How to Make People Understand You

From Entrepreneur Media, this is Problem Solvers, a show that solves entrepreneurs' toughest problems. I'm Jason Pfeiffer, Editor-in-Chief of Entrepreneur Magazine, and each week I take a problem that you're probably dealing with and get tactical solutions from people who have been there and solved that. So let's get solving. Here's a problem so many founders face.

You tell people about yourself or your work or your company, and they just don't get it. Maybe they nod politely, but they don't follow up. Or they seem interested, but they never convert into customers, clients, or collaborators. Have you experienced that?

I definitely have. Here is probably what's happening. The language that you are using makes complete sense to you and almost no sense to anybody else. Today on Problem Solvers, I'm going to show you how to find the gaps in your own communication and how to make yourself very appealing to others.

But let's start by backing up and looking at someone who's doing it very wrong. But I bet you're going to recognize some of those mistakes in yourself. Okay, a few years ago, I was with a group of entrepreneurs and one woman introduced herself as a transformational coach. That was the language she used, transformational coach.

And another person in the group, a sales coach named Myron Golden, stopped her on that. And he said, what does that mean, transformational coach? And she said that she helps people transform their lives. And he said, transform them how?

And she gave an equally vague answer. So Myron just kept pressing. What do you do exactly? How exactly do you transform?

and every answer that she gave just raised more questions. Myron said she had a problem. And here's what he told her. He said, people can only decide whether or not they want to do business with you based on the fact that they hear what you say and then they think, I need that, or I don't need that.

And then he continued. He said, you want to be one of those two things. It's like, hate me or celebrate me, but whatever you do, don't just tolerate me because I'm confusing, which I thought was just really powerful. So I followed up with Myron about this and I'll tell you more about what he said later but let talk about first what going on there Like what happening with this transformational coach Here the thing I don think and I don think Myron thought that the transformational coach was being careless or lazy.

She knew exactly what she did and what value she provides to others, and that was precisely the problem. We are so close to our own ideas, our own work, our own expertise that we forget what it is like to not know this stuff. Our language feels clear and obvious to us, but it is often opaque to everyone else. In the case of the transformational coach, the word transformation surely means something really specific to her.

But I don't know, is anyone waking up in the morning thinking, huh, I need to be transformed? Probably not. And even so, what would it mean to be transformed, transformed into another person, into a frog, the whole thing is confusing. A version of this problem shows up everywhere.

It is the job seeker whose resume is full of titles and acronyms that mean nothing outside their previous company. It is the founder whose pitch is packed with vision language that excites them but confuses investors. It is the expert who explains what they do in terms of their process, not their outcome. In every case, the person communicating is not trying to be confusing.

They just can't see the gap between what they know and what their audience knows. So how do you find that gap? Here is the most useful thing that I do. Wipe your mind of what you already know and then look at everything you create as if you've never seen it before.

This sounds simple, but it is genuinely hard. It requires you to temporarily forget your expertise, your context, and your assumptions, and then encounter your own words as a stranger would. You got to ask yourself, if I knew absolutely nothing about this person or this product or this idea, would I understand what's being communicated? Would I know what it's for?

Would I know if I needed it? And if the answer is no, or even maybe, then you have a gap to close. So once you've identified the gap, you need a way to fill it. And this is where I followed up with Myron Golden to ask what his suggestion is And he has a great formula for this which he shared with me So here how you fill the gap It has four qualities These are four things that you should build in to when you explain what you do or what your company does Number one, it must be measurable.

It must contain an exact quantifiable thing. Not I help people transform their lives, but what specifically changes and by how much. measurable. Number two, it must be statable.

You should be able to fit it into a short sentence. If you can't say it quickly, you have not figured it out yet. Number three, it must be understandable. We're talking clear language, no jargon, no confusing.

If someone has to ask a follow-up question to understand the basics of what you're talking about, you have not gotten there. And number four, it must be desirable. It must contain something people already want. You are not creating desire from scratch here.

You are connecting what you do to something your audience already cares about. So let's revisit that. Number one, it must be measurable. Number two, it must be statable.

Number three, it must be understandable. Number four, it must be desirable. Run your current description, however you explain yourself or your company, through those four filters. Most people will find that they fail at least two of them.

And that is useful information. Now you know exactly where to focus. So let's take all this and then apply it to something that you've probably seen in the real world. So here is a vivid example of this principle in action, which you have seen on store shelves everywhere.

We're talking about Olipop. Olipop is one of the buzziest beverage brands today. But if you had seen their early packaging, you might not have understood what on earth they were selling. Because the first cans for Olipop described the product like this, sparkling digestive tonic.

Sparkling digestive tonic, what is that? You think, I don't know what that is. It must be for somebody else because I don't know what that means. Eventually, they revised it to just sparkling tonic, which is less clinical.

It doesn't have the word digestive in it, which, you know, I don't know, that doesn't sound very appealing to me if I want to buy something to drink. It's better, but it's still pretty vague. And now if you go to the store and you buy an Olipop it does not say sparkling digestive tonic It does not say sparkling tonic You know what it says now It says a new kind of soda A new kind of soda You look at that and you say oh I like soda I wonder what the new soda is. That sounds delicious.

Look at what happened across these three iterations. Olipop stopped speaking their own language, right? This is a company that had come from a world of thinking about gut health and functional beverages. This was language they knew.

Somebody over there knew what sparkling digestive tonic means, even though I didn't know. And they stopped speaking their language and they started speaking their customer's language. They stopped describing what the product was and started describing what it meant to the person who was going to buy it. Those words, a new kind of soda, unlocked hundreds of millions of dollars in sales.

This is a powerful skill. So here is your challenge. Look at how you currently describe yourself or your work. Look at your LinkedIn headline.

Look at your website. Look at just any way in which you answer the question, what do you do? Maybe even at a networking event. Now, wipe your mind.

Pretend you've never heard of yourself. You don't know what you're talking about. And now listen. Do you understand what any of the things are that you're saying?

You understand any of those words? The more you do this, I'm telling you, the more valuable a skill this will become. Think of it this way. You are never sending information out there.

You are always delivering information. That means that you must be aware of who's receiving your information and what's already inside of their heads. View everything from that perspective, because if they don't understand you, then nothing you said matters. And hey, you matter.

And that's our episode. Now let's keep the conversation going. I write a newsletter called One Thing Better, where each week I offer one new way to be successful and satisfied and build a career or company you love. You can find it at one thing better dot email.

That's a web address. Just plug it into a browser. One thing better dot email. And if you get one of those emails and reply, it goes straight to my inbox and I will get back to you.

Problem Solvers comes out every Monday morning. So make sure you're subscribed so you don't miss an episode. The show is produced by Emily Holmes and Money News Network. My name is Jason Pfeiffer.

See you next week.