Get To The Point! Steve Woodruff’s Clarity Fuel Formula

Jim Fuhs [00:00:01]:
Yeah. Let's do it. If you're ready to slice through the noise and make your message heard, you won't wanna miss this one. We have the one and the only Steve Woodruff, the king of clarity in the house. Welcome, Steve. Welcome aboard.

Chris Stone [00:00:16]:
Jim and Chris, great to see you. Thanks for having me on board.

Jim Fuhs [00:00:20]:
Absolutely. Absolutely. So I'm I'm excited to dig into this. But the first before before we go and and start talking about this because you and I you know, this is gonna be free consultation for me because I am about as clear as mud. So this is gonna be, outstanding for me. So send me the invoice later, Steve. But I gotta ask you this, the king of clarity? I mean, is that was that something that, that you that you sort of came up with? Or was this someone that said, here you go. Here's here's your clown or your crown, sir?

Steve Woodruff [00:00:52]:
Yeah. Someone else fortunately, someone came up with it for me because that is really a presumptuous title. I mean,

Chris Stone [00:00:58]:
come on.

Jim Fuhs [00:00:58]:
Listen, confidence. Right? I

Chris Stone [00:01:00]:
mean, hey.

Steve Woodruff [00:01:01]:
You know, some years ago, a friend of mine on social media, Chris Brogan, wrote on my Facebook timeline, happy birthday to the king of Clary. And I looked at that and I said, oh, that is some really good branding. Do I dare take that up? And the answer was yes. I did dare take it up. So There

Jim Fuhs [00:01:22]:
you go.

Steve Woodruff [00:01:22]:
Because someone else gave me the title, I'm allowed to use it. And, and it's turned out to be phenomenal branding because, you know, there's only one king. That's true. Because somebody told me I was the king. I knew. There you

Jim Fuhs [00:01:40]:
go. Oh, man. That's awesome. So, you've got a couple of books and for those of you who haven't made their way over to Amazon, please do by going dealcasters.live. We've got those books and we're gonna talk a lot about the contents of those books, Steve, but something else caught my eye when we were sort of preparing for the show, and that is the phrase that's emblazoned on your LinkedIn profile, sir, which is the elevator pitch is dead. Right. Talk about the elevator pitch being dead. I'm I'm like, woah.

Jim Fuhs [00:02:14]:
Hello. I've I've worked so long and hard on mine.

Steve Woodruff [00:02:18]:
Well, there's only two fundamental problems with the elevator pitch. Okay? Number one, nobody wants to be pitched, and number two, nobody wants to talk in an elevator. Other than that, it's just a it's a fine term. Now the concept of the elevator pitch, having a compressed message, is great, but it's not compressed enough the way people are talking about it, and it's too much telling and selling. And so I think you need a fifteen to twenty second way of introducing yourself that's compelling, that draws people in to say, oh, what's that mean and tell me more? And that's what I call a memory dart. And I believe that the best way to introduce yourself is with a memory dart. So here's the question we all have to answer who knows how many times a year. Steve, what do you do? And the way we answer that question either opens the door to opportunity or it's boring.

Steve Woodruff [00:03:26]:
So what I do, one of my memory darts is somebody says, Steve, what do you do? I said I say, I help people answer that very question in a way that's interesting and not boring. It's called the memory dart. And then they have to ask, what's a memory dart? And off we go. And so everybody should have a way of introducing themselves that is sticky and a hook and interesting and lets you get to the point of what your real value is all about.

Jim Fuhs [00:04:01]:
I love that. And I think, you know, you know, if there's ever a better time, then to do this, it's now because yeah. Listen. I I hear the words, you know, the this phrase short attention spans so much, and, you know, and, you know, vertical video and and AI and all these platforms are just, you know, the the the surge is is very high. And, people will say, well, you know, everybody's, you know, attention spans are shorter. You know, I maybe that's true to a degree, but, do you feel like maybe people just have less patience for for the for the muck that they have to wade through in order to get to what they need?

Steve Woodruff [00:04:43]:
One of the more interesting books that was written back in the seventies or eighties was the attention economy, and this author was writing about the fact that the most important commodity is people's attention, and it's getting harder and harder to win it. Now I was around for the seventies and eighties. I was around for the sixties. And how much harder is it now when the average American is looking at a screen seven hours a day, when the average number of times we pick up this device is, you know, between 153 times a day? The fight for attention is just simply hugely challenging and just keeps getting worse, which means that for us, we have to be that much more skillful and that much more quick to be able to win that battle for somebody's attention.

Jim Fuhs [00:05:44]:
I love that. So so let me ask you this, Steve. Like, who who are some good examples that you can maybe cite other than yourself? Because, like, so you'll have to as the king of clarity, you'll have to, you know, you'll you'll you'll have to look down the org chart a little bit and kinda like, who who who in your opinion is a are have great examples of using that that memory dart and being being memorable and hooky with with answering that question?

Steve Woodruff [00:06:11]:
Well, one of the newest acolytes that's become very effective is my youngest son. And so my youngest son, Seth, I have five grown boys, he has recently taken on a job where he's doing photography work with a traditional camera and with a drone and is part of this company offering where they document the progress of a construction site in a building over time, and they take document it with all these different pictures. And he said, dad, you've been talking about this term memory dart, and my title is documentation specialist. And I said, well, Seth, that's pretty boring. But see what we can do with that. And so and I'm I'm just I'm driving to the gym, talking to him, and he's he's in his car driving. And I said, well, Seth, how about this? Introduce yourself next time this way. I get paid to fly drones and take pictures.

Steve Woodruff [00:07:14]:
And sure enough, we get off the phone. Five minutes later, he gets pulled over by a policeman because his right rear brake light is out. And and the cop comes up and asks him what he does. And Seth says, well, may as well. And he says, I get paid to fly drones and started in this conversation with this policeman. And, you know, he's just a 20 kid. But here's the thing. Anybody can be good at this.

Steve Woodruff [00:07:43]:
Anyone. You just have to find an interesting way to say what you do. And so you don't have to be some highfalutin' actor or some high paid social media maven. You just find an angle in what your work is, and then you come up with a way, like Jim would say, the marine way of doing things. Okay. What's the marine way of doing things, Jim? And then Jim has a chance to open up. So memory darts are for anybody. Everybody can have one.

Jim Fuhs [00:08:19]:
So I have to ask, did your son get a ticket?

Steve Woodruff [00:08:23]:
No. He got one.

Jim Fuhs [00:08:24]:
Okay. So I

Chris Stone [00:08:25]:
did tell

Jim Fuhs [00:08:25]:
you it worked in two ways then. He was he was memorable and didn't get a ticket. I love it.

Steve Woodruff [00:08:29]:
Exactly. Yeah. I can't guarantee you. Can't guarantee future results, but, you know,

Chris Stone [00:08:35]:
it's always a

Jim Fuhs [00:08:35]:
good one. Disclaimer on the memory darts. I I think everybody heard that. Awesome. Jim, I know you had a question. Sure.

Chris Stone [00:08:42]:
Yeah. So, you know, Steve, Chris and I with Dealcasters, a lot of times, like, when we wrap up the show, we say don't fear the gear, but I guess, is that really a memory, or do you think maybe there's a better way for us, like, when people say, well, what's Dealcasters about? I I think that's something that we probably hadn't thought about before because it was like, oh, well, you know, we have this show. Right? We start we start blabbering. Oh, we have this show, and we have people on, and sometimes we don't. We talk

Jim Fuhs [00:09:08]:
about that. You blabber, Jim. I don't blabber at all.

Steve Woodruff [00:09:11]:
I'm not

Jim Fuhs [00:09:11]:
sure. No kidding me.

Steve Woodruff [00:09:13]:
Alright. So this is this is my favorite thing to do, by the way. Do it live right now. Okay?

Jim Fuhs [00:09:19]:
Okay.

Steve Woodruff [00:09:20]:
Go gear the gear is cute, but I don't know what you're trying to tell me. I'm not afraid of gear. I don't know what gear you mean. Fear, what's that? So it's it's a sort of a memorable little tagline, but it doesn't give me a visual of what you're doing. So answer me this. What is the point of Dealcasters? What are you trying to accomplish besides make a million dollars, have a massive audience? Yeah. Yeah. Yeah.

Steve Woodruff [00:09:51]:
Okay. Let's be a little more noble. What are you actually trying to do here?

Chris Stone [00:09:57]:
Jim? Chris, I'm gonna let you go I'm gonna let you go first. You're the

Jim Fuhs [00:09:59]:
you're the one that asked him the question. Yeah.

Chris Stone [00:10:02]:
But you're the one that wanted the consulting.

Jim Fuhs [00:10:04]:
Okay. You're making me squirm now, Steve. This see, this is this is good stuff. This is good stuff for all the folks that are listening and watching. The the point really in the the original point that when Jim and I got into this is we're remote producers, and we are constantly doing what you're seeing right now for other people. And we are constantly in the process of explaining the tech and the gear and the and coaching people through this process. So we created a show where we could demonstrate what we did while creating, inspirational content for others for them to do it themselves. Okay.

Jim Fuhs [00:10:41]:
So that was that was about that was the the lobbyist thin dart that threw into the air, but that that that gives you the the the concept of it.

Steve Woodruff [00:10:51]:
Thank

Chris Stone [00:10:52]:
you. We wanted to help we wanna help people kind of overcome that hurdle. And what drives us is that when we have people like say, after watching your show, I went out, I bought this microphone, and I'm starting my podcast or my show or whatever, so that's kind of what ultimately drives us.

Steve Woodruff [00:11:12]:
Mhmm. So

Jim Fuhs [00:11:13]:
I don't

Steve Woodruff [00:11:13]:
know if

Chris Stone [00:11:13]:
that if that helps or or hurts our You mean? Or dart.

Steve Woodruff [00:11:18]:
Okay. So don't fear the gear doesn't necessarily, right off the bat, tell me it's about podcasting. It also doesn't necessarily tell me how you're gonna help me. You're encouraging me to have a disposition, but I don't know why. So And right off the top of my head, you know, that I'll send the invoice later if you really like it. Please.

Chris Stone [00:11:38]:
But, anyway,

Steve Woodruff [00:11:40]:
podcasting, it's way easier than you think. Now I know what you're talking about, and now I know what you're gonna do for me or at least you're gonna show me something because podcasting, if you're not into it, is intimidating like everything else that's new. First time you publish a book, it's intimidating. Starting a podcast, intimidating. Starting a blog, intimidating. Starting a business, intimidating. So the fear part that you're talking about is there. Intimidation is a real big problem with anything else, but you've gotta give people little more information of how you're going to help them overcome their fear of something specific.

Steve Woodruff [00:12:21]:
You see how that works? Gotta be a little more, precise so that I know what problem you're facing and what pain you're taking away.

Jim Fuhs [00:12:33]:
Got it. So so if I'm if I'm gonna put this into a formula, Steve, which I I know you you, you talk a lot about, it's about identifying maybe a, identifying a problem that you solve for a specific type of person. Is that that accurate? Or did I did I miss one of the steps? Or is that that kind of like the general formula?

Steve Woodruff [00:12:56]:
The core what I say is, look, everybody's gotta have a core value proposition. And the core value proposition for any company, any brand, any person, any consultant is this. I fix this felt pain for this specific type of person or company using this superpower. That's the core of it. If you can create that one sentence and fill in those three blanks, you've got the core of a value proposition. Now once you can say that, then coming up with a nice little memory dart twist to introduce, it might be a different phrase, but it's gonna lead right to that value proposition. Okay? So a great introduction involves a statement, that's a value proposition and a clever way of drawing people into that value proposition. And if you've got a nice, clear way of saying, this is the problem we fix, Not only is that great for selling and networking, it's actually the core of your strategic direction as a company.

Steve Woodruff [00:14:11]:
You've got to be clear on exactly who you're serving and exactly how you're serving them.

Jim Fuhs [00:14:19]:
So what do you think the the you know, with the tons of people that you deal with, on a day to day basis, what do you think is you know, what are some of the common mistakes or or maybe some of the biggest mistakes that people make when they're when they're putting this thing together? Is it is it too many words? Is it, running running a chat g p t and letting that, rubber stamp your content out the other side? Or what, what are the other mistakes that people are making?

Steve Woodruff [00:14:45]:
Two main mistakes. First one is TMI, too much information. We try to say too much. Constant, constant, constant problem. We wanna pack about 27 thoughts into our opening. That's part of the reason why the elevator pitch is not effective. It's too much. And the human brain is not ready to process that much information and work that hard right off the bat.

Steve Woodruff [00:15:11]:
You've gotta give me a quick light on and a quick value. The second thing is that then it becomes if it's not too many words, it's generic words. Okay? So if you open up and say, we provide podcasting solutions and services for people. Okay. You and a million others. That's generic. That is not telling me what your unique angle is, what your superpower is, how you're fixing it. So genericness and TMI ness are the two biggest problems.

Steve Woodruff [00:15:52]:
And when you're in the corporate world, part of the generic problem is also jargon. Throwing a bunch of jargon in

Jim Fuhs [00:15:59]:
Yeah.

Steve Woodruff [00:16:00]:
That says absolutely nothing, but it sounds impressive when in fact you actually just totally turn the person's mind off. Right.

Jim Fuhs [00:16:08]:
Yeah. So our an acronym that only a specific, you know, subset of people really know, right, is the other thing that I you know, like, I'm I'm working with a client now, and and there's they're you they're throwing all these acronyms. And I'm like, pretend I'm in eighth grade. Would you say that? You know? Yeah. And and and they're like, woah. This is this is high level stuff. Yeah. Well, stop making it to the people feel stupid when they don't understand what you're saying.

Jim Fuhs [00:16:32]:
Right? And that that, you know, that may be part of the thing. Right? Do you feel like if somebody gives information that makes that they think makes them sound smart, that someone else is reacting like, I don't even know what they're talking about. I must not be smart enough to be in this room.

Steve Woodruff [00:16:47]:
The funny thing with jargon is at a very high level, high corporate level, it's a great moneymaker because the people that are using the jargon, the big consulting groups and all those, and they're they're accompanying their jargon with all these, you know, hundred point slide PowerPoint decks, All this fluff that sounds good and sounds like best practices and blah blah blah. And the people they're selling it to, executives, that's what they want. They want something like that that's fluffy and generic, but it sounds like it's expertise so that they can blame those people if it doesn't work out. So there's this one strata where it works, but for the rest of life, it's nonsense. And so I just don't like jargon at all, and I don't like generic meaningless information. And the way I illustrate that most commonly is I ask people this, and in fifteen plus years, nobody, and I mean, nobody, individuals, groups has ever been able to answer this question. What's on the side? What's written on the side of a UPS truck? Now we've all seen a UPS truck thousands and thousands of times. People know there's a logo there, UPS, and people know it's Brown.

Steve Woodruff [00:18:12]:
But there are two phrases that UPS uses on their vehicles. Sometimes it's both, sometimes it's one, sometimes it's the other, and they do not stick. Okay? So the first one is worldwide services.

Chris Stone [00:18:33]:
Oh.

Steve Woodruff [00:18:34]:
Services? But just Generic? Yeah. It means absolutely nothing. Wow. And no way can anybody process that. No way does it turn a light on, and it's not memorable. Worldwide services. It's a technically accurate description, but it's junk as far as being able to actually make an impression. The second is worse, synchronizing the world of commerce.

Steve Woodruff [00:19:03]:
Oh my god. So that is aimed at a tiny percentage of people that are executives in supply chain management and logistics. They understand that UPS has this whole bath office logistical engine. It is very impressive. They are a logistical machine, but you're putting this message on a truck that's driving around neighborhoods delivering packages to normal human beings who have no idea what it means to synchronize the world of commerce, nor do they care. And they have 130,000 vehicles, trucks, vans, planes, emblazoned with phrases that nobody knows.

Chris Stone [00:19:54]:
But, you know, what's funny is I don't know if you guys remember a few years back, they had a commercial. That's what I was thinking of is, like, what can brown do

Steve Woodruff [00:20:00]:
for you?

Chris Stone [00:20:00]:
Can brown

Jim Fuhs [00:20:01]:
do for you? Which would be better. Right? I mean, at least at least you're memorable. I mean, it's it's at least you have some sort of, like

Steve Woodruff [00:20:08]:
They were they were trading on the one thing that people do recognize, breath. Right. But personify a color, especially the brown color, is a really warm move. The other dumb one they did was a campaign called we love logistics, and everybody's running around, jumping around, saying we love logistics. I gotta tell you, nobody loves logistics. And don't try to make don't try to make the average American who doesn't even know what logistics are get excited about the fact that a bunch of people in brown uniforms love logistics. It's it's I don't know who runs their marketing, but something's

Chris Stone [00:20:43]:
I love analytics.

Jim Fuhs [00:20:45]:
You know?

Chris Stone [00:20:45]:
Like You know? Exactly. Yeah.

Jim Fuhs [00:20:48]:
I mean So do you so, Steve, do you then I mean, this sounds to me like, tell me I mean, I know you you you're a keynote speaker, obviously, an author. Do you work with companies to work on their branding like this? Is is this or is it is it individuals to work on more of the memorable memory dark stuff? Or is it more of the work sitting in sitting in with marketing teams and working on, creating memorable content like that?

Steve Woodruff [00:21:15]:
So I do a lot with individuals, because that's where my passion is. My passion is with individuals, people and by the way, this isn't just for consultants or solopreneurs or entrepreneurs in startups. I do this with people in career transition. So individuals that are trying to figure out their value proposition, how do they position themselves with a company to be hired? It's it's branding. It's personal branding in that case, personal professional branding. So I work a lot with individuals, and then I work with corporations on their brand messaging, how their what their core message is, how are they gonna put it on say a trade show booth, how are they gonna do it on their website, how they appear on LinkedIn. I'm not an agency so I don't do the execution part of marketing but I do help people arrive at the core identity and package of messaging. And the process for that is exactly the same whether it's a 20 year old documentation specialist in his car with his drone or whether it's a massive corporation.

Steve Woodruff [00:22:23]:
It's all comes down to distilling the message in great works.

Jim Fuhs [00:22:28]:
Speaking of distilling great messages, we have our friend Jody Krangle, who's joined us over here, on Amazon. She's waving hot. And she is apparently is a big fan of yours because she's, she's cheerleading you, from, from Amazon. We're a big fan of Jody. She's been on the show. Voice that melts like butter in your ears. Jody Kringle, thank you, thank you for,

Steve Woodruff [00:22:51]:
for joining us. Memory daughter. Okay. That's a great because it's it's vivid. It creates a picture, and it's true to Jody because her voice is warm. She's got a warm voice. I told her that when I met her. There's this certain professional warmth to it.

Steve Woodruff [00:23:08]:
But you can say professional warmth, and then you can say melt like butter. Melt like butter in your ear. Absolutely remember.

Jim Fuhs [00:23:18]:
And, actually, if butter was melting in my ears, it probably wouldn't be super comfortable. Not as comfortable as, like, listening to Jody talk about whatever. She she can read their own book.

Steve Woodruff [00:23:27]:
But you're gonna but you're gonna remember it. Right.

Jim Fuhs [00:23:31]:
That's all that matters. Jim, you had a you had a question.

Chris Stone [00:23:36]:
Yeah. So, Steve, and you talked about this in the in the Zoom meeting we had, but you also, talk about this in your book. And one of your other sons, which I thought that's where you're gonna go originally, he, you know, as you said, actually listened to you, and he started whiskey with a view. And, of course, just when you think of that, right, it definitely is memorable, and so what do you what kind of I guess, how did you help him come up with that? Because I'm sure there were all kinds of other thoughts in that, and and I guess the other, part of that question is, like, if you're doing, you know, maybe that's the danger, right? We're not doing just one thing. If you're doing different things, I guess you have to maybe have more than one dart.

Steve Woodruff [00:24:21]:
Yeah. Let me pick up that part first, and then I'll talk about mate. So Yep. Most people, when they are in business, they do more than one thing. So what I say is you've gotta have a lead horse. You need a lead message, one flag that's going to be your main thing. If you have other things that are you can have in your back pocket, that once somebody knows you, trusts you, talking to you, then you can say, oh, by the way, I I also do this if you need that. Or by the way, I also do this.

Steve Woodruff [00:24:53]:
But you don't wanna confuse people by coming right up front and saying I do four things because they won't remember you for any of them. So I do more than clarity, but clarity is the main thing, and that's all I want you to remember. Later on, if you want to find out about this or that, that's fine. So I always encourage people, you know, even if you do a few things, you've got to pick your lead horse, and you've got to try to stick that one thing into the mind because people don't have 15 memory slots

Jim Fuhs [00:25:25]:
Right.

Steve Woodruff [00:25:25]:
For you. They're going to have one. So pick your pigeonhole, and and embrace it, and put yourself in that pigeonhole, and own it. So my son, Nate, he and I started exploring the world of bourbon and and whiskey, some years ago together. I never had any interest really in in whiskey before then, and and he was working as a bar tender. And we both started to just explore, and we really liked it. And we started to have our own little unofficial tastings together, and we would read up on it and try to figure this out. And Nate's always been a great photographer and a highly creative person.

Steve Woodruff [00:26:07]:
And he glommed onto this stuff, and he really started to develop a passion and a great palate for whiskey. And he started networking effectively in the industry, got to know brand ambassadors, got to know distillers, and then he started taking these beautiful pictures of whiskey in nature. And Nate's a very much a nature guy, hiking guy. And he was composing these lovely shots and he started this Instagram thing, Whiskey with a View. Whiskey has not traditionally been marketed by anything but old school old guys. It's an old guy's club. And Nate's this young buck who's creating these beautiful pictures, and he's he's looks like a Viking, and he he's, you know, he's young and vigorous, and and he had his dog and I mean, the whole thing. And, and he just started doing these fabulous pictures, and he started developing quite a following.

Steve Woodruff [00:27:06]:
And now he's over 80,000 people on Instagram. And that began to get him more opportunities to work with other brands. And they started to pay him for his pictures and pay him for posts. And then he got some brand ambassador positions. And now he's been approached a couple years ago by some venture capital folks who are helping him stand up his own brand. And hopefully, the first whiskey will be released next year under him. He's the face he's the face of the brand. So he took this interest and moved it all the way up the scale into influence and then business, just by being passionately devoted and using his talents and staying laser focused on it.

Jim Fuhs [00:27:56]:
That is that is so so cool. You know, and it probably helps that his dad gave him some memory darts to put in his pocket along the way. Right? And and helping and you something tells me you had more than just your DNA along for the ride there, that there was there was definitely some, some free consultation happening there with, with you and your son and how he helped to build that business. That's incredible. Any stories, that that where you helped him with with clarity along the way?

Steve Woodruff [00:28:25]:
All along the way. So, we we brainstormed constantly all along the way as he started to develop this thing. And so, you know, I don't know how many times we went back and forth, but I think one of the most memorable times we had was, he was with a brand at that point, Whistlepig, and they were doing tastings at this event with a whole bunch of other distillers up

Chris Stone [00:28:50]:
in Kentucky. And he said, dad, why don't you come up for the weekend and help me? And I

Steve Woodruff [00:28:55]:
said, sure. And, so he had his little booth there, and, I I knew enough and I picked up enough of his lingo that I I kinda knew the advantages. And we were then both just doing tastings, and it was like I was part of the team. I mean, I I may as well have been another Whistleblig brand ambassador. And we had the best time just selling stuff together. And, and it was just this incredible bonding time where we were doing his whiskey thing together. And so we've had many, many moments like that. And, it's just been a delight to escalate the discussion up from dad and kid to, you know, coconspirators, strategic business, marketing.

Steve Woodruff [00:29:42]:
It it's just a blast.

Jim Fuhs [00:29:45]:
Yeah. As a father, that's, you know, that that's one of the things that, you know, you my kids are not interested in podcasting or production. Right? And so it's just not always but you you end up finding something that you can do together. For my youngest son, it's it's, you know, Detroit sports. You know, for my oldest son, we go to we go to shows together. Like, you end up finding something, but it's almost like, there's still a part of me that wishes, like, yeah, but why don't you just do a podcast about that? And then and then all of a sudden they're interested in it. So it's really cool that you were able to not you know, bonding with your son along the way and being able to do that and and also utilize your expertise in kinda letting him sort of let let that the bird fly out of the nest and and and see that success story is is is incredibly cool. I wanted to I wanted to pause for a bit because we're we're talking about more whiskey than books here, and, you wrote a couple of great books.

Jim Fuhs [00:30:40]:
This show is not about whiskey, but, you know, today it was for fifteen minutes. But, there's a there's a couple of books she wrote, and I and I wanted to dig in a little bit if I could. First one here, the most recent one is The Point, and, that's available on Amazon. It's called The Point, How to Win with Clarity Fueled Communications. I bet there's a memory dart in that subtitle that you used there because that, clarity fueled. And and so you talk about the is it the clarity fuel formula in this in this book? Talk a little bit about that that clarity fuel formula, if you would.

Steve Woodruff [00:31:18]:
So, when I wrote my first book, which is called Clarity Wins, that was about having nice compressed messages to try to be try to move your business to a referral base because part of the reason for putting these memory darts into people's minds is you want them to know exactly what you do, who you do it for so they can refer you Because we all know that the best business is referral business, but most people don't have a referral strategy. So that whole book is about coming up with these compact messages, these memory darts, and how to brand yourself, how to love your pigeonhole, and how to plant your message in people's minds effectively. But even as I released that book in 2018, I had been doing workshops for my corporate clients on other parts of communication, project management, internal collaboration, all this stuff. And I had this crazy idea. Maybe there is actually one formula for all human communication. Not just a selling formula, a marketing formula, a coaching formula, a blah blah. Because, you know, there are thousands of these systems with all their own acronyms, all their own stuff. But when you read them and you look at them, you go, you know, a lot of this is the same.

Steve Woodruff [00:32:41]:
So I worked for years, especially during the pandemic years, to try to figure out if I could boil it all down to a formula, and I did. And so the point is a distillation of that. It's four rules and eight memory dark tools that anybody can apply, and it can apply to any role, in person, any language, any anything. It's just human communication. And so, so this little, it's a handbook basically, and it starts out with these two fundamental realities that your customer is the human brain. You've got to understand how the brain works, what it wants. The brain is processing 11,000,000 bits of information per second from all five senses, and you to gain focus, you have to win the 60 bit battle. When you're looking at somebody and talking that's a 60 bit information flow, you're competing with 11,000,000 bits, and you've got to get through the brain's master filter, which is called the reticular activating system.

Steve Woodruff [00:33:50]:
And it turns out that the key to getting through the reticular activating system is a very simple acronym that we all know, WIIFM, what's in it for me? Yeah. You have to lead with something new, interesting, and relevant, and then the brain goes, oh, I wanna listen to Jim. But if you go blah blah blah blah blah blah blah and it's not relevant, the 11,000,000 bits are gonna wipe you out all the time. So the moment of opportunity is winning that 60 bit focus, and you the thing you gotta understand as a marketer, salesperson, podcaster, dad, teacher, preacher, is you've got to win the 60 bid buck. So brain friendly communication. Human brain is your customer. And then the second thing is we all have not only the same customer, we all have the same competition, which is the noise, the vast tsunami of noise that competes with us. And so your competition isn't that company or that person or that brand.

Steve Woodruff [00:34:55]:
Your competition is the noise. And therefore, we have to learn how to get right to the point and win that battle. And so the rest of the book explains the four rules, which are very simple.

Chris Stone [00:35:08]:
You have to have a point. That does help.

Steve Woodruff [00:35:11]:
You have to get right to the point quickly to get through the RAS. You've got to get the point across, which means you've got to arrive at understanding and memory, and that's where the memory darts come in. And then the goal is to get on the same page, to reach alignment and agreement. So that simple four steps for anything from email to writing a book, to journalism, to broadcast, everything. Those are the four steps to making great communication. And then the eight tools, the eight memory dark tools, all start with s. These are the brain friendly things that you can use to get right into somebody's head, a little statement, a snippet, a story, a statistic, a side by side comparison. And I list out eight S's, and one of my favorites is symbolic language.

Steve Woodruff [00:36:11]:
Okay. So king of clarity is symbolic language. It's a word picture. If Jim is the Mercedes of something or other.

Jim Fuhs [00:36:22]:
Oh my god. All it language. We gotta bring that. We gotta bring that. Can we make can

Chris Stone [00:36:26]:
we make it a Porsche?

Jim Fuhs [00:36:27]:
He's like the Jeep. Can we like a Jeep.

Steve Woodruff [00:36:30]:
The Jeep. Yeah. But what you've done is you've taken something that's already in somebody's head. Yep. It has a whole bunch of characteristics, and you've just simply attached them to it. It. And you've made a picture. And it's so much better than coming up with a whole white paper of bullet points about Jim, which nobody's gonna remember.

Jim Fuhs [00:36:50]:
Right.

Steve Woodruff [00:36:51]:
So the editor for my books, Josh Bernoff, I worked on him for his memory dart. And I said, well, well, Josh, basically, you know, you're the Mercedes of business book editors. Well, he liked Teslas. So he decided he was the Tesla of business.

Jim Fuhs [00:37:06]:
Does he still like him?

Chris Stone [00:37:09]:
Well, he

Steve Woodruff [00:37:10]:
likes his Tesla. He's not

Chris Stone [00:37:12]:
so sure about Right. Right. Right. He hasn't put an apology bumper sticker on it yet. Yeah. Yeah.

Steve Woodruff [00:37:18]:
But that's the thing. These are things we've known forever. This is not like I'm not some PhD rocket science. We've all known symbolic language and stories and snippets and and all this. This is how I mean, it goes back into the the great old books. The Bible is full of full of memory darts. True. So, you know, it it's not it does not require any kind of advanced degree to apply the four rules and the eight tools.

Steve Woodruff [00:37:50]:
It's just

Jim Fuhs [00:37:51]:
Yeah. You are you are being humble to a degree because I feel like it's it sounds simple, but it's hard for people to do this, or

Chris Stone [00:38:00]:
else you you wouldn't be unemployed. You wouldn't be even getting paid money to

Jim Fuhs [00:38:03]:
do this stuff. It's hard. Why is it so hard for people to do this?

Steve Woodruff [00:38:09]:
I think it's because we fundamentally don't understand unless we stop and think about it, and most people don't have time to stop and think about it. We don't understand what the human brain is looking for. And I put it this way, the brain wants what it wants the way it wants it. Now you can go with the rules or you can break the rules. It's up to you. But the human brain isn't gonna change. It's fundamentally wired the way it's wired, which means you've gotta be simple, brief, vivid, and membered. You don't have a choice.

Steve Woodruff [00:38:44]:
Oh, that or you're just going to be forgettable. And we tend to think that if information has been transmitted, communication has happened. Absolutely not

Jim Fuhs [00:38:56]:
true. Uh-huh.

Steve Woodruff [00:38:57]:
Yeah. I sent that in an email. Yeah. An email that was this long and packed with 47 other distracting things. Yeah. You you shared information. You didn't communicate. And, you know, you sat through speeches, you've sat through conferences where somebody will get up, and they'll put up that slide with 6,000 bullet points and box arrow, and you're just going, I have no idea what the point is here.

Steve Woodruff [00:39:26]:
Right. And the presenter thinks, well, I've shown you the information. You've not communicated.

Jim Fuhs [00:39:33]:
Yeah. It's like, it's so many people, Steve, you know, talk to whether it's clients we deal with or not, and they talk to us, they think that we're quote unquote social media experts, which is, like, if you call yourself that, I mean, come on. You don't you're you're not you're not privy to all the, the algorithms. But they're like, well, I'm posting every day. I'm putting this stuff out there, and there are these basically trumpets of information expecting that that's going to land and that people will be social and communicate back on social media. Do you feel like this apply a lot of these a lot of these things apply in the social media context as well?

Steve Woodruff [00:40:12]:
A lot of a lot of my philosophy was hammered out by jumping into the social media world early when it started. And it was Twitter that Yeah. Forced me and many others to learn the art of brevity. So when I went to college, it was long form. So I learned how to write long form. I learned logical dissertation and all very valuable stuff. It was great stuff. I'm a good writer.

Steve Woodruff [00:40:37]:
But I had to throw it all throw it all away when we started hitting the Twitter era. And then I realized that, actually, Twitter was on to something. This is a universal law. Get it down to the essence or you lose the opportunity.

Jim Fuhs [00:40:56]:
Yeah. YouTube just extended their their, their time on what they call shorts, which is their vertical video, and it went from fifty nine seconds to three minutes. And everybody was like, oh, I can I can put a three minute version, a clip on social media? And I was like, hang on. Hang on. Make sure that the extra two minutes that you're putting on is valuable or you're not gonna get, like, your stuff's not gonna get seen or heard, which is really the point.

Steve Woodruff [00:41:24]:
Yeah. So so here's a quick question for you. We're gonna see, probably I'm gonna guess Jim's gonna get this one faster, but we'll still

Chris Stone [00:41:33]:
be Ouch.

Steve Woodruff [00:41:35]:
Alright. Who gave the Gettysburg address?

Jim Fuhs [00:41:41]:
Jim Fuse. Abraham Lincoln.

Steve Woodruff [00:41:43]:
Abraham Lincoln. How long was the Gettysburg address?

Jim Fuhs [00:41:48]:
Eighteen minutes. I don't know.

Steve Woodruff [00:41:50]:
Two minutes. Wow. However, there was a great, more famous orator that gave a speech same day as Lincoln. What was his

Jim Fuhs [00:42:03]:
name? Oh, it was in your book.

Chris Stone [00:42:05]:
I forgot. That's right. Because it because it was so long, but I remember Abraham Lincoln because it was short. Yeah.

Steve Woodruff [00:42:13]:
Edward Everett, two hour two hour eloquent speech Wow. That nobody now knows, nobody remembers, nobody knows his name. Abe Lincoln got right to the point, and he used very juicy, vivid language, and it stuck. There's nothing new under the sun.

Chris Stone [00:42:39]:
James, you got it you

Jim Fuhs [00:42:40]:
got it right. You've earned an you've earned the next question. I'll sit down.

Chris Stone [00:42:44]:
So so, Steve, and it it's interesting because I don't know if it's just been some of the guests that we've recently picked, but you're kinda hitting on this common theme about stories. And so I think where you know, I know I struggle with it sometimes, I don't know if Chris struggles because because Chris is smarter than me, but, do you have any advice on how to share the right stories? Yeah. Especially when it gets into these darts.

Steve Woodruff [00:43:10]:
So I encourage every single human being, every professional, and this is for for networking purposes and introductory purposes, you wanna have at least three brief stories. And I have an exercise that I now do. I call it a pre note. So, at conferences, you wanna help people to network effectively. So you have keynote packages, people speaking. But what I have proposed for people is something I call a pre note. It's a half hour exercise where I lead people, the entire group, into developing three memory dart stories that they can then use during that conference and afterwards to introduce themselves more effectively. Those three stories are your origin evolution story, how you got to where you are now.

Steve Woodruff [00:44:02]:
And that is always a fascinating story. Everybody has a different one, and there's always some kind of twist, some kind of unexpected change, something happened, and it's memorable. When you tell that story, it's memorable. So you've gotta have a good origin evolution story, and you wanna keep it, like, up to a minute. The second story you wanna have is an outstanding success story. So I was in this situation and my customer said we've gotta have this and we gotta have it by next Thursday, and we came through and we nailed this thing, and the result was $2,000,000 in revenue and a repeat customer for the next five years. And if the success story illustrates your value, now what else do you gotta say? You've just made the point, nailed it, and made it very memorable. The third one, which is for fun, is your coulda, shoulda, woulda story.

Steve Woodruff [00:44:58]:
So this was a course you might have tried to take, thought you were gonna take, whatever. So I, well, I do this story. I say, I self tell people when I went to college, went to Vanderbilt, I was gonna go to be an astronomer. I was fascinated with all things space, loved astronomy. And I thought, and they had a good astronomy program and I had a scholarship to go to Vanderbilt. So I said, okay, do that. Then I ran into physics and calculus And that was the end of that quest.

Chris Stone [00:45:30]:
It turns out,

Steve Woodruff [00:45:30]:
the economy is mostly formulas and physics. It's not just looking up at beautiful nebulary and galaxies. It's hard work. And what I discovered in college is that I love ideas and words. I don't love numbers. I love words and ideas. So I ended up majoring in psychology, totally changed my course, went into business, and have been dealing with ideas and words ever since. And so coulda, woulda, shoulda, yeah, I still love space stuff, but, you know, I I got waylaid because I was on the wrong track.

Steve Woodruff [00:46:06]:
And everybody has a story like that. So if you walk into any situation, you have those stories, you have a great way of connecting with people. And then turning it the other way, in one of the books I talk about story asking. Storytelling is wonderful, but what you wanna do is be a story asker. You wanna say, Jim, how did you get to this position? I'm gonna I'm gonna get your origin story out of you. Or where did you think you were going when you were in high school? So I'll say, Chris, I'll bet you didn't have in your high school yearbook some goal of being a podcast producer. What were you thinking back then?

Chris Stone [00:46:48]:
You know? Yeah.

Steve Woodruff [00:46:51]:
And the best networking skill is story asking because what you're really doing is interviewing. You're being curious. You're drawing out. And I'll sit down with somebody, and forty five minutes in, they'll say, wait a minute. I don't know anything about you. Yeah. It's because I've been asking you stories and drawing you out, and everybody wants to tell their stories. Great.

Chris Stone [00:47:12]:
Very You know, and it's Dale it's like Dale Carnegie. That's Yeah.

Jim Fuhs [00:47:16]:
It's it's a great sales technique too. Right? Oh, absolutely. Get get them talking. Right? Get them talking, and they'll tell you what they want. Right?

Steve Woodruff [00:47:23]:
And, not

Jim Fuhs [00:47:24]:
you know, obviously not with the intention of doing it. It's also a great, podcast host technique. Right? Okay. So so if you're if you're someone who has a podcast, this is this is fantastic and very useful, information as well, like, you know, because I think in a lot of ways, Steve, you know, people, when they have a podcast and they're hosting a podcast, they make it too much about themselves, and it's not really what that's about. Some of the best, and most informative podcast, the actual host speaks, you know, less than 20% of the time.

Chris Stone [00:47:59]:
That's not

Steve Woodruff [00:48:00]:
your bait.

Chris Stone [00:48:00]:
Yeah. Exactly how it should be. You're right. So this show, really, a lot a lot of the people that we serve are podcasters, livestreamers, entrepreneurs that either we've helped along the way or are just, like, you know, they're getting nuggets of information from from, you know, smarter, you know, astronomers than than we are. But, I wanted to I wanted to like, is there would there be some advice for crafting memory darts for for podcasters that you know, obviously, a lot a lot of the stuff that a lot of podcasters do is putting together this information, putting the content together, and sort of throwing it over the fence as it were, and just hoping that it lands because and then trying to build a community. They have a struggle with with, you know, building and really having the patience to do it, which is there's not a lot you can do about it, but you you just have to create a space where people can can, you know, you know, be a part of this community. Any advice for someone who is struggling with that? I know that the shows can differ from who they serve and what what the topics are and and things like that. But a lot of, a lot of this material is evergreen and it applies across a a multitude of different companies of varying levels.

Jim Fuhs [00:49:21]:
Anything more specific maybe for for podcasters?

Steve Woodruff [00:49:25]:
I think in general, when you're going to write an article or do a podcast or or make a presentation or whatever, you ought to settle on a very intriguing lead message. Okay? So we've covered a lot of topics here, whiskey and a memory card, astronomy, whatever. You're gonna have to pick one thing that is most likely to get somebody to go, What's that all about? I gotta listen to this. And with each guest, you're going to touch on five, ten, however many different things, but you're gonna have to select. And and you wanna do this probably ahead of the show with the guests and say, look, of all the things we're gonna talk about, what's your what's your point? I mean, that's that's the first that's the first of the four rules of communication. You gotta have a point.

Jim Fuhs [00:50:20]:
So what's your

Steve Woodruff [00:50:22]:
point that we're going to put forward about this podcast? If it's just, here's an interesting talk with an interesting guest, there's a lot of those out there.

Chris Stone [00:50:31]:
Right? You need

Steve Woodruff [00:50:32]:
an angle. So everybody's gotta have an angle. And part of what I do, and I do brand consulting with companies and individuals is we arrive at your angle. The thing that makes you really intriguing, cool, exceptional, and remarkable. If you're familiar at all with Seth Godin, his book Purple Cow made a massive impression on me. And the point of the title of that book, Purple Cow, is this book is how are you going to be remarkable? You can drive past a thousand cows on the side of the road and not say a thing about any of them, but if you see a purple cow, you're gonna talk about that purple cow. And so what we've gotta do is we've gotta find our purple cow message as a brand or in any particular podcast and say, this is the intriguing thing. Don't miss this thing.

Jim Fuhs [00:51:33]:
Wow. What about content creators that that don't feel like their content's getting any traction? Right? And then and then and then they start to get in their own heads. Right? They they start to, you know, like, it's just not resonating with people. Yeah. They feel like they have that they have a mission. They have, like, this is this is definitely the point that I want I want to. I mean, what are some of the what are some of the ways that they can pivot off of that and cut and still continue to serve the people that they wanna serve?

Steve Woodruff [00:52:03]:
Part of that is you've gotta have you've gotta have some people around you that are really smart that you can just bounce stuff off of. So I have a mastermind group that I work with. I have a number of other consultants that I talk to a lot, and I need clarity just as everybody else does. So one of the phrases I've made famous, although I didn't make it, man,

Chris Stone [00:52:24]:
I don't think anybody knows

Steve Woodruff [00:52:25]:
who me, is this. You can't read the label of the jar you're in. We're very subjective. We only see ourselves in a certain way. We don't always see our strengths. We don't always see what's best. Yeah. So I will tell you that after the release of the the point, I thought, look, I've come up with something absolutely astounding, a universal formula for clear communications.

Steve Woodruff [00:52:52]:
This is really awesome. Okay? I thought it was. I actually still think it is.

Chris Stone [00:52:58]:
Okay.

Steve Woodruff [00:52:59]:
But it wasn't selling that well. The message is too big. Who's in charge of clear communications in an entire It's like, it all needed to be written, but it wasn't sticking. It wasn't landing. But what started to happen last year as I was interacting with some of my smart people around was that this concept of memory dart, which I introduced back in 2018, it wasn't even the main point of the first book. But that memory dart thing kept coming back. People kept saying that's the coolest thing ever. And I just kind of, yeah, yeah, yeah, memory dart.

Steve Woodruff [00:53:40]:
And now I've actually completely altered my message to make memory dart the lead. It was there all along, but I needed other people to tell me, Hey, that's your really crucial message is the memory dart. And then what was even cooler was one of these guys said to me, we were doing his brand message and I've got, as I mentioned, the eight tools, in here, the clarity tools, ask statement snippets, specifics, stories, stakes. What's at stake? Because that's important to the brain is there's gotta be a benefit. Symbolic language, side by sides, and summers. So I was talking to this guy, and we were working on his brand message. And he said, I went back to my room. I was building a, slideshow.

Steve Woodruff [00:54:31]:
I made every single slide its own memory dart. And I thought, oh, I've been thinking too narrowly about memory darts. I've been thinking about introductions and referrals. I haven't been thinking about memory dart. And then I realized, wait a minute, those eight tools I've identified, those are memory dart tools. I hadn't identified them as memory dart tools, but that's what they are.

Chris Stone [00:54:56]:
Yeah.

Steve Woodruff [00:54:57]:
And so all of a sudden, my second book became subordinate to my first book because the memory dart concept is my lead message. You know? But I needed other people to tell me that because I I was too immersed in it.

Chris Stone [00:55:10]:
You were in your own jar. Yeah. I'm

Jim Fuhs [00:55:13]:
I'm totally gonna use that. I am definitely gonna, you know, give you give you credit for that, but that is that is that's a memory dart in itself, the whole, you know, in in the jar, you can't read the front of the label. It's it is very true. It is we are huge believers in surrounding yourself with, you know, smarter people around you that that will give you the information you need to move forward, not just the information you think you wanna hear. Right?

Steve Woodruff [00:55:37]:
And a

Jim Fuhs [00:55:37]:
lot of times, we're like, well, let me run this by my wife, or, actually, my wife will definitely give me constructive or deconstructive criticism. Maybe that's a bad example. Family members, things like that, they'll just they're gonna wanna tell you stuff to have you know, because they're you're in a relationship with with these people for a long term. Right? But in a lot of ways, you know, surrounding yourself, masterminds, you know, mentors, you know, coaches, you know, all of these things we're we're big believers in because if you're gonna get better, you can't just work out of that that bubble of of yours. You've gotta surround yourself with people. Not everybody else is gonna you know, not everybody else is right, but, I mean, I think that's a powerful story because, you know, you you poured years into these books, and all of a sudden, you're like, oh, crap. Wait a minute. I this was right in front of me, and it took somebody else going, hey.

Jim Fuhs [00:56:30]:
This this is what, you gotta do. So, ladies and gentlemen, I can't believe the time has flown by as as much, as as it has. Go to stevewoodruff.com. And, of course, if you, if you, and then why wouldn't you, go to Amazon, get the point, how to win with Clarity Field Communications. And you just sold me on this one. Clarity wins, get her, get referred, and the memory dark concept there, you know, and we didn't even touch on referrals, which, you know, I it's like, there's so much about that that I wanted to ask, ask you about, but we are right up against time. Steve, this has been just incredibly awesome. We thank you so much for not only the time, but the amount of value that you brought to the show.

Jim Fuhs [00:57:18]:
Thank for thank you for making the show better today.

Steve Woodruff [00:57:21]:
Well, I appreciate the opportunity. It's been great talking to you guys, and and I love it when people I'm talking to that are on podcast get it. You you see it. You see what's going on, and you get the value of it. And sometimes I feel like I'm just a a wolf howling in the wilderness and nobody's looking. But but I know the value of it. I I because I've seen people's lives change by just getting clarity of who they are and how to say it. I've seen so many people change that I'm not quitting.

Jim Fuhs [00:57:54]:
Dan, and nor should you. Nor should you. I mean, especially now, so many people are just farming out this kind of stuff to AI thinking it's going to just land, and it's just not. This is where the human can separate themselves from from everyone else that's just adding to this pile of mediocrity that no one's paying attention to, which is happening a lot. And so I think your work, here is is even more important now than than ever.

Chris Stone [00:58:19]:
Yep. Chris, I'm getting off the elevator and just using darts from now on.

Jim Fuhs [00:58:23]:
That's right. That's right.

Chris Stone [00:58:25]:
Don't put a dartboard in an elevator.

Jim Fuhs [00:58:30]:
Awesome. Thanks everyone who's joined. And as always, podcasting, it's not as hard as you think it is.

Steve Woodruff [00:58:38]:
That's right.

Chris Stone [00:58:42]:
Thanks for listening to Dealcasters. Congratulations. You've taken another step forward in your content creation journey.

Chris Stone [00:58:49]:
Please don't forget to hit the subscribe or follow button here

Chris Stone [00:58:53]:
in your favorite podcast player so you can be reminded every time we drop an episode. We love hearing from our listeners and viewers.

Jim Fuhs [00:59:01]:
And if you're wanting to watch our shows live on Amazon, feel free to

Chris Stone [00:59:04]:
follow Dealcasters Live as well at dealcasters.live. Follow us on Twitter or subscribe to our YouTube channel where we also included added content that you cannot find anywhere else. If you have questions about this episode or have something you want us to review, you can also email us at dealcasters@dealcasters.live. Thanks again for listening, and you know the deal. Don't fear the deal.