Headsmack: Conversations with Misfits
The Headsmack Podcast with host Paul Povolni invites you to listen in on conversations with misfits, mavericks and trailblazers. Join us as we explore the life of difference-makers and those who have stumbled, fumbled and then soared.
Be inspired as they candidly share their journeys and the aha moments that changed everything.
Headsmack: Conversations with Misfits
Steve Woodruff / The Clarity King. Author. Speaker. Coach
Stop wasting words and start making impact.
Meet Steve Woodruff, the “King of Clarity”, who’s spent 40+ years turning noise into memorable, referable communication.
In this episode, he reveals how clarity fuels success, why vague messaging kills referrals, and how YOU can create “memory darts” that stick in people’s heads and drive business forward.
If you want to be unforgettable — you need clarity. This conversation will show you how.
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Guest Bio
Steve Woodruff, widely regarded as “The King of Clarity,” brings over 40 years of experience in business, training, and communication. After early career detours in astronomy, psychology, and medical sales, Steve found his true calling: helping people and companies express their value clearly and memorably. Through his books Clarity Wins and The Point, workshops, and consulting, Steve equips individuals and organizations with tools to become referable, aligned, and impactful communicators. His signature concept, “Memory Darts,” has revolutionized how professionals craft compelling introductions and messages that stick.
Link: https://www.stevewoodruff.com
Paul Povolni, the founder of Voppa Creative, has been a creative leader for over 30 years, with clients around the world. He’s led teams in creating award-winning branding and design as well as equipping his clients to lead with Clarity, Creativity and Culture.
Headsmack Website
I'm Steve Woodruff, and you're listening to the HeadSmack Podcast.
SPEAKER_00:You are listening to
SPEAKER_01:conversations with
SPEAKER_00:misfits, mavericks, and trailblazers. Hey, welcome to the HeadSmack Podcast. My name is Paul Povolny, and I am excited to have another misfit with me. I have Steve Woodruff with me, and he has over 40 years of business training and has uncovered the secrets to clear communication for everyone. That's why he is known as the Clarity King. How you doing, man? Good to have you on. Paul, it's great to be here. Thanks for having me. I'm looking forward to this conversation. I love the topic of clarity. I have the cup for it. I have the t-shirt as well, clarity through action. And so clarity is one of those words that whenever I see it, my ears perk up. And so I'm going to really look forward to this conversation and looking forward to what we're going to talk about. So let me start off this episode by just hearing a little bit about your backstory. I love origin stories. I'm into superheroes and stuff. And so I want to kind of hear a little bit about your background, kind of where you got your start. You've been in this for over 40 years. And so I'm sure there's quite a bit of story in just business. But how did you get into what you were doing even before that 40 years started?
SPEAKER_01:Well, Paul, like most of us, whatever I said in my high school yearbook definitely did not end up being exactly where I was going. So my earliest aspiration, I wanted to be an astronaut. I loved science fiction. I read that stuff like crazy. But I didn't have good eyes. And back in those days, you had to have 20-20 vision to go into the Air Force, be a pilot, be an astronaut. So second place, astronomer. I wanted to be an astronomer. You
SPEAKER_00:could have done that a few weeks ago, though.
SPEAKER_01:Yeah. Well, you know, I loved astronomy. I had my own telescope. I was totally into it. I got a scholarship to go to Vanderbilt University. They had a great astronomy program. And so I went with all those high hopes, and then I ran into calculus and physics. And that was the end of my dream of being an astronomer. It turns out I love all the observational and some of the more esoteric aspects, but I just hate formulas. I hate math. I hate all that stuff. And that's 99% of being an astronomer. So I had to shift to psychology. And for a while after college, I thought I was going to go into the ministry. I studied for two and a half years for that. And I developed more and more of a fascination with words, with the impact of words and ideas. And this started very young for me. I didn't really know what marketing was, what sales. I didn't know any of that stuff. I just knew I loved ideas and And once I entered into the business world and started in sales, I began to understand how important ideas and words were to promoting whatever it is that you're doing. And so that started me on my 40-year journey of using words in emails and books and presentations in every form. to try to impart information, convince, and it's become probably nothing short of an obsession and a mission for me that you've got to be clear. If we can't break through the noise and be clear, we can't succeed in any endeavor. Clear communications is crucial for every single endeavor, every role, every company, every person, except one person. That is Brother Thomas, who is on an island under a vow of silence, and he is not allowed to communicate with any human beings. He doesn't need
SPEAKER_00:clarity. Everybody else does. He's off. He's off. So where did this love for words come from? Is it something attached to your parents? Was it something attached to a book you read? Where do you feel that love for words came from?
SPEAKER_01:You know... I just started reading a lot when I was young and I was good at processing words. And then my first, this incredible memory that was way back there about how I first began to get an interest in what later I understood was marketing was I was watching a TV commercial and it was for a moving company. I don't remember the name of the company, but I know they had a jingle at the end. And I said, boy, that's a lousy jingle. That's really bad. Yeah. And I came up with new words for it. And, you know, it's just one of those little isolated things. But it showed that there was something in my DNA real early about how important a message was. And as I grew older and as I went to school and then as I entered into the business world, later on, maybe decades later, I look back on that incident and said, oh, wow. You were a marketer right from the get-go. You just didn't
SPEAKER_00:know it. You got distracted with space. Yeah, I got distracted
SPEAKER_01:with living and growing up. But there's always been this fascination with brands and with marketing and with messages. And I still, to this day, absolutely love being immersed in analyzing how words work.
SPEAKER_00:Yeah. Now, what was your first job? So after you studied psychology and all of that stuff, what was your first job that you did that actually got to use some of your passions?
SPEAKER_01:It was in a medical device company. We were selling very sophisticated medical device equipment in radiation oncology, radiation medicine. And the ironic thing about this is that one of our chief audiences for this equipment was medical physicists. And it turns out that I could learn this stuff if I could get my hands on it and see it. It was the theoretical that had thrown me off. So I learned, you know, electronics and aspects of physics. And about eight years into this job, somebody said to me, Are you a physicist? And, oh, I laughed within. I never forgot that because it was like at least a little vindication of the thing that had beaten me in my freshman year in college. I had at least made some form of recovery.
SPEAKER_00:Yeah, yeah. And so that led to what? What was the next step from that? When did you start pursuing the next thing?
SPEAKER_01:So that was a 10-year journey. And that was a small company. So I got to wear a lot of hats. I did sales. I just started doing marketing because there was no one else to do marketing. I got into branding. And Every bit of that, I just loved it. And then the internet showed up. And early on, I saw a demonstration in the very early days of web browsers and the internet, and I was absolutely awestruck. The fact that you could just design something and push it up and it would be available to the whole world. blew my mind. So I then took a job with a software company that was developing applications mostly for pharmaceutical companies, but it was online learning, online branding, and it gave me a chance to scratch that itch of internet and software stuff. And so that's where I started getting much more serious into things like user design, interface design, information design, all of which are part of effective communication, as well as doing consulting and project management and all these functional areas where clear communication is mission critical. And I just had to learn it by doing it over and over. So that was another 10-year span. And then I had a decision to make. Was I going to work for someone else or was I going to follow my own passion and my own vision and launch my own consultancy? And with five young boys under my roof and probably too much idealism and not enough common sense, I launched out about 20 years ago on my own and haven't looked back. No, I have looked back once or twice. Every entrepreneur or solopreneur will have to admit that they've looked back a few times. But I built my company, my role, my job around me. what I believed was most important. And that led me eventually to writing a book and writing another book and workshops and doing clarity stuff
SPEAKER_00:full-time. Yeah. So you're considered the king of clarity. What does clarity mean?
SPEAKER_01:So I look at clarity in two primary dimensions. One is clarity about your purpose, your value, and your direction. And this is both individuals and companies. You've got to have a clear sense of where you're going. And this is a big problem. Many people do not have clarity and many companies don't have clarity. They basically say, we'll do anything. Jack of all trades. I'll take that. I'll do this. Without a clear North Star or compass. I think that is one of the most crucial things. And that's one of the most important things I do is working one-on-one with individuals and working with companies to help them get clear on who they are. The second piece is, okay, given that, how do we make the message clear? How do we express it clearly? How do we use words effectively to sell, to market, to brand? And although these two things are separate, When it comes to actual implementation, you really want both together.
SPEAKER_00:So if a company is asking itself, well, we do need clarity, what are some of the first steps that you do or take them through to get them to that point of clarity? I know you mentioned you have your books, you have your workshops and things. What are some of the things that you start doing with them to get them to that point?
SPEAKER_01:Well, the first thing is stories. I ask a lot of questions and I harvest the stories out of the company or the key people in a company or an individual that is looking to either launch their own business or in career transition. Same process. I want to know the stories. And I'm very curious. And I ask in a sort of a free form, but deliberate way. I ask the questions that will bring to the surface the What is the unique value of this person or this company? What are your greatest success stories? How did you get there? How have people reacted to this as opposed to that? And typically within one or two hours, I can come up with the prototype value proposition that says, this is who you are. This is your thing. And for some people, that is an absolute epiphany. The information has been in their heads all along. But no one drew it out and systematized it. And that's the unique gift I have. For some reason, my mind is constructed in such a way that I can, not for myself, because I get myself all confused, but for anybody else, I can help sort through all the bits and pieces and say, this is really what's going on. And now how are we going to say it? And it's one of the most rewarding moments. things you can possibly do to help someone essentially get a mirror and put it in front of them and say, here's who you
SPEAKER_00:are. Yeah. So what are some of the biggest hurdles? Because some people have never thought about those things that you just said, share those questions that hopefully somebody's written down and they're going to be examining themselves. But when you approach them with those questions, they're going to hit roadblocks. They're going to hit things that they wrestle with. What have you found that they wrestle with most? The... biggest
SPEAKER_01:river to cross is you don't want to have a wide open net for any opportunity. People don't want to be pigeonholed. They want to keep an open mind, so to speak. And I say, absolutely not. You need to be pigeonholed because nobody can know when they need to come to you and nobody can refer you unless you are accurately pigeonholed in the minds of others. And that's why clarity of words is so important because if I can plant in your mind in 15 to 30 seconds who I am and what I do in a memorable way, you can refer me. And everybody knows that the most powerful driver of new business is referrals. But most people do not have a strategy for becoming memorable so that they can be accurately referable. My first book called Clarity Wins, it has a subtitle, Get Heard, Get Referred. The idea is to establish your brand in such a clear and focused way that you can have your message spread by others because they get it
SPEAKER_00:and
SPEAKER_01:remember it.
SPEAKER_00:Yeah, wow. That alone is a head smack for somebody. A pretty powerful way to put that about the idea of niching or getting super clear on who you are and who you help so people can refer you. And so is there tools that you use? Because for some people that's the biggest, like you mentioned, that's your first thing that you have to deal with or that's the pushback or the biggest river to cross. What tools do you use or what do you use to help them to niche? Because it is hard to say, you know, for somebody that feels they can do multiple things, they've got multiple passions, they've got multiple skills, they want to help everybody. What are some of those tools you use to build that bridge that they have to cross?
SPEAKER_01:Two of those tools are behind me over my shoulder. Those are my two stuffed birds.
SPEAKER_00:The penguin and the pigeon.
SPEAKER_01:Yeah. Justin is the penguin and Niche is the pigeon. So I say, look, You've seen all those science shows where you've got a whole bunch of penguins on the ice floor. They all look the same. They all sound the same. No differentiation. They're all the same. You are just another digital agency, just another trainer, just another whatever, until you're not. You're just another penguin out there amidst all the noise and all the other companies that Nobody knows who you are until you can express your value. As Seth Godin put it in his awesome book, Purple Cow, you can drive by fields of cows and none of them are remarkable, but you go past a purple cow, you're going to talk about it. And so we all have to become a purple cow. And if you are a generalist, if you do lots of things, you're just another commodity. And so what you want to do is find your pigeonhole and say, this is exactly what makes me unique. So I was talking to somebody just this week who is looking to get better defined in their career, get their value better known within the company. And as we went through the stories, and that's a big part of what I do, it became obvious to me that though she has one job title, she's actually fulfilling five different job roles in this company. She's so omnicompetent. And so we decided that who she is, is an indispensable unicorn of that company. Yeah. Now you use a title like that. I'm an indispensable unicorn. You are now going to compel people to say, tell me more. What do you mean? And now you can express your value. So one of the most important things I do with people is how do you get to a 15 second introduction? that's not telling and it's not selling. It's compelling. Yeah. It's drawing people out and they want to draw you out. Yeah. So tell me about the pigeon. Well, the pigeon is the pigeonhole. So the very people that want to be commodities are the ones that say, I don't want to be pigeonholed. Yeah. And I say, no, you do want to be pigeonholed. You want to be as narrow and niched as you can because I Nobody can remember you for five things. They're not going to refer you for five things. Everybody has like one pixel in their mind for you. So you better occupy the right pixel. You got to love
SPEAKER_00:your
SPEAKER_01:pigeonhole, not resist it. Yeah.
SPEAKER_00:And I think we're like that as humans is we like to summarize. That's why we come up with nicknames. We shorten nicknames. People's names, you know, instead of McDonald's, it's McD's, you know, instead of, you know, we are prone to shorten things to remember them better. And so we automatically start categorizing that's that person and he's a, or that's that person and she's a. And so I think you're absolutely right in that is that, you know, if, if. they're unable to do that easily for you, then you've become too broad in what you're doing, and that's going to hurt you in the long run. Now, with people battling that, what are some of the fears around allowing themselves to niche or to pigeonhole themselves? What are some of the fears that you deal with?
SPEAKER_01:The main fear is that people are afraid of turning down revenue. As if all revenue is equal. Got to have revenue. And there's a certain point, especially when you're starting out for the first year or two, you can't necessarily afford to turn down everything. But what you want to do is you want to start taking aim at a very specific niche as soon as you can. Because it turns out the riches are in the niches. The riches aren't in the everything. The riches are there. So you've got to find that niche that's underserved, where you've got a unique value, and then you own it. So, uh, some years ago, uh, a friend of mine, Chris Brogan wrote on my Facebook page on my birthday, he said, happy birthday to the king of clarity. And I said, Ooh, that's real. I mean, that's ballsy, but I like it because it's a perfect, what I call a memory dart. It's a perfect memory dart. You might forget 20 things I say, but nobody forgets the king of clarity. And so I just took that and ran with it. And part of effective branding for a company and an individual is that shorthand, shortcut picture that you put in somebody's mind. And our job is to put that picture. It's not their job to figure us out. It's our job to say, here's my pigeonhole.
SPEAKER_00:Yeah. I love that. And so are there any other fears for other people that you have to work with them or get over when it comes to them wanting to have that niche or that pigeonhole? You mentioned the financial is one of them. Are there any other things that?
SPEAKER_01:One of the ones that comes up a lot is people are afraid of bragging. And they're afraid of being viewed as bragging. Wow. And I get it. I understand that. And there's a nobility to that. But the fact is that personal branding is just simply expressing who you are. It's not obnoxious bragging. It's bringing forth, in simple terms, the value that we have. And I have found that I have to help people overcome this feeling of... Yeah. Right. This is my superpower. And sometimes you kind of have to push people a little bit to own it. Yeah,
SPEAKER_00:yeah, yeah. I love that. Those are those two great, great points. And so when it comes to the niching or the pigeonholing, what are the different types of niches? I would imagine one would be I am a specialist and that's my niche or I serve a certain group. Right. Right. Are there any other niches or is there any other ways you can define those? So
SPEAKER_01:there are lots of layers of niches. So I talk about vertical niches, which is, you know, I'm an expert in the auto industry or I'm an expert in insurance or in medical device, whatever. You want to define that. There are also what I call horizontal niches that transcend certain industry domains like an hr specialist or a writer or that kind of thing then you want to narrow it down to i work with this specific type of person this demographic this title they have a particular type of felt need that i can meet and so you just keep moving down the layers Until you can say, as my editor, Josh Bernoff, who worked with me on both of my books, he is both an author and an editor and a Sherpa for new authors. But he works on business books. He's not just a general editor. He helps people write or he helps Ghost write business books. That's his niche. And he's great at it. And he's just said that that's where I'm going to be. Well, that's way better than if his LinkedIn profile just says, editor. Yeah, yeah. What does that mean?
UNKNOWN:Yeah.
SPEAKER_01:And so a lot of companies use generic fluff language like solutions and services and systems, and they don't tell you exactly what they do, who they do it for, and what the pain is that they're fixing. And so they're forgettable.
SPEAKER_00:Yeah. Yeah. Wow. Wow. I love that. And so, uh, yeah, I, I think, I think somebody is going to need to rewind and listen to how you, uh, how you define that. Cause I think it's so, so good in, you know, it's not just, you know, I'm, I'm a particular skilled person at whatever at branding or whatever, but also niching down as who, who do I specialize for, um, and getting as, as narrow as possible. Now you started talking about something there that, um, that I want to also elaborate on is the memory darts. You're not a fan of the elevator pitch. You like the term memory dart. So talk about that for a little bit. What is that? A memory dart,
SPEAKER_01:the term memory dart is a memory dart. It's a graphical, vivid snippet that creates a picture in somebody's head and enlightens quickly. And the best communicators throughout all of history have used memory darts. Parables, stories, statistics, all of these great little shortcuts are what I call memory darts. And the most important memory dart we can have is our introductory memory dart. How do we answer the question, Paul, what do you do? Well, if you don't give me a good, clear answer in about 15, 20 seconds, I'm tuning you out because you're just another whatever, podcaster. Right, right, right. But it turns out that memory darts aren't just introductory. Memory darts are everything you would use in a sales pitch, in a presentation. You want to wrap your concepts into colorful, short, provocative concepts. language that stick. And so I believe that actually we all have to learn to speak in memory darts. And if you look at ancient literature, if you look at the Bible, it's full of memory darts, absolutely packed with summaries and word pictures and analogies and all of these things. They've all existed for a long time. I just systematized it in the books and called it memory darts. But these are not unique. They're not rocket science. They're just effective use of words to turn the light on.
SPEAKER_00:Yeah. And the great thing is, too, is just making up phrases that can own a concept, right? Kind of like the purple cow that you already referenced by Seth Godin. Other people have said similar things about standing out or differentiation or whatever, but he came up with the purple cow. And we've been using it forever. We try and explain differentiation. We try and do all these things, but then we say purple cow, and it's like, oh, yeah, yeah, I get
SPEAKER_01:it. Part of this is the shortcut process of you want to try, if you can, to hook something into people's minds that they already have. So if I said, you know what, Paul is the Mercedes of podcasters. Okay. Well, everybody knows what a Mercedes is. High end, top quality, whatever, whatever, whatever. So what I've done is I've shortcut and stolen an image in their mind and attached it to you. Well, turns out That's being brain friendly. That's what the human brain wants. It wants shortcuts all the time. So I don't want another white paper of jargon. Just give me an analogy. And it turns out that's what parents have always done. Teachers have always done. Preachers have always done. That's how it works.
SPEAKER_00:Yeah. Well, and I think companies also do that, not only with words, but they also do it with visuals and with colors. If you see something from Tiffany's, you know it's from Tiffany's because they have a very particular packaging. If you see Gucci, if you see different brands, they have these visual things that immediately say luxury. This is me. This is my company. This is who we are and what we're about. And so I love that idea of memory dial. And memory darts itself is a
SPEAKER_01:memory dart. Delicious. Yeah. And then somebody created a visual memory dart. They had a picture of it, and then they stacked up how much sugar was in that thing. Oh, wow. Now, I could have read and probably heard how much was in it. It didn't hit me. When I saw that, I said, I am not having another one of those.
SPEAKER_02:Yeah.
SPEAKER_01:It got in me and turned the light on. Right. Now, the information was out there, but it was packaged in a way that that rang the bell and moved me. It touched my emotions. And that's what you want to do. You don't want to just share information. You've got to touch
SPEAKER_00:emotions. Right. Yeah, I'm going to be thinking about memory dots for a while because it's such a powerful way to share the concept of, you know, doing something to stand out. I mean, even with speaking, you know, as a speaker, if you got up on stage or if you're doing a presentation or whatever, you know, you can get up there and just kind of start, hey, everybody, you know, we're going to be talking about blah, blah, blah, blah. But if you can attach something interesting to stand out, to differentiate, to get in their head a statement, a phrase, Yeah. Yeah.
SPEAKER_01:I mean, that is masterful. And it absolutely went viral. Now, he could have gone into a technical description of MP3 files. No. We know what a song is. We know what a pocket is. We know what a little device is. And all of a sudden I want that. I want to have a thousand songs in my pocket. Oh, it's absolutely brilliant.
SPEAKER_00:Yeah. Yeah. I don't want to carry this big binder around with CDs in it every time I want to travel or go anywhere. So it immediately answered so many things of, you know, what does it do and what problem does it solve? And all, yeah, it was, it was an absolutely brilliant way to kind of stick in people's heads with marketing. And And so, you know, as we're talking about communication, you know, there is, you know, you had mentioned that there's a basic science to communication that provides clues to effective communication design. Talk about that for a little bit.
SPEAKER_01:Well, I've used the term already brain-friendly. And what I practice and what I have, I think, pretty effectively demonstrated, and it's pretty self-evident in the book, is the human brain is a very busy place. It's processing something in the vicinity of 11 million bits of information per second from all five senses. 11 million bits of information. Now you and I, staring at each other on the screen here, this is a 60-bit information flow. We're able to focus on 60 bits. That means that the brain is filtering out 11 million bits so that we can focus. How does that magic happen? And that is because of a little neurobiological marvel called the reticular activating system. And one of its jobs is to filter out everything but what's most important right now. And so if we're going to get people's attention, we have to know what does the RAS, the reticular activating system, want? Turns out we know what it wants. It wants immediate personal relevance. It wants to know what's important, what's most interesting, what's new right now. Everything else goes away. So if I introduce myself, if I get up to present and I don't get the RAS on my side by being immediately relevant, showing why something is so important, why you need to listen, I lose you. Every one of our communications has to be front-loaded. With relevance. In other words, to take sales language and use it in a broader sense, the RAS wants to know the WIIFM, the what's in it for me. Everything is what's in it for me. So I've got to appeal to your interest so that you will go, ah, this is worth the 60 bits. I'll ignore everything else. And people think communication is information dumping. No. It's the shortcuts through the RAS
SPEAKER_00:that
SPEAKER_01:win.
SPEAKER_00:And what are some of those shortcuts? I know we've talked about the memory darts. We've talked about several things, having a niche, having a way you talk about yourself. What are some other tools to break through some of those what's in it for me things that might block from you getting through?
SPEAKER_01:So one of the things that works really well is something that is surprising. So you start with something surprising. Whenever I tell people the brain is processing 11 million bits and then it's a 60-bit flow for focus, that's That's shocking. It's absolutely shocking. And that makes you go, whoa, tell me more about that. Or when I share the statistics about how many emails we get, how many ads we see per day, how many times we pick up our phone, shocking numbers. And so shock is one thing. Stakes, high stakes. If I know something is a high risk, high benefit, I pay attention. If it's not, I won't. So you have to spell out the stakes. And one of the ways I do that is I tell people, look, you've got a few seconds, a moment of opportunity to open up a communication well. If you don't, you lose. You might have invested$25 million into your offering. If you don't secure attention in the first few seconds, it doesn't matter. That's what's at stake. That's why you can't treat communication as a nice to have. You've got to pay attention. So those kind of things, those kind of things that jar and that hook are what enable us to win the RAS battle.
SPEAKER_00:Wow. As people try and figure out what those words are for themselves, do you have a way to take them through that? Because clarity is the best thing. Clarity is the amazing thing. Clarity is what we all strive for, but we sometimes have a hard time finding that clarity of what is it that I do. I know we've shared quite a bit already. Are there any other things that you'd like to share about helping them get to clarity? One of the most
SPEAKER_01:important perspectives came from a piece of artwork that Hugh McLeod, who goes under the name Gaping Void, he makes these really interesting little drawings. And some years ago, he put one out, and it was just fascinating. It said, you can't read the label of the jar you're in. And I looked at that and I said, holy crap. Now, that was a memory dart. And I bought that piece of art. It's actually right behind me. And I have used that phrase. Nobody knows where it came from. I don't know who originally. People think I came up with it. No, I've just promoted it like crazy. Because as soon as people hear it, it sticks. It's a universal truth. We have trouble seeing ourselves objectively. In fact, we can't. We're all subjective. So we need others to help us see the label of the jar we're in. And one of the things I do besides teaching and writing about the principles of clarity is I serve as a consultant to help people gain clarity. And this is very much a sort of a, I mean, you've got to think of it like a doctor. You're dealing with an individual. You've got symptoms. You've got specifics. There are general rules, but This individual has this background, these stories, these strengths, this life situation. So there's no magic wand. You have to kind of work it through. And part of being in multiple roles in business in 40 years is you begin to gain a business perspective, a practical perspective that AI can't replicate, where you can talk to somebody and say, I could envision what you're doing applied over here in this way. And they've never thought of that because they're just in their little jar.
SPEAKER_00:Yeah. Well, and I think that is the thing. Sometimes we try and get clarity ourselves, but having an outside perspective, see the obvious sometimes. I heard somebody once recently mention about therapists is they ask good questions that get us to– say the things that we already know. And I think that happens with a lot of businesses and even with coaching and things like that is sometimes it's finding somebody that can ask the good questions that can get you to where you need to go.
SPEAKER_01:One of the analogies I use, and I used to actually literally bring a box of M&Ms to the clarity sessions with people and I'd spill out the box of M&Ms and I'd say, this is what's in your head right now. What we're going to do is we're going to start putting it in order. We're going to arrange the yellows and the greens and the oranges. My job is to just get you to dump out all the M&Ms and then we're going to figure out how to do it. And yeah, we can't do it ourselves. I need help. I have guys in my mastermind that help me because I get myself all wrapped around the axle. I'm stupid when it comes to my own stuff. And I need outside input. I need outside affirmation, encouragement, creative thinking. I can't read the label of the jar I'm in, even if I can read somebody else's pretty well.
SPEAKER_00:Yeah, that's so good. You know, and with one of the things that I've recently leaned into, and like I mentioned, I have it on my cup, clarity through action, you know, because for me, it's Sometimes you get clarity just by in the doing, you know, in in, you know, I don't know what I'm good at. I don't know what I should do. And sometimes it's just the matter of Peter stepping out of the boat and figuring out that the water holds, you know. And so so do you deal with that with with people as well? And how do you work with them when it comes to that?
SPEAKER_01:Yeah, absolutely. I have a story from long ago when I was in my 20s before I became a clarity consultant. And I had a friend of mine, I was young married, I'd been married for a few years, and he was dating this gal and trying to figure out, you know, should I do this? And I said, Dave, you know, you're only going to get about to 85% certainty before you just simply have to act and step out in faith. Yeah. And I forgot about it. And then decades later, he reminded me of that. But I used the same 85% rule, which is quite arbitrary, by the way, but it's handy for me. When I launched my business, I mapped out what I thought I was going to do. And I just thought, okay, I think this is right. But the marketplace and the action I take and the steps I take will clear up the rest. You can't get 100% pure billboarded, this is it, Steve, clarity. You take action and let clarity develop. So I am a big fan of having a clear picture and a clear direction, but it's not 100% ever. You just have to say, I'm pretty sure this is right. Let's go.
SPEAKER_00:Right, right. Well, and I think for, and you kind of mentioned it there as well, is that the market will tell you. And, you know, sometimes I've had people tell me, what do you think of this idea? What do you think of this idea? You know, it's kind of out there. It's kind of different. It's, you know, I want to try this. I want to try that. And it's like, well. You know, some stuff is hard to get data on until you actually put it out there. And then you let the data tell you. Yes. Let the market tell you. Let the response tell you. And it's like, you know, I'm a great singer. Well, go sing. You know, I'm a great whatever. Then go do that. Let's find out. Let's find out. And so there is that clarity through action that sometimes you just need to put it out there and, you know, some of that clarity will come. Because you've actually tested it in the marketplace. You've tested it as far as your capabilities, as far as does the market actually want that or need that?
SPEAKER_01:Well, I had to learn that the hard way. So when I first started out, I had all these ideals about clarity. And it turns out you can't sell clarity. Nobody knows how to buy clarity. What is clarity? It's not a tangible. And so I would talk about clarity. I would offer consulting to reach clarity. People would get sort of how important it was, but they didn't know what it meant to buy it because it wasn't within the known universe of how they buy things. So after some years of frustration in the marketplace I have been in, biopharma training, one of the things that money is thrown at is workshops. And I was always into more of the electronic digital stuff. And so I sort of poo-pooed workshops. But then I realized people are spending millions and millions of dollars on workshops because they know what that is. They have it in the budget. I need to take clarity and package it into workshops. on leadership clarity, email clarity, personal branding. And then all of a sudden they could buy it. So part of clarity and part of reacting to the marketplace is you've got to be able to give something tangible that people can understand, even if you're in a sort of a unique thing. Because if you try to go too far, they can't relate to it. So I had to learn that one the hard way. And I've talked to lots of people that, look, you've got to have an offering that's packaged in a way people can grasp it. You have to have a formula. You have to have an acronym. You have to have a way of saying it that someone says, oh, I can buy that. And yeah,
SPEAKER_00:it took a while to figure that one out. So how do you sell clarity now? You said you had a formula, you had an acronym. How do you sell clarity now?
SPEAKER_01:So most of my revenue is still doing corporate workshops and I can do corporate workshops on clear communications for literally any group any role, everybody needs clear communications. And I was on this obsessive hunt after my first book. I had this idea that maybe there was a formula for clear communication that covered everything. not just selling, not just marketing, not just email. And I was on this quest for years to hammer this thing out. I had it halfway hammered out with my first book. And then sometime during the pandemic, I kept working that thing like a dog with a bone and I figured it out. And so my second book called The Point is an actual formula on clear communications with the four rules of and eight shortcut tools. That's it. So what I do with that formula is I package workshops and say, okay, if you want to work with your executive leadership or your emerging leaders or your sales people or whatever, we can do a series of lunch and learns. We can do a full day workshop. We can do a practical this. We can do a team this. And I take the principles and practices and just simply adapt them to any situation that's needed. So that's the corporate side. And then on the individual side or the smaller micro business side, I do anywhere from two to four to eight hour sessions of really brand consulting. Let's deep dive into who and what you are and get your messaging straight and figure out how you're going to say it on LinkedIn, how you're going to introduce yourself, how you're going to sell this, how you're going to put a backdrop in a exhibit hall that makes sense. All that branding stuff, which I love. So there's kind of two pieces to it, working with smaller individual groups and then I can do the other in very large groups or small teams. And then I've recently introduced a whole new thing, which I call a pre-note. So one of the things I've seen after 40 years of being in conferences is that a lot of people struggle attendees to introduce themselves. They don't have a good elevator pitch. They hate elevator pitches. In fact, most people do. They have a very generic way of introducing themselves. I'm the associate director of training for blah, blah, blah, blah. Right, right. And So when I would do personal branding workshops, I'd help people in groups to come up with ways of sharing stories that showed who they were. It turns out I can get people in a conference in 30 minutes in a pre-note session early on to develop three quick shareable stories that they actually develop with each other right there. that they can then use to share throughout the conference, their origin and evolution story, which we've mentioned before, the top success story, and the coulda, woulda, shoulda story, astronaut. And everybody has those stories. And when you can tell people those little stories, it creates immediate bonds with others. And I can walk through in any conference this session in as little as 30 minutes and help spark that. way better network among the attendees just by people developing their memory darts right there, live.
SPEAKER_00:Right. Well, and it makes you more memorable when you're at an event, when you're in a meeting, if you've got those interesting stories, those interesting things about you that make you stand out from everybody that says, you know, I'm Bob and I sell real estate. You know, whatever, that by sharing some of those stories, it creates a way for them to say, yeah, there was a guy that said this about themselves, I remember them.
SPEAKER_01:Well, one of the most fun ones I did recently was with one of my own sons. So I have five sons. They're all grown up now. But the youngest had graduated college and he had done a degree in aerospace, basically in drones, you know, using drones. And he's a very good photographer. So Turns out there's a company or a type of company that goes and does photographic documentation of buildings and construction in process. They go like every week and take all this archive of information, some of it's with drones. So he and I were on the phone one day and he, uh, he was driving, I was driving and he said, dad, you know, you keep talking about these memory darts. Well, you know, my, my job title is documentation specialist. I said, that's ridiculous. So I said, okay, let's, let's work on that. And you look at what he's doing. And I said, Seth, here's how you introduce yourself. I get paid to fly drones and take pictures and you're got to ask, what do you mean by that? I mean, that's intriguing. Documentation specialist, not intriguing. I get paid to fly drones, that's intriguing. And so after we hung up 10 minutes later, he gets pulled over by a policeman because one of his brake lights was out. And he decided, well, I'll give it a try. The cop asked what he was doing and who he was. And he said, I get paid to fly drones and started this conversation. And he just got off with a warning. Now, I don't know, maybe he would have just got off with a warning without it, but he immediately saw the power of using a memory dart to introduce yourself and to create a bond instead of just
SPEAKER_00:throwing out a generic title.
UNKNOWN:Yeah.
SPEAKER_00:Wow. Wow. And so I do want to talk about your second book as well. And you'd kind of referenced it. It's called The Point. And you'd mentioned there were four things, four rules that you use. Do you mind sharing those?
SPEAKER_01:Sure. It's real simple. The four rules for crafting and designing a good communication, whatever that communication is, is number one, you have to have a point.
UNKNOWN:Okay.
SPEAKER_01:A lot of people communicating don't have an actual point. Then, secondly, you've got to get to the point. You've got to quickly, because of the RAS, you've got to quickly show the relevance and where you're going. You've got to let me know what's in it for me and why I should tune in. So, you know, a lot of people keep saying, get to the point, but there's a step before you've got to actually have a point, get to the point. The third is getting the point across, which means that the brain has a common operating system, but we all have different stuff in our heads. And I can't assume that the way I use a word, the definition I have, the meaning I have, is the same between you and me. We might be talking right past one another. So that means I've got to define, I've got to illustrate, I've got to explain to make sure I'm getting the point across. And that's where memory darts come in, is I'm using memory darts to say, and what I mean by this is he's the Mercedes of podcasters. And then the final thing, especially in business, is the goal of the communication is to get on the same page. We want to summarize, get everybody on the same page. Otherwise, why are we communicating unless we have a destination? And if we don't document it in a summary, it never happened. Yeah. Anywhere from an email to a book to a podcast to whatever, those four steps are important. what you have to do to design effective communication. And that's being brain friendly. And then under each of those, I have some tactics and specific ways that you can learn how to have a point, how to get to it, how to stratify and design your information so that it's brain friendly. And so the second book is that. And then the other part of it, the eight shortcuts are The memory dart formats, which are snippets and stories and side-by-sides and symbolic language, they all start with S. Again, things that have been commonly used for many generations, all I did was systematize it and make it all S's. But there's nothing in this book that is unique except the fact that I systematized it and turned it into a formula. These have been the principles that any great communicator has used all along to maybe calling it something else. But with those four rules and those eight tools, anybody can be great at email, at presenting, at interviewing, at leading, at whatever, because the human brain is the human brain. It works a certain way, and information needs to be packaged in a way that works.
SPEAKER_00:Wow. And so for the fourth point you mentioned, summarize, is that to capture the people that might have got distracted, tuned out, ADHD, you know, whatever it is, is you, you basically bring them back to all, all the previous three things, right?
SPEAKER_01:Yeah. We have to assume that information, we have to assume that communication isn't going to work. We have to assume the endless capacity for miscommunication, misunderstanding, forgetting, selective remembering, all of that. And, uh, The reason why summaries are great, little bullet points, little summaries, little action items, is because whatever the bulk of information that has been shared before, that's not brain-friendly, that bulk. The summary is. So after a meeting, the summary before the meeting is the agenda. Here's where we're going. Here's the point. The summary after is, here's the roadmap. And the human brain needs summaries. We just do. We cannot hold in our heads a huge pile of 60,000 concepts. Summarize it for me.
SPEAKER_00:Right. Well, and it's basically like... Here's what I heard. When you're sending a summary to somebody, here's what I heard. Is that correct?
SPEAKER_02:Yeah.
SPEAKER_00:And when you're speaking, it's in case you tuned me out, in case your mind went somewhere else, or in case you misunderstood or misheard, or like you mentioned, sometimes we have filters that we hear things through. Here's what I want to make sure that you've got all the main points, right?
SPEAKER_01:Yeah. The classic, you've probably heard this before, I think people talk about it in reference to teaching, is tell them what you're going to tell them. Tell them and then tell them what you told them. It's the same principle. We need repetition and we need ways of piling the information on and condensing and distilling so that we can walk away with it.
SPEAKER_00:Man, so, so good. So many head smacks along the way. And I do encourage you to check out his books, both The Point as well as Clarity Wins. And so tell me a little bit more about how people can get a hold of you. Who do you help? How do you help them? Who do you not help? Yeah.
SPEAKER_01:So the interesting thing I've discovered about who I can help is I can literally help anybody if they have some humility. about them. You've got to be ready to have someone else look at the jar and speak into your life. So if somebody wants to understand who they are, where they're going, and how to say it, really the principles are universal. And it's not even just business. It also applies to every other part of life. Everything I've written in these books can be applied to teaching, to preaching, to parenting. So all the same, it's just human interaction. And so I work with a whole variety of different people and it's just, It's all the same. I don't need domain expertise to help people formulate nice packages of words. So stevewoodruff.com is my website and that has a lot of information on the different offerings. A lot of what I put out is on LinkedIn. I use LinkedIn most because a lot of what I've done has been more business focused. So I have a LinkedIn newsletter called Clarity Blend and that's where It's easiest to find me, as well as in a couple of local coffee shops here in Franklin where I meet people all the time and we do clarity sessions. And, of course, many of them are Zoom, and I'm working with people all over the place. But there's nothing quite like face-to-face in a coffee shop.
SPEAKER_00:Yeah. Now, I know you offer like a 90-minute session for folks as well. What do they come out of that session with when it comes to a clarity session?
SPEAKER_01:Yeah, so a 90-minute clarity session. which I price very reasonably, between$500 and$800, is they come out with, usually depending on what their goal is, A headline introduction of a hook, a very effective hook that they can use to introduce themselves and to put in their headline on LinkedIn. LinkedIn is another area where if you just have a generic headline under your photo, you're forgettable. You want to put something really good there. So we work on that. We work on the quickest summary of what your offerings or what your value is. And then we work on success stories and origin stories. And so it's those combination of early memory darts, introductory memory darts that we work on. And then if somebody wants to go longer and deeper, we can go into their websites, into their pitch decks, into all how it works out. But the initial core is let's figure out the value proposition and let's figure out at least the most distilled, quick way to get that across. And then after that, we can go as deep as you want to go.
SPEAKER_00:That's awesome. I do encourage you to check out stevewoodruff.com to contact Steve. So Steve, as we wrap this up, what's a question or a head smack that you wish I'd asked you about, but I didn't ask you and you'd like to share?
SPEAKER_01:The question or the head smack would be this. No matter how experienced or how successful people are, you'd be shocked at how often they need somebody to just simply affirm what they're really good at and what they're all about. It's amazing still to me that people can be incredible human beings and not know what makes them tick and why they're awesome. And one of the most valuable and liberating things we can do for each other is reading that label, whether it's in business, yes, but it's one of the most important parts of parenting and helping to identify in your children what makes them awesome and in your friends and people in your church. And it turns out that just about everybody except the worst possible narcissist and sociopath needs intelligent, insightful affirmation. We all do. And we should always assume that one of the best things we can do for somebody is say, you're awesome at this. And here's why. Not just blowing smoke. Here's the specific thing that makes you amazing. You can absolutely make someone's year with a two-minute interaction like
SPEAKER_00:that. Wow. So good. Great way to wrap this up. I can't believe it's already been an hour. This has been an awesome conversation, Steve. Thank you so much for coming on. I do encourage you to check him out on LinkedIn. Check him out on his website, stevewoodruff.com. Reach out to him if you need clarity, if you just need somebody to look from the outside of the jar to help you figure it out and get some clarity in your life. Because clarity really is the key to everything. I think it was Craig or a And I don't know whether he originally said it, but he said, when you know who you are, you know what to do. And I think that's such a, you know, when we have our identity, when we know who we are, we know what to do and what not to do as well. You know, we know the things that this doesn't align with who I am and therefore I should not do it, but it all comes down to clarity. And so I do encourage you to check out his books as well. You said that you had a third book coming up? I'm thinking about
SPEAKER_01:it. So I've got the prototype idea in my head is the elevator pitch is dead. It's time for the memory dart revolution. And it's not a bunch of new stuff. It's actually taking a lot of what I've developed in the first two books and packaging it at the introduction level. conundrum that we all have and try to impart immediate tools to people to allow themselves to introduce themselves. And so you have to have a bad guy when you have something you're offering. And my bad guy is the elevator pitch, the contrast. And the good guy is the memory dart. And of all the things that I've written in the book, it seems like the memory dart concept is the one that lands. Just as you said, take action, put it out there. I did not expect memory dart to be the thing that landed as hard as it is, but that's what it does.
SPEAKER_00:Yeah. Yeah. And you just put it out there and you just see what happens. And that happened. And if it didn't happen, then you'd come up with something else and keep putting it out there. Well, Steve, thank you so much for being on. This has been amazing. Really appreciate
SPEAKER_01:your time, Paul. It's been great getting to talk to you.
SPEAKER_00:All right, and
SPEAKER_01:we're done. Man, that was so good. That was fun.
SPEAKER_00:That was so good. I enjoyed that.
SPEAKER_01:Yeah, that was great. I love doing podcasts, and once you start getting in the groove, it's effortless.
SPEAKER_00:Yeah, yeah, yeah. I love recording them. I don't enjoy being on them as much. I haven't been on a ton of them, but I really enjoy having these conversations with people and just talking to them and just hearing their stories and hearing what they have to share and stuff. And so, yeah, I love this part of it.
SPEAKER_01:You brought up actually one of the really interesting head smacks that I didn't explicitly mention, which is that when you have clarity about yes, you have far more clarity about what you can say no to. And this is where a lot of the confusion is. People don't know what to say no to because they haven't decisively said yes to their pigeonhole. It turns out you make people's lives way simpler. when they have clarity. Because then you can immediately say, nope, that's not my wheelhouse. I don't do that. That's not my domain. And it really changes things.
SPEAKER_00:Yeah, yeah. Well, that's not who I am. That's not what I want to align with. That's not what I'm about. That's not what my vision is. Yeah, absolutely. I love that. Yeah, I need somebody to look at my label as well sometimes. Because I think no matter how... how good you are at certain things, sometimes you're kind of blind to your own things. Like they say, the cobbler's kids have no shoes, you know, and we sometimes miss our own things. And so with me, I've kind of wrestled with it as well as just trying to figure it out. Because you're a human being like the rest of us. Yeah, yeah. I mean, I love this podcasting thing, but, you know, I also do brand strategy and design and And so people have asked me, well, so how does the podcast align with your brand strategy and design? It's like, well, it does in a whole lot. But it's just something I love doing. I wanted to have these conversations with folks from different disciplines. And so I'm still trying to figure it out myself. But this has been very helpful. And I'll be checking out your books and following along your story on LinkedIn as well and following along with what you do. And I'm glad we connected. Yeah, me too. Well, by the way, HeadSmack is a great
SPEAKER_01:memory doctor.
SPEAKER_00:Thank you. Well, actually, what it is, is, you know, as a young creative, you know, I would get called into these meetings and they were brainstorming meetings. And so they were like, well, let's bring the creative guy in to have these brainstorming meetings. And so we'd get into these meetings and everybody would kind of sit there and just play on their ideas. you know, blackberries or, you know, they'd fiddle around or they'd bring gadgets, you know, clay and hats and, you know, let's, all right, let's brainstorm. And they'd have a sheet of paper and it's like, okay. And they just kind of stand there not knowing how to think creatively. And so it kind of started me on this journey of, you know, can people that are not creative think creatively? And so I started like researching and reading books and stuff and found some frameworks that I liked. And so I modified those and came up with the acronym HEADSMACK. And it's kind of a nine catalyst words that help people think creatively, that kind of prompts this creative thinking. Kind of like we had mentioned in the chat about asking the right questions. Sometimes a coach or a therapist is a good one, is the one that asks the good questions that pulls it out of you. And so these nine words kind of pull that out of you to help you come up with creative ideas. ideas and solve problems in a creative way. And so that became HeadSmack. And it's kind of like that aha moment, you know, that, oh my goodness, that's so obvious. You know, why didn't I think of that? And so that's kind of where that came from. But I've kind of been sitting on it for a while because once again, it's a It's such a separate thing from designing logos and websites and whatever. It's creative thinking and getting people unstuck. That's a separate thing. But then when it came time to do the podcast, I thought, well, maybe I can do a podcast that is about creative thinking and creative people. And I thought, well, how many guests can I get on for that? That seems like such a niche thing. And then I was driving home from St. Louis and I was just really wrestling with, God, help me with, I want to do a podcast. I want to call a head smack, but I don't want to just be about interviewing creative people or creatives. And I started a separate thing called Kingdom Misfits for creatives that kind of feel out of place in the church and in the kingdom of God and kind of sometimes are the outsiders or the weirdos. And so I like the word misfits. And so in that drive home from St. Louis, my wife and I were just driving quietly in the car. She was reading. I was just driving. And it was conversations with misfits. When that came to me, I'm like, that's what I want to do. I just want to talk to unique people from all kinds of different disciplines that have achieved all kinds of different things, that have different specialties, and just have these conversations. I don't want it to be an interview. I don't want it to be political or overly controversial. I just want to have these conversations with people with great ideas. And when I brought those two together, it's like, yeah, I want these aha moments for people to listen to the podcast. You know, I've often said, you know, one idea well executed can change everything. And that's the head smack is like, oh, wow, if you just took something that Steve said today and you took that and executed on it, it could change everything. It'd be that aha head smack moment for you that could literally change your life, your business, your whatever, your ministry, whatever it might be. And so that's kind of where that came about. That's the story. Because I
SPEAKER_01:didn't even know it was an acronym for the creative thing. I just looked at it as as just a great analogy, one everybody can relate to. Oh, man. Either I wish I'd thought of that or the epiphany, the aha. Yeah, exactly. Everybody has that. So one of the things I do when I encourage people and I help them create an origin evolution story, the second piece of that, I have four parts to it. I started here. Then this happened. The change, the thing that got you in that direction, that direction for me, physics and calculus. Now I'm doing this and here's where I'm going. So using that simple four phrase format, you come up with an origin evolution story. But the interesting thing is the then this happened or the head smack, the thing that's like, and you can build off of that into a tremendous interview and story
SPEAKER_00:because we all have them. Yeah. Yeah. Well, and that's why I started the podcast off with the origin story. And I always drill down, like, what was the catalyst that got you from that to that? Like, where did that happen? And some people had never even, some of the people I've interviewed had never thought about that, you know? Yeah. Do you know what? My parents, they told me to go do a lemonade stand or whatever. And so they think back to these pivotal moments that kind of changed the whole trajectory of their lives. But yeah, I love that. And which book is that in, that discussion in? Is that one in any of those books?
SPEAKER_01:I'm not sure it is. That's more on the pre-note and the personal branding part. It's probably in there somewhere. Yeah, I love it. I've had several. One of them was the book Now Discover Your Strengths. That was life-changing for me. It was, don't keep focusing on your weaknesses, identify your strength. Completely changed. Purple Cow was another head smack for me. And so there were just a few of those along the way. And then Susan Cain's book, Quiet, about introverts and why it was okay, not only okay, but it was fine to be an introvert. Those three things were all major pivots in my thinking and my ability to accept who I am and view the world in a different way and not to be always thinking bad things. Right, right. So those head smacks were huge for me.
SPEAKER_00:Yeah, yeah. And I think as we look back in our lives, we all have those. We all have those moments where, and we don't think about it, but it's like, you know what, that book or that movie or that presentation or that speech or that sermon or whatever really was the catalyst that changed the trajectory to my life. And sometimes it's even negative. It was that person... said this about me and ever since then I've never been comfortable with this or I've never wanted to do this or I've always avoided this. But we don't often identify those or recognize those and then deal with them because we just don't know they exist until we think about it. Yep. Well,
SPEAKER_01:Paul, this has been awesome. Thank you
SPEAKER_00:so much for having me. I've been recording this whole time. Let me just stop
SPEAKER_01:the recording.
UNKNOWN:We could...
