Transcription
You're not bad at explaining. You're just trying to hand someone your whole brain.
You have an idea in your head that feels clean. Maybe it's a lesson that you've learned, a realization, a plan, a feeling that something needs to happen. And in your brain, it feels like I know it. I know what the idea is. And then you open your mouth and you end up with a pile of sticks. You don't like this. You know that the idea is far more complex than is necessary.
And I see this pattern happen in the CEOs, the entrepreneurs, the high performers that we work with. It's a frustration with how complex they make their own idea sound. And so what I want to give you in this video is one concept that's going to help you make complex ideas stupidly simple.
I've devoted most of my life to studying communication. And people pay me to listen into their meetings and study their speech. And so what I want to offer you is an image, a framework that I give these people that I want you to etch into your mind that's going to help you for the rest of your life. And I call it throwing the spear.
Now, most people explain an idea like it's a pile of sticks. There's background, there's context, and there's details, there's history, there's caveats, and then somewhere in the pile, there's a point usually buried after all of this. It's usually after at the very end of all the ideas that they share. That's not clarity. That's a pile. It's a pile of sticks.
In a meeting, your listener usually has one question that they're asking. What are you wanting me to understand or decide? And if you don't answer that, the person's brain is usually going to check out. And so, this is where the spear framework comes into play.
I want to take a moment to study the architecture of the spear. The spear has a point right here, the the sharp part of the spear. It has a shaft that we're breaking into two parts. And it has the throw, the momentum, the push. A pile has many different points. There's no real momentum. There's lots of different ideas overlapped on each other.
And so from now on when you share an idea, when you share a lesson, when you share a concept, we are going to use the spear model. Point, picture, proof, and push. These two should be interchanged. And if you don't do it in this order, then you simply haven't practiced it enough. And you're going to get good at this by the end of this video.
So let's talk about point. Point is very simple. One sentence, no commas, not "I think" or "I kind of" or or "basically." What I want to give you are these starting phrases that you can use such as "the bottom line is," "this comes down to one thing," "the real issue is," "here's what I recommend."
So what's an example of this? Well, if I were making a point using this first part of the spear, I might say, "The real issue is I think you're burning out because you never fully rest." "The reason this keeps happening is because we don't have a clear owner for this project." "The real issue here is we don't need more time. We need fewer decisions." "Here's what I recommend. We stop over complicating this."
So, there's a really good rule of thumb here that I mentioned in the very beginning, and that's typically it's one sentence, no commas, or maybe one comma. If there's two commas, that's more than one point, and your spear's probably starting to look like this. You've got two points that bend. That's not effective. Don't do this.
If you're an entrepreneur, business owner, or high performer, and you like the concept in this video, and you want it to be something that you do effortlessly under pressure, click the link below to apply for Elite Speak. Elite Speak is my signature program where you work with me directly to identify and overcome the three communication bottlenecks that are limiting your influence, authority, and room control. I'll see you on the call.
Let's talk about the second part of the spear, the picture. Now, your brain understands visuals faster than logic. If you can master the art of visual speech, you will be unstoppable in what you say. And this is part of where complex ideas begin to take form and begin to feel simple and understandable. You have to give the listener one image that makes the point feel obvious.
And so I want to give you some starting phrases that can help you here. "It's like when I was going to the gym." "Imagine that you're at a checkout lane in Costco." "Think of it as a vehicle that's driving downhill."
So, let's step through some examples using the picture sentence, the second part of the spear. Let's say there was a bottleneck in a database or a company. I might say something like, "It's like when there's one checkout lane open at Costco and everyone is just flooding to the same cashier." Or if we're talking about, let's say, strategy, maybe we're in a meeting, and I would say something like, "It's like rowing with one oar. We're burning energy right now and going in circles."
That example of burnout that we talked about earlier. And in the point section of this video, I might say something like, "You're dealing with burnout. It's like leaving your phone plugged in and there are 40 apps running." Or if we're talking about overwhelm, I might say something like, "Imagine that you're inside of Chrome and you've got 20 Chrome tabs open and you're trying to toggle between tasks." Or if we're talking about what might be another idea, maybe delivery of information or team alignment, I might say something like, "Think of it as we're playing a game of telephone right now and the message is changing every single time we pick up the phone."
So being able to feel the picture, this is a huge part of being able to develop this visual speak. This is something that takes practice and it's something that you get good at over time. The biggest piece of advice that I could give you right now is to determine what is that feeling, what is that emotion that you're experiencing thinking about the problem or the point that you've mentioned and map that emotion to another specific scene in your life where you've experienced that emotion. Because behind every single point, like we talked about the point of the spear, there is some kind of emotion. And you can get better at detecting what emotion is behind the point. It could be overwhelm. It could be confusion. It might be like some mild anger. It could be some frustration. Think about what is that emotion. What picture comes to mind when you feel that? And that's going to give you a a cheat code for finding an image or finding another area of your life where you felt that that other people can relate to and you can use it as a picture. We call this practice tuning your emotional compass. That's what this illustration is. And you get much better at this simply by making the decision to practice thinking in pictures.
Let's talk about the third part of the spirit, which is proof. Proof is very simple. This is my favorite part. It's one concrete thing. It could be a number, a moment, or a pattern that you've noticed. The point is proof is evidence of the point and the picture that you've shared so far. And typically point and picture like both of these are one to two sentences each. Point should really be one sentence.
In fact, there's a rule that we talk about inside of Elite Speak, our flagship program, where when you say a sentence and it's your opening sentence, the truth level and the confidence level in your opening sentence, it sets the tone for the entirety of the idea. It's one of these basic principles of communication. If you can create strength and momentum in your opening sentence and your point sentence, the rest of your idea will be much easier because you haven't baked any uncertainty or hesitation into what you say versus maybe starting with, "I don't know," some kind of point of hesitation or a stutter or a stammer. None of these are wrong. They just don't capture the strength that can help you create momentum.
So when we talk about proof, this is one of those sentences that needs to be said with a certain level of stability in your voice. So an example might look like a sentence like, "In the last 30 days, channel B on YouTube produced 70% of our qualified calls." "Every time we add one more approval step, our launch seems to slip by one week." "Last weekend, John, you slept 9 hours. Monday, you were a different person." >> [snorts and clears throat] >> "We missed the deadline because no one took ownership of this project." "Every time we add one more option, we delayed this the decision another week."
The point is that this is a sentence that needs to come out decently fluidly. It needs to feel like you've done your research. Now, you should have done your research. You should have some kind of proof behind what you're sharing. It could be one specific scene. For example, when I was a child, I rolled down the grass and I broke my arm. And maybe that's some reason that I'm bringing up. Maybe some proof as to why Grassy Hills terrifies me and sets my nervous system off. I don't know.
This proof section of an idea is where most people lose simplicity because they have five, they have six, they have seven different sentences of proof. And you only need one. And if you need more proof, you can save that for later. You can let the listener ask for that. Give them more reasons later. For now, just pick one. Pick one number, one moment or pattern that you've noticed. And this is the third point of this of the spear. And this has to come after picture because now you're adding more detail as you go.
And then you get to the most powerful part of the spear architecture. And that is the push, the momentum. This is where you tell a person what to do or what you would like to do about the point. So some starter phrases can be "so the move is," "what I recommend is," "so what I feel like the next step is," "what I need is," "what I've learned is."
So some examples might be, "So what I recommend is that we pause channel A for 2 weeks and we reallocate all of the budget to channel B." Or I might say something like, "What I need is one owner for each project going forward, one deadline and one definition of done." "What I learned from this is that sleeping more and treating my sleep like it's the most important appointment of the day makes me feel the best and and how I show up better for the people that I love."
So here's the fun part. Now we know all four Ps, the point, the picture, the proof, and the push. And now I want to give you an example of what the spear looks like fully assembled. Okay, this is the complex idea to stupidly simple in 20 seconds. So let's say the scenario is well one most of you can probably relate to which is feeling overwhelmed about some part of your life. So here's here's the pile version of it. Okay. I just feel like lately there's been so much time. Everything is moving so fast and I feel stressed and I feel like I'm behind and I overthink and then I realize that I didn't really do anything today but like I want to be better and I'm just not able to find like there's any meaningful direction.
Okay. Using the spear framework now of point, picture, proof, and push, I might say something like, "I think the simplest way I can describe what I'm feeling is I'm overwhelmed because I'm carrying all of these open loops." "It feels like having 27 Chrome tabs open in my brain." "And especially on days when I have a lot of free time, it feels like I just can't relax because I feel guilty." "And so tonight, what I think I need to do is write out a list, pick a topic, pick one thing to do, and then close off the rest of the week."
So that's an example of stepping through point, picture, proof, and push. It might not be perfect, but there's a relationship between all moving parts that feels whole, that feels complete. It's not about getting the words right, and it's not about stripping the emotion away. These don't necessarily have to be one sentence either, although in a professional environment, less generally is more. It's about learning to think in this framework so that it becomes a pattern in the way that you speak and your creativity and the wonderful way that you share yourself fits this and it feels unbelievably simple. I hope this helps.