Hey Reader,

Class: COM527 - Effective Communication

Day: The first class on a cold Tuesday in January 2019

Lyndon: "Does anyone else think it's weird that there's no text book for this class, but we were required to have multiple packs of white college ruled 3x5 cards?"

We got that answer pretty quickly - for the entire semester every class member would be presenting in front of the class at least once a week. And every person in the class would write each person feedback (1 good, 1 improvement) on a 3x5 card.

In the beginning weeks I would get things like "you said umm", or "remember to pause and breathe, that was one long run on sentence." But as we got deeper in the semester I started to get things like "stop discounting yourself," or "you sound unsure."

Seeing a stack of 3x5 cards each week telling me the words I use matter forced me to think about how I wanted to be percieved as confident when I talked to people - and to this day I still go back and remove words from emails & DMs because its so easy to fall back into "bad" habits where I discount myself before anyone else even has the chance.

So what can you do to sound more like the expert that you are?

What marketing is driving sales for you right now?

No really - we'd actually like to know.

We've heard a lot of people say that their marketing funnel is changing this year and we want to dig deeper on that.

So, we're collecting receipts - we're surveying 200 creative service providers to ask them exactly what's working for their business this year, and we're going to put together a report to answer questions like:

• Is Instagram still the best platform to find clients for my type of service?
• Where are people nurturing their leads?
• What types of offers are selling well right now?

Would you be willing to take the quick survey?

​Take the survey here​

1. Cut the filler

We've all become attuned to 'tells' when AI writes copy like emdashes, "here's the thing," or "honestly". But we as humans do the same thing, and we notice it when people do it as well.

The ones I struggled with most were "I think," "hopefully", "potentially", and "possibly." I told myself it was because I cared about being factual and if I wasn't 100% sure, I didn't want to lead someone astray. But in reality most of the time I just didn't want to disagree with people, so I started added disclaimers that I wasn't confident.

To this day I still have to go back and remove "just" from basically everything I write, because it's a crutch that doesn't add anything and makes me sound less confident in what I'm saying.

What are your goto confidence deminishers?

2. Just stop talking

In Daniel Pink's MasterClass course he talks about the idea of creating a Discussion Map in a meeting, basically the idea is a way of mapping who holds the power and influence in the room rather than just paying attention to who talks the most.

I watched it years ago while multitasking, but one passing comment ~"often times it's the person who speaks the least that holds the most power & influence" is one I still think about a lot.

Saying more words doesn't necessarily add more, often times it does the opposite.

In our businesses this could look like on a sales call; after saying the price we want to justify it and keep talking for a few paragraphs. It comes across as way more confident if you just stop talking after the price, because it shows you believe it's worth it, so they should too.

Most times less is more, if what you're saying is specific to what matters.

Where do you over talk in communication?

3. Fake it till you make it

On day 1 of getting a new job I was given my business cards with my title on it - if someone were to ask me to do that work in the first week would I actually be able to do it? No, I wasn't up to speed.

Often times as entrepreneurs we think we need "proof" before we can give ourselves a title, introduce ourselves as a ___, or sell an offer we've never delivered before.

But that's how the entire job market works, you get a job based by "selling" the HR team that you have enough transferable skills and making them believe you'll be able to do the thing - then you figure it out once you start. You can apply the same things to your business.

In your business this could be "building in public", "paid to create" (pre-selling something before you've made it, aka kickstarters entire business model), or "I'm sure I can figure it out".

What have you been putting off until you have "proof"?

4. Defer authority

If Freud believed most of our adult mind is based on our childhood, I'd make the argument that for many of us our confidence is based on the elementry school playground and "he said/she said" behavior that for many in adulthood was experienced again as cancel culture.

We don't want to be called out that we're wrong, or have to defend ourselves. It's easier to just appear unsure.

Find a backstop for your opinions. For example, if you're a web designer with a strong opinion that SEO should be a certain way, find a study you can quote.

Then people aren't disagreeing with you, it's a study/report/published fact and your just the person quoting it. And by extension you get the credibility of known such a good source.

Where are you "sanding down" your opinions because you don't want to disagree with people?

Today on The Sustainable Creator we dropped episode #37 - Stop Diminishing Your Expertise: 4 Ways to Boost Your Confidence around Mannerisms (this email), Belief, Scaffolding, and Proof. It was one of our favorite conversations to record you can find all the links to listen here.​

See you next week,

Lyndon

PS we'd really appreciate it if you filled out the survey!