Think Fast Talk Smart: Communication Techniques - 242. Tech Tools: The Power of Showing, Not Telling

Episode Date: November 13, 2025

Transform how you communicate with tools that make your message stick.Sometimes the best way to explain an idea is to show it. That’s why Loom was built — to make communication more visual, authentic, and efficient. By combining video, screen sharing, and AI-powered editing, Loom helps teams connect and collaborate asynchronously, no matter where they are.In this episode of the Think Fast, Talk Smart Tech Tools miniseries, host Matt Abrahams talks with Joe Thomas, co-founder and CEO of Loom, now part of Atlassian, about how asynchronous video can make communication clearer, faster, and more personal. They discuss why “show, don’t tell” is such an effective communication principle, how authenticity builds trust, and why recording yourself might be one of the best ways to improve how you communicate.In addition to insight-packed discussions, this miniseries explores innovative tools that enhance the way we communicate and connect. Whether you want to make your presentations more memorable, craft stories that stick, or connect with your audience on a deeper level, these episodes will help you communicate with greater clarity, confidence, and impact.Episode Reference Links:Joe ThomasEp.227 Tech Tools: Move Your Audience By Moving Through Your PresentationEp.230 Tech Tools: Use Visuals to Your AdvantageEp.233 Tech Tools: Write with Confidence and ImpactEp.236 Tech Tools: Zeroing in on Your Email CommunicationEp.239 Tech Tools: How Smarter Scheduling Leads to Stronger Communication Connect:Premium Signup >>>> Think Fast Talk Smart PremiumEmail Questions & Feedback >>> [e-mail] Transcripts >>> Think Fast Talk Smart WebsiteNewsletter Signup + English Language Learning >>> FasterSmarter.ioThink Fast Talk Smart >>> LinkedIn, Instagram, YouTubeMatt Abrahams >>> LinkedInChapters:(00:00) - Introduction (01:18) - Loom Elevator Pitch (02:27) - Creation of Loom (03:50) - Show, Don’t Tell: Using Video Effectively (08:35) - Favorite Communicator (09:39) - Communication Hack or Tool (12:42) - Conclusion  *******Thank you to our sponsors.  These partnerships support the ongoing production of the podcast, allowing us to bring it to you at no cost.Try Prezi today and get 25% off exclusively at prezi.com/thinkfast.

This Tech Tools miniseries is brought to you by Prezzi, the presentation tool that makes your ideas easy to follow, hard to forget, and faster than ever to create with Prezzi AI. The best investment is in the tools of one's own trade. At Think Fast Talk Smart, we're taking this quote by Benjamin Franklin, the famous U.S. inventor and founding father very seriously. As you know, our show strives to share tips and techniques to help you hone and improve your communication and careers. These practices and approaches can be augmented with tools and technology. I'm Matt Abrams. I teach strategic communication at Stanford Graduate School of Business. Welcome to this Tech Tools mini-series of Think Fast, Talk Smart, the podcast.

In this multi-part mini-series, we'll introduce you to tools we use at Think Fast Talk Smart to help us be better at our spoken and written communication. And you'll learn best practices from the founders who created them. Taken together, we hope you'll hope you. these communication tools will help you find new ways to think fast and talk smart. I'm excited to speak today with Joe Thomas, who's one of the founders and the CEO of Lume, now part of Atlassian. Well, Joe, welcome. Thanks for joining me. Thank you so much for having me, Matt. Some of our listeners might not know exactly what Lume is. Can you share what your product is

using the elevator pitch structure that I teach to my MBA students? What if you could, so that, for example, and that's not all. Certainly. So what if you could record a quick video showing your screen, including a camera bubble, where the video is instantly ready to share to communicate complex ideas with anyone at any time, so that you can save time, reduce misunderstandings, and build stronger connections with your team, no matter their availability or where they are in the world. For example, with Loom, instead of typing out a long,

long note to explain a project or walk through a slide deck live in a meeting, you can record a video for your team to move work forward. Over 10 million Lume videos are shared per month. And that's not all. Loom utilizes AI to transcribe your video and auto draft a relevant title, summary, chapters, and action items, including helping you polish the video removing filler words and silences so you can communicate even more effectively. No video editing skills required. That was very well done in that structure and very clear. I'm curious, what led you to create Loom? When we were starting out in 2015, myself and two co-founders,

what we observed was that video was everywhere in our personal lives from a consumer landscape perspective. But when we would show up to work, video recording and sharing was nowhere to be seen. Where I was working at the time, we were still using Microsoft Outlook for email. Slack was just starting. to become a thing. When we looked at what the existing software and offerings provided, it was

really complex to use. You would record a video. It would save a local file on your desktop. You would have to upload it to Dropbox or Google Drive. By the time you were ready to actually share a link, it had already been 20, 25 minutes. And we felt like there was a ton of latent potential within the space to bring video recording and sharing to the workplace based off of the fact that consumer behavior tends to leave the enterprise. Now, to be clear, we had a core thesis of bringing video to the workplace, but from November 2015, when we started building to June of 2016, so nine months, we had a couple major pivots about how we would apply it and bring it to the workplace.

But ultimately, what we've built and what we've been building against now for nine years, is how do we enable more people to use async video as part of their core communication? Thank you for that. And one of the big powers of what you've created is that it is, say, asynchronous. You don't have to be in live connection. Many of us, thanks to the pandemic, are very familiar with synchronous communication, but the tool allows you to do this asynchronously and provide very specific videos for people to leverage. Now, I know beyond just really thinking about bringing video to the enterprise, you spend a lot of time thinking about how to integrate videos into our

work life and our workflows. What best practices have you learned that can really help people be more effective at integrating video into what they do? It's funny because in listening to this podcast and other episodes, I feel like a lot of things end up being consistent in terms of what is good ways to use asynchronous video. And one of those is you already talked about it, which is show, don't tell. I think one of the things about Loom is that 93% of videos that are recorded on our platform, they have a screen component to them. They're not just talking heads. And that allows people to show their work, not just tell about it. There's also keep it concise.

We actually have a feature on our free tier of Lume that is a five-minute limit, and we have had a lot of people talk about the fact that should be a paid feature to implement a recording limit. And then the third thing that I think about is being authentic. The thing about recording video and sending it is that you can watch it back, you can hear your own voice, you can know the stumbles and say,

I can re-record that. I might be able to do it better. But in a meeting, you can't go, back in a face-to-face conversation. You can't go back in time. Right. And so just be authentic and lean into that authenticity. And that's what really resonates and builds trust with people. And the last thing that I'd say with Async videos is that even though we're bringing consumer behavior to the workplace, it is still a new skill for a lot of people to record and share video as a form of communication. And so just think of Async video as a skill that you can build

and develop over the course of time. We actually have had many users and customers right into us that they started using Loom and because it was the only consistent way that they've ever heard themselves played back that they've improved their communication as a result of just clicking play on themselves no matter how painful it is because pain is gain.

And so just think of Aync Video as a skill. Taking the time to watch yourself is perhaps the best way to improve communication skills. And with a tool like yours, it allows you the opportunity to try slightly different variations and compare them literally side by side. So you can see how that looks different. I tell people, this is like going to the dentist. And I do not mean offense to anybody who is a dentist. My uncle was a dentist. A lot of us don't like going to the dentist, but we're super glad we went. Some of what you're talking about is exactly that. Take the time to record yourself. Watch that recording. As Joe said,

it is a skill and it is a skill that you can develop. All athletes watch their videos. Coaches use those videos to help the athletes. It's a great skill. The notion of focusing on showing really valuable, I think it's fascinating that over 90% of the folks that use your tool have something else on the screen besides just them that shows you how much people are using it to show. Being concise and clear, I love that you have a feature. I wish we could build that into everyday interaction. Wouldn't that be great? And then finally be who you are. Be authentic. You don't have to put filters on and be somebody or not when you do this. That authentic. matters. We'll be right back to continue our conversation, but first, a quick break for a word

from our sponsors. Their support allows us to continue to bring practical communication learnings to our listeners around the world. One of the things I've noticed on busy weeks is that it's not just the cooking, it's the deciding, what to make, what you have, what you're missing. And before you know it, you're back to the same two or three meals. And I'll admit, I'm pretty comfortable staying in that routine. What I like about Hello Fresh is that it nudges you outside of it. You get recipes with flavors from around the world, but everything is already planned and portioned. It makes trying something new feel simple. And because the process is so straightforward, it actually makes cooking feel easier, not like another task at the end of the day. Go to hellofresh.com

slash think fast 10 FM now to get 10 meals free plus a free neutral bullet ultra plus two and one compact kitchen system. It's a $199 value on your third box. Free meals applied as a discount on the first box. New subscribers only varies by plan. Must order the third box by May 31st, 2026. And now back to our conversation. So before we end, I'd like to ask you two questions that I'm asking everyone who's part of this mini series. Who is a communicator you admire and why? This is going to be a basic. answer as well as I said in this sense that like Steve jobs I think he's undeniable but I wanted to call out not just his keynotes I think that the recordings that I'd go back to on a very regular basis of the informal Q&A's that he's done with Apple employees where I find it really fascinating to study

those and Mike the CEO of Atlassian does something very similar to Steve in our town halls where he'll pause and he'll really think about an answer for 10, 15 seconds, which seems like an eternity, right? But that allows him to shape the communication in his head such that it is thoughtful, but it is also not skirting around what the real answer is, like the no BS answer. And so I feel like Steve Jobs was truly excellent at that. Many of us, when we think of Steve Jobs, we think of those big keynotes or the amazing address he gave at Stanford's graduation. many years ago. But in fact, he was also pretty expert at the Q&A piece. And that's where I really think the rubber meets the road, because you can prepare and practice and have a lot of help in

those planned communications. But in those on-the-spot moments, that's a lot harder. Second and final question, beyond Loom, your tool, what is one communication hack or tool or shortcut that you use personally to help you be more effective? So this one is probably more for managers and leaders, but when I actually adopted it, it was incredibly helpful for me in order to reduce my anxiety and communicating with the team. It's a framework called do try consider. A lot of times when you are communicating things to your team, especially if you're in a position of authority, if you don't frame what your messages to them through do try consider, they're all going to take it as gospel. Like, we need to go off and do this. And so when somebody finally introduced to me three

years ago, this do try considerer framework, it actually radically changed my ability to share feedback in a higher volume while also knowing that I trust that it's not going to be misconstrued on the other side. So do in this scenario is used extremely rarely, at least for myself personally, which is I have extremely high conviction on this. I am asking you to do this. This isn't a try or consider try is if it's a design concept. I'm not saying that this is a thing that we're going to ship, but I would love for you to experiment and tinker with the designs in this way. And then we can come back and have a conversation about it. And then consider is used 80 to 85% of the time, which is just, hey, this is a random

thought. I think it's relevant, but I don't know. You're the owner of your work and you need to take it as like just another data point relative to all of the other things that you're considering. And so that was a huge communication hack for me as a leader is making sure that I communicate, whether this is a do try consider to make sure. that something that was a consider wasn't taken and come back three months later. And I'm like, oh, no, I forgot I even said that. I really appreciate not only you sharing that, but also teaching

that to us. And you're right. Many leaders when they will say things, people take it as a do when in fact it was meant as a try or consider. It's the preamble that you give to your comment that helps people understand this is a try, this is a consider. And the fact that we look at our thoughts as leaders and even colleagues, I would argue, as either do try or consider helps us to frame and makes the communication more clear for the recipient. Joe, thank you. You know, when I think about it, a lot of what you're about is helping make things clear and easier. We are a visual species, seeing things, helps us a lot. And Loom as a tool is really helpful for us doing that. Thank you for your time and thank you for sharing your insights and background story of the tool.

Matt, thank you for creating this podcast in the first place. It's so, so helpful. And thank you for having me on. Thank you for joining us for one of our communication tools episodes of Think Fast, Talk Smart, the podcast. Please be sure to listen to all of the episodes in this mini-series. We appreciate Prezzi's sponsorship of these episodes. This episode was produced by Catherine Reed, Ryan Campos, and me, Matt Ibrahims. Our music is from Floyd Wonder, with special thanks to Podium Podcast Company.

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