In this episode, Matt Meeks and I dug into “Magic Words” by Jonah Berger.
You can listen to the episode here:
You can find more about Matt at SquareFrameMedia.com.
Full Transcript:
Mickey Mellen
When making presentations or teaching complicated ideas, people often say things like, you don’t have any questions, do you? But swapping that out for what questions do you have will encourage more people to follow up if they don’t understand. So that was from the book Magic Words by Jonah Berger, and it’s a great example of the kind of things that he shares in the book. So with me to discuss it back for a second time is Matt Meeks. So Matt, good to have you back.
Matt Meeks (00:23)
Hey, good to be back. I appreciate it. I apparently didn’t scare everybody off the last time, hopefully. You didn’t get a of negative comments.
Mickey Mellen (00:28)
Exactly, you were fantastic and I’m excited to dig into this. as with all the books we talk about, this is one that you picked. The guest picked the book, so why Magic Words? What led you to want to talk about this one today?
Matt Meeks (00:40)
Yes, so being in marketing and advertising, obviously communication is 100 % of our focus of how we communicate, how we communicate for our clients. So any book, any topic around how to communicate is going to grab my attention. I like this one because he really breaks it down to some tactical things. It’s not just like theoretical or feel good book.
Mickey Mellen (00:48)
Yeah.
Mm -hmm, for sure.
Matt Meeks (01:06)
He gives very specific examples of like, if you improve these things, which I think I’ve got six noted, but if you improve these things, you can actually improve. And he gives practical examples, case studies, you know, so I like that he’s digging into it. It’s not just a feel good, you know. If you speak with passion, people listen, you know, he’s really drilling down and giving examples. So that’s why I like it.
Mickey Mellen (01:26)
Right, exactly, yeah.
I mentioned in other shows, I’m not a big rah rah guy. I like practical stuff. This one gets very practical, which is fantastic. let’s start maybe with those six things then. Let’s kind of dig into those pieces you have there and see where we go.
Matt Meeks (01:36)
Yes.
Yeah, so his first one that I took away was use words with an active sense of identity, right, or that activate identity. He used, I think, several examples, but one, there was an organization last election cycle that said, be a voter instead of get out and vote. And they found that be a voter was more encouraging because it was a label, it was an identity that I am a voter.
Mickey Mellen (02:00)
Okay, yep.
Matt Meeks (02:08)
He pulled another example, think of it was four year olds trying to get them to help clean up and saying, you know, Hey, B, will you be a helper and do this or will you help clean up and be a helper was more effective in getting them to actually do something. We, yeah, we use it a lot because I’ve got a background in sales too, where, you know, I don’t know if this
Mickey Mellen (02:12)
Yes, with helper.
Yep, that was a fantastic one.
Matt Meeks (02:34)
fully fits in but like when I’m talking to a client I will use we right I’m I’m inclusive of me being part of them so I’ll say something like we did really well this month with that is is that I’m seeing an increase in our you know and I use language that identifies and labels us as like one team as opposed to us being some kind of outside contractor or you know third party
Mickey Mellen (02:39)
Okay.
Okay, nice.
I like that.
Matt Meeks (02:59)
Same thing that if I’m in a meeting, I try and identify and put it together where we’re on one team together. So that’s one way we use it.
Mickey Mellen (03:05)
Gotcha, very cool. yeah. Yep, so yeah. So first one was activate identity and agency. So the second one, what did you have there?
Matt Meeks (03:13)
Yep, so I’ve got speak with confidence, ditch, hedge, and filler words. So I am bad at hedging. Being, yeah, I think we’re both geeky enough that we’re like, man, there’s so many variables. Like, you can’t just say with confidence all the time. And there’s no telling what Google, Facebook, or YouTube, or whatever they’re going to do. There’s just no telling sometimes. But I do try and work with our team to speak and project confidence.
Mickey Mellen (03:15)
Okay.
Yes, me too for sure.
Yeah.
Matt Meeks (03:43)
that’s a big challenge that a lot of people have this day and age we run into it all the time my wife is a speech therapist so it’s kind of sad like we’ll go to a restaurant or somewhere and you know waiters somebody comes up and they’re like and you know right mean they walk away like my god nobody’s taught them how to speak like they don’t have power like yeah you know but learning to speak with confidence and
Mickey Mellen (03:50)
Gotcha.
Yeah
You
Yep.
Matt Meeks (04:11)
cutting out the filler words like maybe, sort of, I think. I try and do that especially in like email where if we’re communicating with a client and we want to say, hey, I’m recommending you do this. I shifted my language because I used to say, well, here’s your three options. These are what you could do. This is what we think’s best.
I got a lot of back and forth versus now put out and say here’s our three options number one is what we recommend that you do man 90 % of the time they’re just going to respond and okay option one whatever you recommend I mean they they immediately just go to the recommended thing so it’s a way to cut down extraneous communication and they want to have the confidence that that’s the thing you’re confident in
Mickey Mellen (04:46)
Nice. Very cool.
I like that example better than where you started because when it comes to Facebook and things, I’m not super confident in what they’re going to do so I want to be as accurate as possible. Yeah, I always want to be accurate so I don’t want to say for sure this is it. But then I hear people like Gary Vaynerchuk who is all about confidence. Like he’s saying, this is how it’s going to be and he may be wrong but he’s super confident and I want to just believe him every time. But I do agree when it comes to suggestions for clients, even if we’re not necessarily 100 % confident, we can say, hey, we think this is probably the best one so let’s just go ahead and this is the best one for your client. That’s a good angle there. I like that.
Matt Meeks (05:06)
Right.
Right.
He is!
Right.
Right. Yeah, I’ll still explain like the the background behind the thought, you know, just so that I get my I still have enough of a I don’t know, a crutch to lean back on if it goes wrong. I’m like, hey, we talked about this because I’m a big fan of like just transparency. That’s part of the reason I got into marketing was I couldn’t stand that agencies and marketing people using air quotes over here for people who don’t see video, I guess.
Mickey Mellen (05:34)
for sure, yeah.
Hahaha.
Mm
Matt Meeks (05:55)
that like, you know, they would just do things and they’re like, well, that’s just the way it is. They want to mask it. And I’m like, no, this is the breakdown because it’s how I work. Which kind of leads, gosh, yeah.
Mickey Mellen (06:03)
Right.
Yeah, I see it lot with SEO. Yeah, with search engine optimization, people say, we’re doing SEO. I’m like, no, you’re not doing SEO. You’re doing these tactics to help with search. so yeah, clarity helps a lot, so for sure.
Matt Meeks (06:15)
Right. Yeah, we just had a client that they’ve had a long term relationship with a web developer. So they’ve kept that we’re handling like content, email, ad buy, other stuff, but this other agency’s handling or web firm is doing the site. And they’re like, yeah, we’ve got an SEO plan for the next 90 days. I said, okay, that’s great. What is it? And they’re like, well, we’re going to build out community pages. I said, that’s not, I need details. You know, I like, want to know exactly what we’re doing. The client was like,
Mickey Mellen (06:39)
Right. Yep.
Matt Meeks (06:45)
What do you mean? What are you asking them for? Then we got back a detailed document and they’re like, my God, that’s all the stuff they’re doing? I was like, yes, it is.
Mickey Mellen (06:54)
Cool. so yeah, so yeah, first was identity and then second was confidence. So the third one
Matt Meeks (06:59)
Yep. Yep, is ask good questions. The way he says it, ask good questions, no one will fault you for it. And I think that’s probably the biggest thing that’s missing this day and age. Everybody does want to speak with confidence and project. It’s an election cycle too, so people are really confident about everything right now, regardless of what it is. But I think
people need to learn to ask better questions. Me and my business partner, my whole team is really good at sitting down with like a client and extracting information. My business partner is amazing at it. I mean, he can walk out of a meeting and he knows their kids names, what sports they’re in, their favorite dessert. I mean, he just, he can genuinely get engaged and not in a like…
Mickey Mellen (07:49)
That’s awesome.
Matt Meeks (07:54)
I’m just trying to dig information out of you like they walk away like, my god, you’re so thoughtful. He’s so great. Because he is he’s really interested in people. And it shows because he builds a lot of rapport with folks. So learning to ask better questions, open ended questions. And a mentor of mine used to always say you’ve got two ears and one mouth. So you should listen twice as much as you speak. You know, even if you’re the expert.
Mickey Mellen (07:59)
You
Yep. Yep.
Matt Meeks (08:22)
you should still listen far more because you’re going to learn a lot, especially if you’re the expert. You’re trying to figure out what their problem is or their challenge, what they need to have fixed. Well, you need to listen a lot.
Mickey Mellen (08:33)
Yep, well that’s what I was going to say is asking the right question sounds a lot to me like defining the problem correctly too. People jump to the solution so fast. I posted a blog post a few weeks ago with a clip from Moneyball where early on he said, all right guys, what’s the problem we’re facing? The other one was like, we all know the problem. like, no, no, what is the problem we’re facing? Come on, Billy, we know the problem. No, no, what is the problem? They couldn’t define what the problem was that they’re all trying to solve. And so the same kind of thing. If you’re not asking the right questions, then the answers become kind of meaningless because you don’t know what you’re going after. So yeah, I love that.
Matt Meeks (08:39)
Mm -hmm. Yes.
Right.
Exactly. Yeah. And a lot of people will give like fluff answers back when we’re talking to clients will say, okay, what are you doing there? well, we’ve tried all that. And I say, okay, that’s great. Talk to me about why that didn’t work. And as you start drilling down into it, I’d say nine times at a din, they go, well, gosh, I guess we didn’t really try that. You you start unpackaging the thing and they realize that they don’t know what they thought they knew or they never
Mickey Mellen (09:09)
Mm
Matt Meeks (09:31)
drilled down into it and so you could skip over a tactic or a chance to help somebody just because they’re not willing to to dive down or they don’t think anybody cares. Lots of clients will apologize like I’m sorry I’m rambling I’m telling you too much about the business or I’m telling you too much about the history and like no that’s great please I absolutely want to know as many details as possible because you don’t know
Mickey Mellen (09:42)
Gotcha.
Mm -hmm. yeah.
Matt Meeks (09:56)
what is going to trigger me to have a great idea or to go, ooh, that’s something we need to leverage because I’m getting to hear your story for the first time, you know, if it’s a new client. And so I can help package that and people get so used to hearing the same thing over and over that they don’t know what a good story is. They don’t know what the key selling points are or the critical things. So if you’re not asking good questions and taking the time to listen, you’ll run into.
or not run into, you’ll miss a lot of key things, you know, exactly.
Mickey Mellen (10:28)
Right. You won’t know what you missed. yeah, yep, well said. So number three is asking the right questions. Number four.
Matt Meeks (10:36)
Yep. Know when to be concrete to signal you’re listening and when to be abstract to sell big ideas. I’m not good with the abstract as much. That’s definitely my business partner. I’m much better at doing the concrete thing, which kind of goes back into asking good questions. You know, if you’re in a sales process, you ask a great question, you’ll reiterate that thing.
Mickey Mellen (10:49)
Okay.
Yep, similar.
Matt Meeks (11:04)
car salespeople are pretty good at this unfortunately. You know, where you’ll come in and say something like, we’re having a baby so we need a bigger car and man, they’ll, these are great for car seats, you know, you said you have it a bit and they’ll keep reiterating it, keep reiterating it. You know, but there’s a lot of times where concrete language and being really confident in something is critical. And I would point to that you have to know your audience.
Mickey Mellen (11:07)
Yeah, this is true.
Matt Meeks (11:32)
and what is it that they’re working with? I have some clients who they live in the abstract. If I get into the details, I lose them, right? They don’t actually want to know details or concrete things. They want to hear the big picture. What’s the emotion we’re invoking? What’s the feeling we’re going after? So understanding your audience and being able to code switch between using concrete language for those who need it, who need visuals, who need.
really hard lines versus the people who need the abstract and realizing that you may not be good at both. You may not be capable of communicating both. So finding, you know, somebody on your team or spouse, whatever, to balance that out if it is a weakness of yours and focus in on the strength. Because a lot of people, like I said, I’m not super good at the abstract because I’m so data -driven.
Mickey Mellen (12:23)
Gotcha.
Matt Meeks (12:31)
that I want proof, I wanna know. They’re like, well, this is working. I’m like, well, how do you prove that? So just what did web traffic increase? what signal? I don’t know, people are talking to me about it. I’m like, that’s anecdotal, that doesn’t mean anything. My business partner’s like, no, man, that does matter. They’re getting feedback. And I’m like, I don’t care. That’s not what I care about. What’s the data? So being able to switch between those two, I think is really critical.
Mickey Mellen (12:36)
Yeah.
Right.
Yeah, and that kind of brings the challenge of a book like this. There’s just so many different ideas and ways to talk and you have to know when to use certain tactics and when to, yeah, do different things. So, being able to have someone else that can balance you is a fantastic way to go. yes.
Matt Meeks (13:06)
Yeah. Yeah.
Yeah, there’s also a great Ted talk by, I think his first name is Julian, but it’s how to speak so people will listen. He kind of covers a lot of these points and gives actual tactics. He’s a vocal coach. So he talks through, you know, how do you use your register and tone and all these different things. Cause that’s a big part of it, which goes into point five, you know, using emotion to capture people’s attention.
Mickey Mellen (13:20)
Okay, nice.
Okay.
Matt Meeks (13:40)
the media is great at doing this, you see this all the time in headlines and stuff, know, five reasons not to buy this or, you know, ten ways that this is going to go desperately wrong. You know, everybody’s going to be wiped out in the market. You’ve got to know these three things. You can use emotion in communication because he’s a lot of examples. But
Mickey Mellen (13:42)
Mm -hmm.
Right.
Matt Meeks (14:08)
I think it again is really critical to know your audience in that instance. Because again, I have some clients that I can use emojis with, we send gifts back and forth. Like I can be a lot more playful and use emotional language because it resonates with them. Versus I have other people who would actually get really irritated with that. So you have to understand who your audience is and then shift and leverage that.
Mickey Mellen (14:18)
Right.
Matt Meeks (14:37)
correctly, whether you’re dealing with a client who then has end users, because that’s all the time. I’m dealing with a client, a business, but they ultimately have a customer that I’m actually communicating to. And so sometimes the client is very emotional or very concrete. They don’t want to deal with emotion. And so they’re like, why are we using all these words that are gorgeous? That doesn’t describe me. I’m like, well, but.
Mickey Mellen (14:50)
Right.
Matt Meeks (15:05)
it shows to resonate with your audience. And so people really struggle to understand those things. So just because you get pushback around it doesn’t mean that you shouldn’t do it. If you have data, if you have information that shows, you know, how to leverage that. But mixing it in and, know, I strongly recommend, or this could be really impactful. We don’t want to anger our customer. You know, there’s ways to throw in key emotion words.
Mickey Mellen (15:07)
Right, yep.
Matt Meeks (15:33)
that can convey to whoever you’re talking to the importance or the weight behind the thing versus just saying, we don’t want to upset customers. You know, I have some clients I’ll say, well, we don’t want to piss anybody off like we did last time when you tried this promotion. So, and they get it versus as I said, you know, we don’t want to upset somebody. don’t want to upset somebody. Yeah. So you have to have to know the audience and leverage.
Mickey Mellen (15:43)
Right.
Matt Meeks (16:02)
leverage how and what you use to communicate to them.
Mickey Mellen (16:06)
I like the little piece you said too about understanding who the audience really is. It’s not your client, it’s their clients. And so I even tell new clients, I was like, I don’t care what color you like. Like if you want a different color, how does that impact your audience? And if they say, no, our audience will like that because of this, then cool, let’s do it. if we’re changing something because you like it, that doesn’t really do much for me. How’s it gonna actually impact the people that you’re trying to sell to? it’s getting that level deeper and yeah, it works with emotion as well. That’s a good way to phrase it there.
Matt Meeks (16:14)
Yeah
Right.
Right. Yeah. Yeah. That’s a, that’s a really interesting thing. Like not to rabbit trail, but you know, dealing with when you have a customer or a client who has an end user, somebody else that you’re actually communicating to moving a product to, man, that is the challenge, right? Is so often people get into confirmation bias or just a bias around what they like.
Mickey Mellen (16:47)
Mm
Matt Meeks (16:54)
you know, and they just convinced themselves, no, my audience is this. I’m like, no, you’re 67 and your audience is 30. You’re not the same people probably. You don’t have the same interest. You’re not the same walk of life. You know, and it’s, it’s hard, but understanding reading books like this, understanding this type of thing can help you have the language to articulate to the client, hey, here’s the psychology. Here’s the case studies behind it.
Mickey Mellen (17:00)
Yep.
Matt Meeks (17:20)
you know, here’s the actual data, not just because I know this to be true, but here’s the actual information. Because that’s what I do, is start rolling those things out or talking about psychology and the client will sit back and go, okay, you’re right, you’re right, you’re the expert, let’s just do that. I’m like, no, I’m not trying shut you down, I’m just saying here’s the information I have. Yeah, it matters.
Mickey Mellen (17:42)
Right, yep. I like that. Yep, for sure. So yes, that was number five, employing emotion, and then the last one, number six.
Matt Meeks (17:51)
Yep, know when to blend in with your language. This was really fascinating. He was talking about a case study where, I’m going to get the exact numbers wrong here, so forgive me, but he was talking about employees in a mid -size organization or firm that use a similar language, a similar style of communication, that they were like four times more likely to be promoted or something.
and that the individuals who didn’t, they spoke differently, they used different acronyms, they didn’t blend in with the language of the organization, that they were like three or four times more likely or four times more likely to be fired, right? So understanding where to blend in our office, we always say code switch, right? And understanding how to switch in between because for us, it’s not just internal communication, we’re communicating with dozens of clients.
Mickey Mellen (18:34)
Wow, okay.
Mm
Matt Meeks (18:49)
And each one has their own language. Each one has their own style of communication. So learning, that’s the thing when we bring in somebody new to the team, they’ll say is learning all the apps that you use and learning how to communicate to each client, that’s the hardest thing. Because I’ve got some clients who are super playful. Over the Olympics, I’ve had one that we’ve been sending Snoop Dogg memes back and forth.
Mickey Mellen (18:51)
Mm
Matt Meeks (19:17)
because she loves Snoop Dogg and if you ever met this person you would never imagine in a million years she would be a Snoop Dogg fan. So I’ve got that to the client who like, man when you get on the call it’s very serious, it’s uptight, they’re great people but it’s very structured, very business, there’s like no personal communication. It’s all about very tactical stuff and if I showed them a meme or sent them something they’d be like, why are you sending this? Do you think this is a strategy we should implement for our business?
Mickey Mellen (19:35)
Mm -hmm.
Matt Meeks (19:44)
which channel do you think this should go into and which core audience do you think it resonates with? You know, they wouldn’t get it. So learning how to switch your language and blend in with the people you’re talking to is really, really critical. Code switching, I think, is the technical term for that. So, you know, if you’ve never dug into it for those listening, you know, just Google code switching.
Mickey Mellen (19:47)
Right.
Gotcha.
Matt Meeks (20:10)
and understanding how you do it. News reporters are really good at doing it. If you ever watch on social media, there’s a lot of news reporters who they’ll do it in their news reporter voice, and then they’ll do it, you know, they’ll code switch and do it in their normal voice. And it’s very different. It’s two different people. And there’s importance to that. Like my staff will joke with me on a regular basis. I can be talking, you know, driving back from meeting or lunch.
Mickey Mellen (20:14)
Mm
yeah.
yes.
Mm
Matt Meeks (20:38)
and then a client calls me and I go into client mode and I’m like, hey so -and how are you doing? And I hang up and then I reset and they’re like, my god that’s weird. They’re like, how do you do that? And I’m it’s just, you gotta be able to turn it on and off, man. It’s not fake, but it’s just the way I interact with them, because they want energy, they want confidence, you know, they want to be assured. So learning how to shift your language.
Mickey Mellen (20:41)
Right.
Nice.
Mm -hmm.
Right.
Matt Meeks (21:05)
or blend your language to match the people you’re with is really critical. And most people don’t do that. They are very concrete in the way in which they communicate and they run into constant challenges because they’re not willing to adapt into the environment that they’re in.
Mickey Mellen (21:11)
Gotcha.
Yep.
Gotcha, you made me think of a couple things here. The first was when Andy Bernard came to the Scranton office in the office and he just mirrored everything Michael did and for the first few hours of that, Michael Scott said, wow, this guy’s amazing, I love him, because he was just mirroring his personality all the way, harnessing the similarity to an absurd degree, of course, but was, yeah, I thought about that. But the other thing it made me think of is you mentioned with new employees trying to teach them the ways of each client, we do …
Matt Meeks (21:29)
Mm
That’s a great example though.
Mmm.
Mickey Mellen (21:53)
extensive messaging work about our clients companies and so we kind of say hey here’s how this company works here’s how their audience is and all that but we don’t really talk as much about here’s how we should behave talk to our client it’s more about how we talk to our clients audience which is what our job is but yeah we should so we have to kind of work through it just a bit at a time and I wonder if there’s a way we could build documentation internally without saying hey when we talk to this client we should be more playful we should be you know more outgoing you know share more memes and stuff but that’s an interesting thought that we focus so much on their audience which again is what we’re paid to do but
Matt Meeks (21:57)
Okay.
Right.
Mm -hmm.
Right.
Mickey Mellen (22:23)
Having that piece in between of, be more serious with this one, be less serious here is something we don’t really have written down anywhere. We just kind of know it. But yeah, having, I don’t know, I don’t know if you could document that or not, but that’s, yeah.
Matt Meeks (22:31)
Yeah. And we’ve tried, and I’m not saying we’ve got it figured out by any stretch. We have tried the documentation route and building like, here’s their internal and external communication strategy. So this is internally how we communicate to them versus how they communicate to their client or their customer. The outbound stuff works. The inbound stuff was just too nuanced.
So instead, we just try and make it really clear. I think I mentioned this even on our last time we did this, but we tell our team, as we bring them on board, I’m like, you’re going to make mistakes. They’re going to cost us money. We know that. It’s fine. So don’t stress. And then the second one is don’t feel compelled to speak all the time. When you’re in a meeting, when you’re brought into things, be very content to just observe. And it may be months of observing.
Mickey Mellen (22:58)
Yeah
Gotcha.
Matt Meeks (23:27)
in client meetings with these people. Learn who they are, watch how I interact or watch how so and so interacts with them. Figure that out and then you have to establish your own relationship, right? Because just because I can send Snoop Dogg memes to client A doesn’t mean you can because I’ve known this person for 10 years. I’ve been working with them for years. I knew their kids. I’ve played golf with them. You know, there’s more of a relationship there. So
I’m at a different stage of relation with that individual. So that’s where the documentation side was so hard because the way my business partner talks to one client versus the relationship and the way I talk to them is different. Because we have two very different relationships. He went to high school with them, I didn’t. You know, but I joke and tease about these subjects because we have these in common and they joke and tease about these subjects.
Mickey Mellen (24:07)
Very good point, yeah.
Mm
Yeah.
Matt Meeks (24:19)
So we really encourage them to be students of the client and understand how they communicate. Because yes, while we get paid to communicate to their end user, their customer, how they feel about our relationship is just as important as the results. Right? So we really try and drive that home and help them understand that you need to establish your own relationship and rapport with each client, with everybody in that organization that we deal with.
Mickey Mellen (24:35)
yeah, for sure. yeah.
Matt Meeks (24:49)
and your relationship is not going to look the same as mine necessarily. Some clients, it is. They’re very uniform in the way they treat everybody. Others, it’s very not hierarchy, but it’s just based on person, personalities and where you’ve established. So we’ve found that documentation around it’s not as useful, but we do meeting prep before we meet with every client. And so in those meeting preps, if we’ve got somebody new on the team, we try and spend an extra
Mickey Mellen (25:02)
Mm -hmm. Yep.
Yeah, I can see that.
Matt Meeks (25:18)
you know, 10, 15, maybe 30 minutes of the prep, just talking to them about, hey, here’s the kind of language they use. Here’s the kind of terminology. Here’s some of the backstory. Here’s the big pain points. And going through those communication styles using, you know, some of this outline in this book to help them understand here’s their magic words effectively. And here’s the ones that are pain points. Don’t talk about this.
Mickey Mellen (25:41)
Yep. Nice.
Matt Meeks (25:46)
and watch and observe these things so that you can establish your report.
Mickey Mellen (25:50)
Gotcha, well said. We’re getting a little low on time here. There’s so many things we could’ve gotten to. We talked about the six kinds of magic words. The book gets into four ways to speak with confidence and four strategies for asking better questions. Again, it’s almost like a workbook in the way it kind of lays things out. So many different things. I wanna hit one more piece that I really like, just a small tip. And again, the book was full of tips. We could pick one of the other 50 tips. But I love this little line he said, quote, having a tough time sticking with that New Year’s resolution, struggling to stick to a goal.
Matt Meeks (25:54)
Yeah.
Mm -hmm.
gosh, so many.
Mickey Mellen (26:18)
try saying I don’t rather than I can’t. And so that I’ve used in my life a good bit, like I don’t miss a day of blogging. Like I blog every day, just, it’s not a question. It doesn’t become a should I today, should I not, which I sort of do with working out. I try to work out every day, which becomes three days a week or something versus that. But like I don’t miss a day of blogging or like I used to drink a little bit here and there, but didn’t really want to, so it’s easier to say I just don’t drink. Like, you know, it’s just simpler. It’s like wearing the…
Matt Meeks (26:18)
Mm.
That’s great.
Right.
Mm -hmm. Right.
Mickey Mellen (26:45)
the black turtleneck every time that like Steve Jobs did. Like you didn’t have to make a decision about clothes, like I don’t have to make a decision about am I gonna blog today? Like am I gonna drink? Like no, I’ve got those answers already well in place. And so yeah, I don’t rather than I can’t kind of just, so much of this book is just shifting your mindset just a little bit and just making things easier. So I like that.
Matt Meeks (26:52)
Right. Yep.
Yeah, yeah, I love that. I’m into just the simplicity, that always try and communicate with simplicity. That’s the one thing that I really hone in on my team of like, especially in email, we get way too lengthy, or there’s big blocks of texts. And I’m like, hey, no bullet point these things out. This is not email communication. This needs to be put into a doc that can be collaborated with like.
Mickey Mellen (27:05)
Mm
Yes.
Matt Meeks (27:25)
The old terminology or adage was make the ask easy. So whatever it is you’re trying to communicate to them, make it easy. Make it easy for them to say yes, no, like whatever the answer is you’re trying to get. Try and simplify and make it easy. But I do love the point of just say that I don’t. Because yeah, there’s lots of things that I’m like, I don’t do that. I just don’t. It’s not a debate. It’s not a decision.
Mickey Mellen (27:36)
Yep.
Yeah, simplifying can take some time too. Blaise Pascal, I love his old quote, said, if I had more time I would have written a shorter letter. Because I think we do that. When we dump the email, the email is long and messy, but then if we spend a few minutes we can of pare it down and add some bullets and actually spend some time to make it shorter, which is more beneficial for the client so that it becomes a balance of how long do you want to spend writing an email versus making it better for your client, easy for them to digest. Because if they’re not going to read it, then you’re wasting all your time. So make it as short and concise as you can. So yeah.
It’s a fantastic book. I encourage everyone to go pick up a copy. It’s about a seven hour audible, so a seven hour read, something like that. So not too bad, but there’s again a lot of very specific tactical stuff you can do with it. yeah, Magic Words by Jonah Berger. Check it out. So Matt, they want to find more about you. How can people track you down online?
Matt Meeks (28:19)
Very much so.
Yes. Yep.
Yep, squareframemedia .com. It’s easiest place to find us.
Mickey Mellen (28:38)
Alright, yep, awesome, appreciate it, always good to have you. See ya, bye.
Matt Meeks (28:42)
Yep, appreciate it. Thanks, Mickey.
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