Latest / Expertly Said / Steve Woodruff on Developing Clear Messaging That Sticks
Transcript
- Kristen Sweeney: My guest today is Steve Woodruff, president of Clarity Fuel Inc. Steve is known as the king of clarity after spending 45 years in the business world seeking to communicate effectively in every type of role across sales, marketing, presenting, training, blogging, authoring and more. He's convinced that there's no skill more vital for any professional than clear and concise communication. Steve has been a solopreneur for 20 years and is the author of two books, Clarity Wins and The Point. Steve lives in the Nashville area with his bride of 44 years. and they have five grown sons and three adorable grandchildren. Steve, welcome to the show. Steve Woodruff: Thanks so much for having me, Kristen. It's a pleasure to talk with you. Kristen Sweeney: I'm really looking forward to this conversation. like, could it be more in the bullseye of communication about communication? So we were joking before the show, same with your emphasis on concise communication. We'll see if this is the shortest podcast episode we've ever recorded. But if so, I've no doubt it will still be value packed. ⁓ So we've heard a bit about you from your bio, but can you share a little bit more about what that journey has looked like? How did you get into communications and ⁓ How did you end up getting into business for yourself? Steve Woodruff: Well, none of it was intentional. I grew up as a kid as a space nerd. I just loved all things science fiction, outer space, fascinated with that. I wore out the science fiction section of the neighborhood library. And I thought I'd like to become an astronaut, actually, initially. But my bad eyes took care of that. You had to have 20-20 vision back then to move into piloting and astronauts. So I figured I'd settle for being an astronomer. I bought a telescope when I was a teen and I just absolutely loved looking out at stuff. Well, that dream crashed in my freshman year of college when I ran into physics and calculus. And it turns out that all my romantic dreams about space, astronomy is 99 % math and I just don't like formulas. I don't like math. Kristen Sweeney: Hahaha Steve Woodruff: It turns out I like ideas and words. And I remember an instance back in my teens, sitting in front of the TV. It was a moving company. They had this ad and they had a really dumb jingle. And I thought, that's really bad. And I made one up in my mind right there. And you know, that was just some memory back there. Well, it turns out I was a marketer way before I knew what that was. Kristen Sweeney: Ha Yeah. Steve Woodruff: And my fascination with words and with ideas and with the human brain led me to switch over to psychology. And then I began to just do a lot with writing and speaking and communicating in my entire professional career and sales and marketing and branding and consulting. It's all ideas and words. So the way my brain is configured is I see all this information. and I see what's in people's minds and hearts, and I'm somehow able to very quickly analyze it and turn it into effective words. And so that has been for the last 20 years. My work is doing clarity and then teaching others how they can communicate with clarity. Kristen Sweeney: That's so cool. It makes me think about, I have a seven year old, right? And they do like a career parade and things like that. And you you're just so interesting to see that there are six jobs when you're a kid, right? And astronaut probably makes it into the list. But how most of us go on to do things that we couldn't have imagined. Steve Woodruff: Mm-hmm. Kristen Sweeney: you know, when we were younger and sometimes well into our 20s and like into our professional lives and up, you know, end up in places we did not think we would be when we got started. ⁓ Steve Woodruff: Absolutely true. One of the things I love doing when I talk to people is pull out their origin story because the origin story always involves at least one of these. And then this happened pivots. And for me, it was physics and calculus, but everybody has somebody or some person or some event that changed the course of your life. And that is in fact, the most interesting thing about any person. Kristen Sweeney: Mm-hmm. Hmm? Steve Woodruff: It's not your role, it's not your title, it's not your accomplishments. It's that story. And I just absolutely love pulling that story out of people, because a lot of times they don't even realize how fascinating it is. Kristen Sweeney: ⁓ we share a love for pulling stories and expertise, in my case as well, out of people. There's nothing more satisfying than, ⁓ particularly for me, for worth like a very technical expert or executive, someone who's, you know, one sentence answers, and you find that thing that just unlocks them, lights them, their whole face changes, and suddenly they're off to the races. And you're like, this is what I need. ⁓ It's not only amazing because it allows us to develop the kinds of content that's getting the outcomes we're looking for, but that interpersonal piece of it is really, really rewarding. Steve Woodruff: Well, that and I share this this fascination because communication, it can be this set of words and effectively designed stuff. But clarity is really all about identity, identity of the person, identity of their strengths, their superpowers, their stories. ⁓ I just absolutely love pulling all that out. And then you design the words ⁓ on brand or the identity or the story. So. Words can exist all by themselves, but when you're dealing with a company or a person's identity, that's the really cool thing. Because as you said, once you give them the words to understand themselves, that's when their eyes light up. And that's what leads to their confidence. Sometimes you just need somebody to tell you who you are. And then you go, ⁓ no wonder I'm great at that. No wonder I hated that job, but I love this boss. No wonder, and everything starts to make sense. That's the most gratifying thing for me of my work. Kristen Sweeney: ⁓ So how did clarity become the thing for you? How is it that idea that you've latched onto and developed and built out? Steve Woodruff: I started early on, after college I figured I was gonna go into the ministry and I studied for two and a half years postgraduate work and a lot of that was theology and preaching. And that is where clear ideas clearly expressed really come to the fore. So very early on, I wasn't calling it clarity, I was just looking at how do you communicate in a way that grabs people's attention and plants ideas in their minds. So the idea of using illustrations, using word pictures, using analogies, using summaries, all of that was percolating in my 20s, which ended up becoming my clarity framework later. And then when I went into business with sales and marketing and software development firm, I'm not a software developer, but I had to articulate the technology into human terms. I was doing... clarity all that time because if you're not communicating, you're not selling, you're not marketing, you're not making any progress. ⁓ And then almost accidentally, I started talking with companies and individuals to try to help refer them. I would help come up with their brand. I called it brand therapy, but then I realized, look, agencies and all these people own the word brand. I can't own the word brand, but I settled on the word clarity. I'm helping. Kristen Sweeney: hahahaha Yeah. Steve Woodruff: companies and people get clarity. And so I started to settle on that word. That was my key word. And I think one of the most important things we can arrive at at some point in our lives is the one or two or three key words that summarize who we are and what we do. And for me, it was this fascination with how do you make that clear? I'm just wired to do it. I can do it without even breathing hard. I began to talk to people and in 20 minutes I'd give them more insight into who they were than they had ever had in 35 years. And I'd call my wife and she'd say, how'd the meeting go? And I'd say, it was the magic again. It's magic. ⁓ So that's how I began to own it. And then 20 years ago, starting out on my own, I just said, look, this is who I am. This is what I do. I'm going to build a business around it. so consulting and workshops, eventually writing two books on clarity, I got to run in my passion. Kristen Sweeney: really cool. You've talked about clarity as being like the opposite of confusion. ⁓ I'd love to hear a little bit more about the range of folks you help. My understanding is this pretty broad ⁓ and how this idea of clarity versus confusion can apply kind of in different contexts. Steve Woodruff: So my potential client base is pretty limited. I can work with eight billion human beings, minus one. The one I can't help with clarity is a monk under a vow of silence on a desert island. He doesn't need clear communication. Turns out every human, every business, every organization, every type of communication needs clarity. So I've worked with executive leaders, salespeople, marketers, individuals in job transition, literally anybody in any profession. It's all the same. It's how the human brain works, what words work, how do you express it? But my most effective work traditionally over the years has not been the corporate side, although I've enjoyed doing the corporate side. It's with individuals and creatives and small business owners and consultants. for whom clarity rising above the noise and being very focused, that's life or death. That's you're either gonna win or lose based on your clarity. And because I'm one of those people, those are my people, people like you, Kristen and others. So I have begun to shift my focus away from corporate. I still do it. But my passion for many years, decades really, has been... Kristen Sweeney: Yeah. ⁓ Steve Woodruff: the small business owners, the micro business, the individuals. And now here in my sixties, that's what I'm devoting myself to for the rest of my work life is helping other entrepreneurs, other solos, other business owners get cleared, get effective, make their mark. Because that's what I love. I mean, I can do clarity for anybody. I will do clarity for multiple types of people. I'm not going to shut the door, but I've just. Found there's a sweet spot there, and that's where I'm running. Kristen Sweeney: One of the things that you hear as an advantage of smaller companies is agility, right? And so this is one of the things I think about is someone can walk away from a single session with you and actually just turn around and incorporate that. The corporate wheels make that a little bit more, a little too a lot more difficult to kind of implement or like transform an organization in the same way and have the same impact. So I imagine that that's kind of part of that fulfilling. And as you said, also that kind of like, the stakesiness of it, right? There's like some, it means a lot ⁓ to folks. Steve Woodruff: Yeah. Well, one of the frustrations I've had over the last 20 years, Kristen, is I couldn't see a revenue model that could sustain me based on working with the individuals. I'd had a history working with health care companies, pharma, biotech, device companies. So I developed a lot of my revenue model around doing workshops and helping people understand clarity. But you targeted exactly the frustration. It was like pushing a boulder uphill to try to get transformative change. Turns out in a lot of companies, clarity is a nice to have. It's not mission critical. It is, in my opinion, but other people didn't view it that way. It wouldn't drive it through the organization. I know it could save and make millions of dollars if people would take it seriously. And I preached that message for so many years and it was like speaking to a wall. And that's one of the reasons why I made the shift. to work more with the people who really value it was. I tried to push that Boulder uphill like Sisyphus for 20 years. I was tired. I want to work with people that love what I do. And I have gotten so much more energized in the past year as I put the corporate on autopilot and started wholeheartedly doing this with other individuals. It's been a blast. I had somebody who saw me a year ago and then saw me again recently this year. She said, you're aging backwards. You look younger. I said, I feel younger. I am full of energy and passion now because I'm not pushing that boulder uphill. Kristen Sweeney: Sleezing! Yeah, that's an interesting example you use. one of my and then moments probably in my own career journey is talk about after my daughter was born and I had done freelance writing. I had a client base, but I put a lot of my energy into teaching yoga, which I had done for several years. And I kind of looked around and said, wow, I'm like running all over the greater Boston area, trying to pick up these classes. This just isn't aligned with my lifestyle anymore. This thing over here. when I got really on is just what was making my money. I said, what if I decided to try to chase a boulder downhill instead of continue to push it up? I can tell you five, six, seven years in, it doesn't always feel that way. There's ups and downs in that journey. It's not been a, you know, just super easy based on that transition, but there was that feeling certainly in that, in that moment. So yeah, I like that. I like that example a lot. ⁓ So Steve Woodruff: Mm-hmm. Yes. Mm-hmm. Kristen Sweeney: Can you talk about a few examples? I'd love to, it sounds like, you know, with your current focus, it's probably a lot of sales and marketing, but perhaps also some customer relationships in kind of the delivery or operations phase, ⁓ ways in which that clear, effective communication helps people when at work. Steve Woodruff: Well, let me give you an example as of yesterday. So I got on a call with a ⁓ high level consultant in AI. ⁓ And I love tech. I've always loved tech. And ⁓ so we were talking, he's going to be giving a presentation to regular humans. That's going to be like a 10 to 15 minute presentation. And ⁓ he said, do you want to see what I've worked up for slides? I said, sure. Kristen Sweeney: Amazing. Ha Steve Woodruff: Well, he pulled up this slideshow. It was all accurate, all valuable, all good. And it was absolutely going to go over everybody's head because most people in a technical field suffer from what I call the curse of knowledge. Yeah. You know, you know so much that you assume everybody else knows so much and then you communicate here and people need it here. So I said, do you want me to give you some input? Kristen Sweeney: call it the curse of knowledge. Yes. Steve Woodruff: And so I did. I said, you've got to just talk about regular people's problems. The fact that AI is confusing to people. You can't talk about six different sectors, multiple layer. All this stuff is too much. It's TMI. Too much information. You can't do that. And so I kind of walked him through. This was off the cuff. I just walked him through. This is how you ought to probably redo this. He sends me the revised slideshow this morning. He absolutely. Nailed it. I mean, it was phenomenal. And I just had a couple minor adjustments to suggest, and I'm going to get to see him do it next week. ⁓ But here was a very smart person with an incredibly valuable offering in a very hot market that has a chance to convert 30, 40 people to his cause and maybe generate referrals. And he was about to miss it. Kristen Sweeney: ⁓ Steve Woodruff: because he was going to go right over their heads. And it took me no time to just help figure that out. Well, that's just a blast to me. I mean, I don't even, I'm not charging him anything. I just love doing that. And all across every marketplace, there are these difficulties of translating the complexities of something into simplicity so that a client can understand it. but you want it to be so simple and vivid that a referral partner can understand it. That makes you what I call referral ready. You plant the image, a single vivid image in people's minds that turns their heads on and they say, oh, Kristen does this for those people. They don't have to know your 16 step framework. They just need to know Kristen's the go-to for that. Kristen Sweeney: Yeah. Steve Woodruff: That's how you apply clarity to business development. I've always felt that since we all know referrals are the best way to do business. So our main communication job is to plant one message that sticks so that someone can say, you need to talk to us. And that's what I help people do. Kristen Sweeney: You, I like, I call it calibration, but that same idea around the curse of knowledge, which is like, you're up here and you have to kind of figure out where the audience is, right? A lot of times we're working, for example, with B2B audiences and like, they aren't here. They're not where I am. They're in this particular topic. They're more advanced. So we have to kind of like calibrate to the right level. I'm wondering if you ever get pushed back or how you navigate. Steve Woodruff: Mm-hmm. Kristen Sweeney: you know, some sectors and some work is legitimately quite complex. So how do you balance clarity without what I find is often a fear of dumbing it down or I'm gonna lose credibility? How do you navigate that? Steve Woodruff: Mm-hmm. Yeah. I say you have to dumb it down period. Doesn't matter. depending. All right. So if you're talking to your tribe, the people that are at that cursive, that cursive knowledge level with you, you can be complex. You can do that. It's okay. They're going to get it. They're going to know the acronyms. They're going to know the principles that you can do that. But if you're communicating to a regular person, which is the vast majority of who we communicate to, you must. Kristen Sweeney: Okay, okay. Steve Woodruff: Take those complex concepts and boil them down into simple word pictures, into simple stories, and into basic core summaries. Otherwise, there is no way people can walk away with the knowledge of what you're doing. So you have to calibrate your message according to what are you doing. You don't dumb it down for the people that know your stuff. If you're speaking to an AI developers conference, all right, go crazy with all your complexities, because Everybody's geeking out on it. But if you want referrals from regular humans, you got to speak at a regular human level and part of the role I play, and this is fun. I get a lot of stuff at a broad level and at a pretty high level. I'm not an expert in any particular one, but I can wear two hats. I can be a pretty smart person that gets you. And then I can be your neighbor that needs to understand this at this level. And I can play both those roles simultaneously and help you calibrate your message so that it works in both areas. And that's a blast. And that's just a skill. Not everybody has that skill. Most people don't. They think and speak at one level. I was at a meeting, a virtual meeting recently where somebody ran off at the mouth for 15 minutes. It was like a TMI overload of jargon and terms. And I was watching. Kristen Sweeney: Yeah. Steve Woodruff: All these people, there's no way any of them absorbed a thing because it was like being hit by a bulldozer. Maybe whatever this person did was valuable. Lost the opportunity. Kristen Sweeney: But the idea that's coming up for me is that quote around, like, if you can't explain it simply, you don't understand it. And that's sometimes the pushback, right, of being able to articulate in plain language. ⁓ The other thing I think you're describing is empathy. really, this has come up for me a few times in conversations recently of just really being able to envision yourself when you're creating a message. And for us, it's a lot of written content, right? It's like, OK. Steve Woodruff: Right. Kristen Sweeney: put yourself in the shoes of that person sitting in front of their desk, that email hits their inbox. It's one of a hundred emails. Your acronyms, like if it's not the thing they do all day, every day, just think about where their brain is when they're probably taking this in. How can you make it easier for them? Steve Woodruff: Somebody shared the quote with me and I've never forgotten it. Said to be unclear is to be unkind. Clarity is kindness. If I'm making you work hard to understand me, I'm not helping you at all. I'm making your life harder. I'm confusing you I'm making you work. So clarity is not just some nice abstraction. It's being empathetic and kind to people so that if they get my email, they should be able to look at it and say, I know why this is important. I know what Steve wants. Boom. And I teach people how do you compose an email to be brain friendly? And part of this is you do not want to overwhelm the already overwhelmed human brain. And I talk a lot about brain science in my books because the principles of clarity are all built on brain science. have the brain has an operating system. It wants simplicity. vividness and relevance right off the bat. And if you don't give me that in the first 15 to 60 seconds, guess what I'm going to do? I'm going here to my phone. I've got a million other alternatives. If you're boring and confusing me or not showing me why I should care, I'm out. Think about the lost opportunity if you're speaking in front of 500 people and you don't get to the point. Wow. Kristen Sweeney: So interesting question. you know, I think a lot of folks who deal in words are often trying to kind of combat maybe legacy models or legacy thinking around the idea that like more words equals more dollars or more value. And I think it's honestly not just folks like us who own our own businesses, but in-house too. ⁓ The idea that you're sort of measured or valued based on output. Steve Woodruff: Mm-hmm. Kristen Sweeney: How do you concisely and clearly, have you dealt with that challenge and how do you deal with it when you're talking to folks and getting them to understand the value that actually maybe less is more? Steve Woodruff: Yeah. A lot of times you have to put something in front of people that stops them in the tracks. So I say, listen, less is more. More is not more. More is more confusion. Less is more. And then I use this illustration. Don't give people a haystack. Give them the needle. You want to get right to the point fast so that they know what's important. My job as a communicator is to do the work to say, here's what matters to you. Not to just dump a bunch of stuff on you and say, see, I gave you a 55 page white paper. Now I've communicated. No, all I've done is dump a white paper on you. I haven't communicated anything. So there has to be this shift of exactly what you said. More is better to say, nope, less is better. And there are many quotes and one of them like what Einstein said about if you can't explain it to a sixth grader, you don't know it yourself. So I have no problem proving that point. ⁓ But distillation, that's the real art. Anybody can blab. Distilling, summarizing, turning things into forms that really turn the brain on, that's the art of communication. And TMI, too much information, is the worst enemy of clarity. Kristen Sweeney: I love that. I love that. I want to transition us now and make sure we have plenty of time to get into our one big idea, which is an extension of everything we've been talking about around clarity. ⁓ It's this concept you've developed around memory darts. So already extremely evocative, ⁓ which I think aligns with the principles you've been sharing. Tell us what memory darts are. Steve Woodruff: When I first introduced the term memory darts in 2018 in my first book, Clarity Wins, was almost, it was a little bit of a kind of a, throwaway, but a little thing. I thought, okay, if you're going to introduce yourself, if you're going to be referral ready, you want to put a memory dart in people, not an elevator pitch. That's too long. That's too forgettable. That's telling, that's selling. You want to put something compelling in people's mind. And so I would teach people and help people develop a memory dart introduction. And I thought of memory darts as the introduction, like the replacement for the elevator pitch. Well, it turns out that a memory dart is just a distilled verbal written tool to make things really clear. And when I wrote the second book, I talked about eight brain friendly formats, which are memory darts that we can all use to make our message clear. And I lined them up all starting with S. So Kristen Sweeney: Ha ha. Steve Woodruff: Clear and short statements. Little snippets. The brain loves little factoids, little snippets, little statistics. Remember those as opposed to windy generalities. Specifics. Give me a specific example. Give me a way to think of this that's tangible. Stories. We all know the human brain is wired for stories. So a success story. Yeah. Origin stories. Yeah. It's a huge thing. Kristen Sweeney: Very hot topic right now, storytelling and stories. Yes, yes. Steve Woodruff: Stakes, which you mentioned, what's at stake? What's the risk benefit? What's the win-loss? The human brain is looking for relevance. Well, if there's nothing at stake, I don't care. So you need to explain to me why this is important. Symbolic language, which is one of my favorites, analogies, metaphors, word pictures. Kristen is the Mercedes of copywriters or something along those lines where I'm going to summarize a whole bunch of information. into an existing picture in your mind, and I'm going to hijack it and hook it so that it turns the light on instead of a one-page or full of nonsense. Side by sides, comparison and contrast. If we say, this is like this, but not like this, we're again using existing memory bits, and we're hooking a message into it. People do this all the time. And then summaries, making a quick hit summary. that people can look at, glance at, go, okay, I got it. Turns out, we've been doing this for every generation of human life for thousands of years. This is how every great communicator has operated. I just arranged them under eight S's, but there's nothing unique here. This is what I was doing in my 20s learning to preach. Same thing. How do you have an opening illustration? How do you summarize at the end? How do you bring a specific application? It's all just human brain-friendly communication. That's all it is. And it's available to everybody. This is not something you need a PhD for. That's why I wrote that book, The Point. It's four rules, eight brain-friendly tools. Anybody can become a great communicator. Kristen Sweeney: It's really interesting and I appreciate ⁓ your perspective and saying like, look, I didn't invent all of this. I put it in my own framework, but describing how these tools have been used for so long, we had a guest, Babs Crane, and one of the things we talked about with her was how we often don't know our brains very well. Like what we think we want is not actually. how we operate. And so sometimes pulling things out and having these frameworks, although these might seem like the most natural things in the world, why don't we do them naturally? Sometimes we need that external perspective or that external framework. ⁓ Can you share a little bit about your process or how folks maybe can think about developing memory darts and what are the obstacles? I imagine it's that too much information. ⁓ Steve Woodruff: So memory darts, not everybody is creative. Not everybody thinks the way maybe you or I think. I think in terms of pictures. I think in terms of how do you change this to that. Actually, probably most people don't. Most people are a lot more just concrete, cut and dried, or whatever. And I recognize that. So part of what I do is when I consult with individuals or companies, I help them develop memory darts. Kristen Sweeney: that kind of get in the way. Steve Woodruff: ⁓ But we now have these AI tools and they're phenomenal. And you can take a bunch of stuff and plug it into an AI engine and say, give me a great analogy. Give me a great summary. Give me a simple statement. And I do this all the time. started, this is how I actually found real value in AI. And then I had an agency talk to me about, we can develop a custom AI with all your writings. which is my Stevebot. So it has my books. It has all my stuff in it. And Stevebot knows how to speak in memory darts. And so I use Stevebot. I'll do an interview with someone on Zoom and then I'll upload their LinkedIn, their website, all the interview. I'll say, give me, and it'll give me like eight pages of output. I'll just tell, prompt it what I want. And in one minute it will do the work that it would have taken me six hours to do on my own. It's shocking. It's and it speaks me. It's me. Now I edit it and I work it and make sure it's right. But it's got all the genius of a chat GPT engine behind it, plus all my perspectives. And this year I'll be launching a public. This is a private version. I'll be launching a public version where people can actually tap into sort of Steve on demand, Steve bought on demand to feed their stuff in and get back memory darts. Kristen Sweeney: Yeah. Yeah. Mm-hmm. Steve Woodruff: Because I'm one person, how am going to scale that? Well, Stevebot lets me scale it. ⁓ So I recognize that for many people, this is not something easy to do. You can learn some of these skills. But I think with AI, the ability to craft distilled, concise, and vivid communication, makes it way more accessible for everybody. Kristen Sweeney: Yep. Yep. Yeah, that's so interesting. you know what I'm thinking about, and I'll be honest, kind of sharing some of my own experience as a business owner, but also what I've seen with clients, especially our smaller clients, is that Part of the reason I suspect that tool's been so effective for you is that you've had a lot of consistency, right? The books still feel relevant today. They're still the same concepts you have. They were well-developed to begin with, and you've stuck with them. I'm sure your thinking has evolved in some ways, but sometimes ⁓ we're looking at organizations that... kind of changing their mind rapidly, or maybe they didn't have that clarity kind of going in. And so the corpus of their existing work isn't necessarily reflective of who they think they are or where they wanna go. And I wonder how you navigate that with folks with it's like, here's how I talk about who I am today, but actually I'm, they're probably struggling, like many are probably struggling, right? They're like, I'm not effective with sales. So maybe the way I'm talking about myself isn't really. Steve Woodruff: right. Kristen Sweeney: the true value I provide. That was a lot, but could you, could you, do you know where I'm heading? I'm not being very clear. Steve Woodruff: Yes. I know where you're going. So I look at clarity at two levels. The one that we've kind of talked about up until now has been what I call the epiphany level. You sit down and you arrive at core clarity. know, the core principles, brand statements, identity, messages. However, clarity is also a journey. Some of those core things will evolve and change over time. And then a lot of the materials that a person or a company have developed need a clarity makeover. So this is something I also work with clients on a sort of an ongoing or retained basis. OK, now we've arrived at the core. How are we going to change the pitch decks, change the mission and vision statements, change the job descriptions, change the training? There's a whole lot of stuff. that needs to be aligned to the clarity. And ⁓ it's more likely that a small company will do that than a mega corporation where you have so many fiefdoms in different areas, you can't possibly fix the sales group, the marketing group, the training group, the executive leadership group, the whatever. ⁓ And so, you know, I wish, but it doesn't seem to happen because of that. And that's another reason why. I work with the smaller companies with the people that can actually call those shots and say, we're going to change our mission and vision statement this week because what we've got now is jargon forgettable and not even aligned with where we're going. That's what I want to work with is people who are ready to say, we're going to turn this ship and it's a sailboat. It's not ⁓ a massive barge that requires five weeks to turn the wheel. ⁓ Kristen Sweeney: Yes. Yeah. Steve Woodruff: Clarity is ongoing and I myself have had to continually evolve my message and my approach as I've discussed with you earlier. I was doing so much with corporate. I had a certain set of messages, a certain approach, a certain website, all that. And I've been on a kind of a one year remake over of who I am and what I'm doing. It's coming back to a core that was always there, but it's now changing that message to be this is, this is. Kristen Sweeney: Yeah, absolutely. Steve Woodruff: basically what I'm doing now. ⁓ And that's just, it's not a one and done. It requires tweaking, editing, and new perspective and new insight. Kristen Sweeney: Yeah, I can share, you know, our company mission statement that I honestly invented in a vacuum was share great ideas with the world. And it still feels very true today. It could change at some point, but what I like about it is it does feel like it's. It gives us the freedom to evolve like the what we do. But I can say that like. Steve Woodruff: Mm-hmm. Kristen Sweeney: When I deliver that in a pitch or talk about it, there is something extremely grounding about it. And being like, this, this still is true. I'm testing messaging all the time. You know, we're doing all sorts of other experimentation. We're looking at different sectors and all sorts of things, right? We're a young business and we're running a lot of experiments and investing in different areas. that core kernel that still holds true is like, Steve Woodruff: Mm-hmm. Kristen Sweeney: Personally even just very grounding and I think very grounding for the business. Yeah, having that clarity. Steve Woodruff: Mm-hmm. Yeah, you want to be able to have, I often mention to people when it comes down to the core mission, vision or core branding statements, it needs to be specific enough that people, that it differentiates. So it's not totally generic, but it also needs to be a broad enough umbrella that it gives you room to evolve without changing your mission statement every two months. And there's a, ⁓ Kristen Sweeney: Right, right. Steve Woodruff: a kind of a tap dance that you do with those. And I love that challenge. I think that challenge is a lot of fun because I tell people, look, here's a statement that's going to give you 10 years of runway. Whatever we've talked about, a bunch of ideas, if you implement this, this, or that, that core statement is going to stay the same. And if you can get five or 10 years out of a core statement, that's in our day and age of rapid, that's almost a miracle. Kristen Sweeney: Yeah, yeah, absolutely. One other question about memory darts, and maybe this will be kind of the place we wrap. We haven't talked a lot about internal comms. And I know that maybe with the smaller businesses, it's less relevant, certainly with solopreneurs. But how do you see the memory darts being used effectively to build culture, keep teams engaged? Can you talk a little bit about that? Steve Woodruff: Yeah. Internal comms. So my initial fascination was branding and marketing and selling. But in my work on project management and vendor management with clients, I began to see how crucial internal comms was because I would watch projects go off the rails because nobody was effectively communicating. So I came up with a structure. ⁓ It's a three level pyramid. Turns out this three level pyramid is useful for designing every form of communication, but especially for project management. At the top, the peak of it is the distilled essence, the point. If you're start a project and you have 20 stakeholders and an outside vendor, you have to agree on the most important crucial thing. Here's exactly what we're doing, here's exactly who it's for, here's exactly when it's gonna be done, and here's exactly the budget. Turns out most people do not get alignment. at the distilled level. That's how things get all confused and go off the rails. So you've got to do that first. Then that buys you the right to move to the outline or the slightly beefed up version of it. You say, OK, we've now agreed on this. We've literally put it on a piece of paper. We're on the same page. That's one of the four principles in my book, by the way, is get on the same page. Now we create an outline. a storyboard, something that's more, we're not yet developing, we're creating the flow, and we get agreement on that with all stakeholders, especially whoever holds the purse strings. Then we can do a detailed project plan and move into an alignment. turns out that's true not only of a major project, that's true of how you run a meeting, that's true of how you do an executive presentation, that's true of how you design a website. It's that same three-fold principle. Get right to the point on the website that draws people into a little more, that draws people into the details. That's how you do a good email. Get right to the point in the subject line, give a little bit of a summary, then here's the attachment. That threefold structure, in fact, is the core metaphor for all effective communication, because it's brain friendly. Give me the relevant point, show me a little more, let me dig in when I need to, instead of dumping the haystack. Kristen Sweeney: Mm-hmm, I love that. All right, I could go on about this for much longer, but I wanna leave it there and make sure we have time for our lightning round communication. ⁓ So this section is called The Last Word. Every guest gets the same five questions, so go with your gut on these. Are you ready, Steve? Steve Woodruff: Mm-hmm. I am, I think I'm ready. Kristen Sweeney: Question one, what's your favorite word to say out loud? Steve Woodruff: My favorite word has always been discombobulation. I love that word. I've always loved that word. And ⁓ some years ago, I just had this random thought, you know what? Discombobulation has a prefix, dis. That means there must be a word called combobulation. So I looked it up and of course there was. Discombobulation is disorder. Combobulation is putting everything in order. And I looked at that word and I turned to my wife Sandy and I said, Sandy, you're a combopulator. Kristen Sweeney: Hahaha Steve Woodruff: It's the keyword that explains how she operates in all realms. Personal, professional, she puts everything in order. She's an organizer. And so I branded my wife. But it's the principle of if you can arrive at your keywords that explain exactly who you are as a company or an individual, it makes everything so much simpler. Now I don't have to confuse myself with, I know what I am. Kristen Sweeney: Mm-hmm. Steve Woodruff: For me, it was the word consultant. I arrived at the word consultant. It completely explained who Steve Woodruff is. I had imposter syndrome, trying to be a salesperson, trying to be a manager, trying to be whatever, whatever, whatever, all imposter. As soon as I said, I'm a consultant, I'm gonna be a consultant, I arrived there. So it was very funny that discombobulation did that. And there's one minor airport in the US, Milwaukee, that when you... Get off the plane, get your luggage. have a sign that says, recombobulation area. This is where you put all your stuff together. Kristen Sweeney: Steve, a guest a few episodes ago chose recombobulate as his number one word and reference this airport. Steve Woodruff: Mitchell field in Milwaukee. It's my favorite airport sign of everything. The recombobulation area. ⁓ That's a riot. Kristen Sweeney: Oh my gosh, now I know exactly what Keith Berman was talking about. Yes, yes, great minds. I'll have to introduce the two of you. Your shared love of combobulating. That's awesome. All right, question two. What's a word you know from reading, but you're not quite sure how to pronounce it out loud? Steve Woodruff: You you shared this with me and I have, I can't think of one. I've tried to think of one and I just don't have one. Probably in a couple of days, I'll be on a walk and all of a sudden it'll pop in, but I can't think of a word for that. So I'm going to have to take a pass on that one. Kristen Sweeney: All right, you're gonna have to take a pass. That's okay. I find for a lot of folks, it's like something that you may be read in childhood when you didn't know. And then it just is one that you kind of always have that tiny little stutter step before you go to say it. But if you think of one, you let us know. We'll get it in show notes for you. ⁓ What's one phrase you're saying you wish could be retired for good? Steve Woodruff: Yep. The word leverage. Now, I hate jargon. I am absolute enemy of jargon. And so there's a whole lot of jargon words that I despise. But one of the primary ones that people kept using and abusing over and over and over again was leverage, leverage. Just say use for crying out loud. You're using it. And then closely related is the word solutions. Kristen Sweeney: ⁓ okay. Steve Woodruff: So people will name their company or their offerings, blah, blah, blah, solutions. Because it sounds expensive. It sounds cool. It sounds leading edge. It means nothing. It absolutely means nothing. Communication solution. And I've been watching over the last 15 years more and more companies say blah, blah, blah, blah, And I want to kick those signs down all the time. Because all you're trying to do is sound fancy. And you're using a word. Now here's a word I love. obfuscation. You are obfuscating, making unclear what you do by throwing out that lofty, foggy, meaningless word of solutions. Kristen Sweeney: interesting. Steve, I have to wonder if your dislike for leverage is related to your dislike for physics. All right, four. What's a communication practice or principle that's non-negotiable for you? Steve Woodruff: No, absolutely not. Nope. ⁓ Well, I guess the one that keeps coming back is that it's one of the four ⁓ rules in the point is you have to get to the point. And I don't mean being rude. I don't mean being brusque. Some people misinterpret it as being impolite. That's not what I mean. What I mean is if you don't know exactly what you're saying and where you're going. You can't get to the point because you don't have a point. And if you don't have a point. the person is listening to you is where are we going here? And it's especially bad if a speaker doesn't have a point and doesn't get to the point. And so that to me is non-negotiable. If you're going to be a good communicator, you need to be right up front with where you're going. And that starts in your mind before you open your mouth or set at the keyboard. You got to have a point. so actually, here are the four rules in the point book. Have a point. Get to the point. Get the point across, which is memory darts, and get on the same page. Reach agreement and alignment. You apply those four simple rules, you'll be a great communicator. But get to the point is the one that really lands with people. Kristen Sweeney: Yeah, yeah. And, you know, it's so interesting as I'm again thinking about kind of applications to my work. The truth is a lot of times we're talking with executives and experts who who who don't have a point yet. They have a lot of information and they have a lot of perspective. And it's gold, but it's actually our job to take that in and say like, Steve Woodruff: Mm-hmm. Kristen Sweeney: What is the point we will then try to make in this particular message or this particular asset that we're creating? And to be honest, I've struggled sometimes, like calling it facilitation isn't quite right. But I think sometimes people think like, well, you're just taking what they know and doing a fancy version of a transcription. And it's much more a co-creation than that because sometimes there isn't a point and we develop one together. Steve Woodruff: Yeah. But what you're doing is translating. You're translating all their scattered information into an effective set of words that work. So it really is a translation process. It's not from Chinese to English or English to Russian. It's from confusion to clarity. It's the translation. Kristen Sweeney: such as, yeah. Right, right. Yes, yes, exactly, exactly. Love that. All right, last question. What's the last thing you've read, or watched that really stuck with you? Steve Woodruff: The last thing was a few days ago, an unexpected phone call with somebody I'd just met. And she was so insightful, so perspective, so sharp in her perspective. And I tell people, you can't read the label of the jar you're in because we are not the best at seeing ourselves. And that's true of me. I can read other people's labels. I get myself all confused. And she was reading my label, even though she barely knew me. And she said, Steve, you're all caught up in the how of this stuff. You're in love with your formula. You're in love with the process. You're in love with all that. You gotta be more clear on exactly what you're doing with somebody. And hit me like a ton of bricks. I was like, oh man, you're so right. When you pour your life into something and you even write books about it, you become obsessed with the process. I fall into the very trap. Kristen Sweeney: Bye Steve Woodruff: that I tell other people about, which means just reinforces the same meme. You can't read the label of the jar you're in. We all need people. We can bounce stuff off of these sounding boards, translate, and have insightful perspective, including me. Kristen Sweeney: Yeah, you know, I love the way that you've described that because I think there's a way in which external partners talk about outside perspective and it could just feel so self-serving, right? Just feels like, want you to buy my stuff. ⁓ But when you pair that with the vulnerability of, I'm not very good at this for myself. It's very difficult to do for myself. It just gives it the kind of... Steve Woodruff: Mm-hmm. Kristen Sweeney: credibility, honestly, that, you know, that outside perspective is important. And whether it's talking about not being that peer level expert in a field or not being fully a team member of the business, ⁓ really valuable. And it is so, so hard to do it for yourself. Steve Woodruff: Mm-hmm. crucial. I'm part of a mastermind of about 10 guys and for two years we've been in this. It was those guys that convinced me that memory darts are the most crucial thing that I've ever put together. I didn't think so. They were the ones that gave the perspective that said, look, that's your crucial message is the memory darts. I wasn't seeing it. They saw it. And they finally convinced me, ⁓ you know what, for crying out loud, you're right. And it changed. Kristen Sweeney: Yeah. Steve Woodruff: the way I've done everything since then. Kristen Sweeney: Steve, that wraps up our lightning round and that wraps up ⁓ this fantastic episode of Expertly Said. Before we go, I want to give our listeners an opportunity. If they want to connect with you, learn more about you, what are the best place or places for them to find you? Steve Woodruff: ⁓ I'm easily found on LinkedIn. So if you go to LinkedIn, look up Steve Woodruff and you see some guy, some promoting himself, ⁓ presumptuous title like King of Clarity. Yeah, that's me. ⁓ Or if you want to go to my website, it's Stevewoodruff.com. And those are the easiest places to find me. Kristen Sweeney: Perfect. Thank you so much for joining me today. Really appreciate you being here. Steve Woodruff: It's been a pleasure, Kristen. It's always nice to speak with someone who gets the kind of thing that we do. Right, exactly. ⁓ Kristen Sweeney: Yeah, just keep hiking each other up about it. All right, thanks, Steve.