Some words and speeches are worth listening to more than once….this may be of them. It’s a mix of irony, truth and dry humour from Tim Minchin at an address he gave to the graduating class of the University of WA.

I think you’ll like it.

(p.s if you wait till the end you’ll hear the part about all the things Tim has done…it’s pretty impressive. He’s even one-half the brains behind Matilda The Musical based on the story by Roald Dahl!)

And in case you can’t watch the video, here is the transcript:

“In darker days, I did a corporate gig at a conference for this big company who made and sold accounting software. In a bid, I presume, to inspire their salespeople to greater heights, they’d forked out 12 grand for an Inspirational Speaker who was this extreme sports dude who had had a couple of his limbs frozen off when he got stuck on a ledge on some mountain. It was weird. Software salespeople need to hear from someone who has had a long, successful and happy career in software sales, not from an overly-optimistic, ex-mountaineer. Some poor guy who arrived in the morning hoping to learn about better sales technique ended up going home worried about the blood flow to his extremities. It’s not inspirational – it’s confusing….

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