Summary

In this episode, Ben and Syya discuss the importance of brevity in communication and content creation. They highlight the need for concise and easily digestible information in today's fast-paced world. The conversation explores the balance between providing enough information and overwhelming the audience with unnecessary details. They emphasize the importance of editing and removing superfluous content to deliver a clear and valuable message. The hosts also discuss the impact of time limits on podcasts and the need to cater to audience preferences. Overall, the episode emphasizes the value of brevity and clarity in effective communication.

Takeaways

• Brevity is crucial in communication and content creation.
• Providing quick and digestible information is essential in today's fast-paced world.
• Editing is key to delivering a clear and valuable message.
• Understanding audience preferences and catering to them is important for effective communication.

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If there's one thing we've learned about business and life is that people are the X factor. They constantly surprise us both in amazing ways and not so much. We're Ben and Sia and welcome to the Nod On This Business Bites podcast. This show is all about real life things we all deal with every day, how they relate to business and how to make some sense out of our daily chaos. Welcome to the show.

Welcome back to another episode of non this business bites. I'm Ben and this is Sia. Today we're going to talk about something that I love brevity. Brevity is your ally. Flowery words, long diatribes, overproduced videos and audio that go on forever. Get ignored.

Nobody's got the patience.

Very few people are looking for all the hay in the barn in one sitting. Where podcasts used to be an hour, hour and a half, two hours long, people today are looking for 30 to 35 minutes. What can I do while I'm cutting the grass? What can I do while I'm going for a walk? What can I do while I'm working out in the gym or out for a drive?

How can I get a quick bit of information that makes my life better? And how can I get it in a way that I can easily absorb, I can easily remember, and I can relate to? That's what people want today. That's why the expression TLDR came along. Too long, don't read. You start off your email and say, this is the most important point, TLDR, and at the very end it says, in sub -nation, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah.

You know what those six paragraphs in the middle could be turned into if you want more information, click here. And the 1%, 2%, 3 % of the people that truly want more information out there, the lawyers, the engineers, you know, those level of people that like all the documentation and all the data, you give it to them to be able to gnaw on to their hearts content. But the

Vast majority of people want to go, how do I get a quick grasp of what the summation is of this particular point, get it across and be able to move on? Do I have enough information to be able to make a decision? Yes, great. If I need more information, great, I can go to page two.

See ya. Let's know on this. Oh man alive. I am a wordy McWordy. So this like, you're like stabbing me in the heart here. Cause I could be superfluous. I enjoy, I enjoy using a lot of obscure words. Like you've heard me say whippersnapper before, like in previous episodes, my friend, I think it's depends. My answer to you is brevity is your friend.

but it also depends. Let's let's know on this. Let's know on this because I remember I remember when I would have to write scientific papers in college. My TA actually wrote and said, a little wordy for a scientific paper. See, you're not an English class. And I was like, and it and he kept all semester long, he kept hammering me. He's like, brevity easier. Like you say brevity, be more brief, be more brief, get to the point, get to the point.

And I was like, Holy moles on crackers. And it was a life lesson for me because I thought if I articulated every detail, if I did the preface, if I did the prequel before the body of the thing, Oh, then you should understand the context. I still do that today. I find myself now as we are content creators and content producers, I find myself coaching my clients. Look, people's do as I say, not as I do. Okay.

I get it. I am not the perfect image of brevity, but there is validity to it. Especially if you are going to go with the long form content, you have to consider that maybe, yeah, if you want to do an hour long, maybe break it up into like 15 minute segments of different things. So yes, it might be an hour long podcast, but at least if I'm mowing my lawn or if I'm taking a walk for 30 minutes or 22 minutes,

I can do two, two segments within that episode. Does that make sense? So yes, I agree. I do want to caution though, too succinct. You're going to miss maybe some nuances. So absolutely. And I'm not like, and I'm not saying to not have the other information. I'm just saying that the majority of people want a quick summation. Here's a hundred, 200, 500 words, depending on what you're.

what it is or five minute diatribe or 15 minute diatribe of the basics. Here's the nutshell of what we need to talk about. If you want more information, go to page two. And there's more information waiting for you. And if you want all the statistics, if you want all the charts, if you want all the, you know, the bibliography that's the 16 pages with all the quotes that go along with it, we've got it all for you. But the thing is,

the majority of the people don't care. The majority of people don't care and they don't need to care because they don't need to be an expert on every subject. I can talk for days on communication. I can talk for days on podcasting. I can talk for days on international terrorism because that's what my university degree is on. But the vast majority of people want a succinct answer. They want to know.

as much as I can give them within a short period of time, gain their interest, give them something to chew on, let them digest it, and then let them ask me a second question. And then I can give them a second piece of information. Then I can give them a third piece of information. But if you give it to them all at once, and you try to just do verbal diarrhea, and just say, everybody needs to know everything because it's all important, da -da -da -da -da, nobody's gonna, everybody's gonna get confused.

And they're going to get lost. I mean, I read a paragraph this morning, one paragraph. I read it six times, trying to figure out what they were trying to say. Oh yeah. Six times. And this was a person that was responding to a LinkedIn post that I put on. And it was one paragraph might've been 300 words. And I had to read this thing six times to figure out exactly what they were trying to say.

And because they were using all sorts of sophisticated language that was absolutely contradictory. Okay. That has to be a chat GPT generated AI. I'm just going to throw it up out there. I'm just going to say if it's too wordy, the odds are high. Either person is like talks that way or they're you some kind of bot, but look, here's the other thing too, that you just reminded me of. Um, you know, when you, when you look at, um, people who,

If you have to or want to request having top 10 questions that's going to be given to you during the course of the podcast, that to me indicates a certain amount of lack of confidence of you and who you are, the content that you provide value for. But if you're still learning and it's an, an, an aid for you to get more comfortable, I 100 % get that, but just be aware. You need to maybe learn and consider getting away from that mentality.

And when given the opportunity to talk, what I also notice is when you get that 10 questions, the people who are anxious, they vomit every single question all at once. And you're like, no, like, give me a chance to ask the question. So guests, please consider not everything that's coming out of you is important in that moment. Consider the impact of one statement at that time.

for that moment. Yes. And as podcasts hosts, when you're looking at the podcast and when you're listening to it, when you're editing it, what's the perfless? You know, if there's a three minute ramble in there that really doesn't say anything, that doesn't add to the conversation, why are you keeping it in the podcast?

If what you're trying to say to me, if that three, you know what? I've done it myself, but you sit there and go, is this moving along the conversation? Is this providing insight? Is this adding value? If the answer is no, why is it there? I write three to four articles for different magazines on a monthly basis. I write the articles. There's somewhere between 600 and a thousand words.

And then I leave them alone for three days. And then I come back and then I edit them because then I'm not in love with every word that I've written. And you can go back and you can hack and you can slash and you say that sentence, you know, you can say those 50 words. I could have said them in 20. You know, that particular paragraph, we really didn't even need that. And you can turn a thousand fifteen hundred words into six to eight hundred, which is.

far better article. It's going to be read a lot by a lot more people and it's going to be better understood by most people. I mean the same thing with my books. I wrote my first book in 45 days. It took almost nine months in editing. Yeah, it took almost nine months of editing to make sure I got it to where I want. I wrote it like Fiend. I wrote 250 pages.

in less than 45 days. But what I probably did, there's probably four full chapters that ended up being thrown in the scrap heap. Yeah. No, uh, it reminds me, I'm going to shout out, uh, Paul Dyche on LinkedIn. He actually commented, he apparently signed up and volunteered for this like speech contest and they had two minutes apparently to do it in. Yeah.

And he goes, so I went to his, he's like, I went to my mentors who are professional speakers, you know, big stage people. And all of them are like, damn, I don't even want to do that because it's hard. It's because two minutes is hard. Like to get a story. And you know, it also reminds me of is, um, what's that? Uh, six word stories. Have you heard of that? Yeah. So like, like give us, like, I think when I got it was, when I learned about that whole six word stories, it was around the horror genre. So.

How do you tell a horror story in six words? Holy smokes. These people were good. I was like, damn, oh wow. I mean, woo. They were Spartans. Like, ooh, they were like, they lived the Spartan mentality for sure. Nevermind six word things. This show, this show, I've got a counter in the bottom left -hand corner of my screen that goes down from 15 minutes. At the end of 15 minutes, we're done.

We know that we're going to be there because we've dedicated our time that we're going to be talking to you guys for 15 minutes. That's the length of the show. Now there are days we go 30 seconds over 40 seconds over, but usually not much more than that. That's true. You know, and if we have, we have edited it down and we take a look at, we said there to say, you know what, we want to be mindful of your time and we want to be mindful of, you know, being able to provide the best information.

in a way that's going to be practical and usable and shareable. And if you give somebody something that's too long, they're not going to share it. They're not going to pass it along because they pass it off to everybody and they go, that's too long. I don't want to listen to that. Or I don't want to read that. Or I don't want to pay attention. I mean, we all get used to a certain length that we're sitting there going, you know what? I'll listen to that, but I won't listen to this. I'll read this. I won't read that. And it could be by the person.

Pretty meatloaf. I'll do anything, but I won't do that. Very true. May he rest in peace. Oh, I know. But you know, you look at it and you go, okay, as a person you sit there going, I am willing to read certain people send me articles. And I don't care how long they are, I'm going to read them. Because I enjoy their writing style. And I think that they're thought provoking. And I think that they're interesting.

And there's certain people, I'll read the first paragraph, I'll go, yeah, maybe I'll come back to that. And there's no right or wrong. There's no absolute. But what we have to realize in general, in aggregate, people want to sit there and say, what can I chew on? What is a chewable amount of information for me that I can get to the point, I can understand what this person's trying to say,

I've learned something and if I need more information, I can go back and I can ask for it. And I think that's the mentality we need to start thinking about. And there is no absolute amount of time or length. It's about experimenting and seeing what works for your audience.

True that. So let's be brief. We're down to 42 seconds. I'm Ben. And I'm Sia. And we'll see you soon.

Hey hey hey, thanks for listening to another episode of Not On This Business Fights. If you liked what you heard, we most humbly ask that you like, share, and hit that subscribe button. And if you want to communicate more effectively within your organization, contact Ben at yourbrandmarketing .com or me at brilliantbeammedia .com. We can help you build your community, brand awareness, and personality through digital content and podcasting.

We cannot wait to hear from you. So see you next week for another episode of Not On This Business Fights.