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

Hey, 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

machine. 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

businesses. 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.

Staying 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,

etc. 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,

but 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

talk 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

is 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

understand. 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

like, 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,

just 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.

You 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

to 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

one 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.

Fear, 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

internal 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,

if 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

getting 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

brain 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.

I 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

literally 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

gets 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

standing 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

good 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,

right? 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,

or 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

a 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.

Classic 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

low 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,

we 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.

And 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

a 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.

Yeah, 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

people 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

exciting 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

and 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.

We 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.

Man, 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

like 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

in 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,

okay, 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

looking 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.

You 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

clients, 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

that 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

valuable 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.

Those 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

out 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.

And 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

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