Matt Abrahams: How to Conquer Anxiety and Lead Powerful Conversations Under Pressure | E114

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Attention is the most precious commodity we have in the world today.

And the only way to foster that attention, to gain that attention, is to make your communication relevant.

Matt Abram, he's a leading expert in strategic communication, a lecturer in Stanford Graduate School of Business, the host of Think Fast, Talk Smart Podcasts.

You can be amazing at what you do, but if you can't communicate it clearly, in a focused manner, you're not going to get the traction that you need.

And I've worked in the corporate world for over a decade and saw how people's careers were limited by communication.

So the person who might have the best idea but couldn't communicate it was limited versus the person who was very good at communication, but maybe not the most creative, innovative person.

Most people get nervous in high-stakes situations.

Your heart beats faster, your palms get sweaty and shaky.

So I have developed what I call an anxiety management plan.

Four or five techniques that you can use in advance of speaking that help calm yourself down.

Matt Abraham.

He's a leading expert in strategic communication, a lecturer in Stanford Graduate School of Business, the host of Think Fast, Talk Smart Podcast, the author of best-selling book, Think Faster, Talk Smarter.

If you're on YouTube, you're going to see it right behind him.

Whether you're pitching an idea, navigating through tough conversations, or kind of need to speak off the cuff in front of a room full of decision makers, this is exactly what Matt does.

So listen in, lean in.

Let's go have some fun.

Matt, thanks for being on the show.

I am so excited to chat with you.

Thanks for having me.

So your entire life suddenly became all about communication.

And I want to take you back in time.

What was the moment where you decided that communication is even something that you are intrigued by?

I think it's always been part of something I've been very curious about.

I am the son of a lawyer and of a teacher.

My mother taught elementary school and then later English as a second language.

And so, communication was always something we talked about.

My dad, from a legal point of view, he always wanted to be clear and concise.

And my mother was all about how can we be engaging, to invite people in, to make them feel feel comfortable.

So we would always talk about communication, and I certainly saw it.

But what really was transformative is when I was in university, I got exposed to just many different ways in which we can connect with people.

And I really believe that communication is operationalized empathy.

It is the way that we connect.

I became very curious and passionate about it.

And the area I started studying most early on was anxiety and anxiety management around communication.

Most people get nervous and that prevents them from connecting.

It prevents them from sharing.

And so that's where my interest was truly launched is when I saw the importance of communication and then how many people were afraid of it.

And then I worked in the corporate world for over a decade and saw how people's careers were limited.

by communication.

So the person who might have the best idea but couldn't communicate it was limited versus the person who was very good at communication, but maybe not the most creative, innovative person.

So it's been a passion passion that's fueled me ever since I was a little kid.

But you decide to go to study, if I'm not mistaken, psychology.

And it's so interesting because psychology is actually a huge part of communication and knowing your audience and all the things that eventually you talk about.

But why psychology?

Why did that come?

It's actually an embarrassing story.

So when I started my undergrad studies, I thought I wanted to be a doctor.

I've always wanted to help people.

And then I met calculus and organic chemistry, and they told me something very different.

They said that this might not be the best career for me.

So where I went to school, there was actually a new program that was a combination of biological sciences and social sciences.

It was called human biology.

And it was sort of an end around.

You could still get your medical school prereqs, but not have to take as much of the hard sciences.

So I started in the very first class, they brought in a psychologist, and I fell in love.

I thought psychology was to just be a therapist, and that's an important part of it.

I didn't know you could do research in it.

And so as soon as I heard that, I switched my major and became very fascinated with the aspects of psychology that focused on interaction, connection, and communication.

So for me, it was just complete happenstance.

I was trying to, I don't want to say cheat, but I was trying to get into medical school a back doorway.

And all of a sudden, I found a field I didn't know existed and studied it and then did a deeper dive into communication.

So my undergraduate degree was in psychology.

My graduate degree is in communication, but they're really all about how do we connect with people.

I love that.

And it's funny because I thought I'd going to be a doctor for many, many years until I became a technologist.

So I'm like, I don't know.

Because at least where I grew up, it was like two options.

You could either be a doctor or a lawyer.

Well, right, exactly.

And I feel bad for kids today who feel like they have to figure out what they want to do the minute they get into school.

And the reality is you don't know.

Many of the people I know are doing things they never thought they'd be doing.

And that's where I think the work you do is so important we can take time to find out.

And it's okay to move from one thing to the next and try something out.

So the work you do, I think, encourages people to find their passion.

And I think 18-year-olds, it's really hard to know what your passion is at 18.

I think it's impossible.

You get to reinvent yourself all the time.

And there's just a lot of options now on the menu that didn't really exist.

And we're going to talk about because you keep reinventing yourself.

It is so beautiful to see, Matt.

Well, thank you.

Take me a little bit.

You did start in the education space, right?

I mean, I saw SAP and OpenWave, et cetera.

What were some lessons that you got from those early years?

When I left graduate school, I had some loans to pay off and wanted to see what it was like in the corporate world.

So I worked in high tech for over a decade.

I ran learning and development teams.

So my life has always focused around teaching and training, et cetera.

But I did it for the corporate world.

And I learned a lot.

As I mentioned earlier, the ability to communicate effectively is critical.

Those who have great ideas might not get those ideas heard if they can't.

I learned how important it is to learn how to collaborate with others.

You are only as successful as you are in terms of collaborating and supporting others and getting support from others.

And I learned just how hard it is because of the pace at which things move.

and how things change to really take the time to reflect and grow your skills.

We're constantly running, running, and running, and we don't have that time for reflection.

So I learned the value of collaboration, the importance of communication, and how we have to really reflect so we can grow.

And I saw that in the corporate world.

And when I teach my students now, I really try to help them with all of those skills, including taking the time to reflect and take stock of what you do and how you can get better.

So why did you shift from that?

Because that sounds like a lot of impact, but you shifted from that to deciding to actually teach.

To some extent, you do both.

But take me there.

Why deciding to move to become a professor and then you teach lecture in Stanford, etc why a few reasons there's several so one was very personal with my family when my wife and i started our family i was traveling all over the place for work i was doing all these things and that was really hard another instance is i was at yet another tech company running their learning and development i was in my mid 30s and i was in an elevator with somebody who was 15 years older than I was.

He ran a group that was adjacent to mine and he was complaining about the same things I was complaining about.

And And I said, oh, my goodness, I can see myself 15 years from now complaining about the same things.

I don't want that.

And then my passion for teaching, you know, my mother was a teacher.

I saw the value of teaching.

I am the beneficiary of so many amazing teachers.

So it was a natural calling.

It gave me a little more freedom to be with my family.

It got me off the treadmill that I think was just going to lead me back to the same place.

And it afforded me.

a passion that I have, which is really to help and to learn.

So for me, it was an easy decision.

And when I I left high tech, I actually became a high school teacher for two years.

I taught freshmen and juniors in high school for two years and then slowly graduated in my teaching.

And now I teach at Stanford's Business School where I teach graduate students.

But each step of my teaching journey, I've learned so much and I've become a better teacher, I think, for having done that work.

And I've certainly learned a lot about how to teach and how to help people learn better.

I love this, Matt.

And what I want the listeners to hear is how life is in phases and different things will be important for you in different phases of your life.

It's just so important to lean into that versus try to fight it because when you fight it, that's where the burnout is.

That's where you're just not as happy and you realize that you're like, I want a little more balance in my life right now.

This is a great way to provide that.

And you still get amazing impact.

So for you, it was, it's kind of fun to see how that leaned into that.

What do you feel like are some of the biggest learning from years and years?

I mean, I think it's like a couple of decades, right, of teaching.

Are you calling me old?

Wait a minute.

No, no, no.

Experienced.

Yes, yes.

Thank you.

Yes.

I have a lot of experience and the gray hair to show it.

Yes, yes.

But tell me, what did you learn?

Because you teach different people from more younger generations to the more experienced that are coming to Stanford to study.

So what do you see as a pattern and what do you learn from it?

Yeah, so I think fundamental to teaching as well as communication in and of itself is you really have to find what's relevant and important to people.

If you can help people see the value of what you're saying is to them, it really can draw them in.

I believe attention is the most precious commodity we have in the world today.

And the only way to foster that attention, to gain that attention, is to make your communication relevant.

And the same is true with teaching.

When my students come in, I don't just teach theory.

I teach it in a very applied way.

Here's how you can use this.

Let's put it into practice.

Let's do it.

So one of the foundational principles I've learned echoes what I teach about communication is you have to understand your audience and you have to make it relevant for them.

And then the next thing is you have to make it clear and concise.

Many of us say much more than we need to.

I think the most effective teachers are the ones who can find a way to make their content relevant and engaging and focused.

And if you can do that, people get a lot of value.

Most importantly, they can act on it and remember it.

Communicating just to get information out is not the goal.

The goal is to actually have people get that information, retain it, and act on it.

So those are things that I have learned over my career.

I'm still working on them.

And those are the things I teach people when it comes to develop their communication.

And many times we learn the biggest lesson because we experience something that it was like, oh, darn, right?

And that creates a little bit of that.

learning.

At least that was for me knowing your audience.

I learned my lesson very well.

But tell me a little bit of how did you learn maybe one or two of these big lessons?

Well, a couple of ways.

One, mentorship.

I'm a huge fan of mentorship.

I had some amazing teachers that helped me.

One of my best teaching mentors, beyond my mother, who was fantastic.

My mother has this saying, tell the time, don't build the clock.

But what it really means is be focused.

Many of us say more than we need to.

So that was a great lesson.

When I was an undergraduate, I had the privilege and honor to study with a very famous psychologist.

His name's Phil Zimbardo.

He's notorious for running the Stanford Prison Study, which had a lot of ethical issues around it.

What many people don't know is he was a very kind and compassionate person.

And he studied shyness.

And I was interested in speaking anxiety and nervousness and certainly shyness overlaps.

But he was a master teacher.

And one of the things he told me is that in order to teach people well, you really have to engage them.

And to engage them, you have to make sure you understand them.

And then you have to find creative ways to get people to experience what you teach.

And he was a master at experiential learning.

So he wouldn't just lecture.

He would have us go through experiences where we really learned.

And that was really, really powerful for me.

And so between my mother and Phil and some others, I really learned how.

And I am somebody who's very open to feedback.

And many, many people have given me feedback about my teaching, my podcasting, my writing.

And that's how you get better is to iterate.

And then you also have to reflect on what works and what didn't.

And you talked about anxiety, which I think is really, really important.

And I want to talk about it for a second.

And by the way, tell the time, don't build the clock.

I wrote it down.

Such a good quote.

Oh, my God.

Like totally stealing this.

You are welcome.

It's not stealing.

It's not stealing.

It's so good.

Because, yes, sometimes you ask somebody and you lose them after a few minutes of, I don't know what you're saying anymore.

You lost me, right?

But talk to me about anxiety.

You mentioned anxiety and I think this is so important.

The listeners here on the podcast or in YouTube, they have some very crucial conversations.

And sometimes it's an interview and sometimes it's a hard conversation with a peer or boss.

And sometimes they want the promotion and sometimes it's a pitch to investor.

And there's a lot on the line.

And when there's a lot on the line, whether you like it or not, you're going to freak out a little bit.

So how do you hope with a freak out?

And I know you talk a lot about it in the book, but talk to us a little bit about what do you do.

First and foremost, we have to realize that anxiety is just part of communication.

Most people get nervous in high-stakes situations.

Like 85% of people report it.

And I think the other 15% are lying.

I think we could create a situation that makes them nervous too.

So anxiety is normal and natural.

We see it in every culture we study.

We see it develop at a certain time as people get older.

So it's just part of who we are.

That That said, we can learn to manage it.

And there are really two ways to manage the anxiety that comes with speaking.

One is to manage symptoms and the other is to manage sources.

So symptoms are the things that happen to us physiologically when we get nervous.

So for example, when I get nervous, I blush and I perspire.

I'm curious, Alana, what happens for you when you get nervous?

What goes on in your body?

Yeah, I definitely feel my palms, my, you know, like I remember sometimes feeling like, oh my God, like I going to get a heart attack attack on stage.

Like how humiliating.

That's right.

And that's normal and natural.

Your heart beats faster.

Your palms get sweaty and shaky.

This is your body trying to protect yourself.

We feel under threat when we speak, but there's some things we can do to manage that.

For example, I'll give you just two things.

One, deep belly breathing.

If you've ever done yoga, tai chi, meditation, it's that deep belly breath.

And the important thing is it's the exhale that's most important.

So I like to joke the rule of thumb, or more importantly, the rule of lung is you want your exhale to be twice as long as your inhale.

And if you do that two or three times, you slow down your autonomic nervous system.

Your heart rate slows down, your speaking rate slows down, you feel calmer.

Now, for somebody like yourself who gets shaky, that's adrenaline.

Adrenaline wants to move you from threat to safety.

So if you move purposely, not swaying and rocking, but if you do big, broad gestures, if you step towards your audience, that energy dissipates.

So there are things we can do to manage symptoms.

Now, the other side of the coin is sources.

And there are many sources of anxiety.

One major source is people want to do their communication right.

They want to be perfect.

And the reality is there is no right way to do it.

I've been doing this for a long, long time, and there is no right way.

There are better ways and worse ways.

But when we focus on doing it right, that means we're over-evaluating what we're doing.

And that takes away precious cognitive bandwidth, focusing on judging rather rather than focusing on connecting.

So I like to say it's about connection, not perfection.

Focus on getting the information out and making it relevant rather than saying, am I saying it right?

And the last thing I'll say about this is this is why memorizing is so bad.

People memorize because they think that's how I'm going to be safe.

That's how I'm going to get through it.

But what that means is you're splitting your attention.

Part of your brain is focused on, am I saying it right?

Leaving only part of your brain's mental energy to focus on actually saying it and connecting.

Rather, if you have a structure and a roadmap, it helps.

So managing anxiety is critical.

There are things you can do.

I've spent a lot of my career trying to help people.

And with time and effort, you can become more confident in your communication.

And what's beautiful is also anxiety and excitement feel very close, right?

So,

you know, if you can start translating it to, I'm actually really excited.

And I'm glad that I'm excited because that's what makes me more alive, right?

So there's a little bit of shifting also the narrative.

The mind.

And what it makes it feel.

Absolutely.

You're referring to work by a colleague of mine and friend, Allison Woods-Brooks, who did that research to say, if you think about it, the physiological symptoms that you have for anxiety are identical to the ones you have for excitement.

Your body has only one arousal response.

So the difference is how we label it.

So if I came to you and said, you just won the lottery, your heart rate's going to go up.

Your hands might get shaky.

You might sweat.

Yeah.

Right.

You're excited about it.

But if I come to you and say, oh, you have to give a speech because so-and-so couldn't make it, same symptoms, but you see one positive, one negative.

So you're absolutely right.

If you can teach yourself to say, this is excitement, this means I'm passionate.

This means there's some value I bring.

That actually helps.

If I don't feel nervous before I do something high stakes in my communication, it means I don't care.

So I actually look for those anxiety signs knowing that I can manage them.

So I love what you said there.

And it's really, really important.

And you have some cute examples as well, also in the book, of moments where you were trying to give a speech yourself and realize either the power of connection or the power, you know, or not to memorize.

You have a few, but talk to us about one or two of these because I think these are really, really important.

Because I think sometimes we think, oh, you're an expert, Matt.

You don't understand.

Like for me, it's different.

Right.

Well, let me do this.

So this happens all the time.

I can get very anxious.

The one circumstance that makes me very anxious to this day is I am part of an academic group of professors of communication who teach at top top business schools around the world.

And we convene once a year and we have a conference, essentially helping each other learn and talking about new challenges and opportunities we have.

And sometimes they're kind enough to invite me to speak.

And I get really nervous because these are my peers.

These are people who know a lot.

These are people I've venerated for years.

So I get very, very nervous.

So I have developed, and I encourage all my students and everybody I work with and all the people listening and watching today to create what I call an anxiety management plan.

Four or five techniques that you can use in advance of speaking that help calm yourself down.

So I'll share my anxiety management plan.

First, I take some deep belly breaths, just as I discussed.

Really helps calm me down, centers me.

Second thing I do is I remind myself that I have value to bring.

Many of us, when we get nervous about speaking, we have a lot of negative self-talk.

We say a lot of things that put ourselves down and put us in a bad position.

I didn't practice.

These people are smarter than I am.

What I'm saying isn't really useful.

So what I say to cancel all that out is I simply say I have value to bring.

I was invited to speak or my students have decided to attend my class.

So I remind myself people see value in what I do.

I'm not saying I'm the best speaker ever.

No, no, no.

I'm just saying I have value to bring.

Third, I hold something cold in the palm of my hand.

I sweat and perspire when I get nervous.

And that's because I'm heating up and I can cool myself down by holding something cold in the palm of my hand.

You've probably done this on a cold morning.

We live in the same neighborhood.

We know how cold it can get.

If you've ever held a warm cup of coffee or tea and felt it warm your body up, holding something cold does the same thing in reverse.

So that cools me down and I don't perspire.

And then the last thing I do, and you're going to laugh, I say tongue twisters out loud.

And the reason I do this is it helps me get present-oriented.

I live in the future.

I'm a very future-oriented person.

And communication happens in the moment.

So the best thing I can do is become present-oriented.

And you cannot say a tongue twister right and not be present oriented.

And because I say it out loud, it warms up my voice.

Many of us walk around when it comes to communication thinking that we can go from silence to brilliance.

But if you're an athlete or you exercise, you know you should warm up first.

So by taking a deep breath, by reminding myself I have value to bring, holding something cold and saying a tongue twister, that gets me more comfortable, more confident and more present.

I'm not saying my techniques are going to work for you or any of your listeners, but there are other techniques that we can can come up with.

But if everybody can have four or five at the ready, you can be better and more confident in your communication.

Oh my God.

I love these.

What are your favorite tongue twisters?

Okay, I'm so bad at these.

Let's do it.

Let's do it.

I'll share it with you, but you have to repeat after me.

It has three phrases, takes five seconds.

And why I like this one is if you say it wrong, you say a naughty word.

So I'm going to be listening.

Repeat after me, Alana.

And I said this three times before we started today.

So here we go.

I slit a sheet.

I slit a sheet.

A sheet I slit.

A sheet.

Oh God.

You got it.

A sheet I slit.

A sheet I slit.

And on that slitted sheet I sit.

And on the slitted sheet I sit.

Oh my God, that is so hard.

That is so hard.

And you did a great job.

You didn't say the naughty word.

I'll leave it to your listeners and viewers to figure out what that word was, but

I was very close.

But in that five seconds, you weren't worried about your next question.

You weren't worried about who you're meeting for lunch.

You were present on

focus.

That's right.

So there are lots of things we can do.

The first book I wrote was called Speaking Up Without Freaking Out.

And it's 50 techniques based on academic research to help you manage anxiety.

And I just expect.

three or five of them to work for people.

Not everything works for everybody, but we can find things that help us.

And you need to know yourself and you need to experiment with yourself and you need to see what works for you.

I love listening to music, walking around.

Like, I need to get my hikes in and whatever, sweat and some hill, and then I'll feel good, right?

So, if I can, absolutely, that would always be my thing.

So, you need to find your thing.

I did not try the tongue swisters.

Yes.

That's really cool.

So, you have this very,

what I would call convenient career at some point, and you somehow decide to make it not just a career, but make it a complete platform of who is Matt.

And at that point, you have the TEDx talk, which has now, what is it, six million?

I don't know.

Like it was like millions of views.

That's a massive impact there, right?

In the podcast, in the book.

And what made the shift?

Was there like a moment or was it like a gradual reinvention?

What was it, Matt?

I'd answer that in a couple of ways.

One, I am very purpose-driven.

I really want to help people hone and develop their skills.

So, as new avenues open up themselves, I like to explore them.

So, the podcast that I do, Think Fast Talk Smart, was an experiment.

The business school at Stanford came to me and said, hey, we want to try our first podcast.

We know communication is important.

I did a talk for them that did very well.

And they said, so we know people are interested in listening to you talk about this topic.

Are you interested?

And I said, yes.

A book deal came to me the same way.

So it's knowing what my purpose is and then taking advantage of opportunities as they come.

So I always try to say yes.

You know, I have two children and I try to encourage them when opportunity comes, at least explore it.

You don't have to say yes, but at least explore it.

So being opportunistic, being purpose-driven and realizing that mistakes and failure are normal and possible.

I have a whole laundry list of mistakes and things that come out the way that I wanted them to, but having a tolerance for that ambiguity and those mistakes can be really helpful as you try to find your passion and what in the moment is important to you.

So those are really what have helped guide me is having a clear purpose and then taking advantage of opportunities and being willing to take the risk that this might not work out.

And then when it doesn't learn from it and move on.

And if I have had any success, it's because of those three things.

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The link is in the show notes.

Now back to the show.

Is there like a certain mistake that comes to mind that you're like, wow, I learned a lot from this?

There are several mistakes that come to mind.

This is a mistake that I tell my students all the time.

When I was running learning and development, I ran learning and development for several software companies.

And this is still back in the day when, you know, before there was the cloud and everything was done online, where we were printing materials out.

We were printing lots of materials.

So people would take a week-long course from us.

If people remember phone books, people don't remember phone books anymore, but the really thick stack.

And people wanted that book because when they came back from our work, they would love to have what we called the thud factor.

They would drop it and it would make a big thud and they would say, this is what I learned.

And it was so costly for us.

And the big mistake I made was I didn't budget for shipping all this stuff home.

People wanted to ship all these manual because we thought, oh, we're just going to burn a CD.

This is back in the day of CDs and we'll just send it with them.

And that was a huge mistake.

So I ended up costing the company a lot of money because we were training thousands of people and we just didn't have that line item.

And it was so embarrassing.

And it was so bad.

So I felt really bad.

And that was a big mistake.

And I learned from that mistake that you have to plan for the minutia.

For me, it's easier to plan for the high-level strategy, but you have to plan for the minutiae.

Now, there's a good ending to this story.

Thank you.

And this is another lesson I learned.

Surround yourself with people who are smarter than you.

So I had a woman on our team who was very creative.

Jennifer was her name.

And what Jennifer said is, you know what?

There's a marketing opportunity here.

And I said, you've got got to be crazy.

There's no marketing.

This is all downside.

We don't want to do anything.

I'm already embarrassed.

What she did is she created these backpacks that had the name of the company and the advertised essentially for the training that we did.

And what we did at the end of every class is we made this big ceremony where we gave people these backpacks.

We took their big, thick manuals, stuck it in the backpack and sent them on their way.

So we didn't have any more shipping.

costs.

And in fact, we got free advertising.

So again, the lesson was surround yourself with smarter people people who are good at creatively solving problems and focus on the detail, not just the high level.

And that's something that I have struggled with my whole career.

I think I'm a good vision person, but not always a tactical person.

A lot of my mistakes have been in not looking at the minutiae and figuring out the tactics as much as the strategy.

I can resonate with that.

And that's why I need a full team by my side to take care of the tactics.

I always laugh that I can run a thousand mile per hour and not realize that, oh, the whole company is not behind me.

And as you grow, by the way, now it's like a whole ship that needs to turn around.

I'm like, oh, I didn't realize that.

So I agree.

But what I love about what you said is it also attached to what you said about knowing your audience and knowing their why, right?

Because you would think that maybe they don't need it.

But no, they actually want the big thing.

So it's really attaching really well to what that they came and learned.

And I think that's true of most people.

People feel I've made an investment in learning and growing myself and my career.

I want to be able to show it in some way, shape, or form.

And that was also illuminating to me.

And that led us to create certification programs and other things, not just to take advantage of that, but to really help people, but then to give them a proof point that they learned something.

Ah, brilliant.

And it boiled down to know your audience so well.

Take me there for a second, because now when you have this platform, and we talked about it a second before when you just joined you essentially need to put different hats on that you didn't put on before right because now you're not just a communication expert that is part of it but now it's sales and marketing and partnership or whatever like it adds multiple layers and i think a lot of our listeners are like i don't know if i'm ready to be out there.

And also when you're out there, you might have more hate or you, you know, people will have something to say.

Take me there for a second, Matt.

It's a big thing.

I never thought at my age, I would be a social media entrepreneur.

If you would have told me of all the careers that that's what I would be doing, I would have said there's no way.

But yes, while I'm not a TikTok star by any means, putting yourself out there can be hard.

A couple of things come to mind.

One is you don't have to do it alone.

And as you mentioned earlier, there are people who can help you.

There are consultants.

There are teams of people.

And I am only as successful as the team that's behind everything that I do.

So you have to be collaborative and you have to look for people.

You have to learn also how to vet people because a lot of people say a lot of things and you have to really see, make sure that they know what they're talking about.

Speaking of communication, yeah.

Yeah,

because they sell themselves, right?

Right.

Exactly.

So I think the first thing that I have learned is you don't have to do it alone.

Two, you again have to have a high tolerance for mistakes and be willing to acknowledge the mistakes and pivot and turn.

It's very easy to fall into the trap of, oh, just a little more effort, just a little more investment.

And you have to be willing to say, okay, that was an experiment, didn't work.

I learned from it, et cetera.

And you also need to be able to take time, I've said this several times, to reflect, to take time to sit down and say, what's working?

What's not working?

What is my audience telling me?

I mean, all of us have audiences, even if it's just our team we're managing or the partners that we have, and sit back and reflect and say, what is it that they're telling us?

I'll give you an example.

When we started the podcast I host, we thought we were a business podcast.

Well, the market, the audience said, no, you're a careers podcast.

So we said, okay, we're going to embrace that.

We're going to do more around careers and how communication impacts careers.

So you have to be receptive and you have to be willing to take risk and realize that there are others who are willing to help you and you need that help to get through things.

And that's how I've been able to survive because life is moving very quickly.

And if you don't have a team, especially now, yeah,

especially now.

And are there moments where I don't know whether the hate is too much or it's too much out there?

Or are there moments of, why do I need this?

Absolutely.

And I take those moments, I mean, those moments hit me very hard.

And in fact, I just went through one of them very recently.

I was tired, a lot of stuff going on.

And I remind myself that that feeling of, is it worth it, means that it's really passionate.

It's something I care about.

And that's why I'm having those feelings, because if I didn't care, I wouldn't even ask that question.

And there are people who have strong opinions.

And I am in the business of empowering people to share their opinions.

And so to me, I want people to feel comfortable sharing their opinions.

Now, that has to come with respect and it has to come with acceptance as well.

But there have been times where people have not liked some of the things I've said or some of the guests that we've had on.

And I try to take it as feedback and information.

It doesn't mean I have to change.

It doesn't mean that it's personal, but I'm a big proponent of feedback and giving feedback.

And part of that is receiving feedback.

So yeah, it can be draining at times, but I have to put it into perspective.

And I think the biggest thing for me with the feedback I get on the work I do is I look for patterns over time.

Any one bit of feedback, positive or negative, may be insightful, but it's really looking for patterns.

If a lot of people are saying something similar, then there's something I really need to pay attention to.

So I'm always looking for patterns, both in the positive accolades we get and in the negative feedback as well.

That's true, because there's also a lot to learn.

I think it depends if it's a pure hate or it's actually like a good feedback.

Right.

But I like the word patterns because there's definitely commonalities when you start listening to more.

And I love that the listening piece is really important in communication overall.

But if you're looking and you're talking to people who are right before, I don't know, interviews and again, those crucial conversations.

First of all, you want them to not be as anxious.

So we talked about that.

And then you also have a really beautiful way of structuring your answers or your pitch or your talk in different ways that the structure will help people understand them better, right?

You know, what, so what, now what?

Like you talk about different ways.

What would you say to somebody listening now and saying, I do ramble, I go too long, or I don't, what would you say to them?

I have a lot to say to them.

And first and foremost is we need to take the time to think about how how best we can package up our information so people can actually receive it.

Again, the goal of communication is not just to broadcast information, to get it out.

The goal is for people to receive it with, I like to joke, the F word of communication, which is not the naughty one, it's fidelity, accuracy, and clarity.

We've all played that game of telephone where I tell you something, you tell somebody else, et cetera.

And by the time it gets back to me, it's totally different.

That's not effective communication.

You want it to be accurately transmitted.

And the way to do that is by by helping focus your communication.

Two major ways to do that beyond knowing your audience and what's important to them.

That's the first step.

You have to have a clear goal.

In all communication, I believe having a clear goal is essential.

And to me, a goal has three parts, information, emotion, and action.

What do I want the audience to know?

How do I want them to feel?

And what do I want them to do?

Before you ever speak, you should think that.

What do I want them to know?

How do I want them to feel?

What do I want them to do?

Once you have the knowledge of your audience and a clear goal, you're ready to focus your message.

And you do that by putting it in a structure, a package.

We are not good at remembering lists.

I ask you this, Ilana.

When you go to the grocery store, how many items do you need to buy before you have to write it down?

For me, it's three.

Anything over three, I'm going to forget.

Yeah, probably.

Yeah.

Right.

So we don't remember lists.

So we need to have a structure, a logical connection of ideas.

So the structure everybody knows, because we've all seen a television advertisement is problem solution benefit.

There's some issue or challenge in the world, the product or service fixes it, and then people have some benefit from doing it.

I don't care if you're selling cars, medicines, alcohol, they all do the same thing.

And in fact, I'm sure as an entrepreneur, a former entrepreneur, you're currently an entrepreneur, I guess, as well, you probably use that structure to help sell what you do.

Here's the issue.

Here's how we resolve it.

Yeah.

Exactly.

That's a structure.

That's a structure.

Now, my favorite structure you mentioned is three simple questions.

What, so what, now what?

What is the information you're communicating?

Could be your update, could be your feedback, could be the description of your product or service.

So what is why is it relevant to the audience you're speaking to?

And now what is the next step?

What you'd like them to do.

Maybe, hey, let's look at a demo or what questions do you have?

So by using a structure like what, so what, now what, or problem solution benefit or myriad other structures, you package the information up so it's focused for your audience, and they in turn can take that package and then pass it along in a good way that has high fidelity.

So focus is so critical.

Know your audience.

Have a goal, no feel-do, leverage a structure.

And that's what's really going to make a difference between you and somebody who just rambles and lists information.

Love this.

We use sometimes why this, why you, why now?

Perfect.

That's a great structure.

These are all structures.

I heard you.

I don't remember if it was a TED Talk or the book.

It was somewhere.

When you said about knowing your audience, It wasn't only the high level, it's that what are their expectations.

And I think that's a really interesting interesting distinction because, yes, we'll go and do research about the company or about the person.

We'll do the basic research, but we are not necessarily good at understanding their why or what are they expecting or what are they afraid of or what is their goal.

And I think that is just so, so, so strong.

Take us there for a second, man.

So when you have to do reconnaissance, reflection, and research about your audience.

And you can do that in many ways.

One, you can ask people who know people in your audience.

You can ask your audience directly.

You can, I like to joke, cyber stalk them, look at their LinkedIn profiles, look at their sub stacks, look at their videos.

If they podcast, listen to them being guests or others.

And that gives you insight.

There are four primary things I believe we need to think about when we think about our audience.

First, what is their knowledge level on our topic?

Do they know a lot or know a little?

And you have to meet them where they're at.

The problem we have as people who have some expertise and some experience is we suffer from the curse of knowledge.

We know too much and that gets in the way of us connecting.

We use acronyms and jargon and technical terms and we start farther down the path than the audience is.

So understanding what they know is critical.

Second, we have to think about their attitude.

Are they likely to be in favor or not?

You know, if I'm talking to somebody who's likely not to be in favor, I should approach it differently.

Perhaps most importantly, the third is where are their areas of resistance, hesitation, and concern?

Whenever you communicate with somebody, they're filtering what you're saying through your areas of resistance, hesitation, and concern.

And then finally, what motivates them?

We have known a long time in social science that if I can connect what I'm saying to what motivates you, you're more likely to pay attention and act on it.

So if you focus on really trying to figure out what's their knowledge level, what are their attitudes, what are their areas of resistance, and what motivates them, you can then tailor your message to be specific to that audience.

And that will make you much more successful.

And it makes it easier for the audience to understand what you're saying.

Wow.

Mic drop.

Boom.

I mean, this is so good, Matt.

So I hope everybody is taking notes frantically here.

But seriously, I think the bottom line, they just need to get your book.

I mean, there's so many insights.

And again, the communication is everywhere.

And I think that's the piece that is really important.

Yes, there's some more crucial conversations, but you communicate all the time.

Yes.

And I think the more we get better at it, because again, whether it's a clerk in the supermarket or I'm speaking to my kid, kid, I'm still communicating.

I still need to meet them where they are.

I still need to know their expectations.

I still want to comfort their fear and make sure I understand their goal.

Like everything that you talked about is critical.

So I love this, Matt.

So yeah, go get his book.

Go listen to the podcast.

Anything else you want to share with our audience, Matt?

First, thank you.

This has been a delightful conversation.

The work you do is so important.

The ability to have the courage and tools to make a leap, to transition, to pivot is so critical.

I hope everybody can find something that is fulfilling to them, both spiritually, mentally, you know, financially.

And communication plays a critical role in that.

And the tools that Think Fast Talk Smart provide and the website I have fastersmarter.io can really help people.

You can be amazing at what you do, but if you can't communicate it clearly in a focused manner, you're not going to get the traction that you need.

And I appreciate the work you you do and the opportunity to share the work I do to help people get to that point where they are feeling fulfilled and contributing in a meaningful way.

And I love that because, again, it's all about getting people to be their best self and their full potential.

And both of these are going to have to happen.

They need to understand what they want to do, how to leap their career, how to build their personal brand, but also how to communicate it really, really well so that the right doors open up.

So, Matt, thank you so much for being on the show.

That was incredible.

Thank you for the opportunity and keep up the great work you're doing.

Thank you.

I hope you enjoyed this as much as I did.

If you did, please share it with friends.

Now, also, if you're feeling stuck or simply want more from your own career, watch this 30-minute free training at leapacademy.com/slash training.

That's leapacademy.com/slash training.

See you in the next episode of the Leap Academy with Zilana Golan Show.