1733 – Getting The Point Across with Steve Woodruff

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0:58with us right now steve woodruff steve you are the king of clarity and you're the author of the book clarity wins your website is steve woodruff.com steve thank you so much for joining us josh it's a pleasure to be here with you and your audience absolutely great well tell us a little bit about your work who you get to work with and the impact that you have most of my work is In the corporate world, I work a lot with people in sales, marketing, training, leadership development, and it really focuses on communication skills. Everything from email to personal branding to marketing to writing. As you know, there's nothing much happens in business without communication.

1:44And a lot of people really don't know how to package information in a way that gets the point across. And so my new book, which is called The Point, is a handbook for how you can actually get the point across, get to the point, and get people on the same page. Yeah. What do most people, what are we doing? How come we're not, how come in our mind, we hope we're being clear, but maybe that's just not being received. What are we typically doing that's causing some hiccups in that process? Two main things. One, too much information, an awful lot of unstructured info dumping that overwhelms the mind of the recipient and shuts it down.

2:33It's when you when you've gotten one of those emails that, you know, you're going to scroll, scroll, scroll, scroll. You know what exactly what I mean. Or you're sitting in a talk and the presenters just blah, blah, blah all over the place. and you're going, where are we going here? Well, this is a huge problem. Then the other problem is vagueness and confusion where people don't know how to actually put things in a way that turns the light on. Maybe an overuse of jargon or of confusing terms or being overly technical. So TMI, too much information and vagueness are the things I am at war with.

3:16Yeah. And I think we can all identify with that. And sometimes I think, particularly, maybe people that might be newer to, or they might be very good at what they do, but they are now having to do the work of marketers. And maybe that's not their first skill set. Like I'm a leadership consultant, but now I'm being forced to also be able to communicate, which, you know, listen, I'm good at one aspect of it. And so I know what that, I then think we all know what that tendency feels like to say, well, more information is better, more is more, and more will only convince the other people, you know, of just one more thing that's absolutely going to convince them that they need to, you know, kind of move to that next level of engagement, you know, and I'm speaking kind of specifically for the kind of the business entrepreneurial world, which I think a lot of, we trip over our own shoelaces quite a bit.

4:13Well, less is more. And the reason why, and these are some numbers that are really striking, Josh, your brain and my brain, we are processing 11 million bits of information per second from all five senses. That's how much of stimulation is pouring into the brain. And it all has to be filtered down. When I'm having a conversation with you, that's 60 bits. We can focus on 60 bits. So the competition that we have is this vast array of noise, all this other stimulation, and we've got to win the 60-bit battle for attention against 11 million bits of competition. So as a salesperson, a leader, marketer, parent, pastor, teacher, this is the warfare we're all in.

5:12How do we get quickly to the point and engage the mind with all of that arrayed against us? yeah um so what does it typically look like steve when i mean obviously you're doing a lot of thought leadership and advocating for you know brevity uh and clarity um but what what do you actually what do you do as a professional so besides the writing i do a lot of speaking so i do workshops i do keynotes and i take the principles that are contained in my books and then in small or large group settings, go over them and apply them into specific instances for that particular crowd. So if it's marketers or salespeople or leaders, we'll deal with different aspects of it.

6:02But the core framework of good communication is the same no matter what the discipline. There are the same rules and the same tools because the brain has an operating system and it all kind of works the same way. And so if we know what the brain wants and how it wants it, we can be a great communicator. And that's why I wrote my new book, The Point, so that literally 8 billion human beings could have a handbook for good communications. That's how universal these principles are. Yeah. Steve, are there any processes that maybe you could walk us through? I think what I would really love is beyond just emphasizing the importance of this topic, maybe there's something that our listener could immediately do over the next couple of weeks or something that could, maybe it's just a lens that they could look at their own content or maybe a process.

6:58Is there anything maybe you could, some action items or something that you could walk us through? So I'll give you two things. The first thing and the first principle of the four-step process of the Clarity Framework is the first thing is you got to have a point. Believe it or not, and I know you believe it, a lot of people don't have a point. And that's why they're wandering. They're just kitchen sinking. Just throwing spaghetti against the wall. And the problem is that the recipient of that download of confusion is not going to listen. We're going to shut that down. So how do you have a point?

7:35Well, I have a very simple formula for that. Whoever your audience is, one or many, they're thinking a certain way right now, feeling a certain way, acting a certain way. As a result of this communication, how do I want them to think, feel, and act differently? What's the shift? When we can articulate in a simple sentence what the shift is, that's the point. That's the destination. That's the purpose for this communication. And now once we articulate that, we can get to the point because we know what it is. But if it's all vague and cloudy in our minds, it's going to be even more foggy in the minds of the person that's listening.

8:22So practically speaking, how does that work out? Well, we all have this huge battle with the email inbox. Email is the low-hanging fruit. And every day we're being inundated with dozens of emails. And what's happening is the human mind very quickly is scanning the most important visual real estate, which is the subject line and the first sentence. That's what determines whether you're going to get a hearing or not. So I encourage people to front load their emails with something extremely relevant, interesting, action item, deadline, whatever it is, right in the subject line in first sentence, because that's your chance to hook.

9:06If you don't get right to the point quickly, you'll be ignored. And really, it's the same principle for a speaker that gets up. You better tell me in the first couple of minutes where we're going or I'm not listening. It's the same with a book. If the book is boring or diffuse, I'm not reading it. So front loading our communication with relevance is the most important thing we can do immediately to win the battle. What's that called in speaking? There's a term for that, right? When you hit the stage and like... Yeah. Well, there's a lot of different terms, but journalists do the same thing. They say, don't bury the lead.

9:42In other words, when you hit it with the headline and In your first paragraph, you better grab me. Don't bury it down six paragraphs because then nobody's going to pay attention. And with the speakers, it's the same thing. If you don't hook me right away, you know what? I've got, and everybody in the audience has this smartphone, and I've got a very easy alternate if you're not interesting and if you're not relevant. So we've got to design our communications to be interesting on the front end. Yeah. So how might that look or how might we know what to lead with, let's say, in an email communication?

10:25So a lot of times with email, what we're looking to do is, whether it's conscious or not, do I need to do something? Do I need to do something with this? What's this for? And so one of the best ways is to put the actual request right in the subject line. Josh, I need a one paragraph input by Friday at noon. Boom. You can't mistake what's going on, what I'm looking for, what I'm asking for. And I'm doing you a favor. I'm letting you know that this is important. This is how important it is. And this is what I want from you. But if it's ambiguous, or if I put so many things in that email, so many different bullet points that it's overwhelming, you're just going to put it off.

11:10And we both lose. So a lot of it is getting direct and simple and brief so that it can't be mistaken. Yeah. Steve, so you have one book that is currently on Amazon. And when is the next book due? So The Point is going to be released October 17th, and it is through Morgan James Publishing, and it'll be in bookstores and Amazon and Barnes & Noble and all the usual places. I have a number of advanced copies as authors do. And so far, I've had tremendous response from influencers and podcasters and reviewers because I've designed it to be incredibly simple and practical and actionable, immediate action that you can take to be more clear.

12:02Yeah. And so your book currently, Clarity Wins, that book's available right now on Amazon. And so what is the transformation that you would expect would happen for somebody as they go through Clarity Wins? Well, when an entrepreneur or a small brand or even a person that's in a career change, one of the most important things we can do is have an incredibly clear and concise message that'll stick in the minds of others, what I call a memory dart. I like to throw overboard the term elevator pitch because nobody wants to talk in the elevator and nobody wants to be pitched. So what I advocate for is a very precise memory dart that will stick and that will make it easy to refer.

12:52So if I said, hey, I had a conversation with Josh today, and he is the Mercedes of podcasters for entrepreneurs. What I've done is I've stolen an existing memory hook that says top level, the best, premier, et cetera. And I have planted that image in somebody's mind. And I've summed up a whole bunch of things with a word picture. That is the most important thing any small company, any entrepreneur, any consultant can do is wrap up your offering into something so tight that someone can remember you and refer you. And that's the point of the book Clarity Wins. The subtitle is Get Heard and Get Referred.

13:41All right. So, Steve, your website is stevewoodroof.com. For a friend that's been listening, what would you recommend they do? Where do they go from here? Well, the first thing is if you are looking to establish a brand message, if you're looking to you know, tighten up your outward expression to the world, Clarity Wins is great. If you're looking to bring about a communications overhaul in your organization with things that are not just marketing or brand related, but have to do with collaboration skills, project management, email, presentation skills, that's what The Point does. And then I also do talks and workshops.

14:21So if people are looking for someone to come in and speak to their teams on communication skills, that's actually the heart and soul of my work. I take all this material from these books and apply them in the talks. Yeah. And again, your website, stevewoodroffe.com, the Clarity King. Again, also, I should point out you're a pretty good LinkedIn follow as well. So if you're looking to improve your associations, Steve, you definitely share a lot of great content there as well. So Stephen Woodruff, again, thank you so much for joining us. It's been a delight. Again, your website, stevewoodruff.com.

14:59Thanks so much, Steve. Thanks, Josh. Appreciate it.

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