Why Communication Is the Ultimate Business Leverage with Communication Strategist Oliver Aust

0:00Hey, everybody. It's Mo. I've exciting news. My new book is out. Gift to grow, invest in relationships to build your business and career. It's everywhere books are sold, hard copy, audiobook, which I recorded myself, Kindle, Digital, everything. Check it out at your favorite bookseller. Everybody, what if I shared with you the one limiting factor that happens every time as a team scales, an internal team, an external team with a client trying to grow a practice area, a new product offering, things like that, anything that requires multiple people. There's one limiting factor that always happens in its communications. Today, I've got Oliver Aust. He's the author of I think five business books. Oliver, is that right? I don't even know how you're creaking them all out all the time because they were like back to back. The one I really love is called message

1:03machine. We're going to dive into some of that today. But because Oliver works with the same kind of people, we do high-end professionals, high-end leaders in large service-based companies, professional services, things like that. Our clientele overlaps one hundred percent, and Oliver can pull from his other content to help us with anything we've got. So, Oliver, why don't you just start with, why is it that communications is this? The scaffolding that if people don't build it right, everything falls apart. Why do teams fail because they don't communicate well, either externally or internally? Tell us more about that. Leadership at the end of the day is communication, and this is what we do. As a knowledge worker, we spend 88% of our time at work communicating. Think about this. What did your grandparents do for work? Maybe they were on a farm, maybe in a factory, but communications-wise, they're probably pretty simple and straightforward. My grandparents worked on a farm. My parents worked in an office, but locally, same language, same people every day, same time zone. Now, we all work in international and potentially global

2:07businesses. We work with different generations. We work with different clients with stakeholders, with regulators. You name it. It's a highly complex communications environment that we have created, which brings many benefits at work, of course, but it is so complex now that it's very difficult for people to navigate, and that is the reason why, in many cases, communications, especially when your leadership role becomes the bottleneck. You need to take your clients, your customers, your stakeholders, your team on the journey. They go out of their way to help you achieve your goals, and of course, you want to help them achieve their goals as well. That is the challenge we all face at work these days, and the challenge doesn't get any smaller with AI and all the complexity and the swift changes we see in the world. I really feel like there's some meta skills that thread through everything. Communication is one of those. Habits is one of those.

3:11Staying consistent through habits is one. The thing I think that's interesting about communications is it's often hidden. Meaning somebody will say, gosh, our marketing materials don't really land well because we haven't figured out our product or service offering, our messaging, our fit, things like that. Or they'll say, gosh, we're just not winning in pitches because we talk too much or we don't design a great experience or whatever. Or for internal meetings, we hear things like, yeah, people just aren't doing the things that I need them to do. It's their fault. But the thread through all that stuff is communication. Don't you think this is one of those skills that if we can get better at this one thing? I'm always looking for leverage. If we can get better communications, leadership communications, external, internal, everything we do gets better. Your thoughts are 100%. I mean, it is leverage. Communication is leverage in this world we operate in. And you rightly said, it's a skill. It's a set of skills that we can acquire. So it doesn't matter where you are today in terms of your leadership communication skills or your sales skills,

4:13etc. You can acquire these skills. And I think that's good news. When you look at someone like Steve Jobs, he started out as a terrible communicator. If you can check out the first interview he gave on TV in the 1970s on YouTube, it's terrible. He said, I'm going to throw up where's the bathroom, right? And he obviously became this iconic communicator on stage. So we all have a journey in front of us. And I think the first mental shift is, hey, let me work on this. This is a skill set and it's actually not that complicated. I can learn it. I've learned many more complicated skills than that. I know how to communicate. I'm maybe okay. I'm maybe at level eight or nine, but I can be a 10. I can be a top 1% communicator. If you communicate, well, you're working life and also your life in general, your family life, it feels like you're you're pushing a boulder down the hill. But if you're communicating, let's say a level four level, you're pushing the boulder up the hills. Everything gets more difficult. And if you have a level 10 technical skill set,

5:14but your communication skill set is at a fall, guess how people will perceive you as a fall, at least if you only leadership roles. So often that becomes the bottleneck. The good news is, we can do something about it. Well, you just reminded me this, this research report, I think the authors of the research were Sherman Patterson. I might have that wrong, but I think it's right. And they said something like this, effective communications in the word consistent consistent and effective communications were the number one correlation to client loyalty. Even more than technical expertise, in fact, when they did the regression analysis, they found that people that were consistent and effective communicators, people actually viewed their technical expertise as better. So communications, especially when done well and consistently, like we're saying, staying in touch over time not only helps people view you as a good communicator, it actually makes you look smarter than maybe you really are. So if not many things unlike where you get a two-fer or a three-fer, this is one. Well, some of the things we're going to

6:16talk about are like, I'm so glad we've thought about what we're going to share today. Like, you're going to share later on how to prepare for a speech in minutes. We're going to talk about product or service offering and marketing fit. We're going to talk about what is brand and how do you communicate it well? Bunch of stuff later today. But I think it's important to start with what you call seven key factors in the psychology of communication. So could you just maybe just run through those quickly? And I might take a couple that I think are the most interesting. Absolutely. Absolutely. So I picked out seven in the book. They're more of course, right? We can talk about many different aspects. But let me preface this. You want to understand them. So other people can't manipulate you. You want to understand them. So you become a better communicator, but always use them in an ethical way. Why? Because it's the right thing to do. But also there's something called reactants. So you can use all sorts of psychological triggers and we know a lot of people out there who say, hey, use this, use urgency, use scarcity, use this, use that. And you know, sometimes there's a case for it that it can also lead to reactants on the other side. Reactants

7:20is the psychological term for I don't like this. I feel manipulated. So we always want to use them when they are true and when they are ethical. So if there's urgency, fine, let's use urgency, but let's invent urgency because smart people will see right through it and it will make the sale or the deal much less likely. So I think that's important to frame this conversation. Well, in Oliver, if I can just jump in, I think that headline, I know it's an old song, but people hate to be sold to, but they love to buy. Yes. Is appropriate here. And Bob Jardini and all this research of influence found that when you use things like scarcity, as an example, one that he used, if you use that authentically, it's a positive. If you make it up, everybody can smell it for a while away. They feel sold to and they want to run. So it actually can have detrimental effects also to very, very strong ones to not do these well. So about here. Absolutely. Absolutely. So the first point is always clarity, right? If we're not clear, people won't buy, a confused mind never buys. So clarity is important. It trumps complexity. In fact, there's something called the complexity paradox, which means the more we tell people, the less they

8:24understand. So saying less, but using clear terms, atomic statements as well, it will store, put it, atomic statements. If you can put a lot of meaning into a simple sentence, a simple statement, then you're on to something good. So clarity, trumps, complexity. I would mention value as well. Value is important. It will never get out of fashion. Value will always be valuable, because no one cares about our company or product, even though we think it's the best thing in the world, but people care about what they get out of it. So value is very important. We kind of know this, but we often forget it when we talk about the features and the bells and whistles on our product. Now, service is great. But what does it do for me? You know, that old marketing question, what's in it for me? We need to answer this and answer the value question. And I'm going to, Oliver, I know I said I was going to let you get that. No, go for it. Do it. I got to riff on some of this stuff. It's so good. So some practical tips that people can take away. So our first two are clarity and value. Clarity, I think one practical tip people can do is save time at the end of a meeting to recommend a next step to make it clear. So little phrases

9:31like, Hey, what must we got 10 minutes left of our one hour call? You know, what most of our clients do next is blank. Just give them one option. Like it's so clear. Everybody wants to make progress. If somebody wants to buy from us and they're just not sure how much to buy it off, that can happen from time. Like we want to use you. We're just not sure if we want to be able to or small, then providing three options can make sense. You know, small, medium, large, good, better, best. So making things as clear as possible really helps. When you talked about value, the second thing that made me think about Cynthia Criter's research that found when we share our own accolades alone, it can actually be a detriment to us. It gets unlike we're bragging. But when we convert that accolade to a benefit for the other side, it's a massive positive. So if somebody said, Hey, you might have seen the, there might be their high stakes and I trust lawyer, you know, you might have seen this particular case where the FDC in the US, you know, tried to block a certain thing. Well, I represented the other side and we got that through and here's what we did. Well,

10:32just sharing that can sound like bragging. But if we then say, and through that process, we really learned the inner work needs FDC, we developed relationships with those folks. And we know exactly where they're headed in the retail industry over the next year, given the new administration. That's important for you because you're going to want somebody like that guiding you. It's not guessing, but knows. So converting accolades to benefits seems like the way to go for value. Your thoughts on that before we go to absolutely. And I love your cliffhangers at the end of meetings, which you outlined in your book. So I love those. And you can indicate the value at the beginning already, right? So when you start a meeting, a conversation say, Hey, from my perspective, our goal today should be X, which indicates value. So the next 30 minutes will be full of value because eight, I want this to you. And if they don't, they can send, say it right there and then and we can work towards a congal. So that's very powerful as well. So always think about the value. What's in it for the other person? Give first. I know that's your philosophy life as well.

11:32You give to grow. And I'm very much behind that as well. I think this is the right way to live in my view. And it is also just happens to be good for business to. Yeah. Okay. Go to the third thing. This is great. Connection. Connection is so important. We often think about perfection, right? Just perfecting my craft, perfecting the business, perfecting the product, having the perfect conversation. Now in communication, there's no such thing. There's no perfect speech presentation or conversation. But what there is is connection. So always aim for connection, not perfection. How do you do this? Well, obviously you meet the world with an open eye and an open ear. You listen, you introduce yourself properly, but you allow the other person to explain what's on their mind, how you can help them. So trying to create connection, I think we do know this as human beings, but sometimes the transactional nature of business just gets in the way. I don't think there's a skill we need to develop. I think we have the skill, but it may be underneath, some skills that we have acquired in the meantime and we've forgotten about it. So allow yourself

12:34to be connected to the people you work with because it will make everything easier. In any conversation, there are two dimensions, right? There's the content dimension, the information, we exchange, great. So that's one part of it. But the other part is the relational dimension. So the connection we create always think about those two, right? What do you want the audience to know, feel and do? What do you want the person having the conversation with to know, feel and do in 30 minutes? That's a good question to ask yourself to guide a conversation towards a mutually beneficial outcome. Oliver, it's so good. And I love how you phrase this in this chart. For those that, you know, we've got two channels, one audio and one that's audio and video. So the video folks can see this, but I just love how you summarize certain aspects of the book where you make this simple. We're walking through this. So we're on the third element connection. The way you define it is so good in the line with what we teach and what our audience believes. Focus on the content and the relationship. And I love this. This is only word on this page is where you capitalize it and both need to happen. I really picked that up because what our audience can do is overbiased

13:40one or the other. Get into teaching mode. I'm going to share all the stuff we know. It only content. You don't connect. Not good. Only connection is bad because then you're a nice person, but you're not need there's an expert or a professional. Be a both are important. That great meeting has a little bit of both, don't you think? Indeed. Absolutely. You want to be interested. You want to be interesting as well. So if you're if you're only interested, that's great. But you may be a fan or follower. You may not be seen as an equal partner. So you also want to be interesting. And this is what charismatic people understand, right? They're interested, but also interesting. So that is, you know, hopefully something to keep in mind because charisma terms like that can be very elusive. But if you think, yes, I'm interested in in in Mo and I'm interested in the person I'm meeting today. But it's also interesting. I've interesting I have an interesting life of interesting interesting things to share and I will share these. And maybe think about these points before. Well, that can help to create a really interesting bond with another person. So good. Okay. Go under the fourth. This is all this is all fantastic.

14:44Fear, right? Fear scarcity. Often fear is used negatively. You can sell on a fear basis, which I wouldn't necessarily recommend. But it is something to understand that we are as human beings often motivated or held back from action by fear. So if I understand the fear paradigm of the person I'm talking to, that is extremely helpful. Give you one example. So let's say you're trying to close the deal. You're speaking to the other person and it's not quite clear why they don't come through, right? Why is the deal not coming through? I would think about the internal the external dimension here, the external objective of that person maybe to grow the business and you think, well, our deal would make sense from that perspective. But what's going on internally? Maybe the person fears this deal won't give the desired results. Maybe it's seen as the little risky. Therefore, my position may be threatened. Or maybe I'm worried that I will lose my job due to AI. Maybe I'm worried about, you know, not getting that promotion. So to understand these

15:45internal motivators, which are often feared driven, especially in large organizations, can be extremely helpful. And it requires a bit more contemplation about them because the external ones are very clear. Well, they're public usually. Our business has the objective to achieve X this year. Okay, very easy to understand. But what's going on inside this other person who takes the decision is less clear. But as a smart human beings like you can listen to your audience clearly is, you can find out by talking to other people, you can find out by just applying common sense to what the other person is saying or where they're coming from, right? Maybe reading between the lines, really actively listening to that other person. So fear plays a big role in interpersonal communication because at the end of the day, we as human beings, unfortunately, are often feared and excited driven. And this 10 age, unfortunately, is quite heavy on these factors. Yeah. Yeah, over that. What you made me think about, I haven't thought about it a long time is a lot of times people share objections or fear in a very nuanced way. Yeah. So if somebody,

16:50if one of a top tier management consultant is talking to a potential client and they're talking about a cost takeout project or a strategy project or whatever, the client might ask something quite nuanced is like, well, I'm just curious, like, how does your team interact with RT? Well, that's not, you don't want to go straight to an answer right there. You want to say, hey, tell me a little bit more about that. Why did you bring that up? I got a lot to share. But it's in that second order question that we're going to find out that they're really worried about how their teams overworked and they're worried about people leaving and they're worried about this is extra work on their look or it could be 50 other things. But we want to know what's underneath that. But there's a fear that's underneath that question that's quite deeper than just what the surface question was and digging into that unpacking a little bit would then give us the answer that they need as opposed to what we might guess they need thoughts. Yeah, I couldn't agree more. And the flip side of that coin is that why don't we become bold and fearless communicators, right? Because I think people are attracted to these bold and fearless communicators. We're not

17:51getting defensive. We lean in. You're expensive, right? And there's a straight from your playbook, right? Yeah. Expensive. You lean in. Yeah, we're not cheap. We're not trying to be the cheapest. We're trying to be the best in the field, right? So you lean in. You're fearless as a communicator. That is attractive to people. Yeah. So good. Okay, go to the next one. This is so great. You're killing it. Thank you. Differentiation. Very important. If you think about branding as marketing as, you know, how do you position your product? If it's not different, you know, how are we even thinking about this? The brain has a tough time processing better, but it's really good at processing different or other, right? So for that simple neurological reason, differentiation is a key factor in communication and especially in branding and marketing. Hey, we are different because, you know, I had a great conversation with Laura Reese on my podcast, speak like a CEO, and she wrote a book, the strategic enemy that really hammered hook at this point, have a strategic enemy, you know, boy in Airbus, Coke and Pepsi, you know, man, it's very easy for the

18:55brain to understand Nike and Adidas. So, you know, I'm all on the other. Nike isn't saying we are we are better than Adidas. They're saying we're different, right? And that makes sense for the brain. And then I can select myself, you know, oh, this brand is for me. This brand isn't for me. And that makes it very simple. You just gave me something that I realized I've done and I had no idea why I was working. I want to do it more, but it's a lot of times people say, hey, you know, we went through such and such sales training. Now she used those words sales years ago, they were some okay parts of it, but honestly, just didn't feel like it fit us really well. I was going to call yesterday that they said that and said, well, yeah, that's because a lot of sales training and I always put like quotes around it in a big consumer person. They were usually built for products where the sales person makes a sale goes away and never talks to the person again, meaning the relationship is never even discussed. And if it is, it's about usually cheesy manipulation stuff, like scarcity, you know, like all the debt, all the you're being sold to stuff, the bad version.

20:00I said, our stuff from the very beginning was built as the relationship being paramount, the sales actually being subordinate. Now we're going to teach how to build relationships that result in winning tons of work, profitable stuff, this stuff you want, but the long-term relationship has to be paramount because you might meet somebody that isn't in a position to need you now, but two years from now they could be your biggest client. So you've got to develop that long-term relationship. And when you thread that through everything is the number one thing, that's a real differentiator for us. I said something like that yesterday in a call and everybody's like, oh my god, that's exactly that's why we didn't like that other thing. Now we want your thick. So having, what did you call it? Have a strategic enemy or it's normal, it's, it's Laura Reese's work called, basically have a strategic enemy. The book is called, I think, just strategic enemy of the strategic enemy. Is she out? Was it Jack Trot and Alrice? Is that? She's Alrice's daughter. Yes. That's what I thought. Yeah, I met her one time. Yeah, fantastic. You should talk to her on the book cause. She's fantastic. Yeah, I should reach out to her. That'd be funny. I was like

21:03literally like 25 years ago when I talked to her on the phone once. Yeah, so have a strategic enemy. Is that what you called it? Yes. Brilliant. In this case, it's like, and what was great is a lot of times people say, you know, you don't want to trounce or you don't want to badmouth the competition. What's great about what we're talking about here is you're not. You're never going to name one entity or one organization. Yes. You're going to name a category of organizations. And that way, you can position yourself uniquely against them. Don't you think and it's not a negative? Whereas if you had mentioned in the exact other organization, it would seem weird. That's not probably not something we want to do. Your thoughts there. It's not something you do because that doesn't appeal to customers, right? And consumers, what appeals to customers and consumers is to be clear. We are not that, right? So if you are Coke, you position yourself differently than Pepsi. Pepsi is everywhere different or Apple says, think different. They're not saying that didn't say at the time IBM's rubbish. They said, think different, right? You're different. You're the Maverick if you choose one of our products. So it's implicit, but the consumer

22:06gets it. And that's also true in B2B and professional services. This is true in any field. And to, let's say you're an agency, you're running an agency and you have a different approach. I would clearly say, hey, we're not your classical agency. If you're looking for classical agency to do X, Y, Z for you, that's not us. We are a consultancy. You specialize in this one thing. And if that's what you're in the market for, we are your people, right? As he said, it's a category question often or with consumer products, it can be a bit more explicit. Yeah. Yeah. That's perfect. And it might have been our recent jack trout. Of course, Alping was father that said, everybody's got like a product ladder in their mind. Just trying to figure out which ladder you're on and where you're at on the lot. So this, this having a strategic enemy helps say, we aren't this, but we are that really. I love how you said the brain's hard at figuring out if you're the best, but it's easy to figure out different. Or once they're they can ascertain if you're the best or not. And that's so much branding in market. It is so bland and doesn't work and it's so expensive, right? Because especially large organizations, conservative organizations, they have a hard time standing out. It's all about

23:11standing out and being different, but the instinct is to be safe and be among our peers. You know, that's the conundrum lot of organizations find themselves in. But at the same time, often you have a new let's say CMO coming in and they want to change things, even though things are working. So you also have to be careful in that direction, but being different, being clearly differentiated and being able to summarize the differentiation in a simple sentence is that's golden. I love this. Okay, two more. We have to talk about trust. Track obviously is hugely important. In a way, you can't really have a relationship if there's no trust, whether that's with your team, whether that's with your clients, with prospects, you know, it's not possible. If there's a lack of trust internally, we see teams breaking down things move very slowly. It's all about, you know, covering your behind rather than moving things forward. If there's no trust among, you know, between you and your clients or customers, again, that's really, really bad. So how do I build trust and, you know, building here on the work by Stephen M.R. Covey, fantastic person, also my podcast, he made a very

24:16good point of saying you have to be trusting and you have to be trustworthy. Why do you have to be trusting that you're trusting the other person? So it's not true in his view and he's probably the leading, you know, person in the world, leasing thinker on trust, the author of speed of trust and trust and inspire and so on. And he says, well, you can obviously build trust over six months, but then you lose six months. Why don't you trust the other person? And by being trusting, you also become more trustworthy, right? So you're extending trust first and the other person will reciprocate. And then you're building a trusting relationship very quickly. So that's the key, he says, don't wait six months to build it slowly, be trusting, but also be trustworthy. And you know, the simple truth, as we all know, if you want to be trusted, just be a trustworthy person, do things the right way and people will trust you because you haven't disappointed them. So, and this comes down to simple things like, I send you this by Friday, you get it by Friday,

25:16right? Always, always do what you say. And this is what, you know, I tell my team members and others as well. If you don't get the little things right, people don't trust you with the big things. So you want to build and establish and keep the trust by sticking to what you said, even if it's a minute detail. But if you said you would do it, just do it. You know, one of the, I'm trying to think of like a practical tip for each of these. One thing I learned a long time ago, because I'm like, I'm really good with strategic thinking. I'm not, I'm not good at figuring out how long things will take, especially when combined with all the other things. So I tended for many, many years to say I'll have something to you by this day. And I would choose too soon of the day. And it wasn't out of like anything other than, I just don't think in Gantt charts, you know, I just don't like, it only takes 10 minutes to do that follow up. But I didn't think of the 27, another 10 minute things to say. So one of the things I've been doing the last several years is I immediately think of a time I could send something to somebody and either don't give one,

26:17or I give a date that's like three days later, five or something. So I don't know, well, not the same thing the hard way. And so for instance, I never say I'd sent you this by Friday. I always say by the end of the week. So if I have to, I can sit down on the Saturday morning for 10 minutes, I can just do it. And it's still what I said I would do. But yeah, give yourself more time and then rather, you know, create a positive surprise. Yeah. Yeah. I think we, I think we win the fact you send somebody early, not by by working harder, but by choosing a later date. It's the deadline. Okay. Last thing framing. So good. Tell me more framing. And I would pair it with priming. So priming is even more primal. It is, is this good or bad, right? And for instance, if you, and we're probably going to talk about structures and how to create speeches and presentations, and so on, the key question I was asked myself is this a positive start or negative start to make it tangible? Do you start with a problem? Do you prime the audience in a negative way? Or do I start with the, you know, the vision, the positive, exciting thing we're going to work towards? That's

27:19a positive priming. And this is very primal and very important. And people, oh, yeah, I always use problem solution benefit. Great. But, you know, that means you always prime the audience in a negative way is that really your intention. So what I'm saying is being intentional. Sometimes it's great to prime the audience. Hey, we're looking at this problem today. I think we can solve it in this meeting. But sometimes you want the positive vision, especially internally when you're talking to your team, don't always start with a problem. So that's priming, very primal, good thing, bad thing. And then there's framing, which is more specific. So when I say a certain word, let's say start up or CEO, that's a frame. So immediately in your mind, there will be connections and associations are, you know, start up means, you know, Silicon Valley and it means funding and it means, you know, fast moving and breaking things and all these associations we have. And this is how our brain operates, right? So it is often said that the person holds the frame wins the debate, even though we shouldn't think about winning debates. It's not about winning and losing in a debate. But you get the picture, right? It is very powerful and helpful to hold the frame.

28:22Classic example would be to say, hey, the client or the prospect says, hey, how much does this cost? You say, well, the investment would be and the return on that investment would be such and such. So I'll say we talk about coaching and say, okay, what's the cost of your coaching? So, well, I would look at this in terms of investment. You probably know the return on investment off your sea level executives because they obviously have a big lever and it's a big company. So that decisions matter. So in that respect, I could probably help them become, you know, two or three percent more effective and communicate better with the team, which means there's a clear RRI on that investment. You know, that is a classic reframe from something someone perceives this cost to something that should be perceived as an investment that creates value for the business and almost is a no brainer. Yeah, it's so good. I like both of those. We talk about framing a lot in one of our modules and how to frame a meeting. It's in our module and how to how to give a pitch, how to just have a normal low coffee chat, anything in between business development meetings, whether they're

29:22low stakes or high stakes, and one of the most important things to do in the first five minutes is set the frame like, hey, what do we try to do to it? And say, hey, just just even if it's super informal at a coffee chat, like, hey, just really looking forward to hearing about what you're up to this year, what your some of your priorities are. And I just love to find some ways to follow up and be helpful. I don't know what it is yet, but let's just let's just have some fun with. Yeah, so just having a little, even even if it's a super soft, that lets the person know why we're there. The thing I hadn't thought about as much, I have a little bit of intuition around this, but I could do it more as the priming idea. Yeah, it's a really looking forward to it. This is going to be a lot of fun. Then set the frame or it's a problem solving meeting, setting that emotional figure. It's almost the prime as the emotional frame. I know that's a mixing metaphor is probably, but is that right or not? Yeah, I think you're right. I think you're right. And when do you use which? So the problem framing is and priming, priming, and then to say, hey, the framing is we need, I don't know, new coffee machines in the office. That's great. Frame that as a problem. The coffee machines break down,

30:24we need better ones. No one's going to be shocked. No one's going to think, I'm going to lose my job. That solvable problem is often framed and primed in a negative way. It's primed a negative way and framed as a problem to be solved in this meeting. Now, people lead us sometimes apply this to the bigger vision. Let's say it's a typical narrative you hear a lot and which usually backfires, which is our industry is changing. We need to change otherwise we're screwed. That's a short form of a narrative that a lot of leaders are using because they think it's motivating. We need to understand the significance of this situation and make the most out of this. The problem is a triggers fear and it triggers resistance. And people who worried about their job or move their attention to finding a new job or whatever, they're not going to be the best self at work. They're going to help to solve the issues at hand. In those cases, it's much better to honor the past, for instance, and say, so far, we've done an absolutely stellar job in 2025.

31:25And you acknowledge that sincerely and then you move on to the challenges, but you start in a positive way or you start with a positive vision. You could say, 2026 could really be our best year ever, right? So you set a positive vision. And the next stage may be to say, hey, but clearly there are challenges on our way, say, I am in security in the supply chain, whatever it may be, the challenges are easy. They're always there and our mind is usually fixated on that. But to start under with a positive vision, that's usually something we overlook, but it is extremely powerful. Yeah, if I go back to just to hate coffee machines or breaking in the office, setting up as we got to fix these coffee machines, that's going to probably, there's our emotional, we got a problem, that's the priming frame is we're going to solve this problem day. A different version of that would be like, hey, I know the coffee machines have been breaking. You know what, I think there's a silver lining to this. I'd like to rethink the entire experience of our break room and our ability to drive culture by people bumping in each other and, you know, as they get

32:29a cup of coffee or a soda or whatever. I'd like to rethink all of that. Let's think today about what can we do as an investment to drive more collaboration and a better work experience through the fact that we all drink caffeine. And you know, like make like there's a totally meeting that's going to happen now. Yeah, you move to too much higher level. I love that. It became a conversation about purpose rather than about coffee machines. What can we do so that teams mingle more and their minds colliding and we can become more innovative. I love that. Yeah, there you go. And so of course that I was just picking up your example from before, but that could be on a whole entire strategy for an organization. We need a, to your point. We need to fix this thing that we we're all broken. We need to fix ourselves versus there's a big new market. We can go capture what are we going to do. Completely different. And then that same thing would be true of client meetings too. We're helping. I never really loved the idea of find their pain points to your point like as a as a frame for a business developer.

33:30Yeah, sometimes people hire professionals because they want they got an issue and they need to it needs to go totally get it. But a lot of times people hire professionals because they want to achieve more than they ever could without them. And I'd much rather work with those clients typically than somebody makes an issue go away. So anyway, I love the idea of it could be either or okay, that was awesome. I'd like to move though to this this idea of how to prepare for a speech in minutes. I loved this. And again, for video watchers, there's just a beautiful diagram for this, for those following along just on audio, driving down the road, whatever I know you can describe this in words. But this is so good. Can you just walk us through this? Absolutely. So people spend too much time preparing for presentations, decks, etc. So here's a very simple way to think about it. Your job is usually to move people to action, right? It's not to pass on information. You can write an email to give someone the information. But if you present, if you speak, it's about moving

34:33people to action. So you start with your headline, what's the key message? What do you want to get across? So it could be something like 2026 could be our best year ever. So okay, this is the message I want to give to my team on Monday morning, right? Okay, cool. What now? You pick a structure and have a whole ebook of 21 storytelling frameworks, which I'm happy to share. Maybe we can link to that. But let's see, yeah, you know, it took me hundreds of hours to do this and I'm just giving away. So it is, it is actually very valuable. I wanted this for myself because if you read a book about storytelling, the author usually if you want framework, which is useful, but you need more than on framework, because you will be in different situations in different contexts. So you need to lease like three or four at your disposal at any given time. So let's pick one, the Hollywood three actor, excite, disturb, assure. You say, okay, could be the best year ever. You're exciting. And you start off by say, you know, this year we have a great opportunity to double the business. Markets are opening up. People want what we are building. You know, this is going to be really

35:38exciting year for us. However, and this is where you go to the disturb part. There are three big challenges we have to face. We need to onboard new, you know, A players quickly. We need to ensure the supply chain is sound and we need to solve our warehousing issue, whatever it may be, right? So challenges always easy. They're always there. And then you go to the third act, which is a sure sec, but I do think I'm hopeful. I'm optimistic that we can solve this. If we follow this plan and here it comes. And then you go to the logic of parts. So you frame the issue emotionally. People like sighted it and they see there's a plan to make it happen. And that's the beautiful thing. And in the end, there's usually culture action to say, okay, let's get to work. Next step is one, two, three. This is how you do it in minutes. You don't need slides. You don't need a script. Go for a bit. Don't use scripts. Don't try to learn anything by heart. You use a structure like that. And as I just did, I just made this up, right? One minute, two minutes and you're good to go. And people will see you as a top communicator because you can capture emotions, you bring the energy

36:43and you always, you stay a message, but it's in an energetic way, right? And this is kind of the sweet spot. I talk about the three levels of speakers. First level is the Rambler, right? Yes, they talk and talk, but they think while they talk and then I forget to the point and they like clarity. And as we learn clarity, you know, without clarity, you know, don't even start. Second level is the robot. And that's the person who has all these elaborate slides with lots of words and lots of graphs, teleprompters potentially, or, you know, a script they try to learn by heart on Sunday night because they read through 20 times and they're recalling it from memory. But it's very hard. It's very time consuming. We don't have time for this in reality. And secondly, if you recall from memory, you're not getting the passion across. You're lacking emotion and there are neurological reasons for that. But you can either be passionate or you can reside from memory. Okay, actors can maybe do both, but that's why acting is a profession and people train this for years until they get good at this. And this is not what we do in business.

37:46We don't have the time. We don't have these skills. So the simple way is to just skip these steps and become a level three speaker, which I call the Ruckentur. So Rambler level one, the robot level two and the Ruckentur, the storyteller is level three. And you work with structure, not scripts. And you know this from business development as well, scripts. Okay, maybe if you sell mobile phone contracts, okay, but for high ticket professional services, a satire, you want to listen, you want to have a conversation and people don't react well if you read, it's a reader script, right? So trying to be that level three speaker, someone who works with structure was very clear about the beginning and the ending. And we can double click on that if you like, because that's really crucial, but can speak freely and just still on point. So good. So if we if we broke that down and it had just four pieces, piece one is you got to get people's attention. We could call that you call it the key message or the hook. It's something that grabs people's attention. And I usually like, by the way, I hate, we need to avoid like my name so and so. And I do these in the beginning.

38:51Man, just start with the hook right away. Yes. You've got a challenge or you deserve to make an impact. Today we're going to talk about something that just drops right into that. Yes. So a key message or a hook. The second thing is in your model, have three points, not four, not two, not 17. Like what are the key three, if you will, and go through those. And I noticed even in your example, you're signposting. Hey, I'm got three points. Here's point number one. You say, okay, that's the end of point number one. Here's point number two. It's basics. It's table stakes, but almost nobody does it in verbal communication. The listener needs to know where are we? There's no road map up there. So we need to say that was point one. Let me move on to point two, signposting. So thing number two is three points. Thing three. And I love how you did this. Something that brings it to life. Maybe it's a story, a personal anecdote, a killer fact to have maybe there's some research you can quote, maybe there's some data nobody's seen before that pulls it to life or something that

39:53like brings it to life. And then that's the third thing. And then the fourth thing is, what do I need people to do? Yes, you get really specific around that call to action, whatever you want to call it. So thoughts on like, what are your thoughts on like of those four things that you're flow every time? Really easy. You can sketch it out. Just think about it in your mind. What do most people get wrong? As he said, they start with an introduction. 30 seconds and you lost half the audience and you haven't made your first point, right? It's just, hello, I'm so we don't want to do that. Secondly, what people get wrong is that there is no call to action. They think of this as an information piece. But again, why are we all here? This is not an effective way to pass on information, send an email. So the point here is the goal, move people to action. So that is a second mistake, I see. And then I see a lot of fact telling. Now we say that in presenting and speaking, you want to work with human biology, not against human biology. What do I mean by that? Well, against human biology means you give people 28 facts. We all know that we can't remember 28 things

40:56in our short memory. We can maybe four or five. So why would I give people 28 things to remember if that is simply impossible? I don't. Instead, I don't fact tell, I storytell and I package my presentation, my conversation as a story. I just did this. Excite, disturb, assure, right? This could be one dream nightmare action, problem solution benefit or something simple like what, so what now what? You can see often they have three acts, three steps, which are prompts for us to storytell rather than fact tell. So cut back on the facts, give more stories. Is that soft? Is that fluffy? Gosh, no, this is how humans think it couldn't be any harder because effect embedded in a story according to research is 20 times more likely to be remembered. So if you want your facts to be remembered, just embed them in a story. It doesn't have to be complicated. It can be a simple customer story. What's a story? A story is a tale of transformation. So if you think about that,

41:58okay, the beginning is one thing and the ending is the opposite. So if the ending is client happy, then the beginning must be client not happy, right? So what happened between client not happy and client happy was probably what you did together, right? So this is a simple way to create a quick story. You can do this off the cuff. It doesn't need a lot of preparation. Once you understand what a story is and just the steps to structure it, very simple once you internalize it. But as he said, very few people do this, but it's a very simple skill we can all use and apply to great effect. Oliver, so good. I'd like to go a touch deeper on the key message or the hook that beginning because I'm as I just reflect back of all of our clients, you're between 60,000 plus people. So I've seen a lot of people present in classes on one thing or another. And they're communicating in almost nobody gets this part right. They don't tear point. I think what people think is I just walked up on stage the whole that audience is

42:58looking at me. I've got their attention. You do not have their attention. They might look at you, but are they thinking about their shopping list? Are they thinking about what they're going to do this weekend? Are they thinking about that email they got to reply to? Even if somebody's looking at you, it doesn't mean you've got them. And what we'll get somebody is a hook. So can you give some examples of what can get a hook and maybe give a couple scenarios? You know, one could just take each with hundreds of people. Another could be a one-on-one coffee chat. Like maybe you just give a bunch of examples. Absolutely. So I think the first question you ask yourself is do you give people an ice cream cone or a sledgehammer? So positive from negative. And the ice cream cone could be something. Let's say you're dressing your team and you say, hey, last month, the way we, you know, we completed this project on time on budget and one of these new clients absolutely splendid. It happens in anything like this in years. A big round of applause to everyone. So then you give people an ice cream cone. That's a nice hook. People like hearing positive things about themselves. And if it's true, obviously, then it's a good way to start.

43:59You can also use a sledgehammer and say, yeah, can I jump in? In a muscle, I'm trying to lather on some curiosity too. So let's say in that scenario, a client team leader, a practitioner leader is having a big meeting. And they want to talk about how we won that work. We won the work. So I like, I like the idea of the ice cream cone. And I wonder if there's a way to layer in some curiosity like, hey, I was debriefing with Sarah about, you know, it's been a two-year march to to win that piece of work. She actually is going to present today on three things that she did that nobody knows about. We actually worked on this with Sarah. She's going to share three things that nobody knows about that she thinks were in flexion points and winning this work over the last three years. I think you're all going to find this interesting. So is there, is there a way to lather on some cliffhangers there? Yeah, absolutely. I love that. That was brilliant. I love that. Because you let the right person shine, right? And again, this reflects positive and new as a leader. It's the right thing to do. So I really like this. So think about ice cream cones, beginner of conversations and team meetings, et cetera, especially internally. But also with

45:03clients, you can thank them for the trust for work we did together last year. You know, if it's genuine, you can also do that with clients and can be external as well. But especially internal, I'm always like to start with a nice cream cone. I love it. Okay, sledgehammer. Sledgehammer is something that really hits your heart as the name suggests. And it's probably negative, right? Which means you get a lot of attention. It may not be the best thing to move people to action. So there's a bit of a trade off here. But let's say you speak at a conference, you're on stage at an industry conference, say, you know, 2026, we'll be the toughest year for industry since World War II. That would be a sledgehammer, right? We're like, I'm hit in the face. Gosh, I need to know why we're going to do next half hour. I will tell you why this is the case. The challenge is on the way. And who will be the winner and how you can be one of the winners of this bloodbath in our industries? Wow, I need to listen to this, right? This is a sledgehammer

46:04that hits your heart. That will be also a hook. Now, those were kind of extreme example, extreme positive, extreme negative. If you want to look at hooks, go on LinkedIn and see how the top creators do it. The first two lines of text and the first sort of the big letters on the visual. Because people like me also create a lot on LinkedIn. You get so much feedback every day on whether your hooks are working or not. So it's a great training field. And you can learn a lot. It's the crash calls on writing great hooks. Why don't you say LinkedIn or not YouTube? LinkedIn is generally more positive, it's more business. YouTube is very fear driven. So it doesn't translate that well into business. So I would look at LinkedIn. Yeah. Well, you have a gazillion followers on LinkedIn, don't you? I do have a lot of followers on LinkedIn. Yeah. I post pretty much every day and I've done so for years. So that consistency pays off. So I don't have any, you know, hacky secret. So how do you think like that? I just show up every day. But so have you, I mean, you post great content every day. And I love to look at your content because I think it's extremely

47:04valuable and often that's missing in the debate. There's a lot of inspirational stuff and that's all good. But what you post is very value-ending. It's not the, hey, look at me. This is actually tried and tested and it works. And that is a great hook in itself. It's been so much work and the world learning from you. And of course, we comment on each other stuff. I look at your stuff every day. There's something about that consistency of adding value every single day. Yeah. Just on LinkedIn, I think one of the things that we switched when we went, we went, we had about 15,000 followers six months ago. Now we have fit. We'll hit 50 probably next week. And, you know, I would expect a hundred by the end of this year. It's making the post about them not about us. You know, how many people do you see that like, look, I'm about to give a speech at a conference or look, it's about me or the exactly whatever. And that's okay. But I send, I just see those never really go anywhere. They get one repost in three comments or whatever. Yeah. Maybe somebody getting a new job. You should totally post that. That's the world needs to know. Those are going to get more of a flood of comments, not many reposts. It's the people that are making about their audience.

48:08Those are the ones that get tons of repost and that's what we're, you're trying to do and we're trying to do. Yeah. So I think I wonder what, what are the things that I've been really impressed by you is just the value you add on LinkedIn. But on this note of, it's not just you talking about yourself, every single point is adding value and written for the viewer, the audience or the, just for the reader, not about you. And I think that's the biggest switch to be able to take LinkedIn for folks to the next level is make it about your client or the person you're trying to attract and not about you. So good. And you do that. You show up every day and do that. So I'll, gosh, you've mentioned a couple of things already, like content. People are going to want more. I really like message machine the book. Of course, it's one of four. It's written for founders just to be clear. So like, how communications will make you an unstoppable founder is the word there. But if we just found and replaced founder for expert, professional, practice leader, team leader, client team leader, all the, all the stuff we talked about today is in message machine and we covered what, 3% of what's in the book. So so good. That's one thing. You've got all kinds of other resources

49:14out there. Can you just rattle off the different things that people might want from you? And of course, we'll put links down in the show notes. Sure. Yeah. So people want to reach out. LinkedIn is the best place. Oliver oust, A U S T. And my brand is called speak like a CEO. It's speak like a CEO dot academy, Ivan academy, Ivan newsletter called speak like a CEO. And I have a podcast to show 300 plus episodes in also called speak like a CEO, or I speak to world leading experts and all aspects of leadership communication. So that's me. And I share everything I learn. I'm an eternal student of leadership communications. I've been for many years. I just share what I learn. Right. So if I have an idea and I'm diving deep and I find something that interests me, I share it with the world. So best place is therefore linked in and from there to the newsletter. If you want to dive deeper. And the other thing I want to grab though is you mentioned some specifically like it was a whole bunch of storytelling frameworks or something like that. Which when you want storytelling frameworks like I book I've written which we can happily link to. It's quite useful. I use it as my own cheat sheet of your like. Yeah. I'm going to take it.

50:15And I'm going to put it in our little database share with our team and all that stuff. Oliver, your stuff is so practical. There's not many people in the world that work with the highest end professionals like we do and like you do. So I think that's why all the content, message machine, why LinkedIn, all the stuff that we've collaborated. I think that's why it lands along with me is I know it'll land well with our people. So I recommend audience to check out all of Oliver's stuff. I'm a student of his work and just absolutely love it. Oliver, thanks for being on the show. It's been so fun. Well, thank you. It was wonderful having this conversation and anytime looking forward to seeing you in person hopefully this year. I know. I think in April. So it's going to be great. All right. See you. See you. Hey, everybody. It's Mo. I hope that you enjoyed today's episode. If you want to grow your skills around business development so you can grow your book of business and your relationships in your career, I recommend to sign up for our newsletter. It's called GrowBigPlaybook. You can find it

51:17at GrowBigPlaybook.com. And it's going to give you three big things. A short article that I write every single issue. It's going to have a litany of all the cool stuff that we're creating or involved in. And the third thing, even if you never open it up, it gives you that little nudge to let you know that business development is important. Keep focusing on it. So whether you've gone through our classes and this could be a great reinforcer or if you haven't and you want to learn more, GrowBigPlaybook is the place to do it. There's no charge. It just takes a couple seconds to sign up and you do that at GrowBigPlaybook.com. Thanks for watching or listening.