Start With A Win - How to Communicate with Extreme Clarity with Debra Jasper

Episode Date: August 3, 2022

International speaker, Debra Jasper, is the founder of Mindset Digital, which is a digital transformation company that provides in-depth training, strategy and consulting to companies around the world. She serves as a Faculty Fellow at Ohio State University and has been named one of the top 12 Winning Women entrepreneurs in North America by Ernst & Young.Main TopicsHow COVID-19 impacted our work in the digital world and the need for extreme clarity in our communication (02:00)The formula for extreme clarity: write for action, deliver powerful presentations, deliver a powerful online presence (6:48)How to build a great LinkedIn profile (10:00) Write for attention by using strong copywriting skills (11:38)Debra’s upcoming book, Extreme Clarity: Break Through in a Hyper-Distracted Hybrid World (16:08)Rapid Visual Storytelling and how it applies to doing business (19:00) Connect with Debra:https://www.mindsetdigital.comhttps://www.linkedin.com/in/debrajasper/https://twitter.com/debrajasperConnect with Adam:https://www.startwithawin.com/https://www.facebook.com/AdamContosCEOhttps://twitter.com/AdamContosCEOhttps://www.instagram.com/adamcontosceo/Listen, rate, and subscribe!Apple Podcasts Spotify Google Podcasts

It's funny, we all think, you know, everybody said the world shifted overnight and all of that. But in a lot of ways, the way we all do business and when I sort of slogging through our days, you know, I mean, frankly, it was even more email that we're slogging through and more. And instead of long, boring meetings in person, we were doing long, boring meetings on Zoom. So in some ways, a lot didn't change that should have changed. But what I think now people are recognizing is the big skill these days is how do you make a big impact on a small screen? pretending to, you know, you're nodding, but I can tell by your eyes that you're checking email. So I think these days you can give me your time. You can be on the Zoom call, but you're still not giving me your attention. You're just not tuning in. And that, that is a big shift because at least in the meeting, I could tell if you were looking down or doing something else, right? Welcome to Start With A Win, where we give you the tools and lessons you need to create business and personal success. Are you ready? Let's do this. Coming to you from Brand Viva Studios here in Denver, Colorado, it's Adam Kanto.

Start with a win. How you doing, Producer Mark? Oh, I'm starting with a win. I love it. I love it. Hey, how are you doing in this current day and age of the hybrid workforce, the hybrid company, the best mindset, communication, your digital enablement, things of that nature. How do you feel about that right now? Well, I mean, I feel pretty good, right? But I will say that it's interesting to see all this stuff happening online with Elon Musk wanting everyone back in the office. And there's just all this stuff going on. So I feel like there's obviously a struggle of what this all looks like. And so today we have the pleasure

of having international speaker, Debra Jasper on Start With A Win. She's the founder of Mindset Digital, which is a digital transformation company that provides in-depth training, strategy, and consulting to companies around the world. She serves as a faculty fellow at Ohio State University and has been named one of the top 12 winning women entrepreneurs in North America by Ernst & Young. Welcome to Start With a Win. Hey, great to be here, guys. So it's, I mean, first of all, my dad's a Buckeye, so shout out to Ohio State. Great school. Go Buckeye. So shout out to Ohio State. Great school. Go Bucs. There you go. And I'm

from Columbus. So, you know, wonderful town, great people. Wow, there you go. Yeah. It is a great town. Small world. Hey, let's just start here. What is a digital transformation company? I mean, a lot of people are using those phrases right now. What does that mean? For us, it means how do you communicate in a digital world, right? So today we were talking about audiences are not just distracted. We've been super distracted for a while, but the challenge now is they're more distant and they're more distressed. And it's just easy to get a message out, but hard to get a message in. It's hard to get people to slow down and tune into anything you have to say. So we basically transform how people are communicating.

You've got to communicate now with extreme clarity if you have any hope that you're going to drive action and get results. Okay, let's break that down a little bit. I mean, I love this concept, and I'll tell you what was it. March 13th of 2020, I closed our offices at Remax. I was the CEO there at the time. And it seemed like the world came to a screeching halt for so many. I mean, everybody was locked in their house or apartment or wherever they could find a place to batten down from the pandemic. And you're right, we all went digital and we didn't know how to do it, even though Skype had been around a long time, things of that nature.

What changed and what didn't change? What were those problems that we had with what didn't change that stimulated this conversation? I actually love that question because it's funny. We all think, everybody said the world shifted overnight and all of that but in a lot of ways the way we all do business and when I sort of slogging through our days you know I mean frankly it was even more email that we're slogging through and more and instead of long boring meetings in person we were doing long boring meetings on zoom so in some ways a lot didn't change that should have changed. But what I think now people are recognizing is the big skill these days is how do you make a big impact on a small screen? You have to design everything for attention. Because if I'm not

capturing your attention, you can be on a Zoom call and pretending to, you know, you're nodding, but I can tell by your eyes that you're checking email. So I think these days you can give me your time. You can be on the Zoom call, but you're still not giving me your attention. You're just not tuning in. And that, that is a big shift because at least in the meeting, I could tell if you were looking down or doing something else, right? Totally. Yeah. We can, we can hide things. I mean, I could have the TV going in the background. I could have my dog under my feet, kids playing over here. And you're right.

I mean, all we did was magnify our distractions and reduce our desire to actually focus on one thing, I suppose. And then you've got those people who got on these Zoom calls and then turned off their video. And they're not even in the same room half the time. They might put on an earphone and wander off to the kitchen or something. Who knows? Right. And we've trained ourselves to sort of nod in the

right places. But I'll tell you one of the big shifts that I think has happened is this level of stress. You know, there's a lot of research on anxiety and how it impacts the brain. And I think for leaders, what people are starting to understand is when I'm stressed out, it's harder for me to listen, it's harder to learn, and it's harder to remember anything I learned. So if I'm leading stressed out people, and who isn't? Everybody is stressed out. It's just requiring you to communicate with extreme clarity. You've got to get to the point. No more long, meandering emails, long, meandering meetings.

People have less patience for it. And that's true in person and away from work because we just, you'll tell us things we can't remember. You know, we can't remember. We're zooming through our days. It's like even my team will say, you know, we told you that last Tuesday. And you're like, oh, yeah. It's just hard. So I think the big shift when we talk about extreme clarity, it's easy to say that,

but what does that actually mean? You know, what does that look like? And so we've spent a lot of time at Mindset Digital thinking through what is the formula for extreme clarity? And now we're working with Fortune 100 firms, a lot of healthcare organizations, taking them through, basically transforming everything they do from their newsletters to their website to their presentations. You just think about all the ways we communicate every day, our online presence. It's just all got to be completely rethought if we're going to capture attention now. All right. So you talk about the formula for extreme clarity. Can you walk us through some of that? Yeah. So first I talk about it in terms of three things. Here's the three. The big skill today is you have to be a better virtual communicator. I'd argue a powerful virtual

communicator, right? Totally. What does that look like? I think it's, I think of it in three buckets. First, you've got to write for attention because I don't see you every day. So now I'm writing you email. And studies show we get toned wrong about half the time. So I'll be like, Adam, that email you somebody, is Adam pissed off at me? Did I do something wrong? Yeah. But you're trying to be very concise, right? Right, right.

So short, we say, does not mean rude. But here, our formula, we call it, we have an SOS habit program. We call it everything that goes out the door has to be short, organized, and skimmable. And then underneath that, we talk about ARC. It has to be clear calls to action, clear recommendations, clear context. Because nothing's more annoying than popping open an email and saying, I don't know why you're sending this to me. I don't know what I'm supposed to do with this. Or why are you copying me on this? So just, it's amazing to me that we spend countless hours every

day writing email, and we've never trained anyone on how to do it. So people send out long, meandering leadership emails, long, meandering compliance emails. These are important emails, and we're doing it, we're writing them really badly. And then of course they get ignored. So that's step one, right? For action. I always say when I do keynotes, I'll say, how many of you, first thing you do in the morning is call up your email, figure out you can delete without opening it? Everyone. So we're just sort of going through our day in triage, going, can I ignore that? Can I ignore that? Can I ignore that? The second is how do you deliver powerful presentations? Because most of us at some point, we're either leading a team meeting or,

you know, we're on a big stage, but either way, we're having to lead team meetings and Zoom calls and presentations in a way that's powerful. And you've got to structure that for narrative. So I wrote my dissertation on micro storytelling and the art of powerful storytelling when I got my PhD at Ohio State. And really, we need to be structuring our meetings like a good narrative story. Powerful opening, you know, three key points, strong chapter headings, powerful ending. There's thought that goes into this. And by the way, my favorite tip on that is never end on questions because there's nothing more painful than, okay, anyone questions. And then, you know, you know, those zoom calls, please, any questions, no one wants to do that. And then the third is how do you deliver a powerful online presence?

And we can talk more about that, but I used to cover presidential campaigns when I was a journalist. I'm glad I don't do that now, but I came to sort of LinkedIn and people's online bios and said, oh, this should be more of a mini magazine bio that answers two key questions versus a, if you said, hey, Debra, you know, I'm Adam. I wouldn't say, hi, Adam. I'm Debra. I'm a dynamic leader. You know, or Debra is a dynamic leader.

We don't talk about ourselves that way in person. We've got to stop doing that online because it's kind of painful. So those are the three things. Okay. You're making me think of some of these really terrible elevator pitch bios I've seen on LinkedIn. It's just crazy. Yes.

Adam is an explosive leader. Bam. Yeah. I run toward bombs. Yeah, no. gotta we gotta stop right yeah i mean it's it's like we're doing a uh like a movie trailer or something like that for an action film right actually and here's the really funny thing we kind of know this in person right but we do a lot we do executive linkedin makeovers i've done moreset Digital. We've done more than a thousand of them. I mean, C-suite CEOs. And some of them are hilarious. I mean, I interviewed a guy once who wanted to lead with my team thinks I'm amazing. I'm like, probably not. But even if they do, we're not leading with that. But a lot of times I say your LinkedIn profile should answer that

summary section. It's the most powerful section in your bio, right? Or even your bio should lead with, we got to answer two key questions. Why should people work with me? And will they like me? You know, I mean, we look you up and say, do I want to work with you? You know, and what am I going to do for them? It's really, why should people work with me? What am I going to do for them? So often we're leading with, let me tell you why I'm great. We should be leading with, let me tell you how I'm going to help you be great. This podcast is full of a lot of really key points for everybody listening. Make sure you go back and listen to this a couple times because I've already got a page of notes here. Deborah, so we've got these three points.

Write for attention. How do you deliver powerful presentations and deliver a powerful online presence? I want to get back into the first one, write for attention, because a lot of people, you know, we went to grammar school. We didn't go to copyright school. And we don't read necessarily in proper grammar. So, I mean, I don't think our brain necessarily works that way. And it's funny because we're writing some scripts for some different courses that we're creating here. And it's funny, Mark's team, a copyright team, marketing team, they're looking at it going, you're not writing a dissertation paper here, Adam. Yes, it's so true.

Why do we try to impress other people with the big words and how long we can make a sentence? Right. Okay. Tell me about this. I love this question. And I deal with this all the time, especially I do a lot of work in healthcare. And that is the, you know, I work with hospitals all the time. And, of course, it's essential that people understand what they're telling their patients. And they're sending them the most complex information. And people, you know, a lot of people are struggling. We can't puzzle through this. So I'm going to give you the three curses that stand between you and your audience. Okay. information. And people, you know, a lot of people are struggling. We can't puzzle through this. So

I'm going to give you the three curses that stay in between you and your audience. Okay. And I talk about this in my new book and I've taught this for 10 years. Well, really more than that. But I saw this a lot when I was a journalist for 20 years before I started mindset. So I saw this every day. The first is the curse of competition. I mean, we know this, right? We're up against a lot. So if you're not engaging, then I've got my phone at my fingertips. There's a million other things I could be doing. So first, there's just too much coming at people, and that's where I call it design for attention. But the second curse, which gets to your point, there's two curses.

One is the curse of knowledge, and part of it is you think about, you know, your real estate expertise, right? You talk in your sort of your own tribal language. You know this stuff really well. You've been immersed in it forever. So it's easy for you because you think you think you're explaining it. But the client is going, well, what are you talking about? You know, I talk about LMS, learning management system. To me, that's everyday language. Other people are saying, what? I don't get it. So that curse of knowledge is when you know it so well, you think you're explaining it, but you're not. What you're talking about, though, is my favorite curse. And I work a lot with, I taught a lot of tenured faculty. And this is the curse of expertise, which is different than the curse of knowledge,

because the curse of expertise is when you're talking to impress rather than inform. So this is when I would say, oh, I studied, I got my PhD in educational policy. I studied pedagogy versus I studied teaching. And what happens is, I love this, that we're waving our flag of knowledge and expertise and people are going to be impressed. And really people are just like, oh, that's too complicated. I'll deal with that later. And they're just, you know, we're giving them permission to tune us out. That is so true because realistically you're following a story and you're asking them to switch channels with their brain and figure out the word you just said, as opposed to listen to the story. So the story goes by the wayside. It becomes secondary to, I now have a new challenge, and that is, what the hell does that word mean?

Yes, exactly. And here's my favorite thing. So we work every day with a lot of big corporations because we transform their content. So they send us their newsletters and their website language and their emails. And at least half of it is harder to read than HIPAA regulatory notices. You can check your readability score and say, how hard is this to read? And I tell people, we should all be writing at about a score of 60, 65. That's Reader's Digest. Most of us, you know, sometimes we're rewriting content. This is a news release and it's harder to read than the Harvard Law Review. Is anyone going to do that? No, we're not. So there's very clear ways we give organizations guidelines to say, you've got to hit certain readability scores and here's how we're going to help you do that.

Because to your point, if it's a word I don't understand, if you're making me puzzle through, here's what I say. You get into my to-do Saturday pile, which eventually becomes my to-do never pile. Because you pop it open and go, oh, I'll read this later. Totally. Totally. Hey, you've mentioned your book, Extreme Clarity, Breakthrough in a Hyper-Distracted Hybrid World.

Tell us a little bit about this book and where can we find it? So it won't be out until next year. But if people want to go to MindsetDigital.com and let me know, I will get them on. We've got a long list now of people who are saying, I want this book. And frankly, when you write a book called Extreme Clarity, no pressure. It's taken a little bit longer to make sure it's extremely clear. But we do three chapters on how to write for action, a couple of chapters on how to design powerful PowerPoint presentations and powerful presentations,

and then three chapters on your online presence. And then we wrap up with something I'm really passionate about, which is there are no captive audiences. So the other thing we do is we redesign training for companies. So we transform. We just rolled out 66,000 seats of gamified cybersecurity training that was loosely based on the Game of Thrones. But this company came to us and said, no one's tuning into our cybersecurity training. So we said, all right, well, let's create kingdoms and let people level up. And we gave people names like John the Defender and let's win, you know, you can win water bottles. So I think that the fourth component that companies are really rethinking is I've got to change my onboarding. I can't make you sit

through three days of bad onboarding. I'm going to lose you before I even, you know, I can't retain people that way. So I, all of it, basically we just have to make everything we do more mobile, custom, fast and easy and more fun, engaging, visual, and just overall more powerful. I like that mobile, custom, fast and easy. Yeah. And that's the expectation, right? I mean, I don't even think that makes us competitive. I think that's just baseline. Right. And you just, you know, you mentioned a very powerful word in business, which is onboarding. So many people get that wrong. And when you get that wrong, you know, that's how people start is how they will leave. And if it's, you know,

really haphazard and, you know, very disorganized and scattered and things like that, that's how their career will be. And then that's how they will leave. And it just will not be a good overall experience. So I encourage everybody, really check out mindsetdigital.com, which is your website. And I have one more question for you before we get to my final question. And that is, what is rapid visual storytelling? You talked about storytelling before, and this is something that your background is in, you're an expert in. What is rapid visual storytelling? It's no exaggeration to say it kind of changed my it changed my life. So I came to, you know, I was a writer, I love storytelling. And then I realized, Oh, no, I actually like just storytelling.

So I could do that in person, too. So I became a keynote speaker. And we started doing visual storytelling. Because it's the same thing, you can't put a bunch of text on a screen and anyone's going to tune in, we're just not. So I give keynotes. I'm giving keynotes from Dubai to Australia. And I think the reason I get these invites is in an hour long keynote. How many, how many slides do you think I go through? Any guesses? An hour, I would go 15. 365. Whoa. It's 365. Wow. And I, yeah. And I click more than a thousand times.

I have very few words per slide. My, our deep philosophy at Mindset Digital is slides are free. We have to stop using them as if they're a scarce resource. Our brains are wired for movement and our brains are wired for visual. I have a ton of data. We can do a whole podcast on visual storytelling. But what happens is afterward people say, oh, wow, that felt like I was watching a movie.

Because, you know, it's so funny. You don't watch television where people put up a bad slide and then talk for 30 minutes. It's so true. Why would we think we're going to do that now? And especially, this is really critical. I deliver a lot of virtual talks now. You're designing for a small screen. There's nothing worse than saying, I know you can't see this, but why are you putting it up? So rapid visual

storytelling is the ability to use a lot of visuals while you're explaining your key points in a way that works with how the brain is wired. That's incredible. I'm going to go look up that concept. And yeah, we definitely need to get back together and talk about that. So, Debra, our show is called Start With a Win. And I mean, we've had a lot of winning points today for the leaders out there. This has just absolutely been fantastic. We appreciate you being on here. But I have a question for you that I ask all of our guests, and that is, how do you start your day with a win? Yeah, I love this question. I saw that,

and I'm like, wow, I really have to think about that, right? It's an amazing question. But I would say one of the things that I'm deeply passionate about is thinking through, so I start every day by thinking about what I can do, not what I can't. And we have a whole thing where we talk about priming for the positive. And there's a million small ways that you can implement this, but I'll give you one of my favorites. If you do nothing else out of this podcast today, just ban the word, unfortunately, from your, you know, from your emails, from your, from your meetings. So if you emailed and said, hey, Adam, or you said, hey, Debra, are you available to do this podcast on Thursday? If I'm not, my team will say Debra's not available. They won't start with what I'm not available. They'll say Debra's available on Friday.

Don't tell me what you can't do. Tell me what you can. And I start every morning sort of thinking through what can I do, not what I can't. And then really thinking all day, how am I priming for the positive? And I think that's just changed so much about how we do business. And we implement it in a thousand small ways, right? We have micro moments every day. We're dealing with clients. Are we priming them for what we can't do? Or are we priming them for what we can?

That's awesome. Prime the positive. Tell people what you can do, not what you can't do. That's an amazing way to wrap up this show. Debra Jasper, founder of Mindset Digital, faculty fellow at OSU, Ohio State University. Go Buckeyes. Thank you so much for being on here. Make sure you check out Debra at MindsetDigital.com and her upcoming book,

Extreme Clarity Breakthrough in a Hyper-Distracted Hybrid World. Debra, thanks for being on Start With a Win. Thank you. Appreciate it, Adam. Hey, and thank you for listening to Start With a Win. Hey, are you wondering how to grow your business? It might be something you're missing and it's not sales and marketing. It's something most people don't even think about and that's leadership. Whether you're missing. And it's not sales and marketing. It's something most people don't even think about. And that's leadership. Whether you're leading yourself or a team, leadership is the key to next level growth. And you're in luck because Adam has put together three of the techniques and ideas he used as the CEO of Remax to develop himself and his leaders to produce amazing growth. And he's put all that information in a download you can get over at adamcontos.com

slash leadership. So head over there. And until next time, remember, start with a win.