My System for Creating Powerful Communication Every Time

0:00 There is no faster accelerator or bigger drag on your career than communication. I want you to think about this for a second. There you are at the center of the universe. You've got your wisdom, your skills, your experience, and what stands between that and the value you contribute to the rest of the world. You have this wrapper around you called communication. It insulates you or keeps you inside or it broadcasts you. That is what we're going to cover today. I want you to think about I have coached many many people. Most people do not have a message problem. They have a process problem. Most professionals are not unclear because they're not smart. They're unclear because they're trying to do too many things at once when they're communicating. If you are not sure if this is you, let's pause for a second. I want you to think about just think about the last communication that you put together, the last email you wrote. I want you to think about the email. And I'm talking about something important here. Meaning, you were communicating something important. Not I'm going to see you in the meeting room in 10 minutes, but something where you actually needed to report something, communicate something. Maybe you did research. Maybe you were making a recommendation. Got it? Okay. If you started the email and you just wrote it, you wrote it from the beginning to the end, that's bad. You were doing too many things at once because there's the points you're trying to communicate. There's the organization of it. There's making sure they have the detail that that they whoever is is reading it needs to have. And much of the time, you're trying to edit it while you're going through. Who's guilty of this? Show me in the chat. Show a hands. It's okay because you haven't been taught to do this differently. You thought, "Hey, somebody, your boss said, hey, will you send me that email and give me the update on how the project's coming along?" Or, "Can you give me an update on what you found out from the research you did on our competitors?" Or, "Can you report back to me on what the customer said?" Right? Who who knows where of I speak? Who's with me? Who's with me? If that's you, don't worry. That ends today because I'm going to be giving you the formula that I have been using for years to create every communication that I create. Emails, presentations, workbooks, talks in my leadership coaching, live office hours, sessions like this, books like this, right? Doesn't doesn't matter the length. If you are interested in making sure that you understand how to craft excellent communication that is informative and inspiring and persuasive, today's for you. I'm going to give you what the formula is. I'm going to help you understand how to pace your way through things. We're going to walk through a detailed example so you could see exactly the evolution of what I'm talking about when you actually construct effective messaging.

3:14 We're also going to give you some action items so that you can actually start practicing this today. Cool. Cool. All right, let's get into the let's get into the the blood and the guts here. Okay, first thing I said, and I was kind of alluding to this as I started. You're building and polishing at the same time. Now, this is a simple way for me to tell you that you're doing too many things at once, but I want you to stop doing this. I don't want you to try to start the communication in the upper leftand side of the page and then just try to write it and then clean the sentence and then write the next sentence. I don't want you to do this. This is too many things at once. And the other thing is your biggest problem is I want you to start thinking in these terms. Your biggest problem is you're doing too many jobs in one draft. When you are creating a communication of any kind, there's a number of sweeps that we need to go through. Each sweep does its own job. It has its own function in the communication. So, I want you to start thinking in these terms. Am I breaking up the way that I actually craft my communication? So, these are things that are going to get you that are going to get you started in the right direction. And I want you to start thinking about things in a layered approach, a layered build.

4:36 I'm going to give you the layered build first. I'm going to walk you through an example from my life, but then we're going to get an an example that might be a little bit more appropriate for you, and I'll I'll show you some slides, and we'll kind of walk you through how the text would evolve. So, I want you to start thinking in terms of a layered build. Cool. All right, let's get into the nine sweeps. I'm going to give you nine sweeps and how it works.

5:03 All right. First thing, whenever you are creating anything, boss asks you for a status report, an email, you're creating a presentation for a client or a proposal, maybe you're trying to pitch it or I write I write these workbooks that I give every month to my leadership crew. Anything that you write, first thing I want you to think of is I want you to outline the main points. You might laugh at this, but it is good to see the organization of what it is you need to communicate. Let's think of this in terms of the what. So, when the boss says, "Can you give me an update?" I don't want you to start writing an update. I want you to think about what are the components that the boss needs in the update. Literally do nothing but that. Get that in order first. I know this sounds remedial. It is remedial, right? How many of you actually do this every single time you're creating something of importance? or do you just start writing it? And then you've got this silly stream of consciousness and then you almost want to you're halfway done and you want to apologize that it looks like a mad person wrote this because your brain is going in 18 different directions because you got a number of things up here that are creating stress and problems and this one's yelling and you had a bad night's sleep and you got in a car crash on the way to work and the customer's yelling, right? Like how many of you do that? Okay. Well, this is the saving grace of getting started in the right place. just outline the main points. I'll show you exactly what I mean. You know, when I wrote this book and I wrote the new book that comes out in in in in in in October, I had to think about what was it that I wanted to communicate. So, I had to ensure that the main points were in order. Okay, it's a table of contents, it's an outline, it's a whatever, but literally what are the ingredients, the what I need to communicate? That's step one.

7:05 I know it sounds obvious, but common common sense is not always common practice. So, you want to make sure that you're doing that. Next thing, I know a lot of people don't do this. I need you to write it. Write it. That sounds that sounds funny, right? No, I need you to write with no edits. The goal is words, not pros, Hemingway, whatever. I need you to write it. So now what you're doing is you're thinking about here's what I need to deliver. Those are the main points. The second sweep is here's how I'm going to communicate the main points. Not here's the how-to instruction manual. Here's how I'm going to communicate it. So far so good. Okay. How many people you you could give me a show of hands or you could laugh to yourself. How many of you try to write and then you edit your sentence? That's bad. You're slowing yourself down. You're going to edit the sentence anyway, even if it was perfect. So, the second sweep is putting meat on the bones. Okay? So, if I want to do a live office hour show, I write the main points one day. The next day, I might write a few fragments or some sentences about what I want to communicate. depending on whether I'm going to hand you a piece of written copy or an email that I'm going to send or if I'm going to verbalize it, but I put some meat on the bones. I do absolutely zero editing. I just get words down. That's the second sweep. Third sweep, after the words are down, I have to clarify it.

8:46 This is if I am reading this and I don't know what I know. Meaning I'm sending this to somebody who does not know what I know. Even if it's your boss or your customer or your or your team member, will they understand it? So when I put something together for you like this talk, I have to make sure that it it's in a sequence that you will understand. Not based on what I know, but based on what you know. If I'm the 22-year-old engineer who just graduated and is looking for my first job and I'm listening to Coach Andy talk and coach Andy is trying to explain something to me. Do I would that person understand it? Or I'm the 62year-old who wants to work three more years before I retire.

9:36 What do they need to understand about it? Well, when I look at something, when you step back and all you're doing is analyzing whether somebody would be able to follow this, that's a whole job in and of itself. Or are you trying to do this while you're writing the sentence, while you're editing the sentence, while you forgot a bunch of things you should have said? So now you only have one job in the third suite. Is is that clear? So when I look at my live office hours talk, I rearrange some of the points because I didn't think the points would be clear. Then I thought, hm, should I actually mix the example in as I'm walking through the steps. Would that be better?

10:16 Should I put it all at the end? Will somebody have a question and not understand and then I have to they have to wait to the I have to think through all of that as I'm prepping this. Same thing with you when you're writing an email. People are reading it and they're jumping ahead because they're looking for information that should have been up top. Sequencing matters that has to do with clarification. Is all the data in there? Did you have to explain what something is? This is the third suite. You haven't even edited it yet. You're making sure that the construct of what you're sharing is understandable. Who's with me so far? Who's with me so far? Okay.

10:58 Then my favorite ingredient is you got to add life to it. So you need examples and stories and analogies. Here's an example. When I wrote this book or any book, the book that's coming out in October and inside the book, there's the what I need to communicate. There's 15 there's 15 lessons inside this book. Each lesson has a chapter. There's other chapters in the book, but there's 15 lessons. In each chapter where there's a lesson, I was teaching you something.

11:30 Okay? So, I wrote what I was going to teach you first. I didn't I didn't write I didn't have stories. I said, "What are the main points that I need to teach them? Step one, step two, step three. Here's how you run your day. Here's how you focus. Here's how you delegate." Whatever it is, I wrote that first. It's like shooting scene seven before the opening scene because in my books in the lesson chapters and in most chapters there's a story that starts the beginning of the chapter.

12:04 I want you to imagine I wrote every book where I wrote the chapter instruction and then I wrote the chapter instruction and I wrote the chapter instruction. Eventually, I went back and I said, "What story best illustrates? Oop, sorry. What story best illustrates my point now that all of my points have been made? What's the right story to lead off with to get them in the right frame of mind to put them in the middle of the story?" Or when I'm explaining something, what analogy do I want to use? So, I used an email analogy. I didn't add the email analogy until the very end till 20 minutes ago. So all of this stuff goes in in a different at a different time in an insertion because you need to illustrate the point or make sure they're with you. So not only is it clear, but you have an extra layer of clarity through examples. What do examples do? Number one, it makes people relate. It makes them digest it easier. But the other thing it does is it makes it easier for them to remember and it makes it easier for them to implement something if you're teaching. Okay? So you you add this forth. So you don't start with a story and say what can I teach from that? Not usually. It doesn't usually become effective if you go that route. Then what? Then I go back through everything and I say what can I strip out? Is there dead weight in here? Is there stuff that's causing inertia? I want you all to think about the emails you write. I want you all to think about your interview stories. How much dead weight is in there? Because you didn't go through a pass and evaluate it and remove all the clutter that does not sell you when you're trying to tell a three minute story about something that took you three years to do. So you got to strip it out. You have an exercise in doing nothing but subtraction. That is that is in and of itself the only job in that sweep. All right. So, you're going to make it succinct. Then what are you going to do? You're going to evaluate it for motion or emotion. Why are you going to do this? Because I need them to act. I need them to be inspired. I need them to connect with the message. Do I want them to be frustrated and then relieve them? Do I want my big boss to know how much money we're losing each day that we don't have this in? I need him to feel it because he needs to understand the impact. If I don't give him this and put emotion into the writing or the communication, he's not going to act. You're not going to act. So that's that's in in and of itself one sweep. Does is the instruction there? But is my instruction is it clear to let them know what to do, but also is it inspiring enough to go and get them to do it? Do you understand what I mean? I can communicate the dickens, right? But if you're not inspired to go take what I'm sharing with you and go make your life better, then I failed as a coach and an as a communicator. Whoop! Okay, I certainly did if I got things upside down. All right, next thing. Live office hours. I might talk it out. I might talk it all out. I might talk portions of it out. But when you talk it out, what this will do for you is it will actually help you understand whether the sequencing is right. Wait a minute. I just said that. They wouldn't know that. It's a double an extra layer of that. today, this morning, this morning I was talking out just a couple of things. Okay. When I talked it out, I said I said I was saying to you even though you weren't there yet because it was like eight o'clock or whatever it was. I said, "All right, outline the main points. This is like the what."

16:00 I scratched the note card. I threw the note card out and I added the what. And then when I said, "Well, when I want to hit them with writing it, I want them to understand what I mean is this is how they're communicating. Add the how." So, I threw that note card out when I talked it out. So, I was still editing up until the last minutes, but that was making it better for you. And I do that on purpose, and I do it at the last minute on purpose because it all comes to me. The best ideas, the best examples come closer to the delivery of the actual product, which is why it's not something that goes in the initial drafts of anything I create. I let my mind marinate on it. Whether that's a day, an hour, a day, a week, a month, 3 months, it depends what it is. Books, months, and then I so we talk it out is seven. Then what you do is if you are going to actually hand it to somebody, so like a workbook that I that I created for you, then I'm going to actually edit it. A book is going to be edited. An email is going to be edited. something where the where the final version lives in a written or or delivered product, you want to edit it. This is where you actually get to edit. So, all you people that love semicolons and m dashes and all that other good stuff, knock your knock your socks off and make your grammar correct. And then the last thing I do is one last pass the whole thing together. I look at it, maybe I I reread it the whole thing, right? Do I have everything? Is everything in there? All the last minute checks, nine sweeps. Sound like a lot. You could do the nine sweeps in an hour if for one kind of deliverable if you want, depending on what it is, but a book takes months. My leadership booklets, we have a four-week clock. I'm going to talk to you about that. Let's talk about how to pace this. You might be thinking, Coach Andy, oh my goodness, you're such an engine nerd. Why would you go through all those steps? Well, it's important for me that the communication is effective for you. So, here's what I do. I use what I call standard clocks. This is how I get good and efficient at whatever I'm going to develop from a communication standpoint. What do I mean? Well, every week I write you a newsletter. It comes out on Tuesday at 6:30. It hurts me if you are not on my email list and not subscribed to my stuff because it's where I share my most personal moments with you. It's where I love to write for you. I love to share my messaging with you. It's where I give you my best lessons aside from this. Okay. So, when I'm doing something, I have a clock and and the clock is dependent on what the deliverable is. So, let me give you a couple of mine that you're probably familiar with. So, I have a live office hours clock. I have a leadership coaching session clock. I'll explain what that is. I have a book clock. I have a newsletter clock. I have an every different clock. You will have standard clocks for anything that you normally prepare. You might have a status report that's due every Friday. Your status report starts on Monday. It doesn't start on Friday at 10:00 when it's due at 11:00. So, here's what I do. Live office hours three day three and a half day clock. Here's how it works.

19:31 So on Monday, I outline the main points. Now you might say, "Well, geez, Coach Andy, you know the nine method, the nine steps of the methods you're going to the method you're going to teach me. What do you need to outline?" Well, first thing is I got to open up with I I need to get them excited, and I need to give them an analogy about how what they're doing is broken. They may not know it's broken, and they might be wondering, "Why am I not getting the promotion? Why am I not getting the pay raise when she doesn't know nearly as much as I do? Okay, maybe your status reports stink.

20:02 I don't know. Okay. Well, I got to open up with something. Then I want to let you know what is it I'm going to I need to share with them what is it I'm going to teach them. Then I need to teach them the nine steps. Then I need to make sure I tell them how to pace themselves. Then I need to show them an example. Then I need to give them their homework so they know what the hey to do. Okay, I wrote that out on Monday, three days ago. on Tuesday. That took 10 minutes, not too long, and I let it sleep. On Tuesday, I had a little time on my calendar, like 30 minutes, where I said, "Okay, I got the main points. Let me write down a little bit about what I want to communicate within each of the different areas." So, I did that on Tuesday and actually it took me less than 30 minutes because I could write in fragments because you're not you're not getting a written booklet today on this, right? So, I did that on Tuesday. On Wednesday, I actually went through another 30 minutes. I clarified it. I said, "What example do I want to give them?" My book, I could talk about that. I've got an example that I'm going to give them about how to write a one-page proposal. I'm going to show you that in a minute. I added the examples. I added the stories and so on and so forth. Then I actually took a part of the talk out. So I made it succinct. I did that all Wednesday. I didn't talk this talk out until this morning. I sat down. I went through some things around 8:00. I said, "Let me talk through a couple of the points just to make sure the flow is there. I rearranged the note cards like I said. You get the idea. And then I'm here at 11 o'clock with you and I'm delivering it. I have a leadership coaching program every four weeks most of the time. It's literally every four weeks. Sometimes it's three. Sometimes it's five when holidays interrupt or whatever. It has a four-week clock. So every four weeks I do a coaching session somewhat like this on Zoom with members of my leadership coaching program. They get a booklet like this every month because the workbook has all the instruction, all the teaching. It has the thought provokers and the action items and the four-week challenge so they can actually implement the lesson that I'm going to give them. They get one of these. So, every four weeks I show up and I deliver it. Week one, I outline the main points. Week two, I add a little meat on the bone.

22:34 I sketch out the points. Week three, I work on the workbook. I work on the workbook and just get the instruction in order. And then at the beginning of week four, like Monday or Tuesday before, these are usually on Friday. I actually look I sit down with the workbook and then I think through the talk. I think through the talk and I say, "What story can I tell them here? What's the analogy I want to do here? Wait, there's an exercise I want to talk with them about during the discussion here." And I'll make a note. Thursday comes around or Friday morning before I'm going to deliver it. I might talk through some things. Some of the teaching I know cold. Some of it's newer teaching that I need to practice a little bit more. Four weeks standard clock. What about a book? Well, a book is I've written five of these now. Four of them are out in the public. Three of them are long text. One of them is short text. The three long text books that you might be familiar with, interview intervention, the hiring prophecies, and the zebra code are long form texts, meaning they're book style. Out of reach but insight was a speech. There's not a lot of text on the pages.

23:46 But these three books were all written in the same fashion. When I had never written a book before, I monitored how long it was going to take me to write interview intervention. It was 35 days. I wrote an average of a thousand words a day between Thanksgiving and January 1st. It takes five weeks at a thousand a day. So now I'm noticing based on my writing habits, patterns, and so forth. It takes me a,000 words. When I was negotiating this with my editor, I said to him, "This is going to be my opus. I could make this book a,000 pages. How many words can I have?" meaning what's the upper end limit that you will allow me to write so that I can get everything I want to get into the book? He said, 'You can't go over a 100,000 words. I said, okay, fine. I'm going to go to the max. I'm going to give you a 100,000word book. That's it. 358 pages. 100,000. How when do you want to agree that you will deliver the book? I said, let me look. Here we are now in November.

24:48 I'll start in December right away. I want a 100 straight days to write the book. That's a 100,000. I want a month because I'm going to need to go through edits, clarifications, and come up with the appendex and the examples at the end. I'm going to give it to you on bang. I had I had a clock. You are going to create deliverables that you have never created before. So now you're going to say to me, coach, what if it's the first time I'm ever doing it? Well, if you got to deliver a presentation to a client or your a sales presentation to a propo or to a prospect, okay, well, schedule the meeting two weeks out, 3 weeks out, whatever it is. Take note for how long it's taking you to do each stage. First day, outline the main points. Second day, start adding a little bit more meat to the bones. What are you going to say? How you going to say it? Next day, what are all the rebuttals they might have? add those to the pile. Wait, you need real life examples.

25:46 Here's how we helped your competitor generate 50% more revenue in the first year. Great. That's an that's an excellent case study. We're going to add that in at the end. Maybe you're going to open that with, hey, I'm going to give you the same formula we gave your competitor who now generates 50% more. And then you here's how we did it. And then here's exactly what their problem was. Here's what we did for them. That's the case study. That's the bring it to life. That's the give it emotion. Don't you want to gain 50% more? You're g Wait, what else is emotional about that? You're behind, but hurry up. Right? So, what I want you to do is record what you're doing, track what you're doing, and then look at what you're doing and say, "Could I have written that faster if I'd have had my damn beeps off and I didn't have the Chrome browser open and I didn't have all the text alerts coming and I didn't pick up the damn phone? Could I have sat down and put the little timer on like Coach Andy has right here and do nothing but write the dang email or proposal or whatever it is? Track it. Okay. Now, here's what I want to do. I want to I want to give you a little insight to exactly how something like this would work using one of my frameworks that I teach in my new book. So, let me get into Are you guys having fun? Before I switch over to the slides that I I just painfully spent lots of time creating for you, are you enjoying this? If you're enjoying this, will you please click the like button for me and Rocket and Stara who are are kabitsen back there and not getting along and interrupting my show and make sure you subscribe to the station.

27:25 Okay, here's here's what I want to show you. Let's let's get into this. All right, so here's what we're going to do. We're going to walk through. I'm going to walk through very quickly because you're this is going to live in YouTube land forever and you're going to be able to go back and screenshot and freeze the sucker and all that good stuff. Let's say you got to create a one-page proposal about a problem that you're having and you're going to give your boss or your management team a better solution. Okay, follow me. Cool. All right. First thing you're going to do is you're going to outline the main points. I have this technique for something like this. It's called problem, cause, solution, and benefit. And I can't stand when PowerPoint does that to me. I don't know why it does that.

28:21 Now watch these will be in alignment. The problem customer churn is high. We got weak onboarding. All right. Well, what's the solution? We need a more structured onboarding program. and and the benefit is higher retention. I want you to know something right there. Problem cause solution benefit is one of my communication frameworks when you need to communicate something very quickly, okay? To your to your boss, to your management team, whatever it might be. So, this is the issue that we're dealing with. So, in the first part of the communication, all you're doing is you're writing that down. You have the framework. You know what you're going to communicate. So far so good. Okay, next thing I'm going to write it out. Okay, renewal rates dropped from 82 to 68. We lost 2 million. There was no onboarding. Customers canceled because they didn't know how to start. Competitors have structured programs. If we build one with emails, tutorials, and support calls, we could recover a million and a half. Cost us 200,000. We could do it in 90 days. That's my first draft. Is this shocking? That's how I would write that. So far so good.

29:36 Cool. Okay. Next thing. Well, I got to clarify it. Customer retention dropped in the past year, costing 2 million. So, now I'm going to get it really clean. The main reason is weak on boarding. Competitors guide customers with tutorials, follow-up notes, and personal check-ins. Okay, it's a little bit more clear. We propose launching a similar program within 90 days at a cost of 200,000. If successful, retention returns to prior levels, recovering 1.5 million annually. Would we agree that this is clear? Just about anybody could understand that. And so far, that has most of the information that my boss or their bosses would need. Great. Now, I want to add some life to it. How would I do that? Let's look in the part where I say, "One customer said,"I wanted to use the product, but I didn't know where to start, so I canceled after a month." Isn't that much clearer? Doesn't that hurt a little more by something specific? Okay. Our competitors avoid this leaky bucket problem by with structured onboarding, including tutorials, follow-ups, and live calls. You get the idea.

30:54 I didn't have to roll that in all right away. And that's not the center piece. That's the piece that substantiates my main dish. Follow me? Okay. Then I might strip something out, peel something out. I didn't like what I stripped. I think it needed to be more robust. Now I want to add emotion to it. same kind of content, same kind of customer story, but now I'm going to make my boss hurt.

31:24 I'm going to make him hurt because I need him to act and I need him to understand that every month we wait, we lose another half a million bucks. We need to act now. That adds emotion. When I want you to go from whatever it is you're doing at any moment in time, I will use the word I want you to feel. Isn't it frustrating you can't get job interviews? I just immediately put you back in the place because I wanted you to connect with the problem you're trying to overcome. If you don't hurt, you won't act. Follow me? You need to make them feel it. This is persuasive language.

32:09 The first iteration wasn't about language. It was about how am I going to tell them what I want to tell them. Then it was how do I make sure they have all the information that's going to get them to act? Because what is the goal? Your goal in a communication is not to communicate. Your goal in a communication is to give somebody information so they could take that information and do something with their life, their their work, their team, their customer, their community, their business. If it doesn't do that, you failed as a communicator. You know, the sad fact is when you get in a job interview, what do I always say? Your job is not to report history. It's to tell a story so they understand what you can do to help them transform. So that they know you're the right person for the job. Because ultimately what you need them to what do you need them to do? You need them to hire you. That's an action. And many of you fail at that because there is not enough emotion in your story and you are not helping them understand the transformation that they can attain and they should hurt by the fact that you are not there doing that for them right now.

33:19 And there's a lot of inertia because you haven't made it succinct enough and you got a lot of dead weight in the story that's dragging the story down. So, what does this look like? I'm going to skip the the last couple of steps for brevity sake. Okay, I think you get it right. You'll talk it out. You'll edit it and so forth. Here's what my email proposal would look like. Proposal to improve customer retention and onboarding program. Here's the background. Customer retention has dropped 82 to 68, 2 million a cost. Main reason is weak on boarding. New customers get a single welcome email then little support. One customer said, "I want to use the product, but I don't know where to start, so I cancelled." Okay, what are our competitors doing? Here's how far behind we are. Our competitors guide customers with tutorials, follow-ups, and live calls, which help people which helps people adopt the product faster and stay longer. Awesome. Here's my proposal. Launch a structured onboarding program within 90 days. Give them five welcome emails, guided product tutorials, and let's offer them an optional support call within 30 days. It's going to cost us $200,000. Every month we delay costs us $500,000. If we return retention to the prior levels, we can get a million and a half back annually and strengthen our customer advoc advocacy. and we need to act now and we can get it done in the in this quarter. You see how that goes? Okay, I know I went through that example quickly, but the point is you got good old Coach Andy's replay that you can watch anytime. So, I want to make sure that you understand the mechanics and then I want to call your attention to a couple of things. Here are the biggest mistakes I see people make when they're trying to communicate information like this. By the way, you could be a research assistant going out and gathering the information, but what I'm going to want you to do is even though you might not be deciding what I should do with your research, can you point me to things that are especially trend and noteworthy? What is actually happening?

35:32 Where do you project the trend going? How did we get in this position? That's really important. All right, here's the mistakes. You don't outline anything. You're editing immediately, way too early. Don't do this. You're you're overloading them with detail. They may or may not need that. the new book is 54,000 words. I wrote 60,000 words. I pulled 6,000 out because although I felt some of that stuff was cool, before I gave it to them, I decided the book didn't need it.

36:07 It could be 10% shorter. Okay, there's no emotion. We're losing 500,000 a month. Where's the pain? Give me life. Don't you want that? Emotion doesn't need to be negative. Emotion could be, don't you want that promotion? Wouldn't it be great to sit in that corner office? Can you just imagine that? Right. Okay. Or you're not rehearsed enough or buttoned up enough. These are the big the top five mistakes. I I I challenged myself to come up with the top five. Keep these top of mind.

36:42 All right. Here's what I want you to do. Homework. Homework people. Okay. Follow along. Now, we're going to have the A students, the B students, and the C students. This is for the B students. I want you to pick a message. Any message. Could be a workbook like this. Could be an email. If you're an A student, you're going to pick a short message and you're going to pick a long message. This is a long message cuz it's 47 pages. Or short message could be an email like that onepage proposal that I just showed you. Cool. Okay. I want you to outline your points. I want you to then write without editing. I want you to go through a step where you clean it up. understand it is will this make sense? I'm going to add some analogies and then I'm going to tune it and deliver it. Now, all I want you to do by doing this is getting in the habit of sweeping. Okay? Just the sweeps. I want you to get out of I want you to get out of doing everything at once. And I want you to get into engineering good messaging. Great messaging is constructed. It's not winged. It's not winged.

38:04 Cool. All right. Now, just to recap. Just to recap the steps. You kind of got it because I gave you the action items, but let me give you the nine again. Here we go. I want you to outline the main points. That's number one. Then I want you to write it with no edits, no drag. You just write. You can't edit a blank page as the expression goes in my world. Okay, I want you to clarify it, clean it up so that they will understand it for whoever your audience is. Then I want you to add the life fourth stories fourth. Then what I want you to do is I want you to tighten it up, make it succinct. Then what I want you to do is check your emotion or motion. Is it going to get them to act or have you basically in some drab fashion just given them the information and not really helped them feel what you needed them to feel so that you've inspired them to act. Then talk it out or if it is a long form deliverable, I want you to edit it. Oop, sorry. Edit it. And then you take one last pass. I take one last pass. Now, if you liked this, there's a couple of things here that that I have for you that you can use. Now, the new book that comes out in October, which is not available for pre-order yet, but will be probably next month, is going to have a lot of information about this. Not just how to construct, but what I haven't given you today is what goes inside, the information that goes inside to persuade anybody. So, there's the architecture of the content itself. The other thing is for those of you that are familiar with the Zebra Code, if you don't have this book, you can grab it from me. There's no shipping charges. I I will send this to you for less than what it it costs on Amazon right now, and I'll ship it to you anywhere in the world. No shipping charge. Just you you pay some percentage of what the retail price is. But it's it's it's pretty good. You can get this from me or you can get it from Amazon if you're outside the US. many of the Amazon sites have this. Some of them have paperback versions, but most of them have hardbound versions. Inside this book in chapter 13, it's called Crafting Compelling Messages. It's a wonderful chapter, a lot of detail on what I shared with you today. A little bit of a different format, but still very very detailed on that. Additionally, I have a a coaching session inside my leadership library about creating compelling messages. If you're interested in my leadership coaching program, I'm going to give you a quick couple of minutes on that just to see just so that you know what's available and what we're going to be doing this year. But if you are watching this on a recording, I will see you next