A good talk is about the woods, not the trees

A few weeks ago I was talking to an old friend I hadn’t seen in years.

By pure chance, it turned out that her husband (a lawyer) had been in the audience for a speech by one of my clients.

When I told her I’d written that speech, she looked at me and said:

“That’s funny, because Hugh (her husband) told me afterwards that it was more interesting than the talks he usually hears at those events.”

That made my day.

Because he didn’t go home raving about it – which wouldn’t have been appropriate in this space or that topic. But it stuck out enough for him to mention it later – and this was before they even knew I had anything to do with it, so it wasn’t sucking up.

But here’s why it stuck out:

Because I’m an unusual person.

I’m not ashamed – it’s who I am. It’s also what makes me good at what I do.

Because I’ve never been ‘inside’ any clique or industry, I never think about any speech like an ‘insider’. I understand it like an insider – in fact, sometimes I’ve had people in an industry I’m writing for assume I must have been in that space for years – but I think about it like an outsider.

What does that mean for a talk or presentation?

It means I have the ability to step outside the speech and look at it with the eyes of a distracted audience member (which is all of them , by the way).

I can see the wood, when most of my clients only see the trees. That’s not a criticism, that’s literally why I do what I do.

Because I’m crazy enough to LOVE taking an idea and making it accessible for anyone and everyone.

And that’s what my clients get when they work with me – clarity, simplicity, but never at the expense of authority or nuance.

That’s a hard balance to get, but it’s one I’m proud of.

You can start doing it for yourself, too – start deliberately spending time with people outside your industry.

The legendary ad writer Gary Halbert (I think – it could have been Eugene Schwartz) used to take his ads to the local bar and get people in the bar to read them. The moment he saw them lose interest he’d know where his work needed fixing.

You don’t have to go that far – but it’s worth taking the time to get outside your normal haunts and outside your normal circles.

It can be eye-opening.

Or, you can just hire me to do that for you.

Talk soon,

Alexander