Emmy Winner's Storytelling Hook Examples That Grab Attention in 3 Seconds

You grab people's attention by appealing to some of their needs, some of their fears.

Data is one of the most boring things you can sell, but when you turned it into how does that impact another human being, suddenly boring data becomes a real story.

Well, Apple did a great job of that. They didn't necessarily sell this little box or this little phone. They sold like a feeling.

There's a storytelling framework called the arc. Could you describe what that arc is? I feel authenticity is what's missing a lot of content today, and that's one of the hardest things to do is to fake authenticity.

You gotta be you. How do you take abstract concepts and make them relatable?

What's the anatomy of a compelling opening line that makes people just simply just stop and pay attention? Talk to me more about how you distill down the most relevant. How do you decide which details to not include? Welcome, Ajay. How are you?

Very good, sir.

Good to, good to have you on. I'm sure the people that are from the DC area will recognize you, and it's so good to see you again on the screen. So I'm looking forward to our conversation.

Me too. Uh, yeah, I've got a lot that, uh, I wanna spill, so to speak, because I've been thinking about this even when I was on vacation. I kept thinking about what did I do and why did I do what I did? And, uh, it got me to thinking about, uh, my entire career stories. I've done more than 6,000. So that'll tell you that I have some experience in, in talking to people, in massaging words, that kind of thing. And that's what I'm bringing to our conversation today.

Yeah. Oh, you know, I love how you just opened that too. And I think one of the things that you'd mentioned was sometimes with experience, we don't always know why we do things. And so executives also feel the same way. They just instinctively know what their next move should be, but not necessarily why. So I appreciate that today we're going to dissect a lot of that.

Okay.

All right. Let me ask you the first question here. So as a TV anchor, you had literally just seconds to capture people's attention while they're either channel surfing or maybe they just land on the news. They could be, if it's the evening news, they could have just been cooking dinner or something. You have just seconds to capture their attention. So what's the anatomy of a compelling opening line that makes people just simply just stop and pay attention? And if you could break down the psychology behind that, that I think would be very valuable.

Okay. Let's clear up a couple of things here. Anchors generally read what is written for them. Reporters actually write the leads that may grab somebody's attention. Mm-hmm. The best way to explain this is you grab people's attention by appealing to some of their needs, some of their fears. Our consultants came along in the '70s, and all of a sudden you had action news, eyewitness news, and the side phrase was, if it bleeds, it leads. But there's a different way to do it too. One is by, you know, making fun a little bit of a current situation going on. You know, for a while in Illinois, uh, each year there were 230,000 people on welfare. And for 2 years, Charlie Smith was 10 of them.

That's compelling. Like you want to know more right away. You want to, okay, I got to find out about how this comes out.

This Charlie Smith must've been something.

Yeah.

So you start out with that, but for the business side of it, you're, you're, we're sitting here right now. You're presenting your podcast. People are seeing you. They're making up their mind about what's this guy know. He wears glasses. That means he's smart. All kinds of assumptions people make about what they see and how you do things. I want to show you a little something here about, let's say you want to put something out there on LinkedIn on a video.

Mm-hmm.

How much do you want to offer? Just a taste. Say, here's something I know about that might help you. Try it and let me know what you think. Then you end the message, follow me here. I'll have other suggestions. And if you're having some issues, I might be able to help you. Now, how was that?

Uh, you know, I love that. And I, what I also love about it is your pacing. Because as you were explaining this on video, I know one of the things I struggle with because I don't have that training is sometimes I talk really fast and I don't realize I'm talking fast, right? And it's too fast for people to absorb really what the message is or what I'm trying to convey. I have the knowledge, I just can't get it out as clearly. So what do you recommend? I loved your pacing here. How did you know to pace it? When do you pause? When do you use voice dynamics? What are some tips there?

Remember, I've been doing this since I was 15, reading commercials, crazy stuff. I even read my own brother's obituary when I was 15, which was hard. But I have a trick. I'll give you a little background. When I got back out of the Navy, let's say, I went to work at Channel 5 in Green Bay. You may know this, it gets cold in Green Bay in the winter. And this— This is film days. So you're trying to conserve film and you're trying not to freeze to death. And we went out as pairs. I shoot your story, you shoot my story. And there's always a stand-up, as they call it, standing out here saying, well, I'm here live. To minimize that, if it was a long complicated thing you wanted to say, you recorded it, practiced it. Got it right. Got the pacing right. All of that. Sure, you could handle the words right. And then you play it back into an earpiece and you're about a second, second and a half behind. It'll drive you nuts the first couple of times you try it, but after a little bit, you'll become accustomed to it and it will save you a lot of time. You're sure you've got the words you want. You've had a chance to practice the inflection. The pacing. It makes all the difference in the world for your time. So you're recording something and you want to do a 30-second bit on, here's what's coming up on our podcast. Record it. Because a lot of people, including anchor people, use a teleprompter and a teleprompter does some reflecting on mirrors and so forth. So you read and you look like you're looking at the screen. Well, anybody who Most people who know how that operates can see your eyes move left to right when you're reading a teleprompter. I know it. I don't think a lot of executives would, so I keep doing it. If it works for you. And that's what it comes down to. What works for you? You're talking about a message? Do you know what your message really is? Have you written it down? Have you tried it against somebody who knows maybe a little bit about your business to see if you're actually saying what you really want to say? Do you have like 3 or 4 really concise points that you can read? But more importantly, read them out loud. See what they sound like. Have somebody listen to you read those things to see if those words are good for you. I have a horrible time. Going between form and farm. And sometimes I'll slur it back and forth. So I try and stay away from those words if I have to make a presentation. Everybody has something like that. And you know, that's the smart thing to do because you don't want to ramble. You want to compact the message to where they heard it and they want more because what you said, the content was useful.

Yeah. Well, yeah, I, you know, I really like that point about like just being very compact with your, with your message. So, so talk to me more about how you distill down the most relevant. And you said 3 points. First of all, is there a magic number? Is 3 that we've heard stories that maybe that's the best way for people to understand in threes? Is that one? And how do you, how do you figure out what's the emotional trigger inside? Those 3 points?

Well, let me say first that it may be more than 3, but what's the attention span of the reader or the listener, the viewer? How many people just scroll through headlines all the time and the headline may not be quite accurate and they don't take the time to read the full body of the story to see what's the context so they really understand it or how to go look for more information. The point I really wanted to make was about the connection. You and I are connecting. And I used to, it was crazy. Professors hated me. I took on interns from American University for a while. They'd spend a couple, 3 months with me going out on stories. They'd write, we'd write, we'd rewrite, we'd rewrite, we'd talk, we'd deliver. And what I taught them was first thing to do is put down their notebook. They say, what? Put down the notebook. Look at the person, connect with them, make sure that they know that you are paying attention. Because that does a couple of things. Number one, it makes you a real person that they're talking to. Number two, you watch people. Now, we're not close enough now, but I can watch people's eyes, their expressions, a little wink here and there. That's what What's interesting to them? Or is there more behind what they just said? Because that's how you sometimes are able to find a human element in a story that's otherwise dry. You talk to people, you find out stuff by asking a question and listening and listening. Then there are more questions to ask and they get comfortable. I asked a person yesterday on the C&O Canal. One question. And 15 minutes later, we'd had a nice conversation. Well, I had a nice listen and she had a nice conversation. Let's put it that way.

Yeah.

Yeah.

That almost goes to the Dale Carnegie principle of getting people to talk and share their stories. And people love to talk and you go to a dinner party and if you can get whoever's talking with you to talk more, they feel like they've had a wonderful conversation with you. So. That's a great strategy.

I'll give you another example of that. I'm just, I have that face that people will tell me just about anything. Shopping at like a CVS and I'm looking through some products and there's a young woman there looking for products. And I always, when I greet people, say, hi, what's new in your life? You never know what they're going to say. This woman said, well, a couple of weeks ago, I realized that my, my dad was dead. I said, really? Yeah, he was a Navy commander and I always just thought in my mind that he was out at sea. And I finally figured out that he was gone. And she didn't know me from Adam. Wow.

That's powerful.

Yeah. And it makes you think, okay, how many other stories are out there? How many other people have things to say? And if you're running a business, how many people are out there who are really looking for the kind of solution that you think you have.

Yeah, let me get into that just a little bit more because, you know, we're talking about— I mean, the opening lines that you shared are, uh, you just want to hear more, and it's because there was some sort of human element behind it. And I think, uh, many times executives will get caught up in all of the cool features their products and services have that can benefit people. Um, and I know in my career I've always found that even I've sold dry stuff, boring data. Data is one of the most boring things you can sell. But when you turned it into how does that impact another human being, suddenly the boring data becomes a real story. So could you walk us through your process of like how do you find that human element in what might otherwise be a really dry story? And, and what do you recommend to businesses on how they can find that same human connection with the content that they're preparing?

Well, I hate to say, read widely, your dailies, however you get news these days, which I guess is social media more than anything else. Yeah. And you find a story that is a big story. It's a big story. Let's say pharmaceutical prices are going up for some reason. Not true maybe, but let's just say whatever it is is going up. And how does that affect somebody not doing extremely well financially. And I've used this before. Every day, Emma Schmidt has to decide between buying her prescription medicine or buying food. Now, that grabs you. It frames the story in personal terms. What is your product going to do? I used to, I did a little series called Digital Edge where I tried to explain new stuff to people who aren't necessarily really technical. And it always turned out to be, how's this going to make your life easier? What am I giving up to do this? Can I afford this? Does it make sense? Is it somebody selling a solution to a problem that I don't have? Where does it fit in? Does it fit in? How do I characterize it so it does? And how do I pitch it? Do I just put print up there and say, oh, here's my stuff? Well, Apple did a great job of that, as you recall. They, they didn't necessarily sell this little box or this little phone and so forth. They sold like a feeling, music. They sold actually almost, I would call it almost cult. I'm going to buy Apple products just because of the feeling I got when I'm playing with my iPod. And you know, some people probably still have those. It was different because I covered a press conference once by Steve Jobs years ago, and they were introducing something new. And there are a whole bunch of reporters there. And it wasn't a group of reporters who were there to ask a whole bunch of questions. They were there to play with the technology and have fun. And that's sort of what you wanna try and create with your product if it's a fun product.

Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm. I remember the iPod ads when they first came out and it was basically people dancing in a white silhouette and, you know, their signature white AirPods. And so they didn't really have anything else behind it other than music and people dancing. And I think the entire message was to communicate a feeling.

Yeah.

And you just wanted to be happy dancing. And so you bought the product. So—

Absolutely. Yeah.

Very, very good way to communicate that emotional message there. So let me get into specific frameworks on how you tell stories. Now, coming up with the emotional trigger that's gonna get someone the hook interested will stop them. Um, and there's a storytelling framework called the arc. Could you describe what that arc is? Um, you know, beginning and, and how you structure a story to take viewers on that journey that keeps them engaged throughout the story?

Well, that's an interesting thing. That's one of those things that I realized that I did and didn't know I did it. Uh, and the arc basically is you sort of start somewhere close to the middle and Here's something going on. And then you back up and say, well, here's how we got to here. How are we going to deal with the problem? And how do we solve it? This happened. It was a, the story basically was that a house, home business in Frederick, Maryland had the same fax number as the White House. Different area code, but you know, people are sloppy. They were running out of paper and toner all over the place because you can imagine how many faxes the White House received. And it took a whole bunch of calls to take care of that, straighten out the situation. But people sort of understood that predicament. Oh my, what if that were me? Which is always one reason people watch. That's why when there are storm warnings and they see people swept away like in Central Texas, oh, thank God that's not me. I feel sorry for those people, but it wasn't me. People are voyeurs, they want to see the train wreck.

So, uh, so just kind of explaining something just in the middle. I know one of the techniques that I've shared with some people who are selling, say, cybersecurity, um, uh, a story arc might be you start actually right in the middle, as you'd mentioned, where the CEO got a text at 2 in the morning that we've been under a cyber attack. Now you wanna know more. What happens after, what happened before to cause it, and then what happened afterwards. And then if you have a product that can help solve that or minimize the risk of that, that's where you can start to introduce things like that. So, you know, when you described the story, the storyline, there's tension that builds in a story. And, you know, as a news reporter, you instinctively know how to build that tension. People with business training may not have had any, any like training on how to tell that kind of story. So how can businesses identify and then talk about a conflict or some kind of tension to build in the story that keeps that story compelling, maybe even building suspense to help build the engagement?

Well, there are a couple of ways to do that, and one way, if you're going to sell something, is to leave them wanting more. I know you throw out little tidbits here and there, and the whole thing is to Uh, say I've got more, but do it in a way that says, you know, it's going to be worth it if you hang around and keep following me. Here's your problem. Let's do it this way. Let's just put that up here. That's probably, it's reverse on what your screen is. It says silence. Okay. It says silence. Okay.

Okay.

Silence.

Got it.

Yeah. But I should have written it backwards, but I'm not that good at that. Because sometimes silence is what people want. They have a chaotic life and you're talking about a cyber attack. You go, oh yeah, not another one. And not another company is going to have me be monitored for a year to see if my personal information has been stolen. Silence is good. Maybe that's how you start an ad like that. Maybe you start the first 2 seconds with That's what you want. You don't want the chaos around you to take over your business, hack off your customers, and throw your whole employee base into total chaos.

Did you just come up with that right off the top of your head? Because that's pretty smart. I loved how you framed it.

How about that? Went off the top of my head, which is getting more, uh, easier to get out there these days. Okay.

Well, that's really, that's interesting. So you start with, if I'm understanding you correctly, you start with where you want the person to be and feel the calmness, and then you drive home how they can get there.

Yeah, it's always about feel. It's always about a personal thing. It's like I was talking before about this device is going to let you not worry about what's going on at your house while you're at your kid's soccer game. You always use soccer. My kids played soccer. Well, that's good because you always worry about things. The less worry, the more you can get out and walk, listen to the birds, feel safe, lower your blood pressure. Anything that's out there that will help you do that. And the same thing as if you're running a business, you're worried about things all the time. What is out there that's going to make you relax, chill? Maybe it's dividing responsibilities with somebody else. Hey, it's Tuesday, Charlie. It's your day to worry about it. I'm going out and play golf with friends. I'm going to do a little something on my podcast, but I'm going to do it from a golf course wearing a red hat and walking around off the 3rd tee saying, you know, every once in a while, take a break and think about what you're doing. Think about what your next step might be and play golf, smoke a cigar, drink a beer. I don't know what people do when they play golf. I don't play golf anymore, but there needs to be a time when you reexamine and reexamine and reexamine what you said. It's just like when I would do a story, we're talking about, does it need to be 3 elements? Well, have you ever seen a hospital show where the doctor says, okay, we're going to move the patient off the stretcher already on 1, 2, 3. What happened to 4? 3, 3 is it no matter what you do. And depending on who you're dealing with, it's A, A, B, C. But in some instances, if it's the last thing and it's really what you want people to really hone in on, make the number 2 the last one. It's sort of like saying, if you get nothing else out of what I just told you, it's C, it's B, it's whatever one you pick. Make it the last one. Media training to, uh, politicians. I did a little bit of that. I always emphasized that the reporters really are looking for an easy way to figure out what soundbite they're going to use from you. Help them out.

Just tell them.

Just tell them, oh, if nothing else you got out of this, this is what I'm going to do.

Boom.

Nice quote.

Very, very straightforward. So there's a lot of people in business, they're selling things that are a little bit more abstract. And so I know it's like, like for quantum computers, for example, very abstract, hard to understand. I'm just using that as an off-the-cuff example, but there's lots of them. Even if you're selling legal services or even like, you know, the latest accounting issues and so on, how do you take abstract, abstract concepts and, and make them relatable? Because sometimes it feels like it's kind of hard to find a human element or a human story in such, such an abstract abstract, abstract concept.

Yeah. Well, quantum physics is, believe it or not, not one of my subspecialties. But, uh, the issue I always had was explaining costs and numbers to people. You know, how much is that really? Uh, there is something flying around on reels off of Facebook these days where the news report says 6 Brazilian skydivers died over the weekend in a tragic accident. And the person is crying and she says, how many is 6 Brazilian? True.

And then I said, this is a true story?

This is, you know, this is a real, somebody made it up and that just shows you that. Okay. But what I did, you talk about budgets and things like that. I did this when I worked in San Diego. It said, you know, X number of dollars, it was like $12 million or some dollars, and that's it. That's enough money to take everyone in San Diego to the movies and buy them popcorn and Coke. I thought it worked.

Yeah, you're taking everything and then just like something that's so simple that everybody can relate to. Yeah, that's, and okay, so here's a twist on this. I often hear people saying that, well, I'm talking to executives. I need to level up my way of communicating. And I remember I used to be part of this CEO coaching group called Vistage. Wonderful experience. And one of the people who spoke there was showing how you can actually use cartoons. And I felt, oh my God, cartoon. I don't want to show a cartoon to an executive. But he said, no, you would be surprised if the message in there is so relatable, they actually will respond to that. And my question was like, are you serious? Like really high-level executives? And like, it just makes everything so simple, even for them. We're all humans. We love and we like to hear a simple story.

Sure. And how do most people learn? I'm a visual kind of guy. I can read something, but if I can see all of that together, then I get some kind of understanding. I recommend, like, if somebody's going to start doing stuff on LinkedIn, that they include video and the closed captioning, all kinds of stuff, because not only does it present you to a potential customer, uh, it gives you a chance to really work on your message, because if you appear on camera, you want to do it right. Mhm. You don't want to mess it up because people will comment on everything. And most people sometimes are not very friendly. And they say, you look like an idiot. You sound like an idiot. I disagree with everything you just said. So you really work on getting it right. And for instance, I told you about the 3 points, A, B, and C. But we also have to factor in from my background with soundbites, which would be somebody who is It's just their house has just been struck by a tornado. Oh my God, we've lost everything. I don't know what we're going to do. Then you start talking about the tornado coming in. Again, that's part of the arc, but it's catching people, their attention and saying, thank goodness. And then start asking questions. Were they warned? What did they do? What's the insurance company going to do? All of these other stories. And all of these other stories are opportunities for people who are in like businesses to see what people are saying, what they're thinking, maybe how they change their message with what's going on. Because there's always something going on that somebody, I'd say it, can offer help to, whether it's financial, whether it's cyber stuff. You have to remember, my experience goes far, so back, almost before you were born. I go back when viruses were on floppy disks in college computer rooms and watched it all come up and how people never figured it out. They still want to answer the Nigerian prince in an email who wants to offer them $142 million.

Yeah.

Because they want to be nice. Yeah. Just like people in the country sometimes. They'll offer you directions. Even if they have no idea where the heck you want to go.

Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm.

Yeah. Yeah.

There's a lot of elements to a story. And sometimes, especially as I've seen many executives fall into this trap, they want to just share everything they know. And so that could cause rambling, not just on a video or in a conversation, being interviewed in a podcast, for example. They might just ramble in, uh, in their marketing message. I, I remember one time, um, an executive wanted to communicate all the really cool features of their product, and the list was so long you just, you didn't even want to read it. So how do you distill, or how do you decide which details to not include, uh, and leave out, especially when you have a limited amount of time? Because I think we all now have a very limited amount of time. Attention spans are getting shorter. So how do you, how do you figure out what to leave out?

That's difficult. The best way I think is to have a conversation, have the executive explain all of these things, do an interview with them and have him talk about all those things. See if there are any tells in the way they, he or she reacts to those things. And drill down, then ask them, you have some special stuff here that you really, really like? Because, you know, the people you're talking to, they're like, maybe 3 or 4 things that they really would be interested in. The rest, I don't want to call it fluff, but maybe it's time for another day, another episode, so to speak. Emphasize what you really like, what you've got proof of. And I was talking about soundbites before. Before with somebody who'd been in a storm. People who use your product, engaging them and them engaging other people to say, you know, I'm using Raj's beta stuff right now and it's pretty, pretty slick. You ought to try it before he starts charging people for it or whatever the case may be. Because word of mouth often spreads without you even knowing it. All of a sudden somebody knocks on your door and says, oh, hi Raj, I'd like to try your product. Well, who sent you? I don't know.

I had that experience. I've actually had that experience several times since we launched our beta. And very recently, one of our beta users liked it so much, he mentioned it at a conference that he was attending, and we ended up getting written up in the event notes. And I have no idea, suddenly just popped up on my radar. How are all these other people just coming to us? So, uh, so having conversations I think is really important, especially in today's age with AI able to do a lot of writing. I personally find that a lot of that writing is very generic, doesn't feel authentic whatsoever. And so the reason we created our tool the way we did is you can't click a button and have it write for you. You actually have to talk to it. So we help you do the interview and then extract out the salient points and so on, and then we can help you craft a message in a much tighter way, much faster way. And then of course, always have somebody edit it to make sure it's not just, you know, something that isn't what you wanted to say. But at the end of the day, I feel like those conversations are really what drives your messaging. Otherwise, you're kind of generic. You sound like everybody else.

You're right. And I'm glad you said, you know, have somebody else edit and so forth. Just on the off chance, excuse me, that you wanted to start talking a little bit about AI. I do a bunch of reading about it. I understand maybe 5, 10% of it if I'm lucky. But, you know, I wrote a bunch of notes for our interview today, questions, answers, what I should probably say, that kind of thing. Yeah. And, uh, and I said, you know what I'm gonna do? I ran it through, uh, Copilot from Microsoft. So would you mind setting this up for me, uh, compact. It was points and all that stuff. And it came back with it. And I looked at it. And I said, uh, you know what? That's pretty good as far as, uh, the way it's set up and how the points are set up and the order they're set up. But, you know, that's not me. Left out some words and things that I thought were important, uh, some ideas that I thought were important. So You know, I'd go back and tweak the AI. It expedites things. It makes things happen faster perhaps, but I don't think it'll replace that connection that we talked about before.

I think that's so on point because I know many executives, they're really looking for a quick like magic button to help them just create that forum. And I feel like while you're kind of outsourcing your own voice at that point, you don't really want to go there because the long-term impact on your brand can be very negative. Sure. So yeah, that's, that's important. Let's talk about metrics. And I don't know if that's something you got into as a reporter, but many executives, especially on LinkedIn, they're obsessing over the number of views they're getting on a, on a post or the number of likes or comments. I personally have found that to not be the metric to chase. Those are vanity metrics. Might make you feel good that you've got a lot of followers, but at the end of the day, I actually find posts that I put out that get the sometimes the fewest number of views, the fewest number of likes, are the ones that actually drive the most engagement because I'm talking to one particular persona. And so can you share some thoughts about what really tells the full story and how do you measure the true impact of your storytelling just beyond, in your case, viewership?

Well, management looks at things a little differently. They have segments of audience. Uh, you may have noticed in newscasts that there is a time for the weather to pop up. There is a time for sports to pop up. In each of those segments, they can look at ratings for them and say, oh, that really tanks. What happened there? Let's see what the new weather girl is doing. Oh, that not so well. We'll see what happens in 6 months. She has a window on her contract coming up. That's one metric. The metric that I used was one that I could handle was emails, phone calls, letters from people saying, you really helped my family understand what was going on here. I even have kept a letter that I kept from an intern that I had. She was from Taiwan. Kept it, I've kept it more than 20 years. She follows me on Facebook for my pictures. She's now, you know, I don't want to call her an old lady. She's almost probably 35 and has a couple of kids, but we still back and forth. But, you know, I had an impact on her life because I was a foreigner and you took me in, that kind of thing, which gets back to another point I wanted to make. And that is sometimes history unfolds right in front of you. And this young lady was with me. We were doing a story, believe it or not, online pet buying. Oh, that's pretty obscure. And we went down to some lady that bought a bunch of pets and we interviewed her. And on the way back, this is during the winter, we're coming up I-95 and this is January 22nd, 2001, coming up north and we look over to the southbound side. There's no traffic. There is nothing moving. And I say to my photographer who's driving, that's not right. So we went up a little farther and looked over and there was a huge traffic accident. 130-some-odd cars just over the hill coming south on 95. There was ice and everybody was skidding out, tractor-trailers, cars, and it just kept going. And going and people were getting out of their cars and running to the woods along the side of the road. We got out and I just told the photographer, turn it on and don't turn it off and let's go talk to folks. That's one of those, those things. And what's happened in 2001? Do you remember?

I remember. I remember, unfortunately, very, yeah. That's really interesting how you can sometimes just turn on the camera and start talking. And I know that a lot of times executives and marketers get caught up in scripting, which I mean, there's a lot of value in scripting. Sure. But I like that just sometimes showing what's going on. I remember one time being at a networking event of this group I'm part of called Mindshare in the DC area. And so it's about 1,200 or 1,300 CEOs or former CEOs that moved on to other companies now. And we were just— not everybody shows up, but like certain groups show up. And I was just talking to people. It was so spontaneous. And that video actually got so many views because it was so authentic. It's like, oh, I want to be part of that network. It's a selective network, but it was pretty neat. Just like that authenticity was right there. And I feel like authenticity is what's missing in a lot of content today. Do you see that also?

Oh, absolutely. Absolutely. And that's one of the hardest things to do is to fake authenticity. You've got to be you. And here's the rub of that, or the good part about that. You have a message and you think you've got it pretty good. It may be. It's a great message. But are you the right person to tell it? Do you have the personality to deliver it. And a lot of times in small companies, there are 2 or 3 roles, whatever. And one's the CEO, one's the COO, one's the CFO, one is the whatever they need to be. And everybody has a role that they're really good at. And it takes really strong people to recognize who should be in that role and to accept that's what should happen. So maybe You deliver it. Maybe with all of the AI stuff out here, maybe you have a character, maybe you have a Geico lizard, maybe you have something that stands for you that can deliver the voice of the CEO. I mean, there are all kinds of ways you can play this. There's so many options for people to try things. And the other thing is to watch, like, especially if you use LinkedIn like you do, you get reaction. And that's just sort of like, we tried this, didn't work. Well, let's try this. Let's tweak that. Let's change this word. What word is more impactful? Which word is bringing people back? Which word is turning people off? And, you know, as long as you change and measure, measure, measure, measure the response you're getting, you get to get a pretty good message.

That's very insightful, especially about the part where it doesn't have to be you delivering the message. I know, so I go to a lot of networking events. You know, my wife and I are empty nesters. I don't have to be at home all the time. So now I'm back to doing my networking that I used to do a lot of. And I go to these events and people do see the posts that I share on LinkedIn 'cause I'm trying to stay as active as, well, quite active on there. And our tool actually helps me vocalize a lot of the thoughts that I have that I didn't even think that, you know, again, instinctively. So I was talking to one of my CEO friends, and he's a very technical person. He's like, Raj, I can't do what you do. And I said, well, tell me what you mean. He said, I just can't talk in the way you talk. I'm not good on video. I'm not— I don't know how to write these, these like special stories. And I said, well, you know, what do you feel like doing when you— when you're on— he goes, oh, I just feel like going back and writing code. And I said, you know, you're not the only one. If you tried to do something the way I do it, it would be very inauthentic. You wouldn't sound like yourself. But if I asked you, well, what is the really cool technical problem you're trying to solve right now? Man, his eyes lit up. Sure. Started to just spark with so many thoughts. I said, that's what people want to hear. That's your tribe. They want to hear those kinds of things.

I ran the same thing as a reporter. People would come to DC and they would do a circuit. They'd come see me, they'd go see, you know, Walt Goldberg at the Wall Street Journal. And oftentimes PR people would over-prepare them. Here are your talking points. Stick to these 3 things. And they brought an engineer. And I'd get past that point and then I'd pick up whatever it was and say, what's this thing really do? Well, you could do this, you could do this. And it's, how's that going to save me time? Well, da da da da da da. Because I was always the, I call myself a trench guy. Show me something, tell me what it's going to do. And if it's really cool enough, I'll stop what I'm using now and I'll start using yours. But you need some way to explain to me how yours is better than what I have. What's your differentiator? Is it cheaper? I don't care about cheaper sometimes. I want something that's going to work and it's going to last. And If you come out with a version 2 in 2 years, I want it to be, you know, backwardly work with it. And you'd be surprised when you get people talking about what they really want to talk about, then they just open up. Yeah.

Can you share, as we start to close out here, some of the core tips that you share with executives on how to how do— other tips about how to just be really on point, concise when they're talking to people. I know I'm guilty of rambling periodically, and maybe I'm doing it now, I don't know. But like sometimes being really on point for executives, you know, who have started their own companies, it's— we've never had that as part of our training. Even executives who have gone to the best business schools don't necessarily have that as part of their training. What are some of the coaching tips that you that you share?

Basically, it's to use your, what do you call that thing that you're beta testing?

Ours is called Make Media.

Okay, and what's important about it? What's it do?

It helps you turn an executive interview that's an authentic interview, maybe about 10 minutes, into SEO-ready articles, LinkedIn posts, and really saves you a tremendous amount of time and helps you articulate your thoughts.

Does it save your authenticity?

It absolutely saves your authenticity. It starts with your authenticity.

Okay. See what we did there?

You asked me some questions.

There you go. That's it. Asking questions. I've done a little consulting work in my semi-retirement.

Yeah.

And I talked to the CEO and put up some soundbites on their website and found out, why did you start your company? Turns out the guy's of Indian descent. His dad lived out in a little village in India and it was a long way away from where medical help was. His dad died. He started a healthcare company to speed up finding where things are. Yeah. Something they needed to work on a patient, they could find it now and not go looking around for it. And that was a very telling story to me as to why somebody would do things. So I think when you, even you find the coding guy, there's some reason that they did that. And if you could bring it out in them, the tip is to be yourself, realize what you know, because you may not know what you know. Like in parentheses, in trying to describe what, uh, how I did things as a reporter, because you're directing things, you're talking to people, you're dealing with a photographer, you want these kinds of shots. Uh, and then you're going to deal with an editor when you get back and try and explain that. And it always winds up being when you write something and you rewrite something, you think you've got it right, you read it out loud, and then somebody says, well, we don't have time for that story today. As the CEO, you're putting out your message. You don't have teases like I had. You don't have the anchor lead like I have. You're going, boom, here I am. Here's what we got. And trust me, simple, short, direct, and follow up.

I, you know, I think it's a masterclass in just watching you answer these questions because The pause, the way your voice changes, the way you're even using hand gestures to explain things. And I'm sort of absorbing a bit more of that. And as the way I'm talking and responding back to you, maybe you can tell, I don't know. But it's a very important lesson, I think, is just to really take that pace. That seems to be one of the most important things. And I do appreciate your thought about questions. That's actually how we built our software. And I probably should have said that first is the way we extract the knowledge out of your brain is all we help you connect the connect the dots by asking you very interesting questions that people would want to know the answers to. We actually then tie that to what would a buyer persona that you're trying to reach really want to know, and that's why we would ask you certain questions. So that's—

Why are you doing this?

Oh, gosh. Aditya, that's, you know, now that I think about it, the reason I'm doing this, this is the tool I wish I had when I was building all my prior companies. So I've built 3 software companies and I've sold them all to publicly traded companies. And the biggest challenge we had was creating high-quality, authentic content. And I see a trap that many companies fall into is that they view content as a commodity and they say, well, how can I get it cheaper? And there are people thinking that a $50 writer, and I don't mean $50 an hour, I mean $50 post is actually generating quality content for them. And I, I cringe because there's, I don't know of anybody who's actually gotten anywhere by using that kind of content cuz it's so poor quality. And so what I wanted was a way that I could actually accelerate creating very high quality content, that stuff that was from here and I shared it and it just, uh, it, it, that's what resonates. And so that's what our tool does.

Got milk?

Got milk. That was a good one. Yeah.

Where's the beef? Yeah.

One-liners.

Remember these things. One line together, it sums it all up. And if you can, simple, memorable. Yeah. People walk away with it and they'll share it, you know.

Yeah.

Got milk?

Yeah. Right.

Yeah.

Well, IJ, thank you so much for a very insightful conversation. This was a masterclass in communications, and I'm sure that the executives tuning in are really going to get a lot out of it. And by the way, so many sound bites. We'll drip those out onto social media as well.

So I hope we got some sound bites out of yours too.

Well, thank you for that as well. Thank you for prompting me, just like a good journalist would. And so if people wanted to connect with you, you're on LinkedIn. Should they just reach out or—

They can do that. I have email. I don't mind at all. I've had the same email for like 25 years. It's idrehudson@comcast.net. Dhobri jay.

And I gotta tell you, it's an honor for me having watched you on television for so many years to actually be able to interview you. So thank you very much for that.