325. Message Market Fit: Turning Great Ideas Into Communication That Lands

[00:00:00] Matt Abrahams: Each of us has our own unique communication signature. What is your signature saying about you? My name's Matt Abrahams, and I teach Strategic Communication at Stanford Graduate School of Business. Welcome to Think Fast, Talk Smart, the podcast. Today, I am excited to talk with Oliver Aust. Oliver is founder of Speak Like a CEO Academy, where he coaches executives and founders how to refine and strategize about their communication. He's written several books, including Unignorable and Message Machine, and he hosts the popular podcast Speak Like a CEO. Welcome, Oliver. I am really excited to be chatting with you, and it's great to be here in person. We've done a lot of chatting over the years, and I really appreciate your work. Thanks for joining.

[00:00:49] Oliver Aust: Thank you for having me. It's so great to be face to face after usually chatting online. Normally 6,000 miles and nine time zones separate us, so it's great to be here in person. 

[00:00:58] Matt Abrahams: Excellent. Shall we get started? 

[00:01:00] Oliver Aust: Mm, lovely. 

[00:01:00] Matt Abrahams: Excellent. Here at Stanford, we teach our MBAs a lot about product market fit to increase the likelihood that their offerings will hit the target, and they'll be able to be productive. You talk about message market fit. What is this, and how can all of us benefit by maximizing it? 

[00:01:17] Oliver Aust: Every company that wants to be successful needs both product market fit, there's a market for your product, and message market fit, which means that you find the right words, the right story to convince top talent, customers, and investors to work with you, buy from you, invest in you. And if you do that, then you can achieve message market fit, and you need both. So in my most recent book, Message Machine, we looked at why 90% of startups fail, plus established companies, their lifespan gets shorter and shorter as well. And more often than not, it's the lack of message market fit, right? You have a product, it works, but there are just so many products out there, it's just very hard to get traction because let's face it, no one cares about us, our company, our products. We have to make them care, and for that, we need the right words. 

[00:02:02] Matt Abrahams: Have you found in your research certain words that work or certain ways of determining which words work?

[00:02:08] Oliver Aust: Yeah, a common mistake I see is that companies like to talk about the product, what they do and why it's great, and why they're so excited about this. That doesn't work. You want to talk about the outcome. What's in it for them? What's in it for your customer? You probably heard the phrase, "People don't want a quarter-inch drill, they want a quarter-inch hole." But I think that's even falling short because who wants a hole in the wall? People want a picture nicely hung on the wall. So show them the picture. Don't just describe the picture. Show them the picture. Make them see it, make them feel it, and believe it. Make them believe what's possible if you work together, especially of course in the B2B space. So that's what I would aim for, the outcome, what's in it for them. 

[00:02:48] Matt Abrahams: Absolutely. So the stories you're telling to help your message fit the market is to make sure that it's relevant and you're explaining the value, not what it is, but the value it provides. 

[00:03:00] Oliver Aust: That's right. And it's, you and I could probably develop an app this weekend on helping people how to communicate better, right? We could just do it. But would it be a commercially viable operation? Would it be a thriving company? It depends, right? It's so easy to produce new services and products these days, but it's harder to find an audience and find customers for it. So you can see how message-market fit is even more important than it used to be.

[00:03:24] Matt Abrahams: Oh, absolutely. And in fact, I would argue that as you're developing your product, as you're identifying your market, you need to be thinking about the message and the messaging around it. 

[00:03:32] Oliver Aust: Yes, do it in parallel. Don't create a product and then think about how you want to sell it and find investors, et cetera. Do it in parallel. Or the Amazon way, you create the press release first, right? And then see if there are actually words that describe it. But it's not easy, especially in the innovative spaces in the startup world, because you're by definition creating something that probably doesn't exist. So finding the right words to describe it that people understand isn't easy. And talk to your customers, right? It's sometimes as simple as that. You need to go out, founders leave the building, talk to your customers. 

[00:04:03] Matt Abrahams: Right. And iterate as you go. Just like you iterate on the product, you need to be iterating on the message. In your book, Unignorable, you discuss the necessity of standing out in a crowded landscape, and it is getting more and more crowded every day. For founders and leaders trying to build their brand in today's fast-paced, digital, creator-first world, what is the first step to shifting from being overlooked to becoming truly unignorable? 

[00:04:28] Oliver Aust: The word unignorable is actually wordplay on a Steve Martin quote. Steve Martin was asked, "What makes someone successful?" And he said, "Be so good they can't ignore you." And of course, that's great if we can be that good. But it's only part of the story. Because in this day and age, as you said, we have to also talk about the work. So unignorable means you do good work, but you also talk about it. You know, in the same way you talk about your work. We're here to give, not to get, right?

[00:04:54] And there's nothing icky about this. So shifting your mindset from, "Oh, you know, I let the work speak for itself," to, "I do good work and talk about it," that's the first step. Then we need the right message, right? Our words needs to resonate. We need to find an audience, customers, et cetera. So we need the message, and we also need a method. We need to find a way that increases our reach and our reputation. So that's where I would start, with the mindset, the message, and the method. 

[00:05:21] Matt Abrahams: Anybody listening, and you know this about me, I love mnemonics that help us. So I loved the three Ms. Can you break those down for us? So the mindset is being comfortable, being out front with the value you bring. Other parts of that mindset piece? 

[00:05:37] Oliver Aust: In 2018, when I started building my brand and start to write books, starting to podcast, I was hesitant. And my team told me, "Oliver, you need to be out there. You need to be seen." And I said, "But it's about the team, it's not about me." It's like, "Yeah, we hear you, but it helps all of us." So I think there is this mindset shift that we all go through, and many of us have been brought up not to toot our own horns, to be humble, and those are wonderful qualities and embrace them. However, no one will know about us, and that, in this day and age where, let's face it, it's hard out there. The labor market's tough. We need to be seen. So in a way, our personal brand is our moat in the age of AI. 

[00:06:12] Matt Abrahams: Well, I like that. Another M to be thinking about. So finding that level of comfort with being out there espousing what it is you're representing, your brand, your idea, your product. It is hard. It was hard for me, too. But if you remind yourself that the work adds value to other people, and being a mouthpiece for that can help. In terms of messaging, and I know this is a huge question, I don't mean it to be unfair, but what have you found most helpful when people are trying to present their brand in terms of messaging?

[00:06:42] Oliver Aust: I would focus on what you bring to the other person and also who you are for and who you're not for and what you're not. Because our brains are very good at understanding contrast. I'm this, not that. We're not good at understanding better. What does that even mean? Who's better than what? Whose offer is better than what? But if I'm saying, you know, "I'm for leaders. I'm helping leaders communicate better with my Speak Like a CEO method," first of all, I said who I am for, and then I said there's something specific about the way I do it. I have my own method, and everything is my academy and my books, et cetera, everything is called Speak Like a CEO. So there's something distinctive about it, and if you say, "I need a workshop for 200 employees," it's probably not me. I work with leaders. So try to be distinctive and try to be clear who you're for and what you're not and who you're not for. 

[00:07:27] Matt Abrahams: That idea of contrast, who you're for, who you're not for, what you don't do, very important. It helps you define for yourself who your target audience is, but it helps your target audience figure out if you are appropriate for them. So taking the time to do that thoughtful messaging is important. 

[00:07:43] Oliver Aust: That's right, and we have three C's here that can help us. So there's the contrast, there's the compression. So we want to make it short, right? We don't want to spend 30 seconds, two minutes to explain who we are and what we do. And then there's cadence. It should sound right. And if we have something short, compressed, something that has good cadence, and something that contrasts, then we're on the right path for very strong, very succinct messaging.

[00:08:07] Matt Abrahams: Three M's that lead to three C's. I really like that. So the three C's again are contrast, cadence, and compressed, being concise and clear. Excellent, and I think those are three criteria you can use to assess and measure any message as you craft them. Let's talk about method. So there are lots of channels through which we can communicate information. What advice and guidance do you have for finding the appropriate method for the message that you have? 

[00:08:35] Oliver Aust: Of course, think about where your audience is, and for many of us, that may be LinkedIn. You are very active on LinkedIn. I'm very active on LinkedIn. And on LinkedIn, I'd say it's all about your PACE. PACE is your profile, your audience, your content, and the engagement. Profile is actually so important these days for a number of reasons. I'd say it's your digital first impression, so you want to get that right. And yet I see a lot of profiles of professionals that are a little, let's say, unloved.

[00:09:00] They could use a little TLC, and I think it's just professional self-care to spend a little time on your profile. So that's where I would start. Make sure it really represents you well. It used to be said that, "Oh, don't dress for the job you have. Dress for the job you want to have." I'd say today it's, "Don't create a LinkedIn profile for the job you have. Create one for the job you want to have." You know, a little TLC is probably in order there. So that's the profile. And then the A in PACE is your audience. Think about who you want to reach because there are a billion people.

[00:09:29] If you don't have the clarity, you're not gonna reach anyone. Maybe you need 100,000 followers. Maybe you just need 1,000 strong connections. So reach out to people in your industries. Who are the decision makers in your industry that should know you? Engage with their content, reach out to them, connect with them. So think about this with intention. Then content. You probably think that LinkedIn is pretty busy, right? Lots of people posting content. But actually, of the billion plus people on the platform, only 1% of them post regularly, like a couple of times per week.

[00:09:59] So if you post two times a week, you're in the top 1% on LinkedIn. You're in top 1% in your industry on LinkedIn. And let's say you post good quality content, you're probably in the 0.1% in your industry just by posting a few solid posts per week, not AI slop. And then E, engagement in PACE. That is, you need to engage with other people's content, so they engage with you. It's give and take, right? It's not, "Oh, please come and engage with my content," if you're not willing to engage with other people's content. 

[00:10:27] Matt Abrahams: I love a good acronym, and I think for any online posting, PACE makes a lot of sense. Think about your profile, think about your audience, really focus on your content, and then engage. Engage not just with your content, but content of other people. If you do that, not only will you keep up the pace, you'll set the pace. I appreciate that. So for people who do what we do, Oliver, anxiety looms large for those that we try to help. Share with me a little bit about how you help people feel more comfortable, confident, and calm when they communicate.

[00:10:59] Oliver Aust: Maybe I can contribute one little framework. And, and I developed this for myself because like everyone, you know, if the stage is big enough and the stakes are high enough, I think we can all feel it, right? So it's BMW: body, mind, and words. And it starts with your body and the order matters because if we're nervous, as you know, it's a physiological signal. And we can do sighing, we can do breathing exercises. I'm a big fan of movement because if we stand in the same place or sit in the same place, the body can feel trapped.

[00:11:24] So a little movement, light movement, walking around the block is much better than checking our emails before we go on stage or give a presentation because that probably gets our blood racing and something is in there that really excites us in a negative way. B, body, breathing, sighing, movement. Then mindset. It helps to reframe the nervousness as excitement. On top of that, I'm a big fan of power memories, meaning we think back to similar situations that we aced, right?

[00:11:54] If I'm going to present to the board and my mind goes in all, all the things that could go wrong, no. Bring your memories back to the presentations that you did really well. So that's a power memory, and it helps us when we drift off into all the negative territory to bring it back. And then the W is the words. People get nervous because of their words, because either they haven't prepared enough, solution is simple, or they have prepared in the wrong way, which means they have usually tried to remember a script, right?

[00:12:23] And as you're a big proponent of structure, you wanna use structure, not a script. A script is, is very time-consuming. It's hard. We are not professional actors, so we wanna use structure. We wanna memorize our key messages, our points, not remember a script. So BMW, we reset our nervous system, we reframe the situation in our minds, and then we prepare with structure to organize our words.

[00:12:44] Matt Abrahams: Well put. Again, a useful way of remembering. You've redefined the CEO role. You argue that the CEO really should be the storyteller in chief. Tell me more about that and how do we help CEOs, and it doesn't have to be CEO, leaders of any type, to really understand the importance of storytelling in their job?

[00:13:04] Oliver Aust: Stories is how we think, how we make sense of the world, right? A two-year-old can understand a story, but it takes 20 years of education, Stanford, for instance, to be a good finance professional or to be, be a doctor or something. You can see why storytelling beats fact-telling every day of the week. What does it mean for CEOs? I think especially in this day and age where the world is changing so fast, no company can be sure that it's gonna be around in a few years. Many employees worry about what AI will do to their jobs, their roles. I think especially now, a CEO has a duty to make sense of the world for employees, but also for other stakeholders, right? Whether it's investors, regulators, the public.

[00:13:41] I think it's their duty, and I think that storytelling is the right vehicle to do this. How? To me, there are three levels of speakers. The bottom level is of the rambler, right? The rambler starts somewhere and ends somewhere and thinks while they speak, but they lose the audience in the process. Level two is the robot, and the robot is scripting it out, rehearsing it 20 times. It's gonna be on message, but it's gonna be stiff and unnatural, so it's not gonna be very engaging. It's not gonna be a great storyteller. So level three is the raconteur, the storyteller, and the storyteller uses story structure, doesn't use scripts, and just has that mindset of, "I need to tell a story. I need to explain what our vision is. Where are we going?"

[00:14:20] What, so what, now what is one of your favorite structures. There are some others like excite, disturb, assure, or goal, problem, solution. So I can talk about the things we wanna achieve as a business, or I say, "Here's the goal. Now, here's the challenge we face, and here's the solution," right? And if I do this, then I start becoming a stronger storyteller, and it's not actually rocket science, right? It comes so naturally to us once we overcome this inhibition of, "Oh, I need to tell facts and this is what we do here." I think that belongs to the industrial age. I think today we live in an age of visionaries and storytellers because none of us knows where we are going, what happens to the world. So the more inspirational, the more educational a leader can be, the better for everyone. 

[00:15:03] Matt Abrahams: Well put. Having the ability to tell a story, to focus on the importance of storytelling really makes a difference, and it makes a difference in all of our lives, regardless of if we're leaders or not. Oliver, I knew this was going to be fantastic. I knew it was because we've had several conversations, and I always learn something and really enjoy it. Before we end, you well know I ask three questions. One I make up just for you, and the others I've been asking people for a long time. Are you up for that? 

[00:15:28] Oliver Aust: Absolutely. 

[00:15:28] Matt Abrahams: Excellent. As somebody who studies communication, has really invested your life in not only developing your own, but helping others, I'm curious if there's one area that you find yourself coming back to that you yourself are working on. I constantly have to work on my listening skills. I feel that I can always get better in all communication, but particularly listening. Curious if there's something that you're working on, and how are you working on it? 

[00:15:52] Oliver Aust: I'm trying to work on my humor and trying to be, you know, more interesting, more entertaining because as you know, the brain doesn't pay attention to boring things, and yet a lot of business communication is boring. So the bar is very low to be a little more entertaining than the next guy who's presenting. So that's definitely an area I'm working on. And I learned this from Drew Tarvin, who wrote a great book called Humor That Works. He's a fantastic guy, and we spent some time together last year.

[00:16:14] And he said, "It's not really about telling jokes or scripting jokes. It's about being that conversational humor, that levity you bring in, and just trying to think, how can this be a little more fun? How can this presentation a little more fun? Okay, maybe there's a meme, maybe there's a funny picture I can use. How can we make this conversation more fun?" These little things, that's often enough. It's not ha-ha, laugh out loud. It's really those little steps. So humor is definitely an area. 

[00:16:37] Matt Abrahams: I personally need to work on that, too. But this idea of bringing levity allows for connection and allows for energy, and I appreciate you working on it. And, and I've known you long enough to know you're pretty good at it. You're pretty funny. Question number two, who's a communicator that you admire and why? 

[00:16:51] Oliver Aust: 2021, there was a new CEO of the Hugo Boss company, that's a German apparel company, called Daniel Riekert. And he came in, the company was in a slightly challenged position. And in the first week, he assembled his top 100 leaders, and he said to them, "Look, we have a choice here. We can either spend the next year getting to know each other and building trust, or we decide right here that we trust each other. Now, I know this is a great company. Only great people work here. That's why I'm telling you now, I'm trusting you."

[00:17:22] And the team responded in kind and also trusted him. And the result was the next few years were actually very strong from a business perspective and obviously made things easier. So for me, the lesson is, as a leader, as a communicator, be trusting and be trustworthy. That's how you build trust. And that's why I admire him for this statement and this approach because I think it's not easy. You come into a new company that isn't doing so well, to be that trusting in the people who are already there, that's a move 

[00:17:51] Matt Abrahams: I appreciate you sharing that. At the end of the day, trust underlies communication. It's about connection and trust. But when we had Jamil Zaki on as a guest, he said one of the things we can do to really build trust is to trust loudly. In other words, state out loud your trust, and you just gave a great example of that. Hate to have to ask our final question, but we do have to bring this to an end. What are the first three ingredients that go into a successful communication recipe? 

[00:18:17] Oliver Aust: I think we often jump to the question, "Oh, what am I gonna say?" I would suggest let's take a step back and just strategize for a few seconds. I always start with character. Like, how do I want to show up? Am I a coach, a mentor? Do I want to inspire? Do I inform? Second is context. And there I put myself in the shoes of the audience, right? What are their worries, their fears, their hopes, desires? What's their state of mind for this conversation? And only thirdly, content. What do I want to say? So character, context, and content. Those are three ingredients I would think about before any presentation, conversation, et cetera.

[00:18:53] Matt Abrahams: Enough said. You paraphrased it. You gave an excellent tool to remember it. Those three make for excellent communication, as does all your advice. You have been very helpful in giving us actionable, clear, and memorable tips. Oliver, you did not disappoint. I knew you wouldn't. Thank you so much for joining us.

[00:19:11] Oliver Aust: Thank you, Matt. I really appreciate all the work you're doing, and love your book, as you know. So appreciate it. 

[00:19:16] Matt Abrahams: Thank you for listening to another episode of Think Fast, Talk Smart, the podcast. To learn more about how to be an effective communicator, please listen to episode 82 with Nancy Duarte. This episode was produced by Katherine Reed, Alex McCarthy, Ryan Campos, and me, Matt Abrahams. Our music is from Floyd Wonder, with special thanks to the Podium Podcast Company. Please find us on YouTube and wherever you get your podcasts. Be sure to subscribe and rate us. Also follow us on LinkedIn, TikTok, and Instagram. And check out fastersmarter.io for deep-dive videos, English language learning content, and our newsletter.