0112: (C)lean Messaging: A framework to help startup founders talk to humans and realize It's about the listener, not you. with Actor, Speaker, Trainer, Bestselling Author, Advisor, Angel Investor & CEO Scott Brown

Ea interviews episode 112 inspiration, transformation, success stories and the imperfect action round. Seven days a week, join Mario Ficcini for today's Expert Authority Effect interview. Have you ever wanted to get new prospects? Have you ever wanted to get new clients? Have you ever wanted to tell your kids, hey, you can't do that? Or maybe they can. No matter who you're speaking to personally or professionally, have you ever thought about what you're communicating, what you're saying? Maybe you have, maybe you haven't. But here's the thing. Everything we do is messaging. What I'm saying to you right now is a message. Is it effective? Is it useful? Do you care? I am super excited because I have Scott Brown here and he's going to be talking about clean messaging. As a former actor, speaker, trainer and authority, he knows what he's talking about. He started multiple companies and has been an investor in other companies. And I'm excited for him to share. Right after we thank our sponsor, Winning with Google in 2020. Of course you want to. I'd advise Google search advertising and YouTube specialist Roch Sillers download the free Winning with Google in 2020 guide@eainterviews.com Roshtips all right, ladies and gentlemen, Mr. Scott Brown. Scott, how are you doing today?

Mario, great to see you. Thanks for having me on.

I am so excited for you to share because what you're sharing is so powerful. Why don't we jump into it? How did you get into here? I know your background. I mean, you were telling me you're used to do acting. How did you go from actor to clean messaging?

Yeah, it's a crazy story. You know, I was lucky enough as a young kid to get into the theater. That's where all the girls were. So naturally I gravitated there. And you know, I went to drama school and I was able to act and te direct all over the world. And I was lucky enough in the early 90s to be invited to do Henry 5 in beautiful Milwaukee, Wisconsin. And while I was there, I met this amazing doctor at a dinner party and this guy had invented a new topical analgesic, this pain relieving gel that you rub on your skin and it helps with arthritis and things. Well, this guy was fascinating. And we got talking and drinking and talking and drinking. And by about 2 o' clock in the morning he says, scott, I think you could help me sell this. And I'm like, heck yeah. Well, sure enough, six months later, we sold the patent rights to a large pharmaceutical company and Here I am now, 25 years later, an entrepreneur.

How have you been enjoying it so far?

It's amazing. You know, I've been really lucky to build eight different companies. Six wins, one catastrophic fail, one zombie that refuses to die. And my passion over the last 10 years has really been about helping startup founders and innovators around the world figure out how to talk about these amazing inventions of theirs.

What do you find the biggest problem is when someone has a great product, an invention or anything? Because I know a lot of people that are great with the skill set. But would you agree there's a big difference in business from I'm good at what I do to I need to sell this. Because you said the key thing, he realized he could, he realized you could help him sell it and you said six months later.

Yeah, that's right. You know, we've actually done a disservice to entrepreneurs. We've given them amazing tools to help teach them what to build. Things like the Lean Startup Canvas. Super important. If you go through that process of build, measure, iterate, you're going to figure out the what of your business and then you've got things like a value prop canvas. If you work through that system, you'll figure out who you're building it for. But now as an entrepreneur, you take all of that great data and you go out and try to sell somebody with it and people's eyes glaze over and so you lose that early customer and that early set of customers because you haven't figured out how to talk to real human beings. And that's what clean messaging is all about. It builds off of these frameworks that we already know how to use today and turns it into a way to talk to human beings that increases sales, increases media, and ultimately increases venture capital investment as well.

So you're meaning to tell me that people would rather connect with people. They don't get excited over numbers and stats.

They don't. Right. People don't remember numbers. They remember the way numbers make them feel. And that's the amazing thing, is that if you get your messaging right, you will be remembered. The trick is not to make the sale right now. The trick is to be remembered when the sale is on the line.

So take me through who you're helping and how you're really helping them.

Yeah, you know, I focus primarily on startup founders, early employees of startup companies. However, we've seen this system apply to innovators and large enterprises. I even did a training session for a local, local government and they're Using this same system now to help figure out how to talk to their constituents about their great ideas. And this system, Mario, is pretty easy. You know, you do all the work to figure out the what to build and the who to build, and we take those inputs into a new type of canvas, what I call the clean messaging canvas. From there, we focus on who's your audience and what are they doing deeply care about. And then what's the most important thing about your business? Then we're going to smash those two things together and find a way to very simply explain, starting with the audience, what you do.

So with most of your prospects, like, what would be a step one? If someone's listening to this right now going, you know what I think, you know, they might not even know the word is copy. But if they're thinking, I gotta change something, and we know the copy might not be the best, where do you generally start? What's a step one that people can take action with?

Step number one is easy. Who's your customer and what is their deepest human need? Not, you know, something simple like, oh, they want to buy some software to help get alerts when a server goes offline. Nobody has a deep human need like that. But there must be something deep inside that potential buyer that they really care about. That VP of it, right when she is looking at software that will send an alert when a server goes offline, it's not because she wants the alert, it's because she wants to go see her kid play baseball this weekend. And that's what we need to find that deep human need that we can tap into and then lead with that when we start talking about our business.

And it sounds like you can just do a random Google search and it's going to give you all the answers you need. Right.

I don't know about Google, but I'm a big believer in pick up the phone and talk to those early customers and those early people that could be customers. And when you find out what it is they deeply care about, you're onto something.

So other than the phone, what's another good way for people to figure out what are their hot buttons?

Well, you know, I think people overthink this sometimes, Mario. It's not necessarily about the challenges that people have in their business. These are deep human things. And so I have deep human needs just the same way that you do. And if we can tap into that, we can even imagine it and then test it out. And so if I had a company that was selling the server alert software, I know That I would rather go see my kid play baseball than be attached to a pager or be attached to some email system that's going to send me an alert of a system goes offline. And so I could try it next time I talk to a VP of it. I might say, hey, you know, wouldn't you rather go see a ball game? Wouldn't you rather go on holiday than be attached to that server farm?

I know, I'd rather be on the lake.

Yeah, right. Yeah. My brother would rather be fishing.

So in all your experience with helping people across the board.

Yeah.

What would you say if I were to say, what are the top five reasons? I'm sure I know you've seen patterns over the years.

It's amazing. It was those patterns that led me to write the book in the first place. I found myself saying the same thing over and over and over again. And so we tried to build this system to help people avoid those exact patterns. What I see, Mario, is the first thing is that building a company is hard. And when we go do our customer discovery, we ask people what it is they want and what they need and they tell us all of this great data, right? It has to be SaaS and AR VR. It has to be running on Kubernetes on AWS cloud systems. So they give us all of this data and that helps us figure out what to build. But the number one mistake people make is as soon as they go talk to a customer, they say it's a SaaS platform, that's AR VR, ML machine learning AI on Kubernetes with, you know, AWS cloud backend. And people don't care. They have to remember, as a startup founder, you have to remember as soon as you walk out the door, it's no longer about you, it's now about the person you're talking to. What do they care about? They want to know how your product is going to make their life better. They don't really care about all of those acronyms and technical bits and bobs. They just want to know how you're going to help.

Would you say this is why the ipod did so well?

Oh, of course. Yeah. They were a master at this, right? They set up a vision of somebody's future. Right. People could imagine what their life would be like after they got that ipod or that iPhone. Apple is an expert at this, and we can be experts at it as well. It doesn't have to be hard. We just have to imagine what somebody's life is like after the fact. That and One of the things we do in clean messaging is we help somebody build a very short story about the life of a user after they started using your product. And the magical thing about the human brain is that whenever we hear a story, we imagine ourselves as the protagonist, as that lead character. Immediately our brain goes there. And so if you tell a story about Sally, who was a user of this system, as the VP of IT for some startup in Ohio, people will immediately imagine themselves as Sally and they'll imagine their future using your product. And now it's half sold.

What is the biggest transformation you've been able to give a company since you started this?

There's so many fun stories here.

I love this problem because almost everyone I ask that to always goes, oh man, just one. So if there's two or three, that whatever's the easiest on the top of your mind. If it's two or three, that's totally.

Cool too, because let me tell my friend Rama. So Rama is one of the smartest people I know. He's a PhD, brilliant scientist. He studied biology in college and then went and started a startup. His startup is all about helping field technicians, people who are on the road, solving problems out there away from the home office. And for him, when he first started the company, he wanted to tell people all of the cool stuff. He has AR glasses and AI backend systems that parse all of this information in real time and tracks all this data into a CRM system. He was so full of acronyms that people had to slow him down to try to figure out what he was really talking about. And so I sat down with Rama, we spent maybe an hour together, and he told me everything about his company. And when he really started to boil it down, he knew that his buyer was somebody who managed these field technicians, not the field technician themselves. And that that person was very concerned that the smartest people, the best field technicians, were no longer in the field. They were now back in the office managing other field technicians. And so today, Rama goes out to the world and he says, with my technology, we can help your field technicians be as smart as the smartest field tech you've ever had. It's simple, it's clear, it's not hard to understand. It's language that will resonate with a 13 year old. But for Rama, he's been able to turn that simple message into millions of dollars of orders. And his business is now taking off. This guy is crushing it. Everything's up and to the right with Rama these days.

Well, that's excellent. To hear not only for the millions of dollars for business, but also. It sounds like you got him to change a habit.

Yeah. Yeah. Well, it's what we do as humans. Right. It's so hard to build stuff that we want to tell people everything we've built. And we think that convincing somebody is about giving them all the data they need. Right. There's. There's an amazing scientist, Jonathan Haidt, who did this research about how humans make decisions, especially decisions that are not actually in their self interest. Right. Have you ever gone to a Thanksgiving dinner and you've got a crazy uncle who believes something, and so you try to convince them that they're wrong? Right. And you give them all the reasons why they're wrong. But that has never worked in the history of the world. No crazy uncle has ever been swayed by the data.

I'm smiling because I'm sure someone, one of my nieces or nephews, is thinking, I'm the crazy uncle. But I know exactly what you're saying.

Yeah, I might be that crazy uncle, too. But we do it anyway. It's our inclination to share with others all of the reasoning that we've formed in our brain that's informed our judgment and decision making. But humans make decisions first from an intuitive place, then we create a judgment, and then we find the words to describe it. But yet, when we try to sell something, or when we try to pitch a venture capitalist, or we go the other direction, we give people data, hoping they'll make a judgment, and then intuit the reason why. And so if we switch it and go the other way, magic happens. That's what clean messaging helps you do. It's a framework to go from intuition to judgment to the data to back up a decision.

So it sounds like you're bridging the gap in the way people are thinking, but also give them the information they need.

That's right.

And presenting it in a way where they actually want to listen to it. Because part of what you're saying is also very akin to let's take a high schooler going into college and the parents are going, you need to go here because of this. You need to go here. You know, this is what you should be doing. This is what you should be doing. And I'll never forget just saying to some of my friends, parents, I was like, have you ever asked them what they want?

Yes.

Instead of telling them what they should do?

Yes.

And it's the same thing as, you know, what I'm hearing is listen to what your audience is know Your audience don't just spew out all kinds of data, information, or, you know, logical reasoning.

That's right. You know, as humans, we need the data to confirm a decision, but the decision happens first. And so what we want to do in sales or in pitching your new startup is we want to move somebody's intuition and then help them form a judgment about you and your business idea and then give them enough data in real time to help them have the words to describe why they believe in you. And so that's the key in clean messaging. We start by focusing on the listener, not you. And then we give you just enough data about how you solve this big problem problem that a listener or a potential customer may have. And then you use a story, some analogies around numbers that can resonate with people, and maybe a couple of little soundbites that you want to drop into people's brain so that they can repeat it to their friends. And that's how it becomes magical. Clean messaging works not just because you're communicating well, but because other people start to repeat it. And when that happens, your business can't be stopped.

So talk to me about the book, because earlier you alluded to this is why you wrote the book.

Yeah. Yeah. Thank you. You know, I wrote this book, Clean Messaging. It's available on Amazon.com or anywhere else that you get your books. It is really the platform and the framework that's going to teach you how to do this. I spent 10 years helping startup founders figure this stuff out, and now you can do it through this clean messaging book.

I will make sure that there is a link in the show notes on eainterviews.com because I love it and I want this in more people's hands because there are so many people out there. I always use the example in my talk. So they're going, I'm a roofer. I can help you fix your roof. I'm a whatever place. I can help you fix your. Like a dentist going, I can help you fix your teeth. It's like, I'd hope so. That's what you do. This is your profession now. But what information are you telling me beyond that? To facilitate the buying decision.

That's right. That's exactly right. Just because you can fix the roof isn't a reason why I'm going to buy. And so you've got it. You can actually influence the buying decision before you tell them you're a roofer. Right. For people who like a roof over the head, I do X. Or for people who Would rather not sleep in the rain. I do. Y. There is always a way, a deep human need that your audience, your potential customer has, and then you pair that to that magical thing that you do, that thing you've invented or the business or service you provide.

Go ahead, Mario. I was going to say, I did put together that little framework that anyone can download, and you're welcome to link to that as well. I will make it free for anybody on this podcast or anybody who's listening at all, to just go to my website, and then we'll provide a link that you can download later.

I will make sure that is on there as well. So I'm going to ask you a fun question now before we go to the Imperfect action round. Are you in the mood for, like, a softball or hardball?

I'll bring it on, man. Give me a fastball.

Who know that's a medium one. All right. Moon landing. Is it real or not?

Well, it's absolutely real. I mean, that's. That's a softball question. How could you debate that? Right? There are pictures. There are people. There's people who've been there.

Okay, maybe. Maybe. Maybe it is a softball one. Maybe it's more hardball on the controversial list, but. Okay, that's what I was talking about on it. But one I was going to ask you, and I really do want to know who is one living entrepreneur you would love to have dinner with who just fascinates you right now that's still alive that we can still make happen?

Hmm. There are a lot. The founders of Zoom, I think, are really great, and I'd love to sit down with them. I love their product. I think they're doing it well. I think that the Slack guys would be really interesting to talk to them a little bit. When you think about the very early stage, there is a guy named Paul Zach that I'm secretly stalking, and I would love to.

I call it intelligence gathering, because that means it's allowed and legal.

Yeah, well, you know, they did ask me to get out of his tree, but, you know, you might be right. Paul Zak is this amazing entrepreneur who's got a company called Immersion Neuroscience, and he's figured out a way to help create compelling content. And I think he's doing some of the same thing I'm doing for entrepreneurs, but for large content creators. And he's a guy I really, really want to talk to someday.

Excellent. Well, appreciate you for sharing that with us. All right, we're going to go to the Imperfect Action round right after we thank our sponsor Winning with Google in 2020. I have no doubt you want to for your business, but who do you trust and where do you start? I'd advise Rosh Sillers. Not only was he episode 22's featured VIP guest, but he's also a Google specialist with search advertising and YouTube. And I had him put together this free Winning with Google in 2020 guide for you to get started with. Right now go to eainterviews.com forward/roshtips to get your free download. Now once again, that's eainterviews.com Rosh tips. All right, and we are back with the imperfect action round. Scott, are you ready to take imperfect action?

Bring it on.

Alright, number one, what is the biggest problem you see your prospects making and the fastest way they can fix it?

The challenge I would have for people in that situation is I asked them this question, what would happen to your life if your messaging was as clean as your code?

That's the key. We spend so much time as founders and entrepreneurs polishing the rock, making sure the product is great and no time thinking about how we're going to talk to mom or a potential customer about this amazing thing we've invented. If you change that little habit, good things can come.

Let's talk about the timing of that in like a ratio. So if there's 168 hours a week, 24 hours in a day and I believe with what I teach people with my block, 15 time, you got 96 opportunities a day.

Day.

Even if you took 15 minutes, what do you think is a real reasonable expectation to. If someone is listening to this right now and they go, I want to go through this, I want to go through your. I want to be where I'm at now. And by the end of the week, would it take two weeks, how much time would you say someone needs to and should be serious to prioritize the dedication to go, I'm going to do, do a little bit each day and.

Get there for a brand new company, for a startup, for example, I would tell them that they need to have four clean messages, four canvases, one that's about the business, one about the two biggest, most interesting features and then one about the founder. So that's four. I found that with a little bit of coaching, I can help somebody get through that process an hour apiece. Now, for somebody tackling it for the first time, that very first clean messaging canvas might take, you know, a good strong morning, but once you get it down and once you Start to figure out the system. You can do this pretty fast. And then it's just about testing it. Take it out to the real world, use it with people out there with real human beings. Take that feedback, tweak it, modify it, spend maybe 30 minutes a week reflecting on it, take it out every time you're about to do an interview with the media or going into a big pitch event, read through it, does it still resonate? Do these messages still hold? And then tweak it when you find time.

So you're telling me that even if someone right now has no clue what copy is, has never done any of this in five to 10 hours initially, maybe even over a month, they could knock all this out. And that's really conservatively. I know it would only take a week or two, but moving forward, maybe touch it once a quarter.

Yeah, yeah, that's what we find. Now, my friend Rama I was telling you about, he looks at it maybe once a month and he just dips into it. Whenever he does an interview with the media or the press, he pulls out his clean messaging canvas, reflects on it, maybe he tweaks a few things and then goes right into the interview. And so it's just become part of his habits.

So I'm always thinking about marketing and how to get companies more attention and profit. What do you think of this if you put it into your social media, so not only you are seeing it more, but everyone else gets to see it more also?

Absolutely. That's a great way to test it. And what we find is that people who put their clean message as the bio on Twitter or they tweet out a couple of of the ear worms that we talk about in the clean messaging framework. That stuff resonates when people start to retweet it and like it. That's how you know you've hit on a real human need and a real answer to a problem.

Excellent. What is the fastest path to the cash?

I would say the fastest path to real cash is, is one key change of perspective. If you focus on your user instead of yourself, focus on the listener and not you doing the talking. When you do that, magic happens. That's when the cash starts to flow. People don't want to hear you talk about your company. They want to hear about how your company is going to help them. If you make that one little change in all of your marketing copy, in the radio interviews you do, in the blog posts you put out, if you start talking about your customers and not talking about yourself.

Everyone will flock to.

You, that is a great tip. I'm going to make sure that gets marked as an expert authority insight. That is phenomenal And I agree 1,000%.

Thank you, sir.

Number three.

What is the best way to maximize customer lifetime value value?

Oh, well.

This may sound pedantic, but talk to your customers. I think you know what we find is that especially for early stage entrepreneurs, they're a little afraid to talk to humans. But if you pick up the phone, if you call people, if you talk to a customer, talk to a new customer once a day, once a week, once a month, whatever your most comfortable with, push yourself. But get out there and talk to people. That talking to people will make them a customer for life. Right? It's that 10 year plan for a customer. It's not transactional anymore. It's about how are you helping them change their future. And when you start to engage in those conversations, then customer lifetime value takes care of itself.

Have you ever gone onto sites like Amazon or YouTube and rank, read their comments to see what they're thinking or basically anywhere on the web to see what's really in their thoughts?

Sure, yeah, there's great ways to go dig into that where you can find out what people think about you either through comments online, what they think about a potential product or a competitor's product. That's all really great data, but that's learning. But it doesn't actually create a customer relationship. It gives you more ammunition on the what to build, but it doesn't really help you build a customer for life because somebody else is going to come along with a feature that you don't have or that you didn't read about or that they discovered just by talking to somebody. And so get out of the office, go talk to somebody, pick up the phone and talk to your early customers and plan to do that often. And that is going to create real long term value.

I love that you focus on this so much because even after thousands of years and all this technology and everything, business still comes down to people.

Oh, it's so true, right? I've got friends of mine and entrepreneurs I've helped and they tell me, well, you know, we sell to banks, we sell fintech to large investment banks. I'm like, no you don't. No bank has ever bought anything. But there is a human being who works at a bank that you probably sell to. And so we have to remember that between all of this stuff, between all of the tech and the wizardry, the magic that we create, at the end of the day it's about human to human, not B2B or B2C. It's about humans.

I love that. And speaking of Amazon and looking at reviews and everything, you had mentioned your book. Where is Amazon the best place people can get it?

Amazon's the best place to get it and I encourage you to write a review.

Excellent.

Also, what is a book you would recommend to Expert Authority World that's made a big difference in your life?

Yeah, you know, there's two that I talk about right now. Number one is everybody should go back and read Hamlet again. Shakespeare is amazing. Everything you need to know about life is actually already written down in Hamlet.

Aside from that, the book that everyone should go out and buy right now is by a guy named Jerry Colonna. A book that's called Reboot. And Jerry is a former venture capitalist turned CEO whisperer. And Jerry has the most amazing stories and a way to help all of us as founders and CEOs get to our authentic self with a thing he calls radical self inquiry to become the leader that we were meant to be. He's been an inspiration for me and I can't recommend this book enough.

I will make sure that gets in the show notes too. That sounds fascinating and it sounds like he'd be a great person to interview too.

Oh, if you could get Jerry on this show, you will be amazed. He is a saint.

Well, I appreciate the recommendation on both. All right, where can people learn more about you?

Well, I'd love it if people would come by to ScottBrown Co as in Colorado. You can learn all about clean messaging there and drop me a line. I'm happy to help.

Well, it has been an absolute pleasure, Scott. I've enjoyed this very much and I know Expert Authority World has learned a lot.

Mario, thank you. Thanks everybody. This has been so much fun. Happy to jump in and I love the questions and the engagement here. This has been just great.

All right, Expert Authority World, we have another great episode. I'll see you on tomorrow's. Have a great day and God bless. Why every business needs a book, including yours. Would you like to save five plus hours with every prospect, generate more leads and profit in your business? Now visit businessbookchecklist.com and learn how you can implement this in your business today. Hey, thanks for listening to today's episode. I hope you got a lot out of it. I know I sure did. If you haven't done so already, I invite you to subscribe to the show and also be sure to check out eainterviews.com for complete show notes, the full interview video experience, links to the resources we mentioned, and more. Have a blessed day and I'll see you tomorrow.