June 17, 2024 • 30 mins
Hey folks! Tune in to the latest episode of B.D. Dalton's dynamic business podcast where he sits down with Glenn Kramon, the editorial genius from The New York Times and a seasoned Stanford professor. This episode is a goldmine for anyone looking to elevate their written communication game. Glenn shares his top tips, emphasizing the importance of standing out with his mantra, "Be one in a million, not one of a million." He also reveals the power of the PS as a secret weapon to engage and personalize your messages. The conversation is not just informative but also filled with lively banter and insightful anecdotes.
Glenn doesn't just stop there; he dives into the BLUF method—Bottom Line Up Front—stressing the value of getting straight to the point. His advice? "Get rid of the organ music before church. Get to the point. It shows respect." This episode is packed with practical strategies and engaging stories, making it a must-listen for anyone serious about mastering the art of communication. So, grab your headphones, hit play, and get ready to transform the way you write with insights from one of the best in the business!
Glenn doesn't just stop there; he dives into the BLUF method—Bottom Line Up Front—stressing the value of getting straight to the point. His advice? "Get rid of the organ music before church. Get to the point. It shows respect." This episode is packed with practical strategies and engaging stories, making it a must-listen for anyone serious about mastering the art of communication. So, grab your headphones, hit play, and get ready to transform the way you write with insights from one of the best in the business!
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Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
(00:02):
Grow, Sell and Retire is thepodcast for the lazy overachiever. Bad Dalton,
author of the assistant Purchase, TrueGravity and Grow, Sell and Retire,
is here to give his twenty fiveyears of secrets, tips and assistants
to take your business to the nextlevel. This podcast is for anyone who
wants to sell more, work lessand make better business. Now here's your
(00:25):
host, Bad with today's GSR podcast. Hey, everybody, Beat Dalton here,
Growth, Sell and Retire podcast Today. I have a great guest on
right now. I've got Glenn Cramonand we're going to talk today about writing
better, communicating better, and engagingwith an audience using words. So Glenn,
(00:45):
welcome to the podcast. Tell usa little bit about yourself and why
we're listening to you today. Thankyou, b d Honored to be here.
I teach practical writing at Stamford BusinessSchool. I've had three thousand wonderful
MBA and management science students of pastten years. Before that and still for
(01:10):
thirty seven years, I've been aneditor and sometimes reporter at The New York
Times. So I deal with thepractical writing side of things, not the
creative writing. So really getting intothe facts and figures and bringing those to
people or is that a good representationof it. Yes, So my most
(01:34):
important message to the students is youwant to make yourself one in a million.
And this is true of SMB ownersand managers. How do you make
yourself one in a million rather thanone of a million? And good writing
(01:56):
has a lot to do with that. I think that's really good. That's
really cool with the O and UHwith one one simple two letter or one
letter word that you can change theentire meaning of a sentence. And I
think that that becomes amazing, especiallyand I kind of lean into this in
our two hundred and eighty character words. You know, all this texting and
(02:17):
short form and you can't exceed thisamount of things. What have you seen
that's really changed in our communication andour communication style in this small text box
world over the last five years,especially since COVID BD. I love to
use the example of dating. Sohere's how things have gone backward. In
(02:42):
the old days, you broke upface to face or with a long handwritten
letter. Then the past century,maybe you broke up using the telephone.
The past thirty years, emails,the past two decades, it's become text
message, and now increasingly we oftenghost people no communication at all, and
(03:09):
that drives me crazy. So Itell my students the story of how a
woman I had planned to marry brokeup with me, and I said,
this is a way to do it. I texted her asking if she could
get together for coffee on a Tuesday. No, she wrote, tuesday doesn't
(03:30):
work. How about never does neverwork? She was honest, she was
to the point she left no doubt. That's powerful writing, none of this
ghosting or beating around the bushes.That's that's really it's really good in making
sure that people to bring it withhumor in comedy. But that's just one
(03:53):
of those things where you're trying toget that. But how do we talk
about impact? So yeah, andit's gone forward too. So it's just
so much easier than when we neededa pan or a typewriter, an envelope,
which means you have no excuse fornot content contacting someone or for not
(04:16):
answering them. And I go ona rampage about people who don't answer emails,
especially people within your network, withinyour business, within your industry.
Everyone should answer emails. And it'sso easy now to compose one and that's
what we talk about, and we'lltalk about a little bit in a second,
is just ways to make it easierto write a basic email. Well,
(04:42):
so, thanks to the computer,it's so much easier to revise your
writing than when you had to scratchit out or begin a new page on
your typewriter. And you'd say,oh, okay, well that's good enough,
so do that, revise and revisesome more. That's why got invented
word processors in pace. That's howto improve your writing. And then one
(05:03):
more thing, which is know youraudience. When you're writing to someone young.
For example, emojis and gifts arefine, but beware for someone older
they might seem immature, So I'davoid it when you're writing to older folks.
Then the other thing I encouraged topeople do with emails now is use
(05:25):
photos and videos. Even older peoplecan do that now the technology has made
it so easy. Why wouldn't youillustrate your email? For example, if
you're meeting a celebrity or you metsomebody important, take a selfie with them
and include it when you're writing backto them afterwards and say, hey,
we met the other day. Here'sa selfie of us. Most people are
(05:46):
honored to be in selfies and thatreally personalizes it and brings it to the
forefront. But I do agree withyou completely is that if somebody is in
your business, your network, you'resay, circle, whatever else it is,
it's very easy just to say extremelybusy this week? Can I get
back to you next week? Imean, how hard is it to do
(06:08):
that in two seconds? Or orwhat's appen or whatever else it is.
It's just it's pure humanistic communication.And I always say BD that when you
answer. When you don't answer emails, people think of you as either aloof
and distant or worse, as overwhelmed. You don't want people to think of
(06:32):
you as overwhelmed. If you doanswer emails, they think of you as
warm and on top of your game. So when you're looking at these these
really impactful communications, one of myone of my words that is kind of
my pet peeve is when I'm dealingwith business owners and they say that they're
busy. That's my pet beeve mebecause like you said, busy to me
(06:55):
means overwhelmed and you don't know howto handle your life, engaged or too
many things that I'm doing. Butbusy just means you don't have your life
in order, which is scary inbusiness. So what are some of your
pet peeve words that you see peopleright now that are kind of people are
hanging themselves up on. Well,here are some of my favorites. So
(07:23):
beginning an email with hope you arewell, Yes, I ask students,
raise your hand. You gotta behonest in this class if you begin an
email with hope you are well,and typically seventy or eighty percent did the
students raise their hand? And Isaid, that's the problem. You're making
(07:46):
yourself one of a million. Everyonedoes that. When chat Chibt begins an
email for you, it begins withhope you are well. Why Because Chatchibt
synthesizes what a million people do andsays, Okay, if a million people
are doing it, I'm going todo it. Avoid hope you are well.
It's a cliche. It's implied,make yourself one in a million in
(08:11):
everything you're right, Hope you arewell waste space, particularly for those in
a hurry reading on phones. AndI think most of us now are reading
most of our emails on our phones. If you want to begin with such
a greeting at least be more clever. During the pandemic, I heard people
say, hope you are feeling positiveand testing negative. That's just right for
(08:37):
a pandemic, and it makes youone in a million. And another pet
peeve I have is starting slowly beforegetting to the point. My boss at
the New York Times used to callthis type of writing organ music before the
church service begins. Start fast,get to the point. As my students
(08:58):
from in the Mill Terry say aboutresponding to an officer, bottom line,
up front, bluff. It's asign of respect not to waste an officer's
time. And I say, youdon't want to waste an officers times.
You don't want to waste anybody's time. So get to the point fast.
(09:20):
What's so I mean those are awesome? Because those are those are definitely How
about closing so throughout the opening?If you're in business emails, are you
sincerely? All the best sort ofare Di Glin? You know so so
glad you asked that BD. Ithink what sinks in most in my teaching
(09:43):
is my advice to close and emailwith something that makes the reader smile,
if not last laugh. So I'muh. For example, Uh, just
as you said. When I'm signinga letter somebody's done me a huge favor,
I will finish not by saying thankyou or sincerely. I'll finish by
(10:07):
saying thank you my queen if it'sa woman, or thank you Mike King
if it's a man. It's justunusual and it makes him smile. Also,
BD the ps, you know theps at the end of an email.
That can be your secret weapon toamuse the reader with something you know
(10:28):
they'll find funny er touching. Youwant to make them smile and leave your
email feeling good about you, andthe best way to do that is to
tell him something that either makes themsmile or laugh or that makes them go
awe, thank you for knowing thatabout me. So, when you're looking
at these things and you're taking yourtime in your overall communication, you say,
(10:52):
go back and kind of edit.So, when you're looking at an
email that you want to get somebodyto make impact, how many times should
I be looking at this again?You know, kind of reviewing, not
just going at it and saying okay, that's one could click send a great
question. So you want to lookfor two things in your email. Does
(11:15):
it display competence meaning you're impressive,I'd like to work with you. And
does it display warmth meaning hey,I'd like to have a beer with you.
Life is too short. People wantto work with people they like,
and so you need both warmth andcompetence. You need to be concise.
(11:41):
So when you're rereading your email,just ask yourself, do I show my
Do I make my point and showwhy it's right? Showing competence? Number
two? Do I make them smilea little bit? And it often has
to knowing something about them, notoh I hear you've been divorced nine times.
(12:05):
Something will make them say, hey, how'd you know that? Yeah
that's true, I do love thatrock group, or or I do love
that sports team, or yeah Idid you I grew up in Wisconsin.
How'd you know that? And thenthey immediately want to talk to you because
they said, oh, this isnot just a worker bee, this is
a colleague, this is a personI would enjoy the company of. And
then finally read it again and sayis this concise enough? And try to
(12:30):
cut the email in half. You'dbe surprised how easy it is to cut
your email. I just I believein that's so much. Well, you
know it's the old Winston Churchill,is it. Well, I didn't have
time, so I wrote a longletter that or whatever is his quote is
just it is time. It's creditedalso to Mark Twain, although I'm not
(12:54):
sure who really said, but isif I had had more time, I
would have written a shorter later.And it's true because it's really hard to
condense your writing, but it's asign of respect to your reader that you
took the time to do it,and it makes it it makes it personal,
it makes it feel better, especiallybecause we read so many emails a
(13:15):
day. I mean, I knowyou probably could receive one hundred a day
at least, and it's just like, how do you make it through all
of those? So you're really gettingto that point and people just want to
know where you're going to. Sosome of the things that you're talking about
and making us more and you've givenus a huge amount of list already,
but the things that you're seeing rightnow, if we bring chat GPT into
it, and like you say,these large language models are taking us and
(13:39):
just synthesizing all this stuff that youand I and everybody else in the world
and the New York Times. Youknow, however, however that thing's going
where it's saying, here's all thisstuff that's been put out in the world.
How many times does this reoccur?How are you seeing that people are
using it effectively to still be creativeand not just abusing it to plays red
(14:01):
And I do bd encourage people touse chat gpt. It's a miracle.
I just finished working on a bookand I use chatchipt every day for research.
So that's the difference. Chatchypt shouldn'tbe your writer. It should be
your writer, your researcher, andit should give you ideas. My former
(14:26):
student Nick Chow, who's an experton AI, says, just pretend when
you use chat GPT that you havea staff of five hundred semi competent interns.
So much of what they give youis direk But every so often you
see something that said, man,that's a really good idea. I'll use
(14:50):
that. Any of you have evertried chatchipt to write subject lines? It's
fabulous. It gives you a bunchof losers and then one that you think,
oh that's really that's close. Ilike that, And then you ask
GPT, give me ten variations onthis one good one, and then it'll
(15:13):
give you ten more in seconds,and then ultimately you're going to find a
really good one of which you wouldnot have thought on your own. So
I say to students, use chatptfor research, for ideas, but first
of all, you have to confirmthe facts it gives you, because number
(15:33):
one, it hallucinates just make stuffup. You've all heard of stories about
chat GBT inventing things, so youneed to confirm what it gives you or
you get in big trouble. AndI just say I tell them, remember,
using chatt is kind of like drivinga tesla. If you take your
(15:54):
hands off the wheel of a tesla, you might be very sorry anything with
chat GBT. If you leave thewriting to chat GPT, especially if your
audience is sophisticated, you're making amistake because the audience will say this is
mediocre writing at best. And chatGPT also tends to write emails and memos
(16:15):
that are much too long. Youcan tell chat GBT cut this in half,
but it often cuts out the wronghalf, so be careful. That's
very very good. So you're rightnow. Some of the writers that are
out there and people that you're readingand things like that, and seeing who
are some of your your favorite impactfulwriters currently. So I'm actually going to
(16:41):
start with a speech. People writespeeches, yes, And Stanford University has
an annual commencement. It's coming upthis weekend. And my favorite Stanford commencement
speech ever was by the actor SterlingK. Brown, which who many people
know from This is Us and frommore recently American fiction. He's a fabulous
(17:07):
actor and he demonstrated in his commencementspeech at Stanford what I emphasize most and
the first rule always is know asmuch as you can about your audience and
exploit it. Then you can makethem laugh and cry and act on what
(17:29):
you're saying and do what you're saying. So when Stirling came to Stanford,
he studied his audience. He knewthat while graduation celebrates the students, the
real celebrities are the parents who worktheir butts off to get their kids into
Stanford. And so they're actually aneven bigger audience at graduation than the students
(17:52):
are. There's two or three timesas many parents and cousins and grandparents.
So right at the start of thiscommencement speech. He knew his audience.
He told the parents that his goalbecause they hadn't heard of him. You
know, he was an actor.Young people know. He told the parents
his goal was to make them say, what a nice young man. I
(18:15):
think I'll go home and watch hisshow. And the parents roar. He
had loosened them up, and he'dmade them understand, I know you're out
there, I know who you are, I know your parents. I respect
you. So that's the largest circleof people. Then he goes smaller.
The second largest constituation constituency in thatStanford audience was the thousands of students themselves
(18:41):
who were graduating. So he wasthe Stanford grad and he told them I've
set where you sat, immediately makinga connection with him, and he likened
his experience to theirs. He said, I went through the four years,
admittedly as a drama major, butit still counts. And most of the
students are engineers. So he wasmaking him fun of himself as a drama
(19:04):
major. They were thrilled. Andthen once he'd won over those two big
audiences, most of all the parents, then the students. Then he reached
out to the black students. SterlingK. Brown is black, and he
engaged them with a chant from Stanford. Stanford has a black theme house.
(19:26):
Ouhjamah and oohjama is not something thatany of the parents or most of the
students had ever heard. And ifhe had started with that, they would
have said, who is this guy? Well? What is this But because
they already loved him, because hehad already made a connection with both the
parents and the students, they wantedto play along. And when the black
(19:48):
students replied to Sterling Brown with abig cheer, the whole crowd was delayed
because they were already already felt likethey were inside. Make your audience feel
like they're on the inside, noton the outside. So anybody who wants
to read some winning writing, googleSterling K. Brown's Stanford commencement speech.
(20:11):
Sterling K. Brown Stanford commencement speech. That should be your top takeaway from
this podcast. That's awesome. Andso know your audience. How are some
give us some tips on understanding ouraudience is better? So you can go
into whatever sector, idea drive whereshould we be looking and how do we
(20:32):
start to understand it better? Ourclients, our people were talking to our
employees, things like that when we'recommunicating. Great question, BD. First,
this is why God invented LinkedIn.I don't use social media, but
I do use LinkedIn at the minimum. Most people have LinkedIn profiles or something
(20:52):
comparable on the web. Just lookthem up. You'd be amazed at how
few people do that. So evenknowing where they work before or where they
went to college, and often peoplewill put on their LinkedIn profiles, and
I think they should their favorite hobbies, their favorite musical groups, what they
do in their spare time, whotheir favorite sports teams are. That way,
(21:17):
you have a way to connect withthem that makes them smile. Hey,
how'd you know that? Well,most of the time they'll figure out
you look it up on their LinkedIn, but they're flattered that you took the
time to know something about them.The other thing you can do is often
do your homework, do some networking. You see on LinkedIn who their contacts
are, who are shared with you, So just look at the contexts and
(21:41):
think, oh, he knows thisperson too. I'm going to contact this
person and say what do you knowabout this other person I'm trying to reach
And you'll often get a nice story, something touching or something funny and use
that. It's like anything else.Work the room. I always say,
you're so focused on sourcing the company, source the people too, because the
(22:06):
company's made up of people. Thebusiness is owned by a person or people
or shareholders or whatever it is.Those people just want to make money or
you know, serve the world orserve clients. But they still just it's
still a commercial entity. So here'shere's a bit of a fun one.
And you know, we've had alittle bit of a conversation about it.
But if you could edit one historicaldocument to make it more impactful, which
(22:30):
one would you choose? And why? Okay, let me think about that
the guide. There are so manyfun ones. So I'm going to give
you two examples, I think BDSo the first is unnecessary words drive me
(22:51):
crazy. So the advert words likecurrently and absolutely words it end with l
y. We use them all thetime when we're speaking. I urge students
to avoid them when they're writing.And I use Dickens to illustrate. I
(23:12):
add unnecessary adverbs to his opening inTail of Two Cities. I said,
imagine Tale of Two Cities with adverbsthe way we use them. It was
happily the best of times, itwas unfortunately the worst. At times,
(23:32):
you don't need to say happily orunfortunately. You don't need to say tragically.
The train wreck killed one hundred people. It's implied that is tragically.
Donald Trump uses adverbs often. Forexample, he said we will totally destroy
North Korea, and for his audience, destroy implies totally. You don't need
(23:56):
it, but for his audience.And I tell the students he's a terrific
speaker because he knows his audience.Totally destroy destroy sounds worse than destroy.
So okay when you're speaking, butnot when you're writing. And the other
thing I do is to show thevalue of simple, concise writing. I
(24:18):
edit Ralph Waldo Emerson. So here'show Emerson put it. There is no
beautifier of complexion or form or behaviorlike the wish to scatter joy and not
pain around us. And I say, okay, that's lovely, but most
people won't absorb something so complicated,So simplify it. How about just scattered
(24:42):
joy rather than pain. It's healthier. It says the same thing, much
more simply, much more concisely.That's awesome. So if there was,
you've given us huge amounts of things. So this is anything else that we
would want to take away about it. Pactful communications, especially since you've seen
(25:02):
them. You've you've you will alsowork, you know, New York Times
and doing stuff. You've seen ahuge change in a pivot in how people
are consuming information. You know,like you said on your phone versus in
a newspaper, headlines on a websiteversus blah blah blah. So how how
are you guys competing against the eyeballsof every other online communicator out there by
(25:30):
speaking more succinctly and more simply byavoiding convoluted jargon. Many people you deal
with in the business world never learnedthe jargon that is popular in places like
Silicon Valley or Wall Street, Andthen when they hear you use it,
they look at you funny. SoI know some people think complicated words and
(25:56):
sentences make them sound smarter. Theydon't remember the words of the great writer
Kurt Vonnegut. I trust my writingmost, and others seem to trust it
most when I sound most like aperson from Indianapolis, which is what I
am. So I say, whysay utilize when you can say use?
(26:22):
Why say incentivize when you can sayencourage or motivate. People outside Silicon Valley
and wallshreet may not know what incentivizedmeans, and they're they're not going to
trust you as much. This iswhat Donald Trump has figured out, is
that his audience doesn't words like incentivize, doesn't like words like incentivized and utilized.
(26:45):
And I bet even the most educatedAmericans have no idea what idate means.
I had never heard that word untilI came to Silicon Valley. It
means improve upon, and Silicon Valley, where I am right now, does
boast some of the worst defenders.A friend of mine compile the list his
(27:07):
favorite nonsensical jargon, and here's anexample. This is about scaling emerging solutions
to pivot the frame to embracing what'spossible. What does that mean? Here's
another one. I'm particularly excited abouttheir interest in pivoting more toward a solutions
frame as they step into this nextseason of storytelling. As Tevy the dairy
(27:32):
Man would have said, that's nottalking, that's babbling. Speak to me,
so I can understand, Glynn,that's amazing. So where can we
What's what's kind of next for you? I know, you're you're doing lots
of stuff and you're having fun,but are anything you're you're publishing? You
said, he just worked on abook, and where can we find out
(27:53):
more about you? And I wantto add one more thing more important is
something about right about me. Thethird thing I'd say is learn to tell
stories. So much business writing readslike term papers, and you want to
write something closer to scripts for Hollywoodmovies, with vivid scenes, with dialogue,
(28:17):
with quotes, with humor. Myfriend, the New York Times calmnist
Nick Christoff reminds us that you canwrite about millions starving in Africa and readers
won't respond. But if you tellthe story of one stick thin little girl
reduced to eating clay with the buzzardswaiting for her to die, readers will
(28:38):
respond. So try to make everythingyou write more cinematic. As for me,
yeah, I just finished a bookabout a company, and one of
the amazing Silicon Valley companies that nevergets any attention. It's called Intuitive,
and it used to be called IntuitiveSurgical. They invented the Da Vinci robot,
(29:00):
which is now used in millions ofsurgeries worldwide. Yes, it's true.
Your doctor is no longer laying handson you. She's in the corner
operating the robot's lookssion saying a videogames. So that was my latest deed.
That's very good. And we canfind you on LinkedIn. You said
you're on LinkedIn. I am onLinkedIn. Yes, very good. Well,
(29:23):
Glenn Cramon, thank you so muchfor coming on the Growth, Sell
and Retired podcast. I've got hugeamounts of notes already written down and I
appreciate you. Mike King, Thankyou, Mike King. All the best,
PD and all the best to allof you out there. Thank you
so much. Thanks for joining uson Grow Sell and Retire. For more
(29:47):
information tools or to book one ofour team members, to work with your
team business, or to speak atyour event or conference, visit Rockfine dot
co dot uk. If you likethe podcast, you'll love one of BT's
three books, The Assistant Purchase,True Gravity and the Book. The podcast
is based on, Grow, Selland Retire. If you want to work
(30:07):
for the rest of your life,that is your business. If you don't,
that is ours.
Grow, Sell and Retire is thepodcast for the lazy overachiever. Bad Dalton,
author of the assistant Purchase, TrueGravity and Grow, Sell and Retire,
is here to give his twenty fiveyears of secrets, tips and assistants
to take your business to the nextlevel. This podcast is for anyone who
wants to sell more, work lessand make better business. Now here's your
(00:25):
host, Bad with today's GSR podcast. Hey, everybody, Beat Dalton here,
Growth, Sell and Retire podcast Today. I have a great guest on
right now. I've got Glenn Cramonand we're going to talk today about writing
better, communicating better, and engagingwith an audience using words. So Glenn,
(00:45):
welcome to the podcast. Tell usa little bit about yourself and why
we're listening to you today. Thankyou, b d Honored to be here.
I teach practical writing at Stamford BusinessSchool. I've had three thousand wonderful
MBA and management science students of pastten years. Before that and still for
(01:10):
thirty seven years, I've been aneditor and sometimes reporter at The New York
Times. So I deal with thepractical writing side of things, not the
creative writing. So really getting intothe facts and figures and bringing those to
people or is that a good representationof it. Yes, So my most
(01:34):
important message to the students is youwant to make yourself one in a million.
And this is true of SMB ownersand managers. How do you make
yourself one in a million rather thanone of a million? And good writing
(01:56):
has a lot to do with that. I think that's really good. That's
really cool with the O and UHwith one one simple two letter or one
letter word that you can change theentire meaning of a sentence. And I
think that that becomes amazing, especiallyand I kind of lean into this in
our two hundred and eighty character words. You know, all this texting and
(02:17):
short form and you can't exceed thisamount of things. What have you seen
that's really changed in our communication andour communication style in this small text box
world over the last five years,especially since COVID BD. I love to
use the example of dating. Sohere's how things have gone backward. In
(02:42):
the old days, you broke upface to face or with a long handwritten
letter. Then the past century,maybe you broke up using the telephone.
The past thirty years, emails,the past two decades, it's become text
message, and now increasingly we oftenghost people no communication at all, and
(03:09):
that drives me crazy. So Itell my students the story of how a
woman I had planned to marry brokeup with me, and I said,
this is a way to do it. I texted her asking if she could
get together for coffee on a Tuesday. No, she wrote, tuesday doesn't
(03:30):
work. How about never does neverwork? She was honest, she was
to the point she left no doubt. That's powerful writing, none of this
ghosting or beating around the bushes.That's that's really it's really good in making
sure that people to bring it withhumor in comedy. But that's just one
(03:53):
of those things where you're trying toget that. But how do we talk
about impact? So yeah, andit's gone forward too. So it's just
so much easier than when we neededa pan or a typewriter, an envelope,
which means you have no excuse fornot content contacting someone or for not
(04:16):
answering them. And I go ona rampage about people who don't answer emails,
especially people within your network, withinyour business, within your industry.
Everyone should answer emails. And it'sso easy now to compose one and that's
what we talk about, and we'lltalk about a little bit in a second,
is just ways to make it easierto write a basic email. Well,
(04:42):
so, thanks to the computer,it's so much easier to revise your
writing than when you had to scratchit out or begin a new page on
your typewriter. And you'd say,oh, okay, well that's good enough,
so do that, revise and revisesome more. That's why got invented
word processors in pace. That's howto improve your writing. And then one
(05:03):
more thing, which is know youraudience. When you're writing to someone young.
For example, emojis and gifts arefine, but beware for someone older
they might seem immature, So I'davoid it when you're writing to older folks.
Then the other thing I encouraged topeople do with emails now is use
(05:25):
photos and videos. Even older peoplecan do that now the technology has made
it so easy. Why wouldn't youillustrate your email? For example, if
you're meeting a celebrity or you metsomebody important, take a selfie with them
and include it when you're writing backto them afterwards and say, hey,
we met the other day. Here'sa selfie of us. Most people are
(05:46):
honored to be in selfies and thatreally personalizes it and brings it to the
forefront. But I do agree withyou completely is that if somebody is in
your business, your network, you'resay, circle, whatever else it is,
it's very easy just to say extremelybusy this week? Can I get
back to you next week? Imean, how hard is it to do
(06:08):
that in two seconds? Or orwhat's appen or whatever else it is.
It's just it's pure humanistic communication.And I always say BD that when you
answer. When you don't answer emails, people think of you as either aloof
and distant or worse, as overwhelmed. You don't want people to think of
(06:32):
you as overwhelmed. If you doanswer emails, they think of you as
warm and on top of your game. So when you're looking at these these
really impactful communications, one of myone of my words that is kind of
my pet peeve is when I'm dealingwith business owners and they say that they're
busy. That's my pet beeve mebecause like you said, busy to me
(06:55):
means overwhelmed and you don't know howto handle your life, engaged or too
many things that I'm doing. Butbusy just means you don't have your life
in order, which is scary inbusiness. So what are some of your
pet peeve words that you see peopleright now that are kind of people are
hanging themselves up on. Well,here are some of my favorites. So
(07:23):
beginning an email with hope you arewell, Yes, I ask students,
raise your hand. You gotta behonest in this class if you begin an
email with hope you are well,and typically seventy or eighty percent did the
students raise their hand? And Isaid, that's the problem. You're making
(07:46):
yourself one of a million. Everyonedoes that. When chat Chibt begins an
email for you, it begins withhope you are well. Why Because Chatchibt
synthesizes what a million people do andsays, Okay, if a million people
are doing it, I'm going todo it. Avoid hope you are well.
It's a cliche. It's implied,make yourself one in a million in
(08:11):
everything you're right, Hope you arewell waste space, particularly for those in
a hurry reading on phones. AndI think most of us now are reading
most of our emails on our phones. If you want to begin with such
a greeting at least be more clever. During the pandemic, I heard people
say, hope you are feeling positiveand testing negative. That's just right for
(08:37):
a pandemic, and it makes youone in a million. And another pet
peeve I have is starting slowly beforegetting to the point. My boss at
the New York Times used to callthis type of writing organ music before the
church service begins. Start fast,get to the point. As my students
(08:58):
from in the Mill Terry say aboutresponding to an officer, bottom line,
up front, bluff. It's asign of respect not to waste an officer's
time. And I say, youdon't want to waste an officers times.
You don't want to waste anybody's time. So get to the point fast.
(09:20):
What's so I mean those are awesome? Because those are those are definitely How
about closing so throughout the opening?If you're in business emails, are you
sincerely? All the best sort ofare Di Glin? You know so so
glad you asked that BD. Ithink what sinks in most in my teaching
(09:43):
is my advice to close and emailwith something that makes the reader smile,
if not last laugh. So I'muh. For example, Uh, just
as you said. When I'm signinga letter somebody's done me a huge favor,
I will finish not by saying thankyou or sincerely. I'll finish by
(10:07):
saying thank you my queen if it'sa woman, or thank you Mike King
if it's a man. It's justunusual and it makes him smile. Also,
BD the ps, you know theps at the end of an email.
That can be your secret weapon toamuse the reader with something you know
(10:28):
they'll find funny er touching. Youwant to make them smile and leave your
email feeling good about you, andthe best way to do that is to
tell him something that either makes themsmile or laugh or that makes them go
awe, thank you for knowing thatabout me. So, when you're looking
at these things and you're taking yourtime in your overall communication, you say,
(10:52):
go back and kind of edit.So, when you're looking at an
email that you want to get somebodyto make impact, how many times should
I be looking at this again?You know, kind of reviewing, not
just going at it and saying okay, that's one could click send a great
question. So you want to lookfor two things in your email. Does
(11:15):
it display competence meaning you're impressive,I'd like to work with you. And
does it display warmth meaning hey,I'd like to have a beer with you.
Life is too short. People wantto work with people they like,
and so you need both warmth andcompetence. You need to be concise.
(11:41):
So when you're rereading your email,just ask yourself, do I show my
Do I make my point and showwhy it's right? Showing competence? Number
two? Do I make them smilea little bit? And it often has
to knowing something about them, notoh I hear you've been divorced nine times.
(12:05):
Something will make them say, hey, how'd you know that? Yeah
that's true, I do love thatrock group, or or I do love
that sports team, or yeah Idid you I grew up in Wisconsin.
How'd you know that? And thenthey immediately want to talk to you because
they said, oh, this isnot just a worker bee, this is
a colleague, this is a personI would enjoy the company of. And
then finally read it again and sayis this concise enough? And try to
(12:30):
cut the email in half. You'dbe surprised how easy it is to cut
your email. I just I believein that's so much. Well, you
know it's the old Winston Churchill,is it. Well, I didn't have
time, so I wrote a longletter that or whatever is his quote is
just it is time. It's creditedalso to Mark Twain, although I'm not
(12:54):
sure who really said, but isif I had had more time, I
would have written a shorter later.And it's true because it's really hard to
condense your writing, but it's asign of respect to your reader that you
took the time to do it,and it makes it it makes it personal,
it makes it feel better, especiallybecause we read so many emails a
(13:15):
day. I mean, I knowyou probably could receive one hundred a day
at least, and it's just like, how do you make it through all
of those? So you're really gettingto that point and people just want to
know where you're going to. Sosome of the things that you're talking about
and making us more and you've givenus a huge amount of list already,
but the things that you're seeing rightnow, if we bring chat GPT into
it, and like you say,these large language models are taking us and
(13:39):
just synthesizing all this stuff that youand I and everybody else in the world
and the New York Times. Youknow, however, however that thing's going
where it's saying, here's all thisstuff that's been put out in the world.
How many times does this reoccur?How are you seeing that people are
using it effectively to still be creativeand not just abusing it to plays red
(14:01):
And I do bd encourage people touse chat gpt. It's a miracle.
I just finished working on a bookand I use chatchipt every day for research.
So that's the difference. Chatchypt shouldn'tbe your writer. It should be
your writer, your researcher, andit should give you ideas. My former
(14:26):
student Nick Chow, who's an experton AI, says, just pretend when
you use chat GPT that you havea staff of five hundred semi competent interns.
So much of what they give youis direk But every so often you
see something that said, man,that's a really good idea. I'll use
(14:50):
that. Any of you have evertried chatchipt to write subject lines? It's
fabulous. It gives you a bunchof losers and then one that you think,
oh that's really that's close. Ilike that, And then you ask
GPT, give me ten variations onthis one good one, and then it'll
(15:13):
give you ten more in seconds,and then ultimately you're going to find a
really good one of which you wouldnot have thought on your own. So
I say to students, use chatptfor research, for ideas, but first
of all, you have to confirmthe facts it gives you, because number
(15:33):
one, it hallucinates just make stuffup. You've all heard of stories about
chat GBT inventing things, so youneed to confirm what it gives you or
you get in big trouble. AndI just say I tell them, remember,
using chatt is kind of like drivinga tesla. If you take your
(15:54):
hands off the wheel of a tesla, you might be very sorry anything with
chat GBT. If you leave thewriting to chat GPT, especially if your
audience is sophisticated, you're making amistake because the audience will say this is
mediocre writing at best. And chatGPT also tends to write emails and memos
(16:15):
that are much too long. Youcan tell chat GBT cut this in half,
but it often cuts out the wronghalf, so be careful. That's
very very good. So you're rightnow. Some of the writers that are
out there and people that you're readingand things like that, and seeing who
are some of your your favorite impactfulwriters currently. So I'm actually going to
(16:41):
start with a speech. People writespeeches, yes, And Stanford University has
an annual commencement. It's coming upthis weekend. And my favorite Stanford commencement
speech ever was by the actor SterlingK. Brown, which who many people
know from This is Us and frommore recently American fiction. He's a fabulous
(17:07):
actor and he demonstrated in his commencementspeech at Stanford what I emphasize most and
the first rule always is know asmuch as you can about your audience and
exploit it. Then you can makethem laugh and cry and act on what
(17:29):
you're saying and do what you're saying. So when Stirling came to Stanford,
he studied his audience. He knewthat while graduation celebrates the students, the
real celebrities are the parents who worktheir butts off to get their kids into
Stanford. And so they're actually aneven bigger audience at graduation than the students
(17:52):
are. There's two or three timesas many parents and cousins and grandparents.
So right at the start of thiscommencement speech. He knew his audience.
He told the parents that his goalbecause they hadn't heard of him. You
know, he was an actor.Young people know. He told the parents
his goal was to make them say, what a nice young man. I
(18:15):
think I'll go home and watch hisshow. And the parents roar. He
had loosened them up, and he'dmade them understand, I know you're out
there, I know who you are, I know your parents. I respect
you. So that's the largest circleof people. Then he goes smaller.
The second largest constituation constituency in thatStanford audience was the thousands of students themselves
(18:41):
who were graduating. So he wasthe Stanford grad and he told them I've
set where you sat, immediately makinga connection with him, and he likened
his experience to theirs. He said, I went through the four years,
admittedly as a drama major, butit still counts. And most of the
students are engineers. So he wasmaking him fun of himself as a drama
(19:04):
major. They were thrilled. Andthen once he'd won over those two big
audiences, most of all the parents, then the students. Then he reached
out to the black students. SterlingK. Brown is black, and he
engaged them with a chant from Stanford. Stanford has a black theme house.
(19:26):
Ouhjamah and oohjama is not something thatany of the parents or most of the
students had ever heard. And ifhe had started with that, they would
have said, who is this guy? Well? What is this But because
they already loved him, because hehad already made a connection with both the
parents and the students, they wantedto play along. And when the black
(19:48):
students replied to Sterling Brown with abig cheer, the whole crowd was delayed
because they were already already felt likethey were inside. Make your audience feel
like they're on the inside, noton the outside. So anybody who wants
to read some winning writing, googleSterling K. Brown's Stanford commencement speech.
(20:11):
Sterling K. Brown Stanford commencement speech. That should be your top takeaway from
this podcast. That's awesome. Andso know your audience. How are some
give us some tips on understanding ouraudience is better? So you can go
into whatever sector, idea drive whereshould we be looking and how do we
(20:32):
start to understand it better? Ourclients, our people were talking to our
employees, things like that when we'recommunicating. Great question, BD. First,
this is why God invented LinkedIn.I don't use social media, but
I do use LinkedIn at the minimum. Most people have LinkedIn profiles or something
(20:52):
comparable on the web. Just lookthem up. You'd be amazed at how
few people do that. So evenknowing where they work before or where they
went to college, and often peoplewill put on their LinkedIn profiles, and
I think they should their favorite hobbies, their favorite musical groups, what they
do in their spare time, whotheir favorite sports teams are. That way,
(21:17):
you have a way to connect withthem that makes them smile. Hey,
how'd you know that? Well,most of the time they'll figure out
you look it up on their LinkedIn, but they're flattered that you took the
time to know something about them.The other thing you can do is often
do your homework, do some networking. You see on LinkedIn who their contacts
are, who are shared with you, So just look at the contexts and
(21:41):
think, oh, he knows thisperson too. I'm going to contact this
person and say what do you knowabout this other person I'm trying to reach
And you'll often get a nice story, something touching or something funny and use
that. It's like anything else.Work the room. I always say,
you're so focused on sourcing the company, source the people too, because the
(22:06):
company's made up of people. Thebusiness is owned by a person or people
or shareholders or whatever it is.Those people just want to make money or
you know, serve the world orserve clients. But they still just it's
still a commercial entity. So here'shere's a bit of a fun one.
And you know, we've had alittle bit of a conversation about it.
But if you could edit one historicaldocument to make it more impactful, which
(22:30):
one would you choose? And why? Okay, let me think about that
the guide. There are so manyfun ones. So I'm going to give
you two examples, I think BDSo the first is unnecessary words drive me
(22:51):
crazy. So the advert words likecurrently and absolutely words it end with l
y. We use them all thetime when we're speaking. I urge students
to avoid them when they're writing.And I use Dickens to illustrate. I
(23:12):
add unnecessary adverbs to his opening inTail of Two Cities. I said,
imagine Tale of Two Cities with adverbsthe way we use them. It was
happily the best of times, itwas unfortunately the worst. At times,
(23:32):
you don't need to say happily orunfortunately. You don't need to say tragically.
The train wreck killed one hundred people. It's implied that is tragically.
Donald Trump uses adverbs often. Forexample, he said we will totally destroy
North Korea, and for his audience, destroy implies totally. You don't need
(23:56):
it, but for his audience.And I tell the students he's a terrific
speaker because he knows his audience.Totally destroy destroy sounds worse than destroy.
So okay when you're speaking, butnot when you're writing. And the other
thing I do is to show thevalue of simple, concise writing. I
(24:18):
edit Ralph Waldo Emerson. So here'show Emerson put it. There is no
beautifier of complexion or form or behaviorlike the wish to scatter joy and not
pain around us. And I say, okay, that's lovely, but most
people won't absorb something so complicated,So simplify it. How about just scattered
(24:42):
joy rather than pain. It's healthier. It says the same thing, much
more simply, much more concisely.That's awesome. So if there was,
you've given us huge amounts of things. So this is anything else that we
would want to take away about it. Pactful communications, especially since you've seen
(25:02):
them. You've you've you will alsowork, you know, New York Times
and doing stuff. You've seen ahuge change in a pivot in how people
are consuming information. You know,like you said on your phone versus in
a newspaper, headlines on a websiteversus blah blah blah. So how how
are you guys competing against the eyeballsof every other online communicator out there by
(25:30):
speaking more succinctly and more simply byavoiding convoluted jargon. Many people you deal
with in the business world never learnedthe jargon that is popular in places like
Silicon Valley or Wall Street, Andthen when they hear you use it,
they look at you funny. SoI know some people think complicated words and
(25:56):
sentences make them sound smarter. Theydon't remember the words of the great writer
Kurt Vonnegut. I trust my writingmost, and others seem to trust it
most when I sound most like aperson from Indianapolis, which is what I
am. So I say, whysay utilize when you can say use?
(26:22):
Why say incentivize when you can sayencourage or motivate. People outside Silicon Valley
and wallshreet may not know what incentivizedmeans, and they're they're not going to
trust you as much. This iswhat Donald Trump has figured out, is
that his audience doesn't words like incentivize, doesn't like words like incentivized and utilized.
(26:45):
And I bet even the most educatedAmericans have no idea what idate means.
I had never heard that word untilI came to Silicon Valley. It
means improve upon, and Silicon Valley, where I am right now, does
boast some of the worst defenders.A friend of mine compile the list his
(27:07):
favorite nonsensical jargon, and here's anexample. This is about scaling emerging solutions
to pivot the frame to embracing what'spossible. What does that mean? Here's
another one. I'm particularly excited abouttheir interest in pivoting more toward a solutions
frame as they step into this nextseason of storytelling. As Tevy the dairy
(27:32):
Man would have said, that's nottalking, that's babbling. Speak to me,
so I can understand, Glynn,that's amazing. So where can we
What's what's kind of next for you? I know, you're you're doing lots
of stuff and you're having fun,but are anything you're you're publishing? You
said, he just worked on abook, and where can we find out
(27:53):
more about you? And I wantto add one more thing more important is
something about right about me. Thethird thing I'd say is learn to tell
stories. So much business writing readslike term papers, and you want to
write something closer to scripts for Hollywoodmovies, with vivid scenes, with dialogue,
(28:17):
with quotes, with humor. Myfriend, the New York Times calmnist
Nick Christoff reminds us that you canwrite about millions starving in Africa and readers
won't respond. But if you tellthe story of one stick thin little girl
reduced to eating clay with the buzzardswaiting for her to die, readers will
(28:38):
respond. So try to make everythingyou write more cinematic. As for me,
yeah, I just finished a bookabout a company, and one of
the amazing Silicon Valley companies that nevergets any attention. It's called Intuitive,
and it used to be called IntuitiveSurgical. They invented the Da Vinci robot,
(29:00):
which is now used in millions ofsurgeries worldwide. Yes, it's true.
Your doctor is no longer laying handson you. She's in the corner
operating the robot's lookssion saying a videogames. So that was my latest deed.
That's very good. And we canfind you on LinkedIn. You said
you're on LinkedIn. I am onLinkedIn. Yes, very good. Well,
(29:23):
Glenn Cramon, thank you so muchfor coming on the Growth, Sell
and Retired podcast. I've got hugeamounts of notes already written down and I
appreciate you. Mike King, Thankyou, Mike King. All the best,
PD and all the best to allof you out there. Thank you
so much. Thanks for joining uson Grow Sell and Retire. For more
(29:47):
information tools or to book one ofour team members, to work with your
team business, or to speak atyour event or conference, visit Rockfine dot
co dot uk. If you likethe podcast, you'll love one of BT's
three books, The Assistant Purchase,True Gravity and the Book. The podcast
is based on, Grow, Selland Retire. If you want to work
(30:07):
for the rest of your life,that is your business. If you don't,
that is ours.
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