So when you're explaining the super complicated situation, are people blinking at you with blank stares?
Or are they engaged in buying what you're selling?
Welcome back to Speak Up, the podcast for high performing introverts, including you social introverts, where we reveal the charisma and communication secrets of A-listers so that you get the recognition and the opportunities you have earned.
I am your host Laura Camacho. your magical executive presence coach, godmother, and strategist.
And by the end of today's conversation with Joel, you're going to know three... core human drivers of communication that even data nerds and all technical leaders must master. how to translate complex ideas into language that builds trust without dumbing it down. and a key message therapy method to prep your pitch, presentation, or white paper for real-world impact.
Let's dive in. So Joel Bend, I am so excited to have you here.
I know our listeners are going, are in for a real treat because you understand you know the technical person's frustration with these people who don't get what they're saying.
Our listeners, not only are they extremely intelligent and highly attractive, they're sometimes misunderstood. you know, frustrated with what they're told or what they perceive about their communications or what are we doing wrong?
Lay it on us. So I work with a lot of, again, very smart, intelligent clients, technology companies, founders.
And I used to be one. So my background is in theater education, video games, but I accidentally became an IT guy.
Oh, wow. Did all the things. struggled through the same challenges, communicating, whether I was giving a threat brief or delivering technical information.
And I think, especially in a workplace, it's often because we think everybody's on the same page.
We think everybody understands the same stuff we understand. but we're just human beings.
And so we've got biases. And so we think, well, if I just present data, and I've come to this conclusion, then surely you will come to that same conclusion.
And I found out that doesn't work. The first thing that I work with my clients is on understanding their own biases, understanding their own levels, and then unlocking some of the secrets of the caveman brain.
Like we're still operating with this, you know, paleolithic, sack of meat in our heads, the information we're dealing with is a lot more complex, but the processing power And the processing hardware or wetware, depending on who you ask, hasn't changed that much.
And so a lot of times... A marketing company will just even if they're a specialty group and there are some amazing marketing companies out there. but to do the groundwork of understanding the messaging, understanding the subject matter, they're managing 15, 18, 19 different clients.
I was the guy writing the website copy for 18 different clients and And they all started to look and sound and smell the same because they were all channeling through me.
And I said, we have to empower. the people on the inside, the nerds, not just the marketers, not just the salespeople, but the technologists within companies to communicate better.
And so that's why I stepped out of marketing to do what I do, which I affectionately call message therapy.
Right. Which is not a spelling error on my website.
It's not a typo. It's message therapy. Right.
To help the nerds figure their stuff out first before they waste money going to marketing companies.
Yes. So okay, but before we go in to how to fix this issue, I think it is healthy to cover some of, like, what are the consequences?
Because it's not just a tomato, tomato thing. kind of Conundrum like when you as a super smart technologist or even you know accountant finance person a cyber security person when you don't connect with people, you don't get the visibility.
What are the consequences for these smart, highly conscientious high performers when they don't get the message therapy that you offer and or the executive presence that I teach?
Well, quite often it results in what I call the blank stare moment.
You can almost tell the moment that you've overwhelmed your audience's buffer, their caveman brain, and you can see that sort of the lights click out.
And that can result in meetings being cut short.
Someone's not paying attention. I mean, you know, we talk about multitasking. which I don't believe in multitasking.
I think it's fast task switching. Yes, absolutely. because you lose seconds and microseconds.
But if you're giving a presentation to somebody, a sales pitch, You're presenting, well, here are the risks if we do this or we do that.
And you just do it purely by data. The person that you're presenting to probably had a meeting right before you.
They're probably still processing that meeting.
They might be thinking, well, what are we going to do for dinner tonight?
My anniversary is coming up and I didn't buy her anything.
Right. You have to keep you have to hold someone's attention.
And so the first thing that I teach people is that there are three motivations, three objectives to all communications. the three different organs that we have in our body that we communicate by.
It's the heart, the head, and the gut. So it's emotion, logic, and credibility.
That's Aristotle. But if you think about it, if you get somebody's attention emotionally first and you get them leaning in and you get them paying attention and then you're the most important thing to them, you've captured their attention, you can act, that's like softening up their brain for the next step, which is delivering just enough information to not overwhelm, to not make them get distracted to get to the next step.
Because quite often, if it's sales, you never sell in the first meeting.
If it's a executive presentation, they're gonna say, what are the next steps?
You're not presenting the full plan, right?
Unless you get down the funnel, you get to that meeting.
So the head is just giving just enough information, tickle the intellect, get them thinking.
And then the last step, which is funny, is the gut.
And in my representation, it's a hamburger because...
If I had to put three organs on one screen or I do this as a card deck exercise, that'd be too much.
So it's a burger. But we have those gut feelings and we, you know, you know when you're like, ah, that doesn't feel right.
The data's good, but I don't buy it. And so many people gloss over that.
So many people gloss over the trust and the credibility building It's one of the hardest things to do.
So that's the first thing that I do is I say, look, you have to understand where are you coming at?
And for the marketing people out there, if you tip it on its side, it's pretty much the marketing funnel.
Get their attention. get there, deliver some information, get some engagement and secure commitment.
But for non-marketing people and executives, I've simpled it.
I'm so glad to know the technical name for what I experienced when I first opened my business in 2008 to sell communication skill training.
Based on the very logical facts that communication is terrible almost everywhere you go.
Joel, when I first opened my company, my main concern was like, what am I going to do with all that money, right?
Obviously, rationally think, again, a rational person, you're solving a problem.
You have the solution. You have data that proves that it exists and that training helps.
And now, without that emotion, All you're going to get is a boatload of blank stare moments.
But you don't even have to be like a hardcore engineer to be missing moments. how important that emotional connection is.
In fact, I had someone say and i totally resonated with when she said laura what does it mean to have personal connection my boss is telling me i don't connect with people and i'm an engineer like What is he talking about?
So how would you answer that question? Well, I always say that when you have an emotional connection to somebody, when you have a personal connection, they're much more likely to, again, listen and believe what you say.
And that takes time and it takes rapport.
And it's hard for some people. Well, you call them introverts. or different personalities, but as humans, there's always something that we can connect on.
Maslow's famous hierarchy of needs, right?
And so not to just rip off Aristotle, to rip off one great master, I ripped off Maslow as well.
And so I have in my card deck, in my workshops, and in my book, I have...
This concept of the different types of messages and how we relate to people.
And so at the very bottom, many of those people we're talking about are dealing with the technical details.
It's low emotion. high complexity, high density thought.
That's hard to convey. But as you get further up the top, you have a big idea.
What's one big idea that we can connect on?
We both work at the same company. We both have the same end of quarter objectives.
We both like the same pizza toppings, right?
And then you're moving down into stories and stories are how we contextualize what we're saying to somebody else.
And so it's not just pure data. It's not just pure If we do this, we can reduce our work hours by 46%.
We can say, hey, if we do this, we no longer have to double staff our shifts.
That's the same message One is a metric.
One is more down here in the proof points.
And the other one is like telling a story.
So the pyramid that I take my clients through is literally developing a What are your value propositions?
I have this concept called mantras. I actually just interviewed Guy Kawasaki, famous tech evangelist for Apple for my podcast.
Yes. nerds that talk good. And I got the idea for Mantras for him decades ago and didn't even realize that it just sort of became one of my personal things, but a mantra is not a motto.
It's not a mission statement. I hate mission, vision, values.
I used to work in the government. I'm so burnt out on those.
But a mantra is just... It's finding the language that you use that's the same language that the person you're talking to uses.
And so it's connecting on a cultural level.
So I say, and we talked about this before we started recording, I'm a nerd that talks good.
The English people, the marketing people, all my content people are freaking out.
They're like, it speaks well. And I say, no, these nerds don't gotta learn to speak well.
They only gotta talk good or... Gooder than the person next to them, right?
Because we're talking about marginal improvement.
And a lot of people think, you know, I'm never going to be the next Steve Jobs.
I'm never going to be the next. Yeah, me neither.
And you don't have to. You just have to show a little bit more. engagement.
And it takes thought. It takes pre-work.
And a lot of smart people think they can shoot from the hip.
Oh, I've got it all up here, so I can just do it.
Yeah, wing it, wing it. Yeah, I'll just wing it.
It's literally... getting your thoughts out of your head and onto the table in front of you so that you can compare, you can objectively take a step back But that is message therapy.
Figure your stuff out before you do that pitch.
Figure your stuff out before you commit to a webpage redesign.
I want to ask you this because I know you've worked, we've probably worked with similar types of people and deep in the the most technical of the technical people where they their bosses are you know it's not just that They're engineers, senior engineers, but their bosses are engineers and their boss is boss.
Like they think sometimes. That this isn't necessary.
None of this talking good is necessary for me, Laura, because everybody I work with is technical.
Is that right? Tell me about that. Like if your audience is technical and you're technical, can we just like Forget all this mantra business and just talk technical detail. if it's a work relationship and you've developed some rapport and you've developed some trust and, you know,
Probably you can eliminate some of it because in the day to day, you've already built some of that top level stuff.
We have a common understanding. We know what we're working on.
But if you're doing a cold presentation or you're presenting a new idea, I don't think you can just skip over that.
So I discovered this at the first startup that I joined.
I joined as director of communications and marketing.
The founder had recently finished his PhD thesis, founded this cybersecurity company.
I previously had worked for him in the government.
So we were having lunch and he said, you know, I'm having a real hard time selling this cybersecurity product.
I said, well, what is it? He said, it's based on my PhD thesis.
It's a self-defending artificial intelligence, multinodal network using the behavior of eusocial insects.
I'm a theater school dropout, right? I'm a cyber guy, but I'm a theater school dropout.
And I said, well, what does that mean? And he said, well, it's an ant swarm that will tell you where you're going to be hacked next.
And I was like, okay, so we've gone from the PhD description to...
I can at least appreciate what it is to know what ants kind of do, and... not wanting to be hacked because i was a cyber guy so i was like that's good but we can work a little bit more on it and then i said who are you selling this to are you selling this to technical people, the people who are doing the actual work.
He goes, oh, no, we're selling it to CEOs and boards of directors and risk and risk teams.
And I said, then we have to completely think because, well, they're They're really smart people.
I said, even though their PhD is in your PhD, you don't have to speak on the same level and you shouldn't make them.
Right. You still introduce the concept. So I came on board and it's all in the book.
I tell this story about how we struggled with, well, do we talk about the ants?
How do we present the ants? Because That's like showing up to a board presentation and starting with a biology lesson.
Yeah. Right. We thought it was important.
We thought it was the secret sauce, but it was another stumbling block.
It was extra information we didn't need.
So we eventually stripped it away. And we got it down to, that was when I invented my first card deck with the help of my son, who was eight years old at the time.
We invented a card deck that could explain the algorithm in 40 seconds.
Just so we didn't get mired in the thesis stuff.
I think you're highlighting at least two myths that we have about our super smart audiences and stakeholders and one myth It's not a myth that they're super smart, but what it is a myth is that they want to read the white paper.
They want to like rack their brains to connect the dots and go back and hit their memory cells and draw this, you know, make it like make a huge effort to follow you.
And that is not true. Everybody I think you're talking to is probably pretty tired, overwhelmed, exhausted and afraid of making a mistake.
Yes, they are smart. They are brilliant.
They are geniuses. But that doesn't mean that they want to use their precious knowledge. brain power on understanding what you're saying.
So that's number one. And number two, and this myth I believe, probably up until yesterday, and that is that Well, Joel's smart.
If he doesn't understand what I'm saying, he'll ask.
Duh. I mean, I'm not going to insult him. by dumbing this down, he'll ask me, well, if Joel is the CEO of my company, He probably doesn't want to ask because he doesn't want to let go of the illusion that he's omniscient, right?
He has a reputation to hold up. And smart people, some will want the white paper.
They will want to read the white paper. Available, but just don't make it necessary.
You should have it on the table, but you should also, in that white paper, not forget to include...
What is the big idea? What are some stories?
How do we do value propositions? There should be the human reflection in a white paper, it elevates it and it makes someone want to read it.
So this is not a white paper. This is my book, right?
But in my book, I'm having a side conversation in the footnotes.
And acknowledging, hey, you might not know what this algorithm is because you're not in this industry.
So let me tell you, it's bonkers, you know.
And having that back and forth and... sometimes burying something a little, so this gets back to kind of those mantras, those inside jokes, burying those things as little breadcrumbs in a technical paper, in a data sheet or something like that is a little treat and a little reward to the person who's reading it.
And it's almost like patting them on the back and saying, hey, Good for you for sticking with this.
And I actually have that in there. I'm like, hey, good for you for sticking with this. chapter because this is a hard one.
It brings just a little bit of emotion back into the deep technical stuff.
It lightens. It gives the brain a treat.
Yeah. Oh, my gosh. Yeah. Reward your audience for sticking to it.
So give me an example or a hypothetical one.
I'll give you an example right from the book.
So in the end of the book, I have a glossary.
And you have color. Oh, yeah. Well, this is full of color because I have to talk about the workshop and I haven't even talked about the card workshop.
In my glossary of terms, I was very cognizant of having very, very short definitions.
ABM, account-based marketing, AI, artificial intelligence, big ideas, foundational messaging themes that shape brand identity. you flip the page, and then there's this huge honking definition of the cluster thought.
Now, a cluster thought is an overstuffed, unfocused message that crams multiple ideas, jargon, and technical details together in a way that overwhelms or confuses the audience, making it difficult for them to grasp the core point or takeaway usually identified by several commas or clauses that result in a single sentence that wraps on multiple lines or one in which you have to take a breath like here, in order to read out loud and is typically the result of editing by committee.
So anybody who gets to that, the glossary, it's like, hey, I'm showing you right here what a cluster thought is.
Right. It's this huge honking thing. But that was a very, very deliberate decision on my point, which which required me going through every other definition and making sure they were like, one or two lines.
But that's like a little treat. And I saved it to the very end of the book.
And by the way, everybody listening, his book is called be a nerd that talks good and what about the cards if someone wants to get the cards Does that come with a workshop or can you get them from the book?
How does that work? If you go to nerdthattalksgood.com, that's the domain, it's .com official.
If you buy the book, there's actually a link in the book for some goodies. which are some worksheets and kind of talk about the process.
And I'm in the early stages right now of developing a cohort training.
I love that. I know that's going to be extremely popular.
I've only gotten through my first question.
I'm a talker. No, you're good. You're good.
What is the nerd's advantage? So people listening, they're probably thinking, oh my gosh, I'm such a loser when it comes to messaging because I'm sticking to the facts and not being all warm and fuzzy and emotional like Joel is telling us.
Because I'm not emotional. I am an engineer.
What is the advantage? You come with a bit of more credibility.
We can all smell a salesperson or a marketing person a mile away, right?
There's a certain gravitas that comes from not even just a nerd, but an executive, somebody who's got experience, someone who has who has done the thing for a very long time.
They have the ability to see context and to see patterns.
The curse of that is the curse of knowledge, not knowing that what you know.
But if you do a little bit of work, there's such a rich, ability for you to put those things together and present them with a lot of gravity, a lot of credibility.
And so yes, your title, your experience your credentials are very, very important.
You don't really, but you can't lead with those.
You have to lead with the human, with the emotion.
And you kind of seal the deal with and you can trust me because watch almost any TED talk or any startup pitch.
I do a lot of startup mentoring. A lot of times they open with, My name is so-and-so and I have this and I have this and I have this and I've done this.
Yeah. And this is the problem and this is what we're doing.
Right. And if you invert that, you say, man... you probably have the same problem that I've got.
Everybody has this problem. This is how bad the problem is.
This is what we're doing to fix it. You want to know why you can trust me?
Because this is what I've done, right? And by inverting and putting that kind of like second or third what you're doing is you're actually pre-answering the question that the audience has, What are they up here for?
What are they going to do? Why should I trust them?
It's not, who is this person? They never asked that first.
No, they want to know, why are you talking?
Yeah, why are you here? So this is why I'm here.
This is what I propose that we do. And this is why you can trust me.
Congratulations. And thank you for listening to this podcast, by the way, because we're very honored.
To have you here. And I hope I'm sure that this has been valuable to you.
So, you know, I only got to ask you like two questions, but.
Episode two, episode two. What should we ask instead of does that make sense is my final question.
And then I want you to answer that and then tell me what I should have asked and answer that for our listeners. audience?
I've seen a lot of people try to answer this question, like, what should I say instead?
And, you know, it depends on the situation.
It depends on the rapport. You can say, can I circle back to anything?
You can say, what would you like to know more about? because you're giving them options.
What about, what do you think? I think what do you think is too broad, and it makes an assumption that they've had an opportunity to process what you've given them, and it puts them on the spot.
Now, if you've been talking for a while, if you've presented two options, you can say, what do you think?
If you presented a bunch of data, right?
I would say, what do you think is probably an iffy presentation?
What can I dig into more? What can I talk more about?
So what... Did I completely not ask you that I should have?
Oh boy. So I always start and end my podcast interviews, no critique, With the nerd origin story.
Which we got to. And then personal things.
Like what do you get most excited about?
And the reason I ask that is. Outside of what you do for work, you know, we talk about a lot of bringing your authentic self to work, but there's a lot of I believe in cross pollination.
So. Oh, yeah. So if you're talking to somebody and they're very technical, you know, developing a personal rapport and saying, what else are you working on outside?
What are the hobbies? Where do you get? most excited that again is a little little serotonin juice to the brain and you're like oh they care about me this is so exciting and we're connecting on a personal level, it develops that rapport.
Yes. Well, thank you so much. It's been tremendous fun.
So helpful. I'm sure everybody has been taking notes unless you're driving.
There's so much good material here. And of course, there'll be the links in the show notes for everyone to pursue more of be a nerd that talks good have have a great day and thank you joel thank you it's been a pleasure Well, I love that.
I thought Joel was very interesting, charming, and gave so many insights for complex data or complex information and making it suitable for the C-suite without being condescending, right?
Even the most technical audiences they need, they crave simplicity, relevance, and emotional resonance.
That's what we learned today. And just for you, I am inviting you to download my Practical Guide to Effective Communication book.
It's the PDF. It retails for $9.99 on Amazon and read chapter four on mindset.
I think that will help you filter out and reach your audience so that you are heard, respected, in all meetings is going to help you be more influential and understand better how to reach key stakeholders.
The link to get that is in the show notes.
And I wish you a wonderful, fantastic day.
And I will catch you on the next episode.
