About

There is a famous Canadian singer named Kevin Kane. I'm not him.

Hi, I’m Kevin Kane and I work for Challenger in Cambridge, Ontario.

I help Challenger onboard new customers. I facilitate the onboarding process so that we begin serving new customers successfully and quickly.

I looked at my LinkedIn endorsements and I found that my colleagues described me as a leader who gets results for clients while maximizing profits.

They said my top 3 skills are:

Effective communication
Attention to details
The ability to teach skills and share knowledge

They said my top 3 characteristics are:

Initiative
Energy
A focus on results

I mostly write about marketing, communication and technology. I’ve also written for The Motley Fool, Ask The Headhunter and the Journal of Applied Psychology.

What is Core Communication?

I try to deliver core solutions for real problems. I try to take complex information and reduce it to its core problem or solution.

The process is not about dumbing down. It’s about prioritizing. Because we can only deal with so much information at a time.

If you make a speech with 10 points great points, a day later your audience might not remember any of them. It’s too much information to recall. When you communicate then, it’s essential that you strip your idea to its core: the essence or key idea of your message.

The hallmark of a great stylist is the ability to take a difficult idea and express it as simply as possible. ~Bryan Garner.

My Best Articles

If you are new to my site, you might want to start with my most popular posts. Here are the top 5 by category:

Presentations:

3 Tips to Make your Ideas Sticky. I’m delighted that people said that they wanted to read Made to Stick after they saw this presentation.
How to Make Sure that Your Toastmasters Experience Doesn’t Suck. My most controversial article. Several Toastmasters told me in private that they agree with me — but some were put off, too.

Productivity:

4 Studies which Show that Using a Second Monitor Can Boost Productivity. This one has been linked to by several sites — but I haven’t figured out how to get the trackbacks to appear.

Technology:

7 Predictions for the Future of Computers. This article gets a ton of traffic because I found a picture of Bill Gates working at his new and incredibly awesome multi-monitor computer workstation.

Writing:

10 Simple Tips to Get More People to Read Your Writing. This might be the most helpful article that I’ve written. It’s about the little things you can do that instantly improve your writing.

Are you Canadian? If so, The Best & Worst of Canada will likely reveal some things you didn’t know about The Great White North — and I had a lot of fun writing it.

Interests

I love weight-training. I train at GoodLife Fitness and at home.
I also love tennis. I don’t play anymore, but I’m still a big fan of the sport.
I’m a vociferous reader, especially in the areas of communication, marketing, leadership and technology.

Education

I have a BA in Psychology from the University of Waterloo.

I’ve also completed several courses toward my Canadian Institute of Transportation and Traffic (CITT) designation.

About This Site

My blog is built on WordPress.
It’s hosted by DreamHost.
The theme I use is Thesis. I did the customizations myself but Alex Frakking was a godsend at helping me get started.

I wrote about setting up my blog here: How to Easily Start a Blog and Get Your Own Domain Name.