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What if the difference between getting the deal and walking away empty -handed comes down to how you say seven words.
You've been there, the presentation where you thought you nailed it until someone said, ''That's not how you came across relaxes.'' The pitch that felt perfect in your head but left everyone confused.
Here's the truth. Most of us are terrible at saying what we actually mean, and it's costing us deals, promotions, relationships, and opportunities.
Meet Bill McGowan. He's the founder of Clarity Media Group and one of the world's leading communication experts.
He's coached the founders of Amazon, Meta, LinkedIn, Spotify, and Airbnb, and for two decades he's been the secret weapon that Olympic champions, Grammy winners, and Fortune 500 CEOs call when the stakes are the highest. Bill's newest book, Speak Memorably The Art of Captivating an Audience achieved the prestigious title of No. 1 new release on Amazon and today he's breaking down exactly why some people command attention while others get forgotten.
In this episode, you'll discover the magnificent 7 framework that makes your message stick, the No. 1 mistake that smart people make when they're trying to persuade, and the proven strategies that Bill uses to prepare clients for high -stakes conversations that can make or break careers.
Whether you're negotiating your next salary, pitching a make or break deal, or just tired of being the smartest person in the room that nobody remembers, this conversation gives you the tools to speak so people don't just listen, they take action and they remember.
If you are ready to stop hoping your message lands and start making sure it does, stay tuned for today's episode.
And without further ado, let's jump into the interview.
Thank you for being here.
Phil, thank you for coming on the show today.
Komi, thanks for the invite.
I've been looking forward to it.
Yeah, it is my pleasure.
And I really want to frame this as powerfully as possible.
And I want you to start off by talking directly to the person who's listening.
If they are able to take what it is that you are teaching today and put it into action in their life, how does their life change?
All of us in work and outside of work, we have the opportunity every time we open our mouth to communicate to other people.
There's a golden opportunity to not just inform them, but to motivate them, inspire them, influence them, persuade them.
And in our work as communication consultants, what we find is that opportunity is being squandered because people aren't aware of the strategies and tactics that go in to making what you say stick in people's minds, and in the work environment, a lot of that has to do with the fact that people are communicating in a very bland, boring, and forgettable way.
And so the point of Speak Memorably is to give them the tools to be able to talk less and say more.
Oh, this is good. This is great.
And I knew this was going to be exceptional.
And with this, this new book, first of all, kudos, thank you for one new release right now on Amazon, correct?
Appreciate that. kudos, this is great.
And I'd love to explore before we get into some of the tactics and specific tips that you talked about in the book.
I'd like you to opine on humanity for a little bit, because we all have the capacity to communicate in some way, and yet even though this is something that everybody does every day in some way, we still struggle so much with it.
And why is it that you think we still need to be coached and taught how to communicate effectively, even though it's something that we do every day?
Because most people communicate in a very spontaneous way in high -stakes situations.
And for instance, you're going into a meeting Kwami and you're thinking I'm not gonna have a speaking role in this meeting.
It's I'm just there to take notice of what everybody else is saying.
Even in those situations you should sit down and figure out if somebody wheels around and says Kwami what do you think of that.
You want to not have to talk off the top of your head.
You want to have a game plan for what you're going to articulate and how you're going to articulate it.
We find generally that people wing it way too much. And I'll give you an example of how crazy I am when it comes to preparing.
Even if I'm calling a customer service representative on the phone and I have an issue I need to have resolved, I will sit down and I will figure out what's my opening salvo in this conversation?
And I will then anticipate how are they likely to come back and push back and try to have me not get the outcome that I'm hoping to get.
And then off of that, where do I go from there?
And I map it out like a bit of a chess game.
And I have found with that kind of preparation I get the outcome I'm hoping to get 50 percent more of the time, and it's only because I am putting in the work to prepare and make sure that my communication persuades and influences them to the maximum degree.
This is so powerful because what we're seeing here is that the best communicators, the best negotiators, the best persuaders do it with intentionality and preparation.
And this is the key, they do it at such a high level, it seems as though they're winging it because they can communicate so clearly and authentically that it doesn't feel scripted.
And I wouldn't say that it's scripted as much as it is thoroughly prepared, right?
It is, we call it feigned spontaneity, where you know the content so well, but the danger of that is you're gonna deliver it in a very robotic rote way.
When we coach people on delivery, we want them to reintroduce the sound of thoughtfulness, even if they know the content backwards and forwards.
One of the traits we find as a common denominator among the very best communicators that we work with is they are relentless rehearsers, they are relentless preparers.
and they do not fall into the trap that a lot of people do when they achieve a certain skill level on this, and a certain level of seniority, where they say, Oh yeah I know this, I've got this, I've talked about this subject dozens of times.
That doesn't mean you're prepared for the next opportunity.
Sometimes that wealth of knowledge can be an inhibitor.
You actually have to figure out what's the best of the best that I'm going to bring up in this conversation, or leading this meeting or giving this presentation.
Otherwise you could just go on and on and on and lack of brevity is also an attention killer.
Yes. And, and so I'm thinking here, Bill, it's, it's interesting all roads lead to preparation.
So let's say you are new at this or whatever the circumstance is and you're nervous, you're afraid, you say, okay, I need to prepare, prepare, prepare, and then you prepare and then you get to a point where you can appear as though it is off the cuff and natural because you are so well rehearsed.
But then on the opposite side of the spectrum, we have people who have they've, they've seen it all, they've been around the block.
And that might be the thing that holds them back, because they might be, they might have put themselves in a position where those ideas have become crystallized to the point where they're not nimble enough to make the adjustment in the moment.
So they need to prepare to be a little bit more open to surprise and be willing to flex and adjust to the circumstance.
So whoever it is that you are, listening to the podcast there's no excuse.
Preparation is mandatory.
Well, we, when we coach people, for instance, to give a presentation, we tell them there are three things they should know cold.
One is, what is the concise, declarative, punchy opening sentence that gets you into the slide?
It should not be a warning about what you're about to talk about in the slide.
It should be a statement of value.
And that's the habit we really look to break in people.
All this talking about what we're going to talk about.
It's all wasted breath.
And we hear it almost in every presentation that we work with people on.
Stop warning people about what you're going to do.
Just inform them. That's really our philosophy.
So that opening sentence is critical.
And it is a lens setter, for which they're going to hear and interpret everything you go on to say in the rest of the slide.
So don't throw that opportunity away.
Then ask yourself, what's the big idea in this slide?
What is the one thing I want to have sit -up higher on a pedestal than all the other information in the slide?
Make that a concise punchy sentence.
Then how do I close this out?
What does the finish line look like?
I want to make sure it's something declarative and concise.
We don't want a running out of gas coasting rolling stop that you often hear in presentations where somebody's standing in front of the deck and they say and yeah so yeah that's what that is.
That makes it sound like there's no cohesive plan for this presentation and when you know those three things cold the opening sentence the big idea in the closing sentence.
It gives your presentation a really crisp, well produced feel and sound to it, everything you say in and around those three things.
I want you to know conceptually, how it comes out of your mouth, but I don't want it to be memorized.
I want you to only commit three short things to memory.
I you know, this is so fascinating Bill, because we have 1600 episodes plus of the podcast. I'm a keynote speaker.
I'm sitting here. Well, thank you.
Thank you very much. I'm sitting here feverishly taking notes because you're dropping gems that I haven't heard before.
And I want to see if this is intentional, but it seems as though this tracks with the way that memory works with people as well.
Because we have the primacy and recency effect and then we have peaks and valleys.
So we're going to put disproportionate weight on what happens at the beginning, what happens at the end, the best thing that happens and the worst thing that happens.
And so it sounds like by using this methodology and hitting those three points, the opening, the closing and the big idea, we're not just communicating clearly and powerfully.
We're also communicating in a way that maximizes positive retention of the message too.
Hello, my friends. Before we get back to today's episode, I want to ask you a question.
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And studies have shown that, that the opening sentence or thought and the closing sentence generate more engagement and more retention than something you say in the middle.
And this is true not just for an overall speech or an overall presentation, but we like to get people to think about that in terms of every slide.
And so throwing away the beginning or the end is really costly.
And so when we craft a presentation with somebody, that's crucial to the structuring of it.
Incredible, incredible.
And Bill, I could talk to you about this for an eternity, but I wanna make sure I respect your time because there are some other massive ideas that we want to explore.
And one that has been getting a lot of play and attention is the idea of the softosteron, right?
Can you tell us about what that is?
Well, at the risk of mansplaining, I'll tell you that the softosteron is an offense that so many women have experienced in their careers.
They're sitting in a meeting, they share an idea or a strategy in the meeting.
It doesn't really necessarily get a reaction.
And then a male colleague five, ten minutes later says virtually the same exact thing as if it wasn't raised before.
And people say, oh, that's a great idea.
We should do that. And shamelessly takes credit for it, even though it's an out -and -out theft. and this is a big problem that we talk about in the book that women need allies to be able to prevent this from happening they need to together understand that when they raise an idea or a suggested course of action at work in a meeting the other women in the room need to right on the heels of that say Rachel, that's a great idea.
And here's the reason why I think that's a great idea.
Reinforce it. Validate it.
Now, men have a role to play here, too.
They need to be vigilant for not allowing this offense to go unchecked.
So if you're a man in the room, and this is a call to all men, And if you see the testosterone happening, if you see something, say something, right?
You need to pipe up and say, Brad, that sounds like exactly what Rachel said two minutes ago.
Don't you have anything to add to that?
You need to call it out as not an original idea on their part, but just echoing something that was said earlier.
So we deal with this offense in the book in the hopes that it will happen less often and that women will understand you need allies in the room who will prevent it from happening in the first place or call it out after the fact.
I really appreciate you bringing this up because it is what once it is brought to your attention and you start to see it, it is remarkable, almost cartoonish, how frequently this occurs.
It's unbelievable. And the other role that men should have in the room is even if your idea and your input is mildly related to something a woman in the room has said, especially younger, more entry -level positions, you really need to say, just to build on Rachel's thought, which I thought was really insightful, just credit the person.
I think it shows that you're secure, you're confident.
It's only really insecure people who don't have original ideas of their own who commit this kind of offense.
Agreed, agreed. And it is a significant problem, because I think especially if you're not a person who has experienced something like this, it might seem trivial.
And the reality is it's not.
Because when you think about the advancement opportunities that exist within your occupation, a lot of that is going to be contingent upon your perceived contribution in these types of meetings.
And if every contribution that you are making is being stolen from you, then not only is it an affront to you personally, it also could potentially stunt your career growth, while at the same time making you feel less included and less as though your your voice matters.
And so there's a it's a compounding effect.
Because the woman who's experiencing it sees this and then other women are seeing this too.
And so you start to say to yourself, well, if I contribute, the contribution is taken.
And if I don't contribute, then there's no contribution.
So what's the difference?
And then people will start to learn silence.
Yeah, and it's almost impossible to have what you say be remembered if you're not getting credit for it.
And the former editor in chief of Cosmopolitan magazine, Kate White has a great quote in the book where she had this intro line that she used to give in meetings before she revealed her idea, which was really just an announcement.
I have an idea of significance that I'd like everybody's attention for, and I think that this will help solve problem X, Y, and Z.
She would showcase it, she'd billboard it instead of of passively backing into the idea, and communication wise, that's something else that women need to be mindful of, being bolder in putting forth their ideas.
Yes, and this is really empowering.
Let me start there because, even though it is a frustrating and unfair situation, the solutions are rather simple.
They're rather simple.
They can be a little bit scary to implement from time to time, but they are doable.
And again, this is an example of your communication mastery to communicate the solution in a way that is easily digestible.
And, and I want to see here too, with the point that you just made, if there is a way that we can extrapolate that same finding or that same strategy to other ways that we communicate, because it seems as though a lot of times you, when you are able to market what you're before you actually say it, it's almost like it creates its own positive placebo effect that amplifies the words that you are about to say.
Another strategy around Theodosterone, as you said, how do you amplify, how do you tee yourself up would be to send an email to everybody who is going to be in the meeting.
To just say, you know, it's my intention to use my speaking time today to put forward this idea.
get it down in writing, that could be another way to safeguard and protect the theft of your idea.
We have a device in the book that we talk about, we call it a drumroll line.
And a drumroll line is a great verbal technique that makes sure that the audience is paying the maximum amount of attention at the moment that's most important for you to have their engagement.
Because it doesn't matter how great a public speaker you are, how terrific an orator you are, you are going to get drift from your audience.
It's just a law. So really, when we get up to speak in the drift killing business, we have to pull them back at the moments that matter the most. So if you have an idea that you want to have land and stick, drum roll up to it.
So a drum roll could sound like...
But of all the things we researched, here's the technique that works best against the testosterone.
And then you create a half a beat pause, and then you reveal it.
And the reason why the drum roll line works so well is because even if people in your lunch or did I leave the garage door up or whatever, did I leave the iron on?
That happens with your audience, they just start daydreaming.
Even if they are, they will hear out of the corner of their ear this drum roll line and they will lift their head up and say yeah what's the one big idea?
They will turn their attention back to you right before you reveal the Big Thing.
And so that is a warning, hey, pay attention, because I'm about to tell you something of value.
Amazing. And speaking directly to the listener now, I want you to know that the point that we are going to discuss next will probably be the most powerful thing that you will hear in the podcast. And it is talking about - Dude, that was good drum roll line.
Ah, you saw it? I thought you'd like that.
Very well done, Kwame.
Thank you. So I'd like to talk about the Magnificent 7, because this is incredibly powerful, and I think could really just change the way that our listener approaches communication and connection.
So can you tell us about the Magnificent 7?
Over the course of our careers coaching people, we've been able to study what it is that people say that get repeated, that get quoted in the media, that get posted on social media by people in an audience when you give a presentation or you sit on a panel discussion.
There are seven devices that work incredibly well and one of them is analogy and metaphor.
People love analogies because they take a concept that might be complex, foreign, unfamiliar to an audience, and they help get the audience to understand it quickly and efficiently, because it's been compared to something that's common to everybody's experience.
So years ago, I was coaching a group of people who were going to be sitting on a panel at a Financial Investor Day conference, the topic of the panel was Brexit.
It can be hard to be pithy and quotable on Brexit.
Not exactly the topic that lends to that.
But one of the panelists said, well listen, let's face it, before the last prime minister in the UK left office, she was the chess player who only had the king left. And she was just moving it around one space at a time till she got checkmated.
Now, I don't remember I don't remember anyone else that was on that panel that day.
I don't remember anybody else on that panel said that day, but I still remember that guy.
Just about everyone knows chess, or checkers.
And he was able to take maybe a complex domestic political dynamic that she was working against, and break it down into a concept that everybody can understand.
And so that was powerful, but it was also an opportunity that he gave me to have a little mental vacation.
I had my fill of Brexit conversation by that point and now he gives me a little mental break where I can visualize a chessboard for 10 seconds and get a little mental refresh and be able to come back and re -engage, which is really important.
Same thing we did for people talking about the height of the supply chain crisis, which is another topic that has a lot of complexity to it.
And the analogy that we formed on that was the supply chain crisis was like having a six -lane freeway merging into a one -lane country road.
And maybe people don't understand the logistics industry but everybody has sat in traffic maddeningly trying to squeeze past other cars and just how nightmarish that is.
So that is really the concept behind analogies.
Wow. It's powerful.
And like you said, it simplifies very complex topics and it's funny, We have a lot of customers who are in the procurement and supply chain world.
So that was something that we were very well versed in.
And just the way you described it, gave me a deeper understanding and appreciation too.
It's incredible. And I want the person listening to this to realize though, this doesn't happen by accident.
This takes a lot of time and thought to go through.
So actually could you outline what that process could look like to come up with a metaphor like that?
And a lot of people do say to us, well, my mind doesn't think that way.
I'm not naturally inclined to come up with those things.
And I get that ultimately though, the more you put yourself to the test to try to compare something that's involved to something that's simple.
You start to develop the capacity to be able to do that.
And the more you do it, the easier it becomes.
And this is something that we work with clients all the time.
Maybe the first half a dozen times, we're crafting the analogy for them.
And then it's so rewarding when we work with them maybe a month or two later, and they've come up with one on their own.
And it's just wonderful to be able to see that we're teaching them how to fish.
We're not fishing for them.
I think that's really the key to think, What does this sound like?
What does it feel like in my everyday life that I could compare it to?" And that skill does build within you.
Amazing, amazing. And so we have analogies and metaphors.
What are some of the other magnificence every?
There's the creative label, which is basically an expression, you coin, the founders of Google years ago were famously asked, what's the criteria for the decision you make as to whether you want to invest in or acquire another company?' And instead of giving all these boring metrics, they said, Well, it's got to be a product or service used twice a day, every day.
It's got to pass the toothbrush test. That toothbrush test is a creative label and it became something that everybody was aware of, everybody knew what it meant, like everybody understands what the great resignation is, like everybody understands what quiet quitting is.
These are terms that take on a life of their own and they get repeated but the first time people hear them they really sit up in their seat and think oh that's that's clever that's interesting I'll remember that.
So a creative label is another one.
We also love wordplay, where you have two sentences back to back, that are almost mirror images of each other that play off one another.
So when we have discussions with clients around artificial intelligence, and how it's going to help alleviate some of the burden of manual tasks and allow people to be freed up to do what really matters in the business.
One of those lines is, it's really hard to move your business forward if you're mired in the back office.
That's a wordplay. We have forward and back playing off one another.
And it makes for something highly quotable.
Another one is what we call original definitions.
It is not defining a term as it is found in the dictionary.
It's defining the term in the way you want somebody to see it.
So, for instance, when we talk to people we coach about being on stage and displaying energy, what does that word mean to somebody?
It doesn't mean, I want to talk louder, faster, flail my arms. Our definition, our original definition of energy is your palpable enthusiasm for the value of the information you're sharing.
That is our original definition of that.
And there are a number of other things.
There's a twisted cliche, where you take a common expression and you put a little twist on it to turn it into something new.
Like businesses that are in a highly competitive industry, where it's survival of the quickest instead of survival of the fittest, the play on Darwin.
There's a mathematical equation that, don't ask me why, but even people who are not great at math at school tend to remember things that are posed as ratios, as equations.
For instance, the more casual your tone, the more confident you seem.
That's a ratio. Or authenticity equals passion plus warmth.
These are sticky in people's minds.
Ultimately, what you realize is the common denominator is they're all brief.
They're all concise.
they're not wordy and clunky it's easy to remember them.
Alright Bill now we've come to the part of our episode where we have a letter from a listener and we're going to allow you the expert communication coach to break this down and help them get through this situation.
Hi Bill I recently stepped into a senior leadership role at a fintech startup, last week I gave a big all -hands presentation to outline our roadmap I thought I nailed the delivery but afterward, our head of marketing pulled me aside and said, you're not coming across the way that you think you are.
People are confused.
I was stunned. I had rehearsed, I was clear in my head, but apparently the message didn't land.
And now I'm overthinking everything, my tone, my slides, and even how I stand when I speak.
I want to improve, but I don't want to turn into some overly scripted version of myself.
How do I sharpen my communication without losing my voice or my confidence?
Thanks, Jordan. Jordan, my recommendation would be to take your phone out and, instead of sitting down at a computer and writing your text and figuring out your content in a prosy way, which doesn't really work because what happens is unless you've worked in television or radio, instinctively people write for the eye, they don't write for the ear.
And stylistically those two things are very different.
When we sit down in a computer we tend to write longer thoughts that are filled with introductory phrases and parenthetical clauses and they wind up being three or four lines long.
That's not how we talk.
We talk in shorter, simpler fragments.
So the hack to help you attain that ability to write for the ear instead of the eye is make yourself an outline on a big index card of what it is you want to say and you can make each card represent each slide in your deck.
Just make an outline of what is really important to convey here and then take your phone and there are lots of apps that will record your voice and transcribe it at the same Otter AI is one of them and just get up and let it rip.
Don't worry if it's full of starts and stops and mistakes it doesn't really matter.
What you're going for is a rough first draft so when you're done with the recording export the transcript that's on your phone to a word document or whatever you're going work from.
And sure, clean it up of the mistakes.
But stylistically, don't change it.
Because what that style is going to represent is something that sounds a lot more authentic, a lot more casual, and a lot more conversational.
And it's going to connect with your audience better.
The other benefit to it is when you get up to speak and perform it, you're never going to be at odds with the content because that content represents instinctively how it's meant to come out of your mouth.
It is not some artificial version of your ideas.
And my guess is that your audience is reacting to the fact that you're not telling it to them like you would tell it to them across a dinner table.
And the style with which you communicate should pass what we call the Dinner Table Conversation Litmus Test. Would I say it to a friend if I was having dinner with them this way?
And if the answer is no, then what's likely happening is your tone is too formal and too stilted.
You need to make sure it passes that Litmus Test. Bill, what I love about this is you've essentially given us a way to construct our own authenticity, Which sounds very strange.
Well, you know the Groucho Marx quote that three quarters of life is authenticity, and when you learn how to fake that, you got it made.
But listen, authenticity is probably the number one characteristic and quality that people are trying to convey to an audience because it is skyrocketed in terms of importance.
Yes, and let's talk about this too, because we have the necessity, the craving of authenticity from the audience and our own desire to be authentic, and now we have gotten to a point where people have shorter attention spans, and this is a bit transitioning from the listener question to just a lot of the core communication work that you do now, because you've been in the business for a while, at least two decades doing this work at a high level with massive companies, incredible celebrities.
And I wanna get your perspective on how culture and society has shifted.
And as a result, how some of your communication and advice has shifted as it relates to just attention span in our capacity to listen.
We live in a TikTok world, that's for sure.
And people want to consume information in the smallest helping possible.
But that doesn't mean that you're gonna get up in front of your colleagues when you have to present about an entire project and think you're gonna do it in a snappy 60 second video style.
That's just not realistic.
But what we have found is absolutely essential is bringing variance to your performance.
And what I mean by that is you need to think about your voice in three qualities.
Your pace, your pitch, and your projection.
Projection just being volume.
And you need to think about those three qualities as something that you keep in a constant state of variance.
Don't drive all in one speed in cruise control where everything comes out of your mouth at exactly the same pace, because that'll lull the ear of your audience to sleep.
You want to be sections where you're both brisk, and sections where you are slow.
And the rule of thumb is, the more important the information you're conveying, the more deliberate, the more emphatic I want you going, and the more pausing I want you to build in.
If you're just giving secondary information, the conversational connective tissue between one important point and another, sure, step on the gas, be nice and brisk and conversational, but don't blow through your big point.
And it's that variance of pace that makes the voice interesting to listen to for your audience, as fluctuation of pitch does.
If you're talking about something positive, about something optimistic, maybe you're trying to project to your colleagues, if we follow this strategy, imagine next year, if we're in this position, you want your voice to reflect that optimism.
And sometimes it's not a matter of saying things louder and harder when you get to the big idea.
Sometimes pulling back and making people lean in and listen to you more closely as long as you keep up the intensity with which you're saying it.
It's a very counterintuitive strategy, but it works incredibly well.
And then the one last thing I would say about variance is, even think about your content as something that stylistically you need to bring variation to.
If you've had this longer, more full sentence that explains something, on the heels of that, make a very short, punchy sentence that breaks up the monotony of the sentence structure in your presentation.
That's another thing that'll jar the audience's attention back into focus.
That's powerful. I really appreciate this too.
And I don't want to overlook the fact that it is easier said than done, especially if you haven't spoken like this.
I know for me coming from law, I mean, we wanna just get the point across quickly.
We're very logical and linear in the way that we're thinking.
We bill by the minute, you know?
Right, well you know, listen Kwame, as a lawyer, you know that some the most successful litigators are not the ones that are approaching a jury in this very academic abstract theoretical way.
They're making the facts of the case come to life in short choppy thoughts.
Yes, that's powerful.
It's powerful and one of the things that helped me to practice this is reading to my kids.
I have a nine year old and a four year old so I said, okay listen I'm going to, I'm going to crush this story.
And we are going to be all over the place with the way that with the variance being intentional about practicing it.
So checked a lot of boxes because I was saying, all right, I'm going to practice becoming a better speaker with more variants.
But then also my kids loved it.
Yeah. That's not, listen, you know, you're trying to keep your kids attention.
Yes. And you're trying to keep your audiences attention and interesting.
You bring that up, because one of the things that we stress with clients is something we call the once -upon -a -time cadence at the beginning of storytelling because a lot of times people are flat in their pitch when they launch into a story and you wouldn't do that with a bedtime story.
Once upon a time has a certain lilt to it.
So does you know, I was talking to some clients last week that should, as opposed to...
I was talking to some clients last week and the two are very, very different.
the traditional cadence that we associate with bedtime stories or any story, needs to be replicated when we're providing anecdotal material in a work environment.
What I love about that point, Bill, is that a lot of times we feel like we have to start a story by saying, well, there was this one time or once upon a time, right?
Or let me share with you a story now.
Yes! That's the warning about what you're about to do.
or to illustrate that point, let me share with you a data point.
All that is wasted breath.
And we can convey the same thing with our tone and our cadence rather than, ah, incredible, incredible.
And before you go, we have one more listener question that came in just now, breaking news, okay?
And so in this new world, we've got the TikTok -ification of life.
If you are somebody who is a content creator when you're creating short form videos, and let's say you're transitioning from something that's a little bit more academic esoteric to trying to connect to the masses via TikTok short form video.
What pieces of advice would you have to the content creator to do that effectively while still being authentic, and this one is from Kwami Christian.
Wow. Namesake. What a coincidence.
I would say, Kwame, that the advice I just gave really fits there about go speech to text as opposed to text to speech. But when I'm advising communications people, marketing people who have to create content for an executive, let's say, and oftentimes that's created in a vacuum.
And I just advised a client this week to say, listen, before you develop a presentation or a speech for this person, just get 20 minutes on their calendar, go in with five or six questions, pepper them with the questions, record it, hear how the thoughts roll off their tongue and instinctively how they'd say it, Try to replicate that when you write for them.
Try not to have the and -so predicament.
What I mean by that is, if you catch yourself saying and so a lot, it means you're creating run -on thoughts, where a period should exist. Most sentences, in presentations or speeches, could be literally chopped into three separate thoughts.
So when you're creating content be your own ruthless editor and think not only how do I take 25 % out of this right away which most things can can accommodate, but also how do I chop this up and make it punchier, more succinct.
All those things are really important.
Amazing. Amazing. So, listeners, when you see my social media blow up.
Just remember it. Remember this moment here, Bill.
This has been fantastic.
And just one last note before you go with this book, speak memorably.
I want to make one final pitch to the audience with this book because it's not your first book and you've been in the industry for a while.
Just real quickly, What was it that compelled you to write this particular book at this particular time?
Because so much has changed in communication since I wrote the last book we have this elevation of noise all around us in society and the competition for People's attention has never been greater, and it's never been more difficult to make your voice stand out.
These are the techniques that I have honed over the years that have followed the writing of the first book that I know work for people.
I know it makes them more quotable.
I know it makes what they say stickier with an audience.
When you have that opportunity to communicate to people, don't squander it.
There's such potential and possibility when you get up to speak to move people, to get them to think a certain way or at work, to get them to do something.
And you really have to take advantage of that.
Speak Memorally is a guide to how you go about raising your game and making your voice really stand out.
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