EntreLeadership - #160: Greg McKeown—Do Less and Accomplish More

Episode Date: August 15, 2016

If you find yourself stretched too thin, losing momentum, or working yourself to death without a lot of traction, listen in. Greg McKeown, best-selling author of Essentialism, teaches leaders of the most innovative companies around the world how to achieve the disciplined pursuit of doing less and getting more done. Greg shares his tips on finding out what’s important and breaking the habit of being distracted by things that don’t matter. It’s a seriously unique conversation that can help you break your business through to the next level. entreleadership.com/podcast E1D LiveStream Team Communication Field Guide Infusionsoft's Guide to Repeat Sales Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

People overestimate what they can do in a day and underestimate what they can do in 10 years. That is Greg McCown, the author of Essentialism, and there's so much more of that in this episode. Helping business leaders grow themselves, their team, and their profits. This is the Entree Leadership Podcast. Now, here is your host, Ken Coleman. We are broadcasting from the Music City, and this is the podcast of leaders, by leaders, for leaders. Thank you so much for joining the conversation. Our feature interview this episode is with Greg McCown, the author of one of my favorite books, not a brand new book.

I've been out too very long, but I love it. It's called Essentialism, The Disciplined Pursuit of Less. This is such an important conversation, and you're going to love that. And then last week, I taught you a little bit on how to improve what you say, how to be better spoken. You want to be more well-spoken. You want to just improve your speaking game, whether that be one-to-one, one-to-five, one-to-10, or to hundreds or thousands, worked on some basics there that we gave you. And so since we talked about how to improve what you say last episode, this episode I'm going to give you a few tips on how to improve how you say it. So that's going to be fun. And of course, we've got some great resources for you as well. Well, I'm very excited to tell you about a brand new offering we're bringing you.

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to the third largest syndicated radio show in the country, and by the way, the number one largest independently owned nationally syndicated broadcast. Now, in so many other different areas, spreading across the globe, if you will, with the message to help people in so many different areas of life. How did you do this? 550 plus team members and growing. How did this happen? from a card table and a living room. Well, the game plan is simply revealed throughout the day at Entree Leadership. So here's the thing. This is an opportunity.

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out is entreleadership.com slash e1D. Entreleadership.com slash E1D. Here is the pricing. Now, everybody else is going to get the streaming price at $29. You podcast listeners are going to get it for $24. Okay? $5 off for you podcast listeners. Here is the code, EL podcast.

EL podcast, all one word, EL podcast. And when you go to Entreeleadership.com slash E1D, you just punch that code in at checkout. and you'll get it for $24. Now, the in-person event, if you'd like to join us in Kansas City on October the 19th, that ticket price is $59. So again, to learn more, to sign up, entreeleadership.com slash e1D. Our feature conversation, as I said at the top of the podcast is Greg McCown.

He wrote the book Essentialism, The Disciplined Pursuit of Less. And, you know, my wife tells me this all the time, that one of the big messages that she and her sister were taught as she was growing up from her mom and dad, which is less is more. And it's so applicable across the spectrum of life. And when you're thinking about hyper-focused and really being who you were called to be, if you think about your organization, who is your organization supposed to be to your target audience? It's about hyper-focus, making sure we don't get distracted by other things. We need to be who are supposed to be. This idea of the discipline pursuit of less really enhances that.

This book is great. Essentialism is the title. You need to run and go get it. But here's the big takeaway. If you're going to become an essentialist, it's all about a mindset shift. And so that's the big theme here in the conversations. Let's get right to it. This is Greg McCown.

Well, Greg, it's a privilege to be with you today, and I've been a fan of this book and looking forward to this conversation for some time. And I want to go back. I don't know how far we go back. But at what point does this book become an idea? What was the birth of this idea, the need for this book for you? I find that to be fascinating. Well, the real Genesis was a long time ago.

I mean, 17 years ago, pretty close to the day, when I was staring at a piece of paper in my hands with all these scribbles, all these answers to the question, what would you do if you could do anything? And what I noticed when I was done was not what was on the list, but what was not on the list. and law school was not on the list, which was inconvenient because I was at the time at law school. And so I was visiting the United States, and I thought eventually, well, I better call my parents.

And so I call the 15-digit number back to England and my mother answers, fortunately. And she listens for a while and she says, I think you better talk to dad. And so he comes on the phone. And I mean, what would you say to your son after all that time, all that time, all that money or that effort. He's calling you from halfway around the world with a hairbrained idea to quit law school. Actually, what would you say? I think my first response would be a question. And maybe I would say, okay, why? I'd want another why. Okay. That's so my why is I just want to teach and write. It's deep in me. I can feel that that's like a more important path, a higher

path of contribution. Keep going. What would you say next? Well, my response is what I would say to my own son, which is, well, I firmly believe all of us have a unique niche, a calling. And I think you have to continue to explore this desire behind this. And so the first step is, yeah, quitting what you're doing there. If you know that's not it. So you've got to begin to take baby steps forward into fulfilling that desire. And that desire, once fulfilled, will lead to true significance because that's my mind. I believe that that's why you were put on this planet to do that.

I think that it's not just passion, but it's also strength. You have to marry the two. That's not what my dad said. What did he say? Could you repeat it? Are you able to repeat it? Or do we need to have the beeper ready? He said, son, he says, you know what we've always told you, which sounds like, you know, live your dreams or that sort of thing.

But of course, what he'd always told me was go to law school. No, actually, what he said, he said because all Englishmen, you know, quote Shakespeare over tea and crumpets for breakfast in the morning, he pulls out this line from Hamlet. He says, you know what we've always told you, to thine own self be true. Which he'd never said to me in his whole life. But it was, of course, a theme. It wasn't like the first time I'd ever thought or felt a sense that. living a mission was important. And so that was the beginning. The key to the story is what was on the piece of paper, which was, among other things, was a question. And the question was, why is it that

otherwise successful people or companies don't break through to the next level? And that has been a question that has captivated me and enthralled me for a very long time now. Because, first of all, because it's so odd that otherwise successful people and companies don't continue to be successful. Don't break through to the next level of contribution. If you and I were to have a race and you won by 50 yards and then we had a second race and you got to run the second race with a 50 yard advantage at the beginning and you win again now you're 100 yards ahead and we race a third time. I mean, what's the percentage chance you're going to win the third race? I don't know what the right number is, but it's,

close to 100%. It's obvious. It's logical. Of course you would. And yet, when you look at successful people and companies, that isn't what happens. That's why it's such an interesting question. So that was the seed of the whole journey was quitting, first of all, but really being curious in pursuing a question. There's so many themes of the book in the story you just shared. for those who haven't read the book, I mean, it's truly one of the most valuable books I think you can read. And one of the things I like to do, Greg, is I like to hop through the chapters of things and pages that I've highlighted, put sticky notes on, and get you to expound on things that really spoke to me. And so I want to jump into chapter three, and I heard so many themes of the book come out. Before I ask you a question about discernment, I'm curious. How much of this book,

essentialism is a result of you studying other people organizations and how much of it is observations from your own life and your own story and you kind of finding your way through this and say, okay, this is what essentialism really looks like to live it out? What's the balance? Oh, that's a good question. I'm not sure I know how to answer it. Over those years, I've interviewed hundreds and hundreds of people worked with many organizations all around the country and all around the world, I don't know that I know how to divide them. Well, that's fine. That was just pure curiosity, you know, how much of it was you, because it seems as I listen to your own story that there's so much of your own story and

observation and learning along your path that has really come out in this book as great instruction. Yes, but the only thing that I distinguish there is that when I think about all the people I've interviewed met and the research that I've read and so on, I feel like it's all so intermingled. They're sort of all combined and circumscribed into one great hall. And that's important because I do think it speaks to how I've approached the research and writing and how I approach this kind of thinking. I'm looking for things that are integrated together. I don't want to write a book that's just interesting, for example. I don't want to write a book that's just curious, for example, or happens to kind of titillate just enough for someone to talk about it at the next dinner party.

I mean, that's great if you could achieve that. That's not a bad thing to achieve. But I want to understand how things fit together systemically. I want to understand the whole and the integrated pieces. So it's been very important for me in all of my living and writing and teaching that when I finding answers, I was finding answers that would be true across the whole human spectrum. So, for example, I wanted to find answers that would work as well for an individual as for a relationship, as for a team, as for an organization, as for a nation, as for the world. You know, I want something

that's true across all of the levels of that system. And I do believe totally that, that essentially, Essentialism achieves that aspiration, that the problem identified in essentialism is a human problem that's true from individual to society level, and that the solution is true at the individual level all the way to the societal level. I can teach essentialism, the problem and the solution at all of those levels. And so that mattered to me. One of the, I think, foundational thoughts of the entire book is a thought you share from someone else. Page 44, I'm just going to jog your memory and let you kind of teach. this because this was just, to me, a real lightning rod in this book, and that's the idea, the law of the vital few, a thought introduced in 1951 from a book, Quality Control Handbook by Joseph Moses Geran, if I'm saying that correctly. Explain the law of the vital few, because this is really foundational and understanding what you're helping us with. Well, Duran was the father of the quality movement, and it's interesting that his whole approach,

I'm talking about like product quality. And his message was completely ignored in the United States. So he did not find an interested audience here. And so he ended up finding a hungry audience, hungry fish, so to speak, in Japan. And this was, it was at a time that is hard for us to remember or to even be aware of now because Japan has a different reputation for product creation now. But at the time, they were the low cost, low quality

producer of products. So for something to be made in Japan meant it was going to be cheap in both senses of the word. So when he turns up there and starts explaining that there's a different way of operating that would significantly increase their value, that the products would be more valuable, they would be higher quality and so on, they just absorbed that and they applied it in very direct and extreme ways. And out of that came the Japanese revolution, the product quality revolution. And then ultimately that revolution came back into the United States and it's gone elsewhere in the world as people realized there's a better way of doing this. Now, that's the context. The insight he had was that by identifying the right few

problems and solving the right few problems, you could massively increase the quality output. But you had to identify those correctly. What he was saying was contrary to the quantity logic. The quantity logic just says, everything's about equal value. If you want more or something, you just have to get more of it. If you want to improve something, you'd have to improve everything. He's saying, no, that isn't the way the world works at all. It's not even close. close. It doesn't even approximate the world. The world, he is arguing, now this is the philosophical way of saying what he's saying, the world is divided into a few things that are incredibly valuable, and most of the rest is noise, and you can ignore it. The ability to identify the thing that is of

greatest value is worth the effort because life is so disproportionately created. So, you know, said differently, it is difficult to overstate the unimportance of practically everything. And so, you know, pulling this back to essentialist language, the non-essentialist believes that almost everything is essential. The essentialist believes that almost everything is non-essential. And so a few things are so valuable that they're worth the effort. I mean, in a way, it really is consistent with the story we ended up riffing on. earlier because the price that you pay to get to the highest levels of clarity are justified because there's so much more valuable. It's almost like the path of the non-essentialist is the metaphor of,

we're in a coal mine and we're digging and we go, okay, well, if you want more rewards in your life, you have to dig more call out and the more call you dig out, then the more value you've created. Okay, that's one approach. But what if you've lived with that mindset your whole life that you're in a core mine, but you suddenly discover, after years and years of believing that, that you're actually in a diamond mine, that you've never been in a coal mine, that suddenly would it not instantly change the way you thought about what you're doing and how you'd work? And suddenly you'd be so much more selective, you'd be saying, okay, well, everything has got to be optimized for finding the diamond and not shoveling out more and more. It's not a game of quantity. It's a game of quality. And so

that's what the essentialist sees that life is and they didn't make it this way I didn't make it this way you didn't make it this way it is this way there some things are disproportionately valuable and we even though we sense that is true we tend to underestimate the extent to which it is true that a few things simply are not twice as valuable but 10 times a hundred times, a thousand times more valuable than the other things around them. So our life is about finding those things and the pursuit to do them. Such a powerful return. I want to jump to page 159, chapter 12, which is entitled Uncommit, win big by cutting your losses. We certainly understand that and just a quick thought here and we'll move in some other things. But I didn't realize this

about the word decision. The Latin root of the word decision, Siss or SID, literally means to cut or to kill. And one of the things that just really kept coming back up and just hitting me right in the head here as I read this book is decisions matter so very much when we think about essentialism. And you've given us a wonderful context in which we can make better decisions. But I find this fascinating that the word, the root word there means to cut or to kill. So decisions really is about editing. That's a beautiful metaphor that you use in the book is how to edit. we have been taught the decision making is about what you say yes to and in a sense it's right but it isn't a decision until we have eliminated something it and how often have people gone into meetings even

you know small companies small groups and they okay what are the things we're going to focus on and we identify that and that kind of is a strategic plan but nobody has actually said and therefore we will not do x y and z so it means we just keep doing everything, even though we vaguely understand that these things are more important. You know the difference when you've decided not to do something, when you've quit law school, when you've decided not to apply anywhere but Stanford and so on. It's a resource allocation change. And you really are saying we're not doing that.

So therefore we can take all those resources, even if those resources are just our attention span, is now onto something else. And by focusing, it is tremendously powerful what we can achieve when we focus. And by focus, we mean when we uncommit, when we remove from our lives the things that are good, interesting, but they've outlived their welcome. They're nice to have, but they're not the very thing we're supposed to be on. That, that's where the magic starts to happen. And of course, that takes courage, but that's where the magic is. All right, let's jump to chapter 17, progress, the power of small winds.

this is not just encouragement. This really can equip people, certainly people who maybe feel like they're stuck, or they're looking at where they know they want to go. They seemingly see the path, but they're almost simultaneously overwhelmed at where the path is going to lead them. And they can only see the apex, if you will, the highest point of Mount Everest, you know. Just explain in your own life and then what you're teaching is in this book. This is the power of small wins, because this is really true. Well, one of the mistakes, most common mistakes I see people making who read essentialism and then subscribe to this different mindset is that they try, in a way, they're trying to become essentialists still using a non-essentialist lens. And you can't do that. But what it looks like if they

try is that they take the path of the perfectionist instead of the path of the essentialist. Because if you say, okay, I'm going to be an essentialist now, that means that all the time and every day from now on I'm only going to do what's essential, then that's not an essentialist journey, in fact. That's saying I have to do everything perfect now, which is like almost verbatim mantra of what a non-essentialist believes. So what I'm saying is that we must become an essentialist in an essentialist way. That means if you don't try and do everything perfect now, you try to have tiny, tiny wins and celebrate them in a big way. So I suggest that people should make a list of six things that they're going to try and do today that they believe are important,

put it in priority order, maybe even cross off the bottom five after they've done it. Take that item, work on it today. See if they can get it done. They get distracted and so on. That's fine. Keep coming back to the list. Keep coming back. Keep coming back. Then at the end of the day, you celebrate those wins. So I keep a journal. I don't think I've missed a day in the last five years, not missed many days in the last 15. You just celebrate any progress that you made on those items. What are you grateful for? What have you seen this? That just, even if it's a small, tiny win, you had it. You celebrate it. You go big on your celebration of every small win. so that you have the motivation to go forward.

I think that the majority of people who read or have heard about essentialism don't doubt it. What they doubt is themselves. They doubt themselves more than they doubt what I'm teaching in essentialism. And so I've certainly come to learn that people have to pursue this in a very gentle, very positive way, where they allow the idea that they'll be off track 90% of the time. But they keep coming back. They keep trying again. They're looking for the tiny items of progress

and catching themselves doing the right thing, catching themselves making a little trade-off. Because as soon as you see that you've done that once, twice, two, three times in a day, you realize, well, I guess I can do it more. It is possible. I can do this. I have some control.

And you keep building on that control. Drip by drip. You're making small wins each day. But you add up small, tiny wins. I'm saying such tiny, tiny than people think. In fact, there's a great little website based on a Stanford faculty member called Tiny Habits. And he says there's only three ways to change anything. One is to have a huge perception change.

two is to have a big environment change where you physically go to a different place and three is to change tiny habits and by tiny habits i mean his example is okay so people don't floss as much as they should so he says the tiny habit is i will floss one tooth that's your goal that's great so small that's what i mean by tiny changes though you know what if we simplify even what i said further do we say each day i will write down one thing that I think is important, a tiny little thing, something I can do in 60 seconds or less, but I know is important. And I'm going to do it, and then I'm going to write that in my journal one time at night. I mean, if you do that, the cumulative effect of that single change over 10 years is immense. The power of cumulative activity is immense. So what I've seen is that

people overestimate what they can do in a day and underestimate what they can do in 10 years. Oh, wow. That right there, that's worth the entire conversation, what you just said. That's really true. That's what we do. We try to cram so much into one day and we end up sacrificing our long-term sustainability and winning and performing at our best because we're trying to do too much instead of winning with these tiny habits, which lead to smaller habits and then real breakthroughs. Yeah, I think it's a real cost of non-essentialism. It's a real cost of our obsessionalism. It's a real cost of our obsessive. excessively fast world that we are distracted from long-term thinking at all. In fact, I mean, that's a very literal trade-off that has been made. Just listening to research that was being discussed on NPR that they talked about this. What is the trade-off of smartphones and social media? Is that we don't do the long-term thinking and goal-setting and planning. We just don't do it. We instead just check the next email. So when you put those two things together, you can see that

the overarching cost is that I'm busy today, I'm consumed today, but I'm not doing those small, tiny things that 10 years from now, you know, I'll look back and feel wise in hindsight. Wow, that's really good. All right, before I let you go, I want to jump to page 21. This is from chapter 20. I love the challenge of this. The very title of the chapter is a great challenge. It's just be, the essentialist life. Just be essential. Essentially is what you're telling us. And I had not, I love words, metanoia. This is the Greek word metanoia. And it refers to a transformation of the heart.

And you go on to say that once you really grasp this, and I'm paraphrasing, the technical process of essentialism and living it, and when it sinks into the heart and the heart soaks it up, it really is transformative. I can sense that you feel this because of what it's done to you, but encourage our audience on how this really can transform them. Well, sometimes people will say after I've done a keynote on essentialism or sometimes even after they've read the book, they'll say something like, yeah, you know, that's just a really good reminder for me. Like it's one more thing they have to do. And I always feel in a certain way like I've failed because, that's not at all what I'm saying. I'm not saying, hey, this is one more thing. By the way, remember this every so often that you're to be an essentialist. What I'm suggesting is that we have a mindset shift, that we become an essentialist. Now, we still, we start that in these tiny ways,

that's for sure, but that the intent is different, that we say, look, I want to live my life as an essentialist. I want to continually and perpetually come back to this until eventually we are at the core essentialists who sometimes are distracted by non-essentialist things fine but that at the core we are consumed with singular purpose and one of the examples of this is Gandhi I mean the story of Gandhi it's not someone who just occasionally focused on what was essential it was the whole path of his life I was in south Africa recently and I went to the phoenix settlement where he where Gandhi lived for 23 years and I read what I was told was the only poem he'd ever written. And in that poem found the words, these words,

reducing oneself to zero. And that is a succincter summary of what I really mean by being an essentialist as I've ever seen anywhere. It's removing and removing more and more of the clutter. It's like becoming more and more of who we really are and less and less of who we really aren't. when you say it like that, when I think about those words, it distinguishes the idea that this is like a technique, a time management technique or a productivity technique. It's not that.

It's figuring out who are you, what's the best? What are you built to do? And becoming more of that and removing all of the fake versions of you so that you can be consumed with the purpose. I mean, when Gandhi died, the US Secretary of State,

General George C. Marshall said, here is a man who has shown that simplicity can be more powerful than empires. And Einstein said of him that generations to come will scarce believe that such a one as this ever in flesh and blood walked upon this earth. They're not describing someone who happened to use a new technique or two. They're describing a person who became something different. He became more and more of himself and removed more and more of these external social expectations that didn't serve that purpose. He became something. And we don't have to be Gandhi, of course, that would miss the whole point. But we can learn from him to become more and more of who we are, remove over time these things that are not who we are so that we can fulfill the purpose that matters most to us.

That is a great final word. The book, of course, is Essentialism, the Disciplined Pursuit of Less. Greg, we really appreciate you. A fascinating conversation. I know one that will make our audience think for a long time to come and hopefully act differently. Such an important message. We appreciate your work very much and your time. It's been my pleasure. Thank you for having me. Well, folks, I really enjoyed that. I could have gone on and on and on. But the very last thought that he gave was, I think is the most important thought of the entire conversation. And I think when you go digest this book, as many of you will, or as you're just digesting this conversation, just one key thought I want to share with you or audience that I think matters so very much. While there are so many great truths in this book

that will help you be more productive, and that's a big thing for you, folks. You want to be productive. You want to be better leaders and more productive in your work. what it really is about more so than anything else is what Greg said at the end and that is

it's about being more of who you really are and you know I love words you know I love the dictionary and we didn't have this conversation about what essential actually means so if we're talking about essentialism it's always fun for me to go back and look at the most simplistic

form of a word and the adjective form of essential four words in the dictionary. Absolutely necessary. Semicolon. Extremely important. So I'm listening to this and my takeaway that I hope encourages you is simply this. Absolutely necessary. It is absolutely necessary that we, men and women, be who we are supposed to be.

You were created beautifully and wonderfully. You have unique gifts, unique passions. Those need to be combined for you to play the role in this big, giant story that we're all a part of. It's a role that only you can fill. And in the midst of the hubbub and the craziness and all the things that life throws at you, sometimes you just get discouraged. So all of us would do well to reflect every once in a while. on a consistent basis that we are absolutely necessary to this story.

Second part of the definition, extremely important. If you're absolutely necessary, then your role is extremely important. It may not be considered extremely important by hundreds and thousands and millions. That's the lie of celebrity. How many people know your name is not directly proportionate to how much you matter. You are extremely important as leaders, as people who fuel this great American economy. You're extremely important. Just think for one moment, how many people rely on you? And for those of you who say, Ken, no one relies on me right now. That may or may not be true. But regardless of that,

you're extremely important. So I think you should run and go get this book. I think you should digest it. and as you're reading, it's going to make you better in so many different areas, but don't forget that it is really about stripping away all the lies, stripping away all the labels, stripping away all the insecurities, stripping away all the fears, and stepping into your unique role, who you are, because you're essential. Because you matter so much, we want to give you extra content.

This is something we've asked you about. You overwhelmingly said you want more content. So we have done it for you. Greg and I continue the conversation, and we go about 15 minutes more. And this particular part of the conversation is really about personal growth. So you personal growth junkies, this is worth your time. It's bonus conversation. All you got to do is go to entreleadership.com slash podcast.

Of course, this is episode 160. So go into the show notes, and you'll see the link there for the bonus footage. Hey, have you taken advantage of our August giveaway from the Entree leadership team? It's a team communication field guide, how to keep your team engaged and productive. I've been telling you about this. It's a great tool. Just give you an idea of some of the great stuff in there. One of the nine hacks for highly productive meetings is something from Jeff Bezos,

who gave some great insight on how to hack a highly productive meeting. One of the ways is to limit attendees. I mean, just simply think about that. Make sure you get the right people in the room. How many meetings have you been in where you're looking around and you're going, what are they doing here? And Bezos actually says you should never have more people in a meeting than can eat two pizzas. So there you go.

That's just some of the fun stuff. But so much practical stuff. And many of you've taken advantage of the field guide. So we want you to get it. It's absolutely free. Text the word communication to 33444. Text the word communication to 33444. Or the link to the team communication field guide is in the show notes.

Episode 160 at entreleadership.com. So Eric the producer has asked me to give you some insight from what I've learned about communicators and good communication. And so last week I taught you folks a little bit about how to improve what you say, right? So how to improve that vocabulary? What are the sources for that? And a lot of times that is that first impression verbally. Of course, if you look like a slob and you've got some ratty clothes on, it may not matter what you say. But I would suggest you that it could possibly change the first impression.

You could look like an absolute bump. and you start rocking a pretty impressive vocabulary. People are going to, oh, what's going on here? It's that important. That's the point I'm making. So last week I taught you how to improve what you say and really focused in all vocabulary. So this week, a few thoughts really quickly on how to improve how you say it.

How do you say it better? How do you talk better? How do you speak better? So I'm going to walk through some things. And this is a technical approach. So we're going to walk through these things. Very simple. You can write these down.

you can come back and listen to it later. First thing is you got to work on enunciation. You know, if you're not enunciating, then you're less likely to be able to be clear when you are speaking, whether that be in a hurry, in a one-on-one setting or in a meeting, or just simply speaking publicly. Enunciate. It also gives that added effect of some intentionality to what you're saying.

When you can enunciate, it actually gives off a really nice presentation. So enunciate for two reasons, right? Next, work on pace. Pace. So many people get a little bit nervous when they're speaking, or maybe they're just in a hurry, and they've developed a bad habit of speaking quickly. Now, I'm going to tell you something. I have to be careful of this because I can speak very, very quickly, and if I'm not careful,

you lose some people. It sounds like mumbling. Now, from a public speaking standpoint, when you speak too quickly, the audience can't catch up. you may deliver a piece of gold to them, but if you've moved so quickly, they've lost it. So that leads me to the next little technique. And it really plays like a cousin to pace. Now, before I move to that, I want to say one of the thing about pace. There are times where you'll want to be faster and more intense, and so you can speed up a little bit.

But make sure that if you're speaking quickly on purpose, that you find an opportunity to slow it back down. Pace really matters. Learn how to use pace to emphasize. Learn how to use pace to call people's attention to things. Now, the pause. I love the pause. I just did it. Now, for young broadcasters, using a pause can be really nerve-wracking because there's something about dead air, right, that terrifies you. But learning the pause is huge, because when you pause, people lean in. And so that's how you use the pause. And the pause can also be used very effectively when you're changing pace. So if you're in a high intensity part of a speech, if you will, using a pause to then change direction of your content is also effective in changing the whole mood

of the room, changing your emphasis, and so on. So enunciation, pace pauses. Here's another one, intonation. Now this is not a political statement. But I got to tell you, the two candidates we have, forget their positions, forget their personal issues. They both scream all the time. When they give a speech, they're effectively just below a scream. I'll say this, Trump's nomination speech was straight up yelling the entire time. And both he and Hillary Clinton, they get up high and they yell the whole time. There's zero intonation in their talks.

That's a problem. Go watch some of their stuff as what not to do. Intonation. That means use the ups and downs, right? And this works beautifully with pace. If you can master pace and intonation, I'm telling you, people will find you pleasant to listen to. And in the early days, that helps when your content may not be very strong.

So pace and intonation, really, really huge. Here's another one. Work on getting rid of fillers. Fillers, the number one filler used in the history of the English language is um. um now i sometimes will use a uh you know as a little transition thing you know a little bit of a but that's that's you got to be careful you can't use it too much you all listen to me all the time um fillers see there i just went up and so when that happens and you do it too much what it does you can use an um every once in a while i want to be clear on that but if you do it too much

then what has happened is you're relying on that as a verbal crutch to get you to your next thought. And if you can remove fillers, it just makes you look so much more confident and it's just pleasing to listen to. And then finally, make sure that you are showing some energy and some passion. You don't have to bounce off the stage. You may not be somebody that's naturally that passion or that high energy, but show the right level of energy. energetic is for you, then you need to be operating at full capacity when it comes to energy because that is a physical connection that the audience will pick up on. So again, don't try to be the energizer bunny if that's not who you are, but operate at your full energy. So there you go.

Just a couple of technical things that will improve how you say what you say. Hope that adds value to you. Big fun to share that with you. So many of you have taken us up on the infusion Soft August giveaway. Very simply put, how do you automate repeat sales? This is so important. This is mailbox money. And so we have given this tool to you infusionsoft.com slash repeat sales. Infusionsoft.com slash repeat sales. That's where you go. Three huge opportunities for you to learn how to do this. The basics of customer retention. New methods that will help you inspire loyalty with your customers. And then most importantly, three ways to do it in less time. earning repeat sales and earning customer loyalty.

I don't know if there are two more important things that you can do as a business, and InfusionSoft has given you a resource this month. It's absolutely free, and it'll help you do all of those things. So infusionsoft.com slash repeat sales. Hey, I want to thank Greg McCown for his time, and I want to thank you folks for the iTunes comments. We've recently got some great comments from you, folks. I won't take the time to read them all,

but you are loving us on iTunes, and we appreciate that, because here's what happens. It does make Eric the producer and I feel a little good. It's an awes shucks moment. But more importantly, people are paying attention. We are consistently ranked in the top 10, top 20 on iTunes, in the business category. People are checking us out.

And when they go there and they look at the ratings and the comments from you folks, it matters. So if you would give us two minutes, go into iTunes, give us a rating, give us a nice comment. Be honest. We're not, you know, again, we're not making Christmas cards out of these things. but the point is it helps us grow. And if you believe that more people should be listening to us,

I need two minutes of your time. iTunes, rate us, give us a nice comment. We will appreciate it, I promise. So that is going to do it. I want to thank all of you on behalf of Eric Anthony and the entire Entree leadership team. We appreciate you folks so very much. Thanks for the listen.

We'll talk with you again very soon.