KF #24. Persuades Archives - How to be Awesome at Your Job

Pete Mockaitis
Jason, welcome back!

Jason Feifer
It is so great to be back. I got to say, after we did this the first time, I heard from so many of your listeners, including a woman I went to high school with, which was fun to reconnect after that. So, thank you for having me back.

Pete Mockaitis
Wow, that’s cool. Well, I’m glad. Hey, thanks, listeners, for reaching out. And I know LinkedIn is often one of the platforms where this occurs.

Jason Feifer
Indeed, it is!

Pete Mockaitis
And we’re talking LinkedIn. And, Jason, I want to say thank you because I just, like, impulse invited you to this podcast just because I was looking at your LinkedIn, yet again, and I was like, “By golly, I’ve read Jason’s LinkedIn more than anybody else’s LinkedIn on Earth.”

Jason Feifer
I love hearing that.

Pete Mockaitis
“What is he doing? And I think we all need to know.”

Jason Feifer
I really appreciate that. That is great. I always like to be impulse invited to a podcast.

Pete Mockaitis
Yeah, well, you impulse accepted.

Jason Feifer
I did very quickly. Yeah.

Pete Mockaitis
I mean, that was one of the quickest turnarounds ever. Yeah, so thank you.

Jason Feifer
My pleasure.

Pete Mockaitis
Well, so give us the scoop, like, you’re on LinkedIn, and maybe it’s just me, but it seems like there’s a lot of other folks who are commenting and liking and reacting and following and stuff with your posts. But I find them mesmerizing. Could you orient folks who have not been so lucky as to see your LinkedIn? What are you doing and why?

Jason Feifer
That’s a question. All right. Well, maybe I should propose an outline for this because there’s a whole bunch of different things to discuss, so things I want to cover on this episode with you. Number one, I want to talk about how to build a personal brand very strategically. We’re going to talk about that.

And then, number two, I want to tell you what LinkedIn is looking for, because I’ve had a lot of conversations with the folks who run the algorithms and machines over there, so I understand what is actually working. And then number three is we can talk about how to create great content on LinkedIn. So those are things I think would really answer your question.

But I’ll just start by zooming out and saying that I didn’t understand the point of LinkedIn at all for a long time. I thought it was just a place to promote myself. And so, I would post these promotional things and nothing would happen. Nobody would read it. Nobody would engage. I thought, “This is dead, useless.”

And then I came to understand that you actually are always promoting yourself on LinkedIn, but if you do it overtly, it doesn’t work. If you do it by displaying your knowledge in service of helping others on LinkedIn, then you actually position yourself as an authority on LinkedIn.

And I think that, right now, LinkedIn is the single strongest tool for reaching the people who could be hiring you, who could be promoting you, who could be your customers and clients in the future should you ever start a business. It is LinkedIn. It just is.

So, I started to evolve into a LinkedIn machine, where I now post every day, Monday through Friday. I have 241,000 followers, I think, at current count. And I get a ton of business out of LinkedIn. A ton.

Pete Mockaitis
A ton of business.

Jason Feifer
A ton of them.

Pete Mockaitis
So, folks say, “Jason, I want to give you monies.” And for what? What are you doing for these people?

Jason Feifer
Well, here’s an example. Someone wants me to keynote their conference for their employees. And I say, “Oh, that’s awesome. How did you find me?” And they say, ‘Oh, I follow you on LinkedIn.” Or, people will say, “Hey, I’d love for you to be an advisor to my business.” “Oh, that’s awesome. Let’s talk about that. How did you find me?” “Oh, I’ve been following you on LinkedIn for a long time.” It is always, “I’m following you on LinkedIn.”

And the reason for that is because everything else that I have ever done, and I get to reach a lot of people through newsletters and podcasts and whatever, is all in a way, it’s somewhat boxed in, right? It’s like you have to subscribe to my newsletter to get my newsletter. You have to subscribe to my podcast to get my podcast. But, LinkedIn, if you post something that really hits, it just starts bleeding out into other audience segments that you were not originally reaching.

And then because you’re posting daily, you’re constantly reminding people, “Oh, this person,” “Oh, this person,” “Oh, this person.” I see LinkedIn and doing LinkedIn well as simply about creating signal and noise. Every day there’s a lot of noise. You hear from a lot of people, you see a lot of people, you see constant stuff.

If you can create consistency, “This is who I am. This is what I have to offer. I will be relevant to you every single day,” then people start to recognize you. They start to say, “Oh, Pete, I love that guy. What does he have to say today?” And then after a while, they start to think, “Huh, can I work with that guy? Is there a way I can work with that guy?” And that is where economic opportunity comes from.

Pete Mockaitis
Okay. So well said. So, LinkedIn is the place where cool things happen in terms of getting hired or perhaps making deals, doing business, selling stuff.

Jason Feifer
Yeah, doing it all.

Pete Mockaitis
And then, so this personal brand…

Jason Feifer
Yeah, and let me add just one other thing to that. Also getting promoted, for real, getting promoted because we’re on a show called How to Be Awesome at Your Job. And the reason for that, this is a really interesting theory that someone floated by me and I’ve tested it out with people and found it to be totally true, is that LinkedIn, if you’re really good at it, creates external validation that then leads to internal validation.

Pete Mockaitis
Oh, yeah.

Jason Feifer
Which is to say that if you’re posting and you’re getting lots of people across your industry who are saying, “That’s really smart. This person is really smart. Yeah, I totally agree with that,” then people inside of your company start to see it, and they’re like, “Oh, this person is being externally validated, therefore, I should take them more seriously internally too.”

Pete Mockaitis
You know, that’s really ringing a bell. And I’m thinking back to, well, Bob Cialdini who wrote Influence, science and practice and more, was on the show. Great dude. Great guest. I’m thinking about just that principle of social proof is that, in a way, there’s a lot of things in the world of work that are super ambiguous and subjective.

I mean, if we’re doing like sales, okay, we know, “Okay, that person sold half a million dollars. The other person sold a quarter million dollars. Okay, Bada Bing, Bada Boom.” But in the world of knowledge work where so much of it is just like, “Hey, here’s some ideas that I’m putting forward. Like, are they good? Are they bad?” “Well, we don’t really know.” But if a lot of other people are saying, “Yes, you are brilliant, sir,” they go, “Okay, maybe. Maybe it is.”

Jason Feifer
That’s right. It’s predicated on trust, right? If you’re in a meeting and some people’s crazy random ideas are commanding more attention than other people’s crazy random ideas, and you wonder, “Why is that?” The answer is because of everything that happened before the crazy ideas. It was all the trust-building that went into it.

And so, people are carrying a reputation and, therefore, people are taking more seriously ideas based on reputation. So, if you have a tool where you can build your perception of authority, not just internally, but externally, it will feed back internally and you will walk into that meeting and be the person that people take seriously.

Pete Mockaitis
I like that. Well, now, and to totally reverse that, I’m thinking about instances where, about being not taken seriously in the humor domain. Because sometimes I’ve had the experience where it’s, like, I’ve made a joke and then another person made almost the same joke with the same crowd, you know, just like six people just chit chatting, within minutes, and they got much more laughter than I did.

I mean, and I’m not going to, I’m not trying to be a standup comic. I’m not road-testing material or anything. But I think that maybe these would be the same dynamics at work, it’s like, “Oh, I have a lot of history of this person making me laugh many times. And, therefore, I just kind of fall into that groove again.”

Jason Feifer
Totally. It’s the buy-in. It’s the buy-in. Why is the headliner comedian getting larger laughs than the opening comedian? I mean, maybe the headliner comedian is funnier, but also everyone’s just there to see the headliner comedian. So, they’re bought in on that person. They want to enjoy that person’s jokes more than the other person.

Pete Mockaitis
“I’m here for laughing for you, from you.”

Jason Feifer
Yeah, “I’m here for laughing from you, very specifically from you. So, if you do a thing, I’m going to laugh at it.” And this is the reason to build up your authority. I have this concept, which is that I want to be singular. I think it’s incredibly important for me in my career to be singular, which is to say I am the sole person who you think of or turn to for this.

I have separated myself from everybody else. You don’t sit around, and you’re like, “Hmm, well, who should keynote my conference? I guess, let me just find any random person who talks about change management,” that’s the subject people generally hire me for. No, you want to hire Jason Feifer, “We got to get that guy, that specific guy.”

The more singular you can become and be perceived as, the more in which it’s not just you’re one of many, you’re just the selection today. No, it is you. People want you specifically, the more in which you will succeed. And so, you have to use the tools at your disposal to build that singular-ness, that distinctiveness. And personal brand is just top among your available assets.

Pete Mockaitis
Yeah. So having a personal brand isn’t just a cutesy thing, that’s a checkbox that we’re “supposed” to check, but rather has substantial real-world consequences that we want working in our favor. So, lay it on us, how do we think about building a personal brand?

Jason Feifer
Okay, let’s do it. So, first of all, if you are not doing this right now, you, person, I’m talking to, because maybe you think, “Ah, that’s not for me. That’s for like, Jason’s got 240,000 followers. He’s like speaking in front of crowds. That’s for him.” No, no, no. Here’s the thing. Personal brands are valuable for everybody and they’ll serve different purposes.

So, my job and my ability to do my job does require having a large audience. It’s the kind of work that I’m in. But that’s not true for most people. Most people just need to reach the right audiences and they can be small and niche. So, an example I always like to offer at the start is my friend, Matt Adelman.

So Matt Adelman, he works at a company. His job is to help brands, like consumer-packaged goods brands, you know, food, beverage, snack brands, but get onto retail shelves, particularly a Target, which is what his expertise is. So, like, he helps people get onto Target, right? So, he doesn’t own the company, he works at the company and that’s his job.

So, he has built a personal brand for himself on LinkedIn in which every single day he is sharing insights about retail, about how to get on retail shelves, about what he’s seeing in retail trends. He’s walking around Target and taking photos of shelves and then posting, you know, “This is the beef jerky aisle is looking interesting and new today,” and whatever it is.

And he’s got like 6,000 followers because he’s been doing this for a while, but it converts, it converts because people see those posts and, eventually, first they say, “Oh, this is useful.” And then they say, “Oh, this guy is consistently useful. I should follow him.” And then they say, “Oh, we should hire that guy,” right? That’s how it happens.

And the reason for that, and this is very, very important, so let us keep it in mind as we do this, and that is that content builds relationships, and relationships convert. That’s it. Content builds relationships and relationships convert. So, when you put content out into the world, people say, “Oh, I like this person. I know this person. Now I feel like I have a relationship with this person.” Pete, that’s why you reached out to me is because you see me on LinkedIn every day and so I’m on top of mind to you.

And then eventually that relationship converts in some way where they say, “I’ve got to have this person on my podcast. I’ve got to hire this person. I’ve got to promote this person.” Okay, so with that as the premise, let’s start by talking about personal brand. Everyone gets the phrase personal brand wrong because they optimize for the word personal, “Oh, I got to post what I had for breakfast on LinkedIn,” or, “I got to…” No, no, no.

We have to actually put the emphasis on the word brand. You are treating yourself like a brand. And what is a brand? A brand is three things. A brand is simple, a brand is repeatable, and a brand is scalable. Just apply that now to the first brand that you can think of. Coca-Cola, McDonald’s, what are they? They’re simple, repeatable, and scalable. You know exactly what Coca-Cola is. You know exactly the message that it has. Happiness.

And then, it’s repeatable. You say it over and over and over again in infinite ways, “Happiness, happiness, happiness.” And then scalable, they’re going to find constant new ways to reach as many people as possible with that message. That’s what a brand is. That’s what you need to become.

So, the first step of this is that you have to turn yourself into something simple. So being a personal brand is not talking about everything. It’s talking about one thing and doing it over and over and over again. So, I have a little framework with four questions that I will share with you for how to simplify yourself, how to turn yourself into something simple. And that is this.

Now, this is something I will caveat that I am usually teaching to people who own businesses, but it can very easily be applied to people who work at businesses, too. So, for someone who’s in a business, it would be like, “What is your product?” But for you, it’s, “What is your deliverable? What is your area of expertise? What is the thing that you hired for?” So that is it. What is that?

And then the second question is, “Who does that serve?” which is to say, “Who are you trying to reach? Who are you trying to impress? Who do you want to be very aware of and interested in you?” Question number three is, “What problems do you solve?” So, for the people that you serve, whether that’s a person, you know, a superior at a company or whatever, or the customer, “What is the problem that you solve?”

And then, number four, very important, most important, “How can you address that problem with content?” So, if I’m Matt who helps companies get onto retail shelves, that is my job. Well, what is my product or what is my service? I help companies get onto retail shelves. Who does that serve? Who do I serve? I serve founders of brands who have products who want to get on retail shelves. What problem do I solve? They don’t know how to get on retail shelves. How do I solve their problem with content? I can inform them about how to get on retail shelves.

Now I have narrowed it really specifically. And then if you want to go even further, I was talking to Matt recently about “How does he take it up a level?” And I said, well, start to think about, “What are the major problems that people have when they come to you for business?” So, it’s like, “Why do they hire you after a previous solution that didn’t work?”

And he’s like, “Oh, well, that’s because they got into Whole Foods, but now they can’t get into Target,” or, “They got into a couple retailers and then their sales flatlined. They can’t figure out what to do.” Great. Okay.

So, you now know the problems that they have, start to answer them in your content. Start to address that in your content, because they’re going to see that you have answers to the problems that they’re walking around with, and now you are incredibly relevant to them.

And now you have to be incredibly specific and specific, I said specific twice, but sure, why not? Because it’s very important. And consistent is what I meant to say. You have to be really consistent about this. Just be really regimented and consistent. Now you are simple. Follow me so far?

Pete Mockaitis
Simple, repeatable, scalable. And I guess I’m thinking that they could be quite possible to come up with some pitfalls, I’m guessing, in terms of, “You’re too generic.” It’s like “Oh, I help businesses with marketing.” It’s like, “Oh, okay. Well, no, no, no, let’s get much more specific here.”

Jason Feifer
Very, very important. Right. Because if you try to be something to everyone, you will be nothing to nobody. And so, the way in which you have to signal value is through a really knowing level of specificity about who you hire. I mean, I tell people this all the time, if they’re building a business, like, “You don’t want to be, ‘Hey, we help businesses with marketing,’ because that doesn’t tell me anything about anything.”

And if I am a business looking for marketing, I’m not going to trust someone who’s just like, “Hey, I help businesses with marketing.” Instead, what you need to do is be incredibly specific about who you serve such that they think, “Oh, this person is for me. This person is for me.” “I help small businesses with less than five employees who are building SaaS products in the finance space with marketing because that is my area of expertise and I understand exactly what they need.”

And if you’re that person, you say, “Oh, my God, finally, I found my person.” And if you’re not, well, that’s fine. That’s not who you’re serving anyway. There’s something to keep in mind. Here’s a little kind of secondary framework here, but it’s something to keep in mind, is that there’s a thing that I like to call the first question. And the first question is the first question that anybody asks whenever they encounter anything.

“Is this for me or is this not for me?” That’s what you’re asking, “Is this for me or is this not for me?” We have limited time. We’re not going to waste our time on things that are not for us. We just want to filter things by, “Is this for me or is this not for me?” So, we started this conversation, and if you’ve made it this far into the episode, then you decided, “Oh, this is for me.” You’re not listening if this is not for you.

So, we have to know, whenever we’re producing something, like content on LinkedIn that’s going to reach people, that people are going to ask that question unconsciously of every single thing that they see, every post that they see as they scroll LinkedIn, they’re going to ask, “Is this for me? Is this not for me? Is this for me?” So, we have to anticipate that, we have to answer it as fast as possible.

So, the first words, and we’ll talk about content later, but like the first words that you write have got to be answering that. The way in which you show up on LinkedIn has to be answering that. The way in which you identify who your target is has to be answering that because, otherwise, people will tune you out. So, yeah, Pete, you’re exactly right. It’s got to be super specific.

Pete Mockaitis
Certainly. And it’s funny how it’s like the algorithms, and people talk a lot about the algorithm or the algorithms, I think that is, ultimately, what they’re trying to achieve is matching the giant catalog of stuff, whether they’re tweets or LinkedIn posts or Netflix or movies or YouTube videos or TikTok shorts, like, “Hey, I got a bunch of stuff, and I got a bunch of people. How can I get the right stuff to the right people?”

That’s what they’re trying to do in their little digital brains as best as they can, and then sometimes they do better or worse. And so, I think this is really vibing, says, if you want to do well on LinkedIn, for instance, you want to be swimming with the current instead of against the current, in terms of, “Hey, let me make it easy for you, everybody. This is who I’m for.”

Jason Feifer
Exactly. And you have to do that not just for everybody, but for the algorithm, because the algorithm is not some uncontrollable stroke of luck. The algorithm is trying to understand who your content is for. So, help it do that. And then you can use it to your advantage. I’ll tell you what the LinkedIn algorithm is for, and then we can get back to simple, repeatable and scalable because we’re still on simple.

But the LinkedIn algorithm is looking for three things. Ready? And this is not me making this up. This is multiple conversations with the people who build the algorithm at LinkedIn. So, it is number one, it is looking for knowledge and advice, and that’s their language, knowledge and advice. So, they don’t want life updates. They want knowledge and advice. They want you offering direct information that is useful to an audience.

And then, number two, they want it built off of your specific authority. So, LinkedIn is actually doing this crazy thing where it is looking at your background, because it’s got your resume. It’s looking at your connections. It’s looking at all past content. And it is making an algorithmic assessment of where your authority is, and it will amplify posts that live inside of your authority, and it will not do that for posts outside of your authority.

So, for example, if I write about marketing that is within my authority, LinkedIn sees it, it amplifies it. If, for some reason, I decided to write about anthropology one day, it would look at it, and be like, “This guy doesn’t know anything about anthropology,” and it would not amplify that. So, you really want to stay in your lane.

And then number three is meaningful comments. So, you want to write things that are going to get the kind of people that you are targeting to leave meaningful comments. And by meaningful comments, I mean more than like, “Yes!” or emojis. Like, give people something to have something to say about.

And the algorithm is literally looking for that because that is a sign of validation that it has reached its target audience and that that target audience is interested. And the more in which you’re getting meaningful comments from people, the more in which the post will be amplified to other people like them.

Pete Mockaitis
Well said. Okay, so you said we’re just on simple. Let’s hear repeatable.

Jason Feifer
Yeah, I know there’s a lot here. Okay, so now we have to think about how are you going to show up as that brand. And I came up with this concept. I call it the 5% character, and it goes like this. So, Pete, you are a 100% person, would you agree?

Pete Mockaitis
Yes.

Jason Feifer
But the thing is that most of that is not relevant to the people that we serve, professionally, at least. It’s just not, right? Bring your whole self to work? No. Actually, you have to bring the specific targeted, most relevant version of yourself to work or, certainly, to LinkedIn.

And so, I think what you need to do is assess what 5% of thoughts and expertise of yours is most relevant to that audience? What way in which you engage is most relevant to that audience? Some days I wake up cranky and some days I wake up enthusiastic. Only the enthusiastic version of me is relevant to my audience. The cranky never is, right?

So, once I understand who I am to that audience, what part of me is relevant, then I can start to build what I call the 5% character out of it, which is that I start to ask myself, “What brand attributes are embodied by this 5% character?” So, what does that mean? Really abstract, but really specific. So, 5% character for me, “I am a guy who simplifies complex problems for people in business.”

That’s how I see myself. That’s what I do. That is my offering to the world. I simplify complex problems. And I do that specifically and mostly through understanding communication and people. So, I can tell people how to do storytelling and how to understand the complex problems around them.

So okay, now, I think about my brand attributes, “How do I want people to think of me? How do I want to show up regularly on social media?” And so, I came up with some attributes. Here are some of them. Energetic. You’ve heard that as I talk to you, right? Like, if Pete and I were having coffee, I wouldn’t talk like this because it would be annoying.

But I do talk like this when I’m performing as my 5% character. I’m showing up on a podcast and I’m embodying this version of myself that is simplifying complex problems and is being really helpful to people. So, I have a way in which I’m speaking and that also translates to how I write. My writing is very sharp. It’s poppy. It’s lively. That’s how I want to do it.

And the reason to do this is because once you know who you are on social media, then it becomes much easier to show up like that every day. So, when I sit down every morning to write a post on LinkedIn, I think, “What does the 5% character version of Jason Feifer have to say about this?”

So that is how you become repeatable. And then scalable is when we get to actual content, when we actually start talking about how to make the content.

Pete Mockaitis
That’s really intriguing. A character. It’s a 5% in that it’s within you, so it’s not utterly contrived. So, it is authentic in so far, it is genuinely a part of you, as opposed to something just invented, fabricated. But it is focused, distilled, polished. So, it’s like we have a very nice left foot of Jason that the world is admiring.

Jason Feifer
That’s right. The word I use, and all the words you used were great, but on top of it, intentional. It is intentional. It is the intentional, consistent version of you that, once you define for yourself, you can always show up that way. And that’s the critical distinction. If we don’t define this for ourselves, then we might show up differently every single time. And then we just create more noise.

But we want to create signal. We want to do things on repeat so that eventually people say, “Ah, I remember this person,” “Ah, yes, I want to follow this person,” “Ah, yes, I want to hire and spend money on this person.” This is why if you watch great personal brands, like just think of anybody who you follow, Gary V, you follow Gary V. Gary is so repetitive, so repetitive. And it’s because that works.

Because if Gary said some random new thing every time, or he showed up in some different way on a regular basis, then he would be noise. He wouldn’t be memorable from the first time you saw him to the next time you saw him, and it would just, you’d lose track of him. But because he’s being really repetitive in the way in which he’s talking and the way in which he’s showing up and the topics that he’s hitting, now he’s going to say new things each time, but those things are really all versions of the same thing.

And, by the way, I once, years ago, I’ve known Gary a long time. So, Gary emails me one day, and he’s like, “Hey, you want to get a drink?” And I said, “Sure.” And then a fun thing about Gary is that if you get a drink with Gary, it means that he’s going to give you, like, an incredibly hyper-specific time. He’ll be like, “Be at this place at 8:43, and I’ve got 17 minutes for you.” It’s so crazy, but I’ve talked to lot of people and they’re all like, “Yeah, that’s Gary’s thing.”

So, anyways, I show up and Gary has the camera rolling because he’s always got a camera on him, and he is Gary and he’s very energetic. And then the camera guy’s like, “Yeah, we got what we needed,” and the camera guy wanders away, and then Gary changes. And then he becomes, not a completely different person, but a more complex person.

He’s not talking quite like that. He has a softer tone. He’s slower. He’s more thoughtful. We’re having back and forth. He’s more nuanced, right? Like, that is actually the moment in which I realized, “Oh, Gary is playing a character named Gary. Like, when I see him on social media, he’s playing a character named Gary Vaynerchuk.”

But then when the cameras are off, he becomes actual Gary Vaynerchuk. And the character Gary Vaynerchuk is inside of that real Gary Vaynerchuk, but it’s just one thing that he’s activating every single time. And that’s being intentional.

Pete Mockaitis
Now, that’s interesting. And, well, now I’m thinking, so you and I both know and love and respect Pat Flynn. And so, I have watched lots of his content, had him on the show a few times, met him at a couple conferences, hung out and got some burritos.

Jason Feifer
Nice.

Pete Mockaitis
And my experience of Pat, and people will say this about famous people, in general, like as a positive, virtuous attributes, it’s like, “Boy, you know what? It sure seems like Pat’s just the same sweet, generous, thoughtful, person in all of his content as he is in person.” And so, I mean, that seems to be the case, and that seems to be a positive. So, to what extent is that contrast with a Gary V. and square with your overall message here?

Jason Feifer
So, everyone is going to make different decisions about how much of their whole version of self they will show to others and in what context and when. And it’s true, Pat is extremely consistent. The Pat that you see on camera is pretty much the same Pat as if you’re talking to him in real life. But, you know, Pat’s a more complex person than what you see on camera. Everybody is. How could you not?

Nobody would want to be friends with or be married to a person who is as simple in real life as they are on camera. So, Pat has done a great job, because he’s such a good content creator, of developing a focused version of himself that is truly appealing and digestible and scalable, and that is absolutely him. But is still just a part of him. It’s still just a part of him.
Pete Mockaitis
Oh, sure. I mean, I haven’t like, you know, been in his house for a week.

Jason Feifer
Yeah, right, right, right. And that’s the thing to remember, right? So, I’ve seen Pat in two interesting, different professional contexts, which is that, number one, we’ve worked together on a bunch of smart passive income stuff. But then also I took my kid to his Pokemon conference. And, you know, it’s interesting how it’s a version. It’s the same version of Pat, but when we’re doing business, he only talks about Pokemon in the context of lessons of content creation.

And when he’s doing Pokemon, he almost never really talks about business, unless he’s using it to help explain his own journey, “I did this and I did this and then I discovered this.” And so, he’s being thoughtful about how to utilize these different arenas of knowledge to be most relevant to the audience that he’s speaking to. And that, I think, is a critical part of this.

We all know lots of things, but we have to make sure that the things that we know are delivered in a way that are going to be most relevant and helpful to the audience in which we’re serving. And we have to think of everything and everybody. “Who am I speaking to right now? What do they need from me right now? What is going to be most relevant to them?” And so, this is what I mean.

Pete Mockaitis
Yeah. And I think, in a way, all of us humans are pretty much doing this all of the time as we engage with different people in different contexts. And so, what we’re doing here is we’re just really clarifying, in your digital realm, if you want to show up in a particular way that is efficacious, this is what it’s about, and it requires a bit more proactive conscious thought than what we do subconsciously that, “I show up differently at Catholic mass than I do at my child’s friend’s birthday party.” We’re doing a different thing with different people for different purposes.

Jason Feifer
And it is easier to do that. I really like the way that you just framed that because what I am describing with the 5% character is, indeed, a version of what we do all the time. But the reason it’s important to think about it is because the context in which you are in will help guide the version of you that you should be.

Because you are in a very specific setting, you are surrounded by people who are also part of that setting, it is easier to fall into the right version of yourself that’s appropriate for that time. It is harder to do that on social media because it’s chaos, it’s noise. You’re seeing everybody do everything. And so, you’re going to go on, you’re going to see…

Pete Mockaitis
Yeah. So, you think it’s fine to do that. That’s a great point. Because we see everything, you may think it’s fine to do everything, but, in real life, we don’t get those cues. It’s like nobody is grunting and high-fiving at like a professional business luncheon, the way they are at a gym, you know. And yet, in a social media world, you see it all. And so, you might take the cue, it’s like, “Oh, it’s okay to just do whatever here.”

Jason Feifer
“Do whatever. I’ll just say it, yeah, say anything. Oh, they’re talking about this stuff over there. Maybe I should join that conversation.” No, do not show up just as yourself. The more in which you can think of yourself as a product in a marketplace, like when we’re engaging in a personal brand space, you are engaging in a marketplace of ideas in the same way that Old Spice is engaging in a marketplace of deodorants.

You are engaging in a marketplace of ideas and you have to be a product, and the product does not change. You don’t take Old Spice deodorant and put it next to orange juice and it becomes orange juice. It doesn’t. It always is Old Spice. And you always have to be that solid, too.

So, the more in which you think, “This is every day how I show up. This is how I talk. This is how I do not talk. This is what I talk about. This is what I do not talk about,” the more in which you will create that signal, and you will not be tempted to just morph into whatever you see.

Pete Mockaitis
Okay, so simple, repeatable, scalable. Lovely. And so, you mentioned a little bit about what LinkedIn is looking for already. Any additional comments there?

Jason Feifer
Yeah, well, so scalable is really about how to write content. And so, let’s just touch on that briefly, which is, once we’ve decided how we’re going to show up, then we have to know how to communicate on LinkedIn. And here’s the thing to know. Most people make the mistake of writing very dense or complicated openings or there’s a lot of throat-clearing.

You’ll find people who are writing like, “Last week I was thinking about…” Nobody cares last week what you were thinking about, right? That doesn’t matter. So instead, you have to always remember what I said about the first question, people are asking, “Is this for me? Is this not for me?” The first things that they see from you have to start addressing that.

So, I challenge you to do the following things in every post. Number one, visual. Find a compelling visual, maybe even put a caption on top of that visual with some text that’s going to draw some people in. For example, I write a lot about marketing on LinkedIn. And so, I would find, for example, a funny ad that Uber created.

And then I’m not just posting the ad, I’m going to write a little caption on top of that ad in the graphic that I’m uploading to LinkedIn, because that’s the first thing people are going to see. The thing that’s going to stop the scroll is actually the visual. So, they’re going to see the visual and then they’re going to wonder what you have to say about it.

And it could be a visual of you. It could be just a really compelling photo. It could be an interesting chart, but you got to have some context onto that chart. It could be anything, but you got to have something. And then the next thing that you want to write is that you want to write some language that signals who this post is for. And then after that, you want to signal the value that is to come. That’s what you want to do.

So, for example, I just told you like I wrote this post just two days ago or something – I’m to pull it up as we’re talking – in which I wrote about an Uber commercial that was really funny. So, what it is, I grabbed the video and I put this caption on top of it, and the caption said, “Uber’s ad was so good, it won an Emmy.” That’s the caption. Now, don’t you immediately want to see the ad, “Wow so good, it won an Emmy? Let’s see.”

Now, here’s my first line. This is what I wrote. This is all anybody sees, because LinkedIn will cut off after the first, like, so many characters. So, this is all anybody sees. It’s got to be good enough that people want to click more and read more. This has got to be compelling. This has got to drive people to take an action. And that action is, here’s what I wrote, I wrote, “Now this is how to speak to young people and turn them into customers.”

So, what have I done? Now, “This is how to speak to young people.” That is now signaling to anybody who is in a business where they need to engage young consumers, young employees, anybody, anybody who’s worried about thinking about that, that this is somehow relevant to them. And then I say, “And turn them into customers.”

At which point I am now promising that the next thing you’re going to read is going to help explain that. I’m going to pay off on that promise. And then if you open it up, that’s exactly what I do. What I do is I introduce an idea, and that idea is stop trying to be your audience, start respecting your audience. And it’s the difference in how Uber was talking to that young audience.

So, this is the language. I call this the three-hook structure, right? So, the first hook is the visual. The second hook is telling who this is for. And then the third hook is what is the value to come. And you do that all in a really nice and fluid way. And you try to be as punchy and simple in your language as possible and just start to experiment and you’ll see what people engage with. Try different formats. And, eventually, you will start to see your own patterns of what your specific audience wants from you.

Pete Mockaitis
And when you talk about the hook, it’s funny, it’s almost kind of like standard issue is like the first sentence, it just has a hook. It’s like, “What? Tell me more. What’s going on?”

But sometimes, they’re clearly written by AI often, it’s like, in a bad way. Like, there’s not actually any substance to back it up. It’s, like, “Yesterday, I quit my job,” or something, or, “I had to fire someone today.” It’s like, “What? Why? Tell me more.” You know, it’s like you can tell what they’re going for. And then, often, you kind of wonder, it’s like, “Well, did you really? Or are you just like making stuff up to try to get me to read your LinkedIn post here?”

Jason Feifer
Totally. Totally. Or, people will do like, “Now this is what teamwork looks like,” and it’s a photo of their team. And that’s great. Good for your team. But there’s no reason for me to click and learn more about that, because you’re not promising anything. That’s what teamwork looks like? I don’t care. Or, a lot of people will also just get too in the weeds.

I mean, who was I just talking to? Somebody in logistics, and they want to position themselves as an authority in logistics. And they showed me some of their posts, and I was like, “You know what? I literally don’t understand the language that you’re speaking right now. It’s full of acronyms and it just feels dense. It just feels dense.”

The best thing that you can do as a writer, as a creator of any kind of content is just look at it through the lens of someone who is just stumbling upon it. Like, take yourself out of you, and imagine me or Pete, just coming across this thing and looking at it. Are we interested? Are we going to spend the time? Or is this too dense and it’s too complicated? And if so, then simplify it so that it makes us stop and read.

Pete Mockaitis
That’s good. Any other thoughts on what LinkedIn is looking for?

Jason Feifer
Well, let me tell you the number one frustration that people in my world, which is to say people who are trying to reach tons of people on LinkedIn have, and that is that the LinkedIn algorithm is constantly changing, and it is. And everyone always complains it’s harder and harder to reach people on LinkedIn. And I’ve put this to LinkedIn.

And their answer, I think, is really instructive, especially for people who are listening to this show. Because what they’re saying is they don’t actually want things to go viral on LinkedIn. And they don’t, actually, want people to be trying to reach the masses on LinkedIn. What they want is for people to use LinkedIn to find economic opportunity. That’s the language they always use, economic opportunity.

Which is to say, and I was like, “Give me an example.” And Dan Roth, who’s the editor in chief of LinkedIn was talking to us. He’s like, “I was just talking to this nurse, and she’s wanted to shift into this specific position at a hospital or something. And so, she started posting kind of insights into best management practices inside of healthcare or something. And then somebody at another hospital saw that and reached out and hired her because of that.”

He’s like, “That’s success. That’s what we’re looking for.” Which is to say, you don’t have to reach tons of people. You just have to reach the right people, as I said at the very beginning, and don’t get discouraged if your numbers are small.

Because if what you just want is more economic opportunity, well, then all you really need to know is who do you want to reach? And then how do you show them, don’t tell them, show them that you are an authority that they should take seriously, that you are great talent that they cannot overlook?

This is a long game. You have to have a lot of patience with it. You have to take it very seriously. You have to be consistent. But, over time, if you do it, people will find you. And that’s the point.

Pete Mockaitis
Okay. Well, and then your third pillar there was how to create great content. We’ve hit a couple of those bits. Anything else you want to make sure to highlight?

Jason Feifer
Yeah, there’s one other thing, which is let me tell you my number one tip for content idea generation. People always ask, “How do you get your ideas? How are you writing every day? What do have to say?” A couple of things to know.

Number one, I think that the best content comes from real life and will come up in real life, which is to say that I just use the Notes app on my phone. And any time that this little “Boop!” goes off in my head, which says, “Interesting!” I don’t let it pass me by. I write it down. I capture it in real time.

And what I am really doing is I am creating an ever-filling backlog of content ideas. Because if you sit down to write a LinkedIn post, you will have no idea what to write about. But if you just start capturing interesting things, just think about interesting things at work, “What problems did you recently solve? What came up in some meeting and you’re like, ‘Oh, that was a good way of thinking about that.’ Or, ‘This is a thing that I did and it worked really well.’”

Like, whatever. You’re not giving away confidential information. But like what are you seeing? What’s coming up? What did you just do to solve that problem that actually is based on something that you do all the time? “You know, the way that I did that is that I always first look at this. And if I look at this first, that it usually gives me a good direction.” Great. That little framework, that thing that you, that is content. So, constantly be capturing those things so that you can then sit down and produce that content.

And then the second thing I want to share is that it doesn’t have to be new every single day forever. So, you might write a post and it does okay. And then give it like a month, and now write another version of that same post. It was a good idea. Maybe you can do it better. Maybe you can find another more compelling way to do it. Maybe you wrote a post and you realize, “Actually, this is kind of like two posts. Like, I have two ideas here.”

So, I am always going back to my old material and just sort of like tweaking it or updating it or doing something new. So, the more in which you do this, the more material you have, number one, in your Notes app on your phone, and then, number two, on LinkedIn, and then it starts to become much easier and you start to get into a flow and a rhythm. So, you need to create some systems so that you can do it.

And then, actually, Pete, sorry, one more thing. I keep promising that this is the only thing that I have and that I just keep adding one more. But final thing is you might be wondering “How often should you post?” And I told you I post every day, Monday through Friday. Don’t do that to start. Don’t do that. You’ll get overwhelmed and you’ll never do anything.

Instead, I challenge you, “What is the minimum amount that you can definitely commit to?” or the maximum amount, I suppose, any amount, just commit to some amount. So maybe it is once every two weeks. Fine. Once every two weeks, do it once every two weeks. Pick it every other Monday, you’re going to write a LinkedIn post. You can spend two weeks thinking about it.

And then, once you’ve got that regularly, once you feel like you’re in a real flow once every two weeks, see if you can add another. Now, can you do it once a week? Great. Now get comfortable with that. So, you never want to take, if you try to do this too often, you will not do it at all. The more important thing to do is to just be building the habit over time. You’ll get better at it. It’ll become easier.

Pete Mockaitis
Well, Jason, are there any tools or resources or experts or websites or newsletters or just things to check out to get ever better at this LinkedIn game?

Jason Feifer
Absolutely. Well, let me tell you about my newsletter. It is not specifically about LinkedIn, but it is very much about simplifying complex problems and communication. I share a lot of great communication tips on there, and it is called “One Thing Better,” each week, one way to be more successful and satisfied and build a career or company that you love. And you can find that by going to the web address, OneThingBetter.email.

Pete Mockaitis
All right. Thanks. Well, now could we hear a favorite quote?

Jason Feifer
Malcolm Gladwell, bestselling author Malcolm Gladwell, said this to me. He said, “Self-conceptions are powerfully limiting.”

Pete Mockaitis
And a favorite book?

Jason Feifer
The last thing that I just was obsessed with was The Three Body Problem, the full trilogy. I could not recommend it more strongly. I think about it all the time. It is like a big hypothesis about the grand scheme of the universe, and I just adored it. So, The Three Body Problem.

Pete Mockaitis
And do you have a final challenge or call to action for folks lucky to be awesome at their jobs?

Jason Feifer
The most valuable thing that you can do is to be constantly seeking the thing that is available to you that nobody is asking you to do.

We spend so much time at our jobs, doing the things that people ask us to do, and that’s fine. But if that’s all you do, then you are only qualified to do the thing you’re already doing. But to do the thing that nobody’s asking you to do.

That is actually where growth happens, because that’s where discovery happens. That’s where new opportunities come from. That’s where new skills are learned. That’s where new connections are made. So, I would step back and ask, “What is available to you,” in the abstract, “available to you because you could pursue it; available to you because you could make a phone call or you could go to a website, anything? What is available to you that nobody is asking you to do?”

Pete Mockaitis
All right. Jason, thank you.

Jason Feifer
Thank you. I am so glad that you impulse invited me onto the show.

Pete Mockaitis
Jessica, welcome.

Jessica Chen
Hi. Thanks for having me.

Pete Mockaitis
Well, I’m excited to get into your wisdom. And I would love to kick us off by hearing something super surprising and counterintuitive you’ve learned over your years of studying how we can get noticed at work for the right reasons.

Jessica Chen
Well, I have to reference back to when I first started working. My thinking was, “As long as you work hard and you’re smart, you’ll get recognized, right? Your opportunities will open up. You’ll get that promotion. People will know about you.” But, funny enough, that’s not how the world works. And it was counterintuitive to many of the things I was taught growing up in a very traditional and conservative household, where it really was just about studying and putting your head down.

And so, when I began my career, which, at the time, was as a broadcast journalist, I really figured out quickly that I had to learn some new skills because it wasn’t just about being smart or being hardworking. It’s being able to communicate, put yourself out there, and advocate for yourself.

Pete Mockaitis
Well, now I’m curious, we’ve got to talk about the Emmy in particular. Congratulations. Not very many Emmy Award winners on the show. So, tell us, that’s sort of a very concrete, discrete achievement, accomplishment, which seems to suggest, “Hey, you’ve been noticed for your work. It is outstanding as recognized by the powers that be.” Was that also something that you had to advocate for? Are we to understand that awards are not granted just for being outstanding? What’s behind the scenes here?

Jessica Chen
So, the Emmy Award, as many of you know, is considered the most prestigious award in television and it was something that didn’t happen absolutely overnight. It took me about 10 years to actually win that award, and this was when I was at the ABC station in San Diego, California. And it’s funny because, and I think, you know, if we’re talking about awards and things like that, I never feel like it’s something that you are aspiring or trying to get. You just do good work and hopefully people will begin to notice it. But there is an element to you have to be able to talk about the work so people know about it.

So, I remember for this Emmy award, this was actually a culmination of, it really was a team effort, and I have to say that, where the story that got us that award was, so this was, gosh, this was when San Diego was experiencing a lot of wildfires. I’m here in California, and many people know California is quite dry. And so, in San Diego, during that particular year that we won that award, there were a lot of wildfires happening.

And so, for us, in journalism, and for me particularly as a journalist, as a reporter, when you have, like, for example, a fire breaking out, your job isn’t to run away. Your job is to run towards the fire, which is also counterintuitive to everything. And so, I just remember our entire team did such a great job in covering the fire, safety, what was going on, where do residents have to go, where did they have to evacuate.

And just the seamlessness in the execution of how everybody operated, how everybody communicated, it actually ended up being one of the, well, the reason why I won was because it was actually a really well-produced news story and newscast. And so, again, it wasn’t just about working hard, which, of course, you got to do, but after we finished that, it was about, “How can we make sure that we get the visibility for this amazing coverage that we had?”

And, of course, we submitted it to get nominated, and it got picked as the award winner and whatnot. But I think that Emmy Award is a good symbolization of, “Yes, execution is important, but being able to put yourself out there and talk about it is also very key.”

Pete Mockaitis
I really dig that story because I think it’s possible that you’re doing a ton of stories, you’re cranking them out day after day, and it is sort of special for y’all to step back and realize, “Oh, wait. This one was really particularly excellent. Let’s make sure that we put our best foot forward,” and pick your moment and rock and roll there.

Jessica Chen
Exactly. And I think one of the, you know, a lot of things that I talk about, one of them is being able to celebrate your wins, and at the same time it’s not about always talking about the work that you do but it’s being judicious about, “Okay, I know this one I did particularly well in. How can I make sure to maximize the opportunity and ensure other people know it?” Because, yes, you don’t need to do it for every single project, every single thing that you do, but for the ones that really stand out to you, it’s thinking about how you can take that and leverage it for perhaps more opportunities, more recognition.

Pete Mockaitis
All right. So, your book is called Smart, Not Loud. Can you hammer home the main idea or distinction we should be thinking about here with that?

Jessica Chen
So, the thesis of this book, and I really wrote this book for those who were raised in what I call a quiet culture. So, people who are raised in a quiet culture were taught principles like valuing humility, modesty, not seeking the spotlight, avoiding conflict, for example. And I teased this earlier where, growing up in a very traditional and conservative family, my parents taught me to embody these quiet culture traits.

But when you go out into the working world, especially in many Western and corporate workplaces, you start to see that it’s the people who are able to speak, be the first one to speak, put themselves out there, talk about their wins. These are the things that people notice, which is what I call loud-culture traits. So, the question is, “For somebody who was raised to embody and value these traits, how can you still get noticed at work without necessarily changing who you are as a person?”

Because my whole thing is, if you naturally tend to be on the quieter side, or if being assertive, dominant, loud, and extroverted, if that’s not your style, I don’t think that’s necessarily what you should do because that feels quite inauthentic. But how can you still show up in a way for you to get noticed and still unlock those bigger opportunities?

Pete Mockaitis
Well, that sounds handy. Maybe before we get into the particulars of how that’s done, could you share with us a cool success story of someone who made a transformation doing this kind of stuff?

Jessica Chen
I’ll share my own story, because this is a personal journey for me too, and like I mentioned, that was how I was raised, and I experienced a lot of friction. I call it communications friction in the workplace. And, in many ways, when I started working, it was this culture shock.

So, I was trying to find this balance that I was talking about earlier of like, “Well, if it seems like the people who are loud get recognized, but that’s not necessarily my style, how can I do that?” And at the end of the day, a lot of it actually came down to one thing. It was communications.

It was learning how to be an effective communicator. And we know communications is a very broad topic, and there’s actually a lot to learn.

It’s about, for example, public speaking, getting comfortable standing up and presenting an idea. I think, for many of us, this is not something that we are naturally born with. It certainly wasn’t something that I naturally was comfortable with, or even finding that moment to communicate your idea in a meeting. I used to remember sitting in a meeting and being like, “Oh, gosh, I have an idea. I want to say it.” But instead, I’m in my own head creating this narrative of like, “Is it a good idea? Is it not a good idea?” And then before you know it, the conversation has moved on, right?

And so, it’s funny because I always joke, even though communications was something I struggled with, because I started out as a broadcast television journalist, there was no better industry for me to learn how to become an effective communicator. And so, this is to say, when you asked about the journey, like a person who had that transformation, I think, in many ways, it was for me being introspective, identifying these points of friction, and then really doubling down on leveling up my communication skills, because once I did that, I felt like opportunities, visibility, all that completely changed.

Pete Mockaitis
Well, I’d love to talk about some of the particulars of communicating well and sort of getting past these friction points. But could you first share with us what is it that we want to communicate? How might we go about identifying key things worth highlighting before we figure out the how, specifically, to execute that communication?

Jessica Chen
The number one most important thing anybody has to think about if they’re thinking, “How do I make sure my message comes across the way I want it to come across?” is to always ask yourself this question, “Who am I speaking with and what do they care about?” I think, for many of us, it’s not instinctive for us to think about that first question because many times we’re thinking about, “I have this idea. I’m excited about this idea. I’ve been working on this project and I know I want to talk about it in this meeting.” And a lot of it is coming from your own perspective.

And I always say you can be presenting or talking about one topic to this group. You’re at a next meeting, same topic, but different group of people. Even though your topic is the same, how you communicate and how you tailor that needs to be different because maybe the people in group A, the things that they care about might be a little bit different than the people in group B.

And here’s an example. Let’s say in group A, you’re talking to your immediate team, and your immediate team are people who just need to know what’s going on, the execution, the nitty-gritty details. But let’s say in Group B, you’re talking to senior-level executives. They probably don’t want all the nitty-gritty details. They just want to know the high-level key points and perhaps your recommendation.

Because if you boggle them down with all the details, they might go, “Okay, so what’s the point you’re trying to say, Jessica?” And I think, as an effective communicator, we’ve got to be really in tuned with our audience, what they care about, and tailoring our message to them. That can be our guiding light and our North Star.

Pete Mockaitis
I like that a lot. And I’m thinking about any number of times I’ve received an intriguing enough cold email that got me to hop on a call for a demo of something. And I’ve been amazed at how fairly often folks will walk me through a slide deck, this is just like a one-on-one kind of sales conversation, but walk me through a slide deck.

And I’m thinking, “I don’t care about any of that. I don’t care about your founder, or the history of the company, or your story, where the idea came from, like the inspiration.” It’s like, “I just want to know, can you really do the thing that you’re saying you can do? Is that going to make big results happen for me? And could you show me a cool case study or how this unfolded in practice with some charts or graphs or numbers?”

But help us out with that. So, we tend to get stuck in a world where we just think, “Okay, this is my presentation, so I’m supposed to give it,” or “I’m fired up about this, so I’m going to go for it.” What’s sort of the habit or practice or ritual we should use to stop and check in and get that audience info we need first?

Jessica Chen
It’s funny because the story that you just mentioned, that experience you have, a lot of it is because this person is presenting you a canned presentation that they’ve created. It’s like, “Okay, getting on a call with Pete. Let me just pull up the presentation that I always give.” And here’s the thing, and let’s be real, nobody has time to recreate a presentation every single time they’re meeting somebody new.

But I do think the first few minutes of, and let’s just use the example of presentations, the first few minutes of you giving a presentation, that is the most critical time because, like you said, Pete, you’re ready to listen, you’re like, “Okay, you got me on this call. I am intrigued enough to talk to you, so I’m paying attention.”

And so, for folks who are thinking about, for example, leveling up their presentation skills, yes, we’re not talking about changing your entire presentation because nobody has time for that. But thinking about how you can tailor just even the first few minutes, “Okay, I’m getting on this call with Pete. What do I know about him? What is it that I feel, like, he cares about? And I can make sure that I start off with that because I want to capture his attention and get him really interested.”

And like you said, for you, you’re like, “I don’t really care to know about, like, the founders or, like, whatever, that kind of stuff,” but maybe to somebody else that is important to them. So, for the person who is engaging with you, for them to think about “How can I be strategic?” it’s being able to identify, “Okay, what are the things you care about? And how can I start it off to capture your attention?”

Pete Mockaitis
And it seems like it would be totally fair in a small environment where you can, like if it’s one or two or three people you’re speaking to, as opposed to hundreds, to just ask, “Hey, so where do you want to start first? What do you find most interesting? What made you intrigued to have this conversation?” And I suppose you can simply ask.

Jessica Chen
Exactly. And I think a good way is to ask open-ended questions at the beginning, and this is kind of where like the art of small talk happens. Before you even dive into the presentation itself, before you even pull it up and start sharing your screen with somebody, it’s just kind of getting a temperature check of, like, this person. Maybe asking a few questions, and then that can give you some pretty key insight of like, “Oh, I know this,” or “Pete said this, so maybe I can kind of, like…”

And this can even be not just content. It can just be even tone and the vibe of how you present it. If you notice somebody is, like, pretty formal and pretty, let’s say, they just want to get straight to it, then you’re like, “Okay, I got to get straight into it.” Or, if you’re like, “Oh, in this small talk, I found that this person likes to chit-chat. They’re a little bit more casual,” then maybe in your presentation style, you now tailor it to that. It’s always basically meeting people where they’re at.

Pete Mockaitis
All right. So, you could intuit based on your observations of how things seem to be. That’s super. Are there any explicit questions you recommend just straight-up putting out there?

Jessica Chen
Well, I mean, I’m trying to think about very specific, but I mean, even just when we think about small talk, it’s just thinking about, like, “What have you been working on?” or, like, “Kind of what’s exciting?” And I think that can give you insight of who the person is, what they’re interested in, and then using that information, whether it’s in the beginning of your meeting or later on in the meeting, but using that bit of insight to make it feel like, “Oh, I heard what this person said.”

And so, in the middle of the conversation, you can even bring it back up. You can say, “Oh, yeah, and, Pete, when you mentioned that earlier, when we first jumped on that call, this point that I’m about to make actually relates to that.” So, it’s really making sure that you’re asking questions that provide insight into this person, but then also maybe even leveraging it during your conversation to show the other person that, hey, you’re listening.

Pete Mockaitis
Well, I am listening, Jessica, and it sounds, like, you’re kind of touching on some of the stuff associated with your 4A Sequence for speaking up at meetings. Can you lay this on us?

Jessica Chen
I have found that for some of us, being the first one to speak up in a meeting is not the most natural thing. Some of us tend to want to get a temperature check of the meeting first, or not the first one to speak, or they tend to just want to think about their ideas before they say something, versus some people are very much about they’re processing their ideas in real time as they’re communicating.

However, there is this 4A Sequence, and this is a communication strategy specifically for people who tend to have a hard time finding that moment to speak because, what we don’t want is for somebody to have a brilliant idea and they’re just keeping it in their mind, and they’re trying to figure out when’s the right time to speak, and before they know it, the conversation has moved on.

So, the 4A Sequence is a way of basically seamlessly inserting yourself into the conversation, and I’ll walk you through the 4A. It’s four As basically. The first A is active listening. The opposite of active listening is passive listening which is think about when you’re sitting on your couch watching Netflix. You’re passively listening and watching what’s but you have no intention to chime in. And I think this is a very important mindset shift, because when you go into a meeting with the intention of saying at least one or two things, it completely changes how you even sit in a meeting, whether you’re leaning in, and how you’re paying attention. So, going in with A, active listening.

Once you found that opportune time to chime in, whether it’s because of a pause or because somebody said something that is relevant to what you want to say, the next is you want to acknowledge. Acknowledging is you simply saying, “Hey, Pete, that was actually a really interesting point you just made,” or “What you just said made me think of…” You’re acknowledging the person by saying, “I hear you.” And you can even say those words, “I hear what you’re saying.”

But what is great about this is you’re allowing the person who just spoke to not feel like you’re cutting them off necessarily. Because when people feel like they’re getting cut off, or this is even more important to do if you have an opposing idea, is you want them to feel acknowledged so that they can go, “Okay, at least I was heard.” You acknowledge. And, by the way, acknowledging is not agreeing, it’s just letting the person know that you heard them.

Then the third A is anchor. Anchoring is repeating one or two words the person said right before you as a way to connect your point to their point, “Hey, Pete, that was a really interesting point you just made. And when you said the word data, it made me think of A, B, and C.” You said data, I repeated your word, data, and that creates a connection.

And then, finally, the fourth is answer. Now you make your answer, your pointed statement, or whatever it is you want to say. And I have found that when you can, like, present this acronym of the 4A Sequence, it’s especially helpful for people who tend to figure out, like chiming in and how to do it. So, it’s active listening, it’s acknowledging, anchoring, and answering.

Pete Mockaitis
Okay. Well, I like those little examples there. Could you give us a full demonstration in terms of we’re chatting, and, well, I guess I need to say something first that you can actively listen to. So, we’ll say, we’re chatting, “I’m really excited about the opportunity to put forward this content. I think it’ll be like testimonials on steroids when we interview our clients in this context.”

Jessica Chen
“So, you mentioned the word content and I know, Pete, you’ve been producing a lot of different content on this, and so it made me think of the next few episodes you’re going to be creating.” So, this is just kind of me using and repeating the word that you said. I was anchoring it to the word you said, which was content. I mean, I don’t really have a follow-up question to what you have to say, but if I did, I’d be like, “Okay, Pete, okay, content, oh, I did have a question about content.” So, this is how I would essentially seamlessly insert myself back into the conversation.

Pete Mockaitis
And what I think I’ve found is that when you’re anchoring and repeating a word or phrase someone said, if that word or phrase is somewhat unique, distinctive, original, fresh in some way, the person who said those words that you anchor to feels a little dose of, like, a pat on the back, or a high five, or a good job for saying that clever thing. So, I just get the impression that it increases your likability or maybe that’s just me and I’m super susceptible to this kind of flattery.

Jessica Chen
No, you’re totally right, and I think some of it can be very subtle. It could be also very unconscious. Like, if I had repeated something that you said, it kind of makes you feel, “Oh, wow, Jessica actually heard me.” And it’s not like I’m explicitly saying it, like, “Oh, amazing idea,” but it’s just like, yeah, it’s just kind of like a little like, “Hey, wink, wink, like I heard you.”

And when we think about being an effective communicator, I think we have to think about making sure we are capturing people when they’re most receptive to listen. And when they’re most receptive to listen, it’s generally when they are feeling validated, feeling acknowledged, feeling like they’re being heard. So, I think, yes, these subtle communication tactics, which we’re talking about right now, is the anchoring, repeating one or two words that person said, it can actually achieve that for sure.

Pete Mockaitis
We had Chris Voss on the show, the FBI negotiation dude, and he talked about that very concept of repeating the last few words they said is almost magical, even if you’re doing it sort of as though you’re thinking it in, like, a soft thinking processing kind of a voice. It’s like, “Okay, you’re really considering what I’m putting forward, and I appreciate that. Thank you.”

Jessica Chen
Exactly. So, I think when we think about being an effective communicator, it’s leveraging things that are also, yes, explicit but also very implicit too, but it’s still getting the other person to feel, like, “Oh, yeah, okay. Well, me hear what Jessica has to say next.”

Pete Mockaitis
And you highlight five different elements of voice which I think is so cool. Can you walk us through these five things? But, first, tell us why do we want to pay attention to our voice and what it sounds like? Is it just sort of like our voice is our voice, and that’s fine? Or just how much of an impact does it make tinkering with these variables?

Jessica Chen
It’s funny because I think, whenever I talk about tone of voice specifically, a lot of times people go, “Well, it’s just the sound of my voice, right?” Yes, but there’s actually way more we can do with our voice than we think. And the five elements, which I will go through, are, I mean, this is not something that I produced. It’s actually based off research and study and research.

And I remember, just for me, when I was a broadcast journalist, I remember we would have consultants come in and they would critique us on television, and they would say, “Do this, do that, change this, change that,” just like as consultants, that’s what they do. And I remember one time I had the consultant come in, and we’re watching me talk on camera, doing whatever story, and she kept commenting, at least for me specifically, like, the rate, the pace of my speaking.

Now, when I get excited, when I’m happy, I tend to talk very fast. I think that’s just kind of like who I am, like I’m just excited, so I talk fast, especially if I’m maybe doing a story that’s more upbeat. And I remember her saying, “Jessica, you got to slow down.” And, in my mind, I was like, “I actually thought I was talking much slower than I would normally do,” because I know being and talking fast is my one weakness. And she was like, “No, no, no, Jessica, if you really want to be impactful, you got to speak way slower.”

And that’s when I realized, your tone of voice has many different elements, and, yes, how fast you speak is the first one. So, I’m going to walk through the five right now. So, number one, your tone of voice, the first element is really what we call your rate, how fast you’re speaking. And that’s kind of like the one that we think of the most because when people are nervous or excited, which is in my case, we talk fast. So, the key is you can actually control and change it. In fact, you do want to have a variety.

The second one is what we call your pitch, and that is basically how high or how low your voice is. Now, we know men tend to have lower pitches, women tend to have higher pitches, but here’s the thing, we all have a range. If we’re maybe talking about something serious, something that we want people to understand the urgency, then we might want to modulate our pitch so it’s a little lower. But it’s not doing it in this unnatural way. It’s, again, knowing that we all have a range.

The second one or the third one is thinking about your intensity. So, intensity, essentially, is how loud or how soft your voice is. Now, typically, when we are mad or angry, we will raise our voice but sometimes when people are shy and timid, they might speak in a lower tone of voice. And the idea is you want to have variety.

And I think this is like very strategic if you’re thinking about, let’s say, you’re giving a presentation and you’re speaking, you’re speaking maybe in a louder voice, and then suddenly you want to get people to know that this point is the most important. So maybe you’ll slow down your rate, lower your voice because that gets people to lean into what you have to say.

The next one is what we call inflection, and that is essentially what words you want emphasized. So, as you’re speaking, you have a choice of, “This is the word that I want people to know.” Like, even I’m just kind of doing it right now, “This is the word I want people to know is the most important.” And that is part of your tone of voice. It’s that inflection on that word.

And then, finally, it’s what we call the quality, and that is inherently, “What does your voice sound like?” When somebody calls you, they’re like, “Oh, that’s Pete,” “Oh, that’s Jessica.” And we say, of the five, the first four, you can control. In fact, you should change and have variety, but you can’t really change what’s inherent, which for some people, it might be that squeaky voice, that hoarse voice, that raspy voice. That’s just inherently who you are.

Pete Mockaitis
In a way, I’m thinking about sort of like recipes. If I want someone to receive a message more, like, thoughtfully, “Let’s reflect on this thing here, and really kind of mellow out and be calm,” we’re going to have a slower rate and a softer volume intensity. And that sort of produces that, which is very different than, “Rally the troops! Onward!” It’s like we’ve got more volume and rate in that zone.

Jessica Chen
Exactly. And I don’t know if you’ve ever even, like, thought so intently about tone. Maybe this is the first time you’re really thinking about it because we’re talking about it, but you’re right, and I feel like because you’re, like, “I have a specific intention, then I need to talk and modulate my tone in this way.” And even when you were just doing those two different modulations, my feeling right now, as a person listening, like I felt a certain way. And that’s the thing, you controlled it, you kind of did that with your tone of voice.

Pete Mockaitis
And not to get on a rant, but people are amazed at AI speech-to-text these days, and it’s very impressive technology, I’ll give you that. Like, that’s pretty cool and that wasn’t around nearly as robustly and beautifully six years ago because I’ve tried over the years. But at the same time, boy, when I watch a YouTube video and it has an AI narrator, I can tell, I get irritated.

Because it’s, yes, you are saying the words, bravo. Bravo, robot. But it’s not giving me all the emotional things with words that are part of what make a video lovely. So, I don’t know, that’s my take for what that’s worth. What’s your take on how AI plays into all this, Jessica?

Jessica Chen
Honestly, it’s just going to get better.

Pete Mockaitis
Yeah, over time.

Jessica Chen
It’s just going to get better. It’s going to get better over time. It’s going to sound so realistic and it’s going to be scary, in my opinion. But where it is right now, I think many of us can tell it’s very artificial. It doesn’t sound very natural. And, as humans, like, I think that’s actually a good thing right now. It does kind of scare me a little bit once you cannot differentiate between, “Is this AI talking or is this a human talking?” But right now, for us, as humans to humans, that is how we connect. It’s the emotion behind the words, the language that we’re using. That’s how it builds connection, for sure.

Pete Mockaitis
And then you got me thinking about news broadcasters, in particular, and connection. What do I call that, the down pitch, in terms of like at the end of things? And some folks, let’s see, for an example, I might say, “And Starbucks revenue has increased by 18%.” It’s like the “Do-do,” at the end. And so, sometimes I get the vibes, it’s like, “Okay, you’re done. That’s what you’re communicating with that, is that we’re done, we’re over with this.” But kind of my thought is, from like a connection building perspective, that makes me feel like the broadcaster is more robotic and artificial and less connectable. So, what’s your take? You’ve been in it.

Jessica Chen
Oh, yeah, I have a lot of thoughts about this. And I have a lot of thoughts because I had to also get out of that broadcast mentality myself. Having worked in broadcast, you start to develop a “broadcasting voice.” And, in some ways, it’s good for maybe more of, like, the nightly news, where, really, it’s just telling you exactly, like, what’s going on.

But if you watch morning shows, for example, on television, it’s way more casual, way more conversational, and that’s the intent. Because in a morning show, the vibe is really to like connect with the audience versus, I think, in my opinion, when you’re watching the nightly news, it’s really about, “This is serious stuff we’re talking about. Like, this is what’s going on. This is breaking news, or whatever politics and crime, whatever’s happening.”

And I think, for most of us listening right now, we’re not trying to talk in that broadcast voice. Actually, a lot of people say, like, “I want to speak like the people who talk on television.” And I’m like, “Actually, you don’t. Yes, maybe in the sense where they’re talking very clearly, they’re enunciating the words, yeah, those are all really good things. But when you’re talking about just everyday speak, you really want to not talk as if you’re talking to a person. You want to talk as if you’re just having a conversation.”

And, honestly, Pete, I think you do a good job with this too. Even though we’re doing this recording together, and in some ways it’s “broadcasting,” but it’s really like we’re having a conversation, and I think that’s really the approach and mentality for everybody.

Pete Mockaitis
Beautiful. Thank you. Well, Jessica, tell me, anything else you want to make sure to mention before we hear about some of your favorite things?

Jessica Chen
I would say the number one most important thing that I want people to know is whether you grew up in a quiet culture, or a loud culture, or you find yourself a mix of both, where sometimes it’s easy to speak up, or sometimes it feels a bit harder, I think what we can do for ourselves is know that we actually can control our career brand.

And our career brand is the perception people have of us in the office. So, the real kind of takeaway point is when you go into work every day and you’re thinking about communications, for example, or you’re thinking about tone of voice, or any of those things that we’re just talking about today, ultimately though, what can really accelerate any of our careers in the corporate environment or whatever industry that you’re in is knowing how you can take the work that you have to do, things that people assign you to do, and how can you use it to really leverage it for more opportunities.

Of course, communications plays a huge role in that, but if there’s any kind of, like, one golden nugget, I want people to feel empowered when it comes to their work, and knowing that they have control. Otherwise, if you don’t control the narrative of your own career brand, other people are going to start controlling it for you, and then you start to be boxed into, like, this person who just does this one thing. And I think all of us are way more dynamic than that.

Pete Mockaitis
All right. Well, now could you share with us a favorite quote, something you find inspiring?

Jessica Chen
It’s the one where it’s about when you think about communicating, it’s not always about focusing on the words that you say. It’s really about how you’re making other people feel with that.

And I think that’s kind of the essence of why I do what I do. And when people ask me, like, “Oh, can you help me become a more strategic communicator?” a lot of times, I’m like, “Yes, the words that you say matter, of course, are really important, but let’s talk about delivery and how you’re saying it because that’s really what matters at the end.”

Pete Mockaitis
And a favorite book?

Jessica Chen
I recently read a good one by Tessa West, it’s called Job Therapy.

Pete Mockaitis
Oh, yes.

Jessica Chen
And I actually really enjoyed that book. I mean, granted, I will be biased, we share the same editor, but I really liked her book because it’s similar to kind of, like, how I think about career. It’s a very proactive way of finding a career that makes you happy instead of the other way around, essentially.

Pete Mockaitis
All right. And a favorite tool, something you use to be awesome at your job?

Jessica Chen
On my desk, I have a cup heater and love it because it just keeps my coffee hot all day. 

But, honestly, in all seriousness, I will say, and this is, they don’t pay me to say this but I do use this one app quite a bit to schedule meetings. It’s called Motion, and that has been huge for me. I’ve been using that a lot.

Pete Mockaitis
And is there a key nugget you share that people seem to really connect and resonate with and quote back to you often, and say, “Jessica, that was brilliant. Thank you”?

Jessica Chen
I would say you got to be your own best cheerleader. I think, for a lot of us who are smart, hardworking, we do good work, sometimes we can just do the thing and then move on. And I think it’s important to remind ourselves that, from time to time, we got to celebrate ourselves, be our own best cheerleader, and it could be even like small little things.

And one quick tip that I love to share with people is if you get an email from somebody, and they’re saying, “Congratulations. Good job. Awesome work,” create what I call a “Yay” folder. Drag that email into your “Yay” folder, and that will effectively become the one place where you can find all the good work that you’re doing, which is very helpful for performance review season.

Pete Mockaitis
And if folks want to learn more or get in touch, where would you point them?

Jessica Chen
I’m most active on LinkedIn, so do connect with me on LinkedIn, Jessica Chen. But I’m also on Instagram, so same thing, Jessica Chen, Jessica Chen page. Otherwise, our website, SoulCastMedia.com. That’s, like, another way to get in contact me and find out about the communications work that we do.

Pete Mockaitis
All right. And do you have a final challenge or call to action for folks looking to be awesome at their jobs?

Jessica Chen
Yeah, find something to celebrate this week because you are going to be your own best cheerleader. So, think back to the last week, put something small that you did that you’re pretty proud of, and how can you highlight it so other people know about it.

Pete Mockaitis
Beautiful. Well, Jessica, this is fun. Thank you and best of luck.

Jessica Chen
Thank you, Pete.