Shadowing Practice: How to Speak Better Than 99% of People (5 Frameworks) - Learn English Speaking with Video
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Have you ever noticed how some people open their mouths and the whole room goes quiet, while another person starts talking and you lose the room completely?
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Great ideas die every single day because you can't communicate well.
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And communication actually might be the highest ROI skill of all time.
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So today I'm going to break down five of the most effective communication frameworks
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straight from some of the best speakers who have ever lived and that I use every day as a CEO.
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I think you're going to learn how to employ one of the greatest tools of all time, which is silence.
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I'm Cody Sanchez.
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This is the Big Deal Podcast.
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Let's go.
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Okay, I want to start with what I call the simple map.
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So this framework is when a speaker tells you the structure of their argument before they launch into it.
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So think about it.
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Bad speakers, they make the audience work too hard.
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You bury the lead.
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You got to figure out where is this going?
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How's it going to take?
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Great speakers remove that anxiety.
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They give you a map.
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One of the best examples is Steve Jobs at Stanford.
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Listen to this.
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Today, I want to tell you three stories from my life.
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That's it.
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No big deal.
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Just three stories.
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They say today, I want to tell you three stories from my life.
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That's it.
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Just three. So simple.
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He doesn't say a bunch of words.
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This is how you make 4,000 Stanford students regret graduating.
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And so then he labels each one.
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In the video, he says the first story is about connecting dots.
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So the audience kind of they know where you are now we're going to steal this one
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Where he says my second story is about love and loss My third story is about death That's the whole speech
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So a great example of do you see how the simple map framework works
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because it pulls all the dots together The problem is
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if you don't do this
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if you don't map it They'll either make up their own map that's confused
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or stop listening So how do you do this before you communicate anything?
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I want you to finish this sentence.
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In the next few minutes, I'm going to show you X number of Y.
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For example, today I'm going to show you how to find a business, know if it's actually profitable, and how to avoid buying yourself a full-time job.
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That's a map.
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If you don't do this, your audience is basically having a headache trying to figure you out.
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Like Guy Kiyosaki, an early Apple employee, his entire job was to convince developers to build software for the map.
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and he would use 10 to 20 to 30 rules for pitching slide decks.
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10 slides, 20 minutes long because he said if I suck at least you know how long I'm going to suck.
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So two of his three rules were about giving his audience their map.
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So I try to always remember what is the map that I'm talking to.
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So if the first thing is the map, the second thing is going to be how many times do you repeat.
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A lot of people think repetition is bad, but actually saying the same thing a few times
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because you want to enunciate the point is different than because you ran out of ideas.
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Your uncle who repeats himself nonstop and the story about his kid's football game back in the day, not great.
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But Martin Luther King Jr.'s I have a dream speech, listen for how many times he says I have a dream.
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It's the anchor and he's visualizing it with you.
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Listen to this part.
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I have a dream that one day, even the state of Mississippi, a state sweltering with the heat of injustice,
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will be transformed into an oasis of freedom and justice.
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I have a dream.
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You know, I have a dream that one day, even in the state of Mississippi, I have a dream that one day, even in the hills of Georgia.
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So you're visualizing all the places, the most symbolic places in the fights for civil rights, that this dream will live.
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And then he ups the stakes.
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I have a dream that my four little children.
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Now it's personal, not just national.
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It doesn't feel repetitive, does it?
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It feels like this additional weight, this weightiness to it.
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and I think one of the biggest mistakes you may make
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when you communicate is if you say something once you think the audience gets it
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if you're in a boardroom assume people are zoning out they're checking on their phone under the table
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if you're talking to your team assume they've heard six other pitches this week
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so the idea matters
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but you have to repeat it in a way that's skilled
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I like you to pick one phrase you want people to remember and then move that phrase through different levels
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Start with the idea, then make it visual, then raise the stakes, then make it personal.
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So first own your income, then own your time, then own your business, then own your future.
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So I'm not saying own five times.
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I'm showing you through repetition and building a new angle and higher stakes.
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That's repetition that builds.
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Great communication is not always saying more things.
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In fact, that can be really bad if you want people to remember what you said.
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It's making sure the right thing lands.
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Next, I want to talk about specificity as credibility.
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Look at this framework.
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Vague people say this business makes a lot of money.
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Specific people say this laundromat does $3 million in revenue from 164 machines
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and 10 vans that allows it to process thousands of pounds of laundry a day.
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Which one do you believe?
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The second, right?
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And that's probably why that laundromat video is doing $3 million.
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It's because it's specific.
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Then you point out the Vans.
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Why?
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Because this is physical proof.
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It's in your face.
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It's believable.
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Then this is the video where you start to see the numbers stacking.
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Pounds of laundry, numbers of machines, machine costs.
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It feels like a hype video, right?
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And always, if you want to really mandate your point, get into the objections.
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Why would someone use a laundromat if they could use a wash and dry at home?
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This is an important moment because you want to say the things that are in their head out loud.
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I think you also want to make sure that you're saying the things that they might not fully understand.
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Like what are the SOPs?
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What does the machines cost?
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How does the system work?
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And if I can only say this is a great opportunity, then I don't have any more specifics.
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You should probably hide your wallet.
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So how do you apply this tactically?
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Before you make any claim, add one of these.
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A number, a time frame, a cost, a person, a place, a before, and an after.
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So instead of, I think you should start a newsletter.
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Say, a newsletter with 100,000 engaged subscribers can be more valuable than a million rented followers.
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Instead of buying businesses really works, say, this $500,000 laundromat bought with seller financing,
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well, it actually replaced this guy's nine to five.
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These details signal competence.
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They're also hard to remember.
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So if somebody's lying to you, they won't always match up.
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Okay, so I want to talk about silence for a second.
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I think about this as the fourth framework.
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It's one of the biggest differences between amateurs and pro.
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Amateurs are rushy.
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They're like afraid of silence.
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They fill all the words.
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So, um, you know, I guess if you want to be a great speaker, silence is not empty.
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Remember silence is like tension.
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It's sexy.
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It's confidence.
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It tells the audiences matters.
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You know, Steve jobs in this video, he's introducing the iPhone And he goes like this.
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We're introducing three revolutionary products of this class.
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Again, like simple sentence.
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Big claim, room to breathe.
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Now he says this.
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The first one is a widescreen iPod with touch controls.
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The second is a revolutionary mobile phone.
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And the third is a breakthrough internet communications device.
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Okay, that starts to build some suspense, right?
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The words to focus on aren't very complicated.
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iPod, iPhone, Internet communicator.
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But the delivery is everything.
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He separates the items.
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He lets the audience register each one.
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And then at the end, he says this.
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So, three things.
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A widescreen iPod with touch controls, a revolutionary mobile phone, and a breakthrough Internet communications device.
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An iPod.
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A phone. And an internet communicator.
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An iPod.
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A phone. Are you getting it?
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He lets the audience catch up to the reveal before he says it.
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If he just walked down and said, we made the iPhone, it would still be historic, but it wouldn't be theatrical.
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It wouldn't be memorable we wouldn't be watching this.
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He turns his silence into a reveal.
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And the tactical advice is this, when you have a big line, do not rush into it.
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Set it up.
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Pause.
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Say it cleanly.
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Pause.
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So if I'm making a point about making money, for instance, I might say, most people do not get rich through a salary.
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Pause.
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They get rich because their skills were so good, somebody wanted them to own. that pause creates contrast.
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What does that mean?
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Why?
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And I want you to pause before you think of these lines.
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Like for instance, the other day in my team meeting, I was getting really frustrated with a member of my team.
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And the team was basically saying something along the lines of, well, you know, the reason why we aren't selling this product is people don't understand the value.
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Now, the problem is they used bad repetition.
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He kept telling me people don't see the value, people don't see the value and I said show me where they say that
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and then I was quiet he's like well the problem is
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you see what they're I'm like no no no no no show me I didn't say more words than
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that he must have said three more times well I want
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to explain like what I'm like no no show me you have the video recordings show me where they say
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that now why was that so powerful because in your life, people love to yap at you constantly.
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And if you just instead hold the frame and say, you're a one-liner, in my case, it was show me, don't tell me, which is a mantra at my company,
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that is going to make them discover the lesson.
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It's painful, but they will remember.
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And Malcolm Gladwell, who I had on the podcast, if you haven't listened to his episode, it's great.
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He does this brilliantly in his TED Talk about spaghetti sauce, of all things.
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Like, here's what he says.
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I decide instead I would talk about someone who I think
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has done as much to make Americans happy as perhaps anyone over the last 20 years.
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a man who is a great personal hero of mine, someone by the name of Howard Moskowitz, who is most famous for reinventing spaghetti sauce.
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He basically says he wants to talk about someone who has done as much to make Americans happy as almost anyone.
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That's a weird opening.
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Like, I would expect, I don't know, Albert Einstein.
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Instead, he introduces Howard Moskowitz.
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Here, he's describing Howard physically, his height, his age, his glasses.
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Howard's about this high, and he's round, and he's in his 60s, and he has big, huge glasses and thinning gray hair,
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and he has a kind of wonderful exuberance and vitality, and he has a parrot, and he loves the opera,
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and he's a great aficionado of medieval history, and by profession, he's a psychophysicist.
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And that turns him into a character.
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He says this.
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One of his first clients was Pepsi.
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And Pepsi came to Howard and they said, you know, there's this new thing called aspartame and we would like to make Diet Pepsi.
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We'd like you to figure out how much aspartame we should
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put in each can of Diet Pepsi in order to have the perfect drink.
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I was actually losing my mind with my team the other day
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because we didn't know specifically one of the most important numbers in business.
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And so I couldn't believe anything that they were saying because they were saying, well, we make this much money per customer.
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And I was like, what does our customer cost us?
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This is called your CAC, your customer acquisition cost.
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And what it costs you to actually gain a customer.
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So my team and I built a CAC calculator with HubSpot for startups.
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The link's below because you got to be able to say it cost me 300 bucks to get a customer.
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You know, that customer may be worth 1400 and that means that we make money.
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That's specific.
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This is the difference between somebody in business getting listened to and somebody getting completely ignored.
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And so with this tool, it takes two minutes because you're going to figure out
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if your business is growing or days away from losing tons of money.
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This thing is super cool.
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You can plug in your sales spend, marketing spend, your new customers.
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It hands you your number.
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It shows you what counts as a cost.
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It gives you the benchmark I use across all my businesses.
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A customer should be worth at least three times what it costs to get them.
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My favorite part, that three to one ratio, because a CAC number on its own is like just a number.
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The ratio tells you whether to scale or to scrap it.
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So get specific with the number that actually decides everything.
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By the way, this is free.
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I made it for you and your team with HubSpot for startups who's sponsoring this episode.
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So go grab yours.
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Now the story has a business problem, right?
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Pepsi wants to know this about Diet Pepsi.
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And it sounds small, but it becomes this doorway into a bigger video.
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And in the video, Howard gets the data back and the data does not create a clean bell curve, right?
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That's the conflict.
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The expected answer does not appear.
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And that's the discovery moment, right?
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Dar Mann on the podcast would call this the incendiary moment, the insight that there's no single perfect Pepsi.
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There's no single perfect spaghetti sauce.
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There are these different kinds of perfect.
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And that's way more interesting than saying customer preferences are heterogeneous,
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which is the kind of sentence that probably should be illegal if you're trying to sell something.
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Gladwell makes the story carry the idea.
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And here's why this works.
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Do you know that a story can lower somebody's resistance to you.
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Like if I say, here's the lesson, your brain starts debating with me.
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If I say, let me tell you about a guy named Howard who got hired by Pepsi, your brain is like, okay, what's going on?
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And by the time you reveal the lesson, you feel like you got there.
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This is persuasion, not pushing.
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This is leading.
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And here's the tactile advice.
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If you want to make a point, do not start with the point.
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Start with a moment when someone discovered the point.
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Instead of saying seller financing is powerful, tell the story.
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I met a guy who bought a business with very little money down.
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The seller wanted out.
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The buyer didn't have cash.
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He thought he was going to lose everything.
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And then the seller realized he could play the bank.
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Now the audience wants to know how.
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That is story's argument.
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The point lands harder because the audience experiences the evidence.
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This is how you speak like a CEO.
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CEOs also sell a vision so big nobody else can see it in the beginning.
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I actually like to talk about Mazo Yoshi-san.
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So he was obviously one of the most famous CEOs of all time from Japan.
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And what's fascinating about him is he had this thing called the fax machine standoff.
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So in 1981, he's 23 years old about, he has no money.
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He has two part timers.
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They're in a wooden warehouse that places a wreck.
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On his first day of business, he climbs famously onto an empty crate and gives his two employees a speech.
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I'm just like picturing this.
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It's kind of unhinged.
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He says in 25 years, we'll be counting sales in trillions of yen.
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Both employees, they quit that week.
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They think he's insane, actually.
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And he goes on to build SoftBank, which is, you know, one of the largest investment firms in the world.
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He's the richest man in Japan.
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And his moment starts on an apple crate that is now in the SoftBank Museum.
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The CEO move is when you're communicating, do not talk small, go big.
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And this is if you want to win in communication overall.
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If they were never, you know, if those two people are gonna stick with him for the
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long time They never would have quit to begin with and
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so be this Delusional type of human who gets other people to see a vision
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so big They are shocked by what you can show them
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if you want people to listen to you even when you Have done something really dumb.
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I Like to go to this story, which is actually from Fred Smith famously the creator of FedEx.
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And I don't know if you know this, but back in the day, FedEx was basically out of money.
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FedEx had $5,000 left in the bank.
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On Monday, they owed $24,000.
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And if he didn't get that $24,000, his business would be out of business.
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This is obviously early on in the beginning of it.
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And so what does he do?
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He does the reasonable thing, flies to Vegas and puts 5k in black and plays a couple rounds and wins $27,000, which is actually not a great idea.
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But I like to use this example because if you want to talk about communicating, even and especially when you may be wrong, he says this line.
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He goes back to the chairman and the chairman says, what would you have done if he'd lost?
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And Smith's answer was, well, it couldn't have been worse than doing nothing.
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And this one sentence is so good because he didn't apologize.
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He really used silence and he didn't have to explain.
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He just reframed his inaction.
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So maybe you're not being listened to because you are apologizing too much.
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And maybe instead of trying to fill the space and instead of trying to make excuses, you should just say the one sentence, let it hang.
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I love that.
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Sometimes communicating means doing it with people you don't like and they don't like you either.
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And in fact, the way to get heard the most is by overcoming those people who want you quiet.
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You know somebody like that right now who wishes you just wouldn't talk, who's talking over you, who wants to bulldoze you, right?
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We've all met those people.
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And I love to use an example.
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Sometimes maybe you're not a loud talker.
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Maybe the way that you communicate isn't even verbally.
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Maybe you're a person who likes to write things down.
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Do you ever feel like when you're having a conversation
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and then you go back and you're thinking about it later and you're like, oh, if I had a couple seconds, I would have done it differently.
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Like, I wouldn't have done it that way, right?
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Okay, that was me.
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Well, then I like to think about Herb Keller, who was the CEO of Southwest Airlines.
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And he did this incredible thing.
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In the 1980s, when he was CEO, he received this complaint letter from a woman who literally hated everything about his airline.
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The entire letter is like, your peanuts suck.
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Your humor is annoying your flight attendants are the worst, you know, there's no assigned seats, it's a cattle car, the airline sucks, you're a terrible CEO, I hate you.
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And he wrote a reply to her.
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And the reply was this, dear Mrs. Crabapple, we will miss you, love, Herb.
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And that he framed it on his office wall for the rest of his career.
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And I love this.
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Why?
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Because you're allowed to be loud in writing too.
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And in fact, sometimes you say in that one sentence written later, hanging it on the wall, allows you to not have to verbally speak much in the future.
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I was just telling Ashley, our designer of our office right now, she's sending me all these art pieces.
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I'm like, no, the way that we tell stories is visual, not just verbal.
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So I want every piece of art from now on in the office to be part of our story.
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I want it to be logos of all the companies we've helped build seven
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and eight figure businesses I want another piece of art to be our very first office aka my kitchen
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and a tiny little house Then our next office aka my upstairs living room
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and my second house I want our third office a house
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by itself on the east side not a very nice one
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Then my next office 10,000 square feet then our next office 20,000 square feet.
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I want the art to be stories And so if you are not the type that feels eloquent verbally, CEOs talk with visions, too.
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They talk with visuals, too.
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And you can do the exact same thing.
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So the next time an unreasonable client emails, why don't you reply with eight words instead of 800?
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What would that be like?
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Like, is there a chance where you can be a little funny?
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Obviously, that woman's name was not Crabapple, right?
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Herb was making a point.
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He was showing him love, but also a little tongue-in-cheek.
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So just remember when you communicate, you control the medium just like you control the message.
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You are arrogant, you are lazy, and you're stupid.
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If you're sitting there and you cannot afford supercars, you're one of those three.
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You should work 84 hours a week.
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No family, no kids, no girlfriend.
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Every day you wake up, the only thing that should be on your mind is money.
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That's not what being rich looks like.
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Jeff Bezos is worth 257 billion dollars because of Amazon.
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He drinks coffee and reads the newspaper in the morning.
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Tim Cook earned $74.3 million at Apple last year.
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He turns his phone off to go to the gym.
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Berkshire Hathaway is worth $1.3 trillion.
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Warren Buffet founded it with his best friend.
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You don't have to wake up at 3 a.m every day.
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You don't have to give up your life.
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And you definitely don't have to do it alone.
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The goal was never a business you run.
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It's a business that runs without you.
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It's time to take back control of your business and your life do it with me on September 18th.
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I'll see you there.
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Vocabulary and speaking notes for this lesson
This B2 speaking lesson is built on the video “How to Speak Better Than 99% of People”. This video has 355 sentences and 3885 words to shadow. The speech runs for 21:52. The speaker talks at a natural 178 words per minute, close to everyday conversation. 85% of the words are among the 3,000 most common in English; the rest is worth studying before you start.
Key vocabulary in this video
The 15 most advanced words in the video, with pronunciation and meaning:
| Word | Pronunciation | Meaning |
|---|---|---|
| pause noun | /pɔːz/ | A temporary stop or rest; an intermission of action; interruption; suspension; cessation. |
| laundromat noun | /ˈlɔːndɹəʊˌmæt/ | A self-service laundry facility with (traditionally) coin-operated (which now may use other per-load payment methods) washing machines, dryers, and sometimes… |
| repetition noun | /ˌɹɛp.əˈtɪʃ.ən/ | The act or an instance of repeating or being repeated. |
| cellar noun | /ˈsɛləɹ/ | An enclosed underground space, often under a building, used for storage or shelter. |
| verbally adverb | In a verbal manner; with words; by speaking. | |
| stake noun | /steɪk/ | A piece of wood or other material, usually long and slender, pointed at one end so as to be easily driven into the ground as a marker or a support or stay. |
| podcast noun | /ˈpɑdˌkæst/ | A program, especially an audio program, produced on a regular basis, delivered over the Internet in a compressed digital format and designed for playback on… |
| revolutionary noun | /ˌɹɛvəˈluʃənɛɹi/ | A revolutionist; a person who revolts. |
| aspartame noun | /əˈspɑːteɪm/ | An artificial sweetener, the methyl ester of a dipeptide formed from aspartic acid and phenylalanine, used in many processed foods and beverages. |
| communicator noun | /kəˈmjuːnɪkeɪtə/ | Someone who, or something that communicates. |
| famously adverb | In a celebrated manner. | |
| visualize verb | /ˈvɪʒuəˌlaɪz/ | To perceive (something) visually; to see. |
| widescreen adjective | /ˈwaɪdˌskɹin/ | Filmed in a greater aspect ratio than the 1.33:1 or 1.37:1 aspect ratio. |
| newsletter noun | /ˈn(j)uzˌlɛtɚ/ | A periodically sent publication containing current events or the like, generally on a particular topic or geared toward a limited audience. |
| startup noun | /ˈstɑɹtˌʌp/ | The act or process of starting a process or machine. |
Phrasal verbs you will hear
| Word | Pronunciation | Meaning |
|---|---|---|
| figure out verb | To come to understand; to discover or find a solution; to deduce. | |
| break down verb | To stop functioning. | |
| give up verb | To surrender (someone or something); to inform on (someone). | |
| go back verb | To return to a place or state after having been there at a previous time. | |
| go back to verb | To stem from; to originate in. | |
| head out verb | To leave, depart; to go on ahead. | |
| make up verb | /ˌmeɪk ˈʌp/ | To constitute, to compose. |
| point out verb | To identify among a group of similar subjects, or in a scene where the subject might not be readily seen or noticed, with a gesture of the body. |
Sentences worth repeating
Short, complete lines from the video that you can reuse in everyday conversation:
- You got to figure out where is this going?
- How's it going to take?
- It's the anchor and he's visualizing it with you.
- It doesn't feel repetitive, does it?
- Which one do you believe?
Grammar in this video
The structures the speaker uses most, with the exact words from the video:
| Structure | In the video |
|---|---|
| Conditional sentences if + clause, will/would + verb — a condition and its result | if you don't map it They'll either · if somebody's lying to you, they won't always |
| Relative clauses who / which + clause — extra information about a person or thing | time, which is · someone who I · man who is |
| Present perfect have/has + past participle — a past action that still matters now | Have you ever noticed · have ever lived · they've heard |
| Passive voice be + past participle — the focus is on what happens, not who does it | will be transformed · is called · are shocked |
Pronunciation to watch
The speaker uses 86 contractions and reduced forms, such as you're, don't, I'm. Say them the short way, as you hear them.
- The “th” sounds: breakthrough /ˈbɹeɪk.θɹuː/, theatrical /θiˈætɹɪkəl/
- The “sh” and “zh” sounds: repetition /ˌɹɛp.əˈtɪʃ.ən/, revolutionary /ˌɹɛvəˈluʃənɛɹi/, visualize /ˈvɪʒuəˌlaɪz/, aficionado /əˌfɪʃ.(j)əˈnɑː.dəʊ/, inaction /ɪnˈækʃən/
- Long words — get the stress right: repetition /ˌɹɛp.əˈtɪʃ.ən/, revolutionary /ˌɹɛvəˈluʃənɛɹi/, communicator /kəˈmjuːnɪkeɪtə/, apologize /əˈpɑləˌd͡ʒaɪz/, aficionado /əˌfɪʃ.(j)əˈnɑː.dəʊ/
How to practise with this video
- Listen to the whole video once without speaking and note the words you do not know.
- Start at 0.75× speed, shadow it sentence by sentence, then go back to normal speed once it feels easy.
- Record yourself and compare with the original, paying attention to words like pause, laundromat, repetition.
What is the Shadowing Technique?
Shadowing is a science-backed language learning technique originally developed for professional interpreter training and popularized by polyglot Dr. Alexander Arguelles. The method is simple but powerful: you listen to native English audio and immediately repeat it out loud — like a shadow following the speaker with just a 1–2 second delay. Unlike passive listening or grammar drills, shadowing forces your brain and mouth muscles to simultaneously process and reproduce real speech patterns. Research shows it significantly improves pronunciation accuracy, intonation, rhythm, connected speech, listening comprehension, and speaking fluency — making it one of the most effective methods for IELTS Speaking preparation and real-world English communication.