You have something
genuinely valuable to share.
And maybe you're sharing it on a stage,
on a webinar, or in your marketing.
But it's not landing
the way that you want.
Maybe you're rambling, maybe it runs
long, or maybe people are
just quietly tuning out.
Well, great communicators are not born
with these exceptional
communication skills.
They practice three skills that almost
nobody ever talks about or works on.
one-day mastermind with my dear friends
Amy Porterfield and Russell Brunson.
Now, I walked into the event, and I was
running a bit late to be honest with you,
because my Uber did not find me as
efficiently as I was hoping.
And anyways, there was about 20 minutes
to go before the event started.
So I walk in, and both Amy and Russell
and our other friend Eileen
are sitting there at the table.
And Amy looks up and she's like, "Stu,
we're gonna need to make "some
adjustments to the schedule."
And I was like, "Well, what do you mean?"
And Russell says, "Dude, I
need three hours to teach."
I'm like, "Three hours?"
I'm like, "Dude, we
allocated 45 minutes for you."
In fact, it was 30 minutes with 15
minutes of questions.
So anyways, we sat there in the middle,
and I'm trying to figure it out.
I'm like, "Okay, how
are we gonna do this?"
So Amy and I start chatting, and we're
trying to rework the schedule.
And she's like, "We can
take 15 minutes off here."
And I'm like, "We can take 30
minutes of my time off here."
And anyways, we're figuring it out.
So then we figure it out, and I said to
Russell, I'm like, "You can't have three
hours, "but I can give you 90 minutes."
So it's like half of what you thought,
but it's double the time
that we had allocated for you.
He's like, "I'll take it."
So then Russell took a three-hour talk,
and he distilled it down
into 90 minutes on the fly.
Now, that wasn't a problem for him.
That right there is the
mark of a true professional.
A true professional fits the message to
the time that they've got,
not the other way around.
And so whenever I speak, I take great
pride in landing my talk on time, because
I never want my talk to run over, because
the moment that you do,
it has a ripple effect.
It throws off the whole schedule and
steals time from everyone else that is at
that particular event.
And I learned this watching my very first
mentor, John Childers.
He was a tremendous communicator, and I'd
watch him take the exact same message and
deliver it in different ways depending on
how much time he had.
It was the same message, same heart, but
just different length.
And here's the bottom line.
A great communicator isn't about just
mastering one skill.
It's about mastering three.
And most of us have only
ever practiced one of them.
So skill number one, expand.
This is the long form version of the
message you wanna share.
So if we just picture it in today's day,
picture it like the long form is your
YouTube video or your podcast episode,
where you've got room to breathe, to go
deeper, to tell the fuller story.
So if you've got like an Instagram reel,
which is like 60 seconds, right?
Could you expand that to be a 15, 30
minute, 60 minute presentation?
It's the same core idea, but it will just
be delivered in a more expansive way.
So then the question becomes, well, how
do you do that without just rambling and
adding a bunch of fluff?
Well, you do it with a simple outline,
like a few main points, and then you
expand it by adding layers to each one.
Maybe it's a story, maybe it's an example
or a piece of research, or maybe you talk
about what not to do or a quick exercise.
But what I want you to do is I want you
to think of any
presentation like an accordion.
The melody stays the same.
You just open it up wider
when you've got more room.
Skill number two is
the opposite, condense.
This is the short form version.
Now, this is going in the
opposite direction, right?
The short form, this is your Instagram
reel, where it's the same message, but
you've got to land it fast.
And this is the one that
almost nobody practices.
And honestly, it's way harder to shorten
a longer message, and therefore it's a
more valuable skill.
And here's a great quote
that I love from Blaise Pascal.
Hopefully I'm saying that right.
This is from back in the 1600s.
I didn't actually know it was Blaise
that, you know, originated this quote,
but I have heard this quote over and over
again, and it is perfect for this.
And basically, he was writing a long
letter, and he said in the letter, I
would have written you a shorter letter,
but I didn't have the time.
Short is harder than long, because every
single word has to earn its place.
And so I just want you to sit with that,
because saying something concisely takes
more effort, more energy, and more time,
because every word has to matter.
And I have struggled with this in the
past, because I've got a few home run
stories that I love to tell.
These are my signature stories.
And I know that when I share them, the
crowd is gonna laugh, and
the point is gonna land.
So for years, I tried to always shoehorn
these stories into every presentation.
But the problem, some of
them didn't make sense.
And some of those stories needed room.
They're three hour stories, so to speak,
but not ready for reals, and they just
don't work when they're condensed.
And so I had to cut my best, funniest
stories, because a story you love still
has to serve the purpose, or it goes.
And every story has to serve the purpose.
And it doesn't support the
point that you're making.
You don't get to keep it, no
matter how much you love it.
Don't shove a story in just
because it's a crowd pleaser.
And I experienced the same thing when I
was writing my book, Predictable
Prophets, because the early drafts had
way more words in it.
And we had to ruthlessly chop and trim
until every word served the purpose of
each particular chapter,
and therefore the whole book.
So how do you know what to cut?
Well, I learned a simple trick from Ken
Davis, who runs the
score speaker training.
This was a training that I went to on the
recommendation of Michael
Hyatt, and it was phenomenal.
And basically what Ken said was, you
gotta come into any
presentation with a singular focus.
And you ask yourself, what's the one
point I want everybody to take from this?
And what do I want people thinking or
doing after I'm done?
Everything that doesn't serve the answer
to those questions, you gotta cut it.
Is it easy to cut your own material?
No, it's super hard, especially when it's
your best stories, right?
Because we fall in love with our stories
and our points, but the confident
communicator says less, not more.
Skill number three, connect.
You gotta make your message clear so that
it lands no matter what length it is.
And this right here is
the difference maker.
The first two skills are about length,
the YouTube version and the real version.
The third one is what makes either of
them actually land for your audience.
And clearer is the thing that carries the
message home, no matter how
long or short your message is.
So you can say the right thing, but if
the audience doesn't respond, it's often
because you said it in a way that's
confusing or too complex, or it makes
them think too hard.
And people don't wanna work that hard to
follow what you're saying.
So complex words force the
brain to burn extra energy.
And when it's a tired
brain, it just checks out.
Now here's what's fascinating.
Research on plain language shows complex
words and jargon raise what scientists
call cognitive load.
This is basically when your brain is
burning extra energy just to decode what
it is that somebody's trying to say.
And a tired brain doesn't push harder, it
just starts to tune out.
So when you make people work to follow
you, they don't work
harder, they just check out.
So we gotta use plain, simple language
because it lowers the effort and so the
ideas begin to land properly.
So I'll give you some examples.
And I'm gonna share them back to back so
you can hear the difference.
They're saying the exact same thing,
they're just saying it
in a far different way.
So first I'll give you the complex
version, then I'll
give you the easy version.
So a complex version might sound
something like, we need to optimize our
customer acquisition funnel.
The simple version might be, we need a
simple way to get more of
the right people in the door.
Do you hear the difference?
Okay, here's another one.
We need to leverage your existing assets
to maximize recurring revenue.
A simple way to say that might be, you
need to use what you already have to
build income that shows up every month.
It's the same message but said in a
totally different way.
Okay, here, one more example.
Here's the complex version.
Our value proposition
lacks differentiation.
The easy version, right now
you sound like everyone else.
See the point of the matter is this,
every big impressive word is a little tax
on your listeners brain.
So you gotta use the free words.
You gotta keep it super simple.
Now speaking of simple,
I have a super simple framework that I
lean on for teaching just about anything
and it has four parts.
Part number one is a hook.
This is where you're gonna
grab the person's attention.
Part number two is a story.
This is what makes what
you're about to share relatable.
Part number three are three lessons, like
lesson one, lesson two, lesson three.
And part four is a summary.
It's where you put a bow on everything
that you just shared.
And PS, I'm just telling on myself
because you're probably gonna start
seeing this framework every time you
listen to one of our episodes because
this is exactly the framework that I use.
And here's the thing, I also learned from
the great Charlie Tremendous Jones.
He's no longer with us but he was a great
man and an incredible communicator.
And one of the things that I remember to
this day when I saw him live for the very
first time is he said, "Tell him what
you're gonna tell him, tell him, "and
then tell him what you told him."
And so this is why whenever you're
communicating, you wanna tell him what
you're gonna tell him, then you're gonna
tell him, and then you're gonna wrap it
up with a summary and
tell him what you told him.
And so the through line that ties all
three skills together is this.
No matter whether you got 60 seconds, 60
minutes, or three hours, the core lesson
of what you're sharing stays the same.
It's just expanded or trimmed but it's
always in simple words.
So here's what I want to
encourage you to do this week.
I want you to take the thing that you
teach and I want you to
practice all three skills on it.
Write the one sentence version, then
maybe expand it and think
about a 15 or 30 minute version.
And then scrub every fancy word and swap
it for the way that you'd
say it to a friend at dinner.
Say one idea in a sentence, in 15
minutes, and in plain words.
That's the whole workout
for you and I this week.
And before you ever deliver it, ask the
Ken Davis questions.
What's the one point?
And what do I want people to think or do
when I'm done sharing this?
All right, my friend, with that, before I
wrap up, I wanna encourage you, if you've
enjoyed this episode, please go and leave
a review because all
those reviews matter.
I read every single one and I have no
idea who is listening to this podcast.
I have no idea if you're listening or if
you're enjoying this.
But I do know when you go and leave a
review and those matter because they help
us get the show in front of more people.
So thank you, thank you, thank you to
everyone who has done that.
All right, here's our recap for today.
If you want to be a great communicator,
there are three skills
that you've gotta master.
Number one is expand.
This is taking a core idea and being able
to expand it into a
longer form presentation.
In today's world, that might be your
YouTube videos or your podcast episodes
or a presentation in
front of a live audience.
But the number one skill
is to expand a core idea.
The number two skill is
to condense those ideas.
It's the opposite.
It's the short form.
It's the Instagram real.
And shorter is harder than long because
every story, every
word must serve a purpose.
And the third skill is connect, making it
clear so that it lands at any length.
And fitting your message to the time that
you've got is the mark of a professional.
And the same lesson works, whether it's a
real or a three hour talk, as long as it
stays clear and simple.
So 60 seconds or three
hours is the same lesson.
It's just expanded or trimmed.
And always, always, always use clear,
simple language and words.
And when you master that, the people will
follow you literally anywhere.
All right, my friend,
that's a wrap for today's