and start a fresh account. Use a spare email. No one has to know.
STOP TELLING CHATGPT TO "MAKE IT BETTER" - UNLOCK ITS FULL POWER
Most people still use ChatGPT like a beginner.
Copy & paste these 6 prompting techniques to make it work like an expert:
I spent two years in chronic pain. I went from being able to deadlift 2.5x my bodyweight to being unable to put on socks, stand up from a chair, or walk extended distances. It nearly ended my life.
15+ doctors, two procedures, drugs. I solved the pain by reading a book chapter
Used to spend 4-6 hours reading DRHPs during IPOs post-COVID, but thanks to Gemini/AI, you can get 80-90% of the job done
Here's the prompt -
Use Gemini 2.5 pro
- Explain the business model to me like a 5-year-old, state the key inputs, outputs, and factors affecting the same
- Are the sales, operating profit (USE EBITDA and Not EBIT) and PAT increasing
- Are the Operating profit margins (EBITDA) and net profit margins increasing? Show a breakdown of how they are increasing and why they are increasing
- calculate free cash flow for the given financials
- calculate EBITDA to Cash flow from operation conversion % and tell me if it's increasing
- Is the balance sheet of the company healthy? Are there any signs of stress?
- Identify the red flags in the company
- Tell me more about the related party transactions in the RHP
- Tell me the growth plans of the company, and if there is visible government intervention in the business and the sector
- Who are the listed peers of the company, and how are they performing? - Create a table with peers showing valuations, growth, financials, and their positive triggers and red flags
- What are the valuations of the company (use PE, PS, EV/EBITDA, PEG)
- Check the quality of the promoter - have they done well during good and bad times, and do they have a history of delivering on their promises (if possible, create a matrix and show what they promised and what they delivered)
Competitive & regulatory landscape
• Named competitors; share/pricing behavior if cited.
• Regulatory updates, compliance costs, licenses, litigation, scheme/subsidy benefits, and sunset risks.
• Management's Industry View (Structural vs. Cyclical): Summarize any explicit commentary from management on whether they view current industry trends as structural or cyclical.
• Customer Health Read-Through: Note any commentary on the health, demand, or inventory cycles of key customer industries.
Conclusion -
• End with five firm takeaways.
Formatting -
- Easy to read language
- Use bullet points
If possible, upload credit rating reports and old financials and old annual reports also as RHP data is only 3 years old and too short-term to draw proper conclusions!
Share your prompts and let's learn together!
Please note - AI is only good for data retrieval and a bit of data crunching, after it gives u a result, u need to delve more deeper to draw conclusions!