World of Speakers E.49: Greg McKeown | Finding your essential message

Greg McKeown: It's great to be with you. Thank you.

Ryan Foland: I always like to start off the show with a story.

Instead of just reading the extensive bio that you have, with all of your successes, and being somebody who is one of the top recruited speakers to take the stage across the world—I want to know a story from your past that, if that were the only thing I had… I've got a friend and I want to introduce them to you and I say,

"Oh my gosh, you've got to meet Greg. Yeah, read his book, sure, but I've got to tell you the story about him."

What would that story look like to get to know you a little bit more from our audience's perspective?

Greg McKeown: It's not a story that makes me look very good.

Ryan Foland: Those are the best stories, right?

To be a perfect human, you have to be imperfect. Let's hear it, what went wrong?

Greg McKeown: I received an email from my manager at the time, and it said—I'm sure, jokingly,

“Friday between 1 and 2 would be a very bad time for your wife to have a baby, I need you to be at this client meeting”.

Thursday night we went into the hospital, my wife went into labor and I went into labor and we were there. Late Thursday night, early hours of Friday morning my daughter was born.

Friday comes and everyone is well, but I'm feeling torn instead of being present for this essential moment, instead of being able to be there, I'm feeling torn.

"Should I be going to this meeting? Should I be trying to keep everybody happy?"

To my shame, I went to the meeting.

Actually I remember afterwards, my manager said, "The client will respect you for the choice you just made."

The look on their faces actually didn't evince that sort of confidence.

But even if they did, I think everybody knows and of course, I know, that I made a fool's bargain.

What I learned from that lesson or experience was that if you don't prioritize your life, someone else will.

In hindsight, it set me off on a new journey, a pursuit to understand better why we do violate what's more essential for something that's less essential.

Also, just as interesting to me, maybe even more interesting, is why some people don't. Why we don't, and sometimes we get it right.

Sometimes there's something that's easier, funner, that's non-essential, but we actually still opt for something that's essential.

We make the right trade-off, and I want to understand that too.

So that in this world full of distraction, full of noise, we can better take this path towards an essential way of living and leading.

Ryan Foland: Interesting.

As you were growing up and throughout your life, when somebody hears “essentialism”, they might think of “minimalism”.

Was there any inherent nature of you being somebody to have more stuff than you need?

Or you didn't have stuff, or was it really that that wasn't even on the radar until this sort of life moment happened and you had this “A-ha”.

Tell me about your history when it comes to this type of decision-making before this inciting incident?

Greg McKeown: So no, first of all to that question, to be clear.

There was no sense in me of like, "Well minimalism is just fun, or cool, or a way to live," or anything like that.

But as I pursued that question, I found a predictable pattern inside of organizations.

That pattern is this: Silicon Valley companies, for example, start small companies focused on the right idea at the right time.

They have a state of clarity, and that clarity leads them to phase 2, which is the success.

Phase 2, success, breeds options and opportunities.

So phase 3 is options.

That all sounds like the right problem to have.

But, in fact, it does turn out to be a problem in many instances if the company falls into the undisciplined pursuit of more.

If you fall into the undisciplined pursuit of more, you can end up in phase 4, which is chaos.

Normally I just think about it in those four phases, but if you ever have to add a fifth phase, it would be “failure”.

Chaos can become so significant in these organizations, that you start to plateau or fail altogether.

So here is this oddity, that success can become a catalyst for failure.

Professionally, this is the big takeaway. This is what I'm observing in these companies.

Then personally, I'm seeing that this is the same phenomenon: what I'm observing in the organizational sphere, I certainly experienced in the personal area. And when these two observations come together you realize,

"Right, this isn't a business phenomenon, it's a human phenomenon."

When these ideas come together, I realized the antidote to the problem.

The companies and individuals who are able to keep breaking through to higher and higher levels of contribution, who are able to escape the undisciplined pursuit of more follow a series of particular practices.

I gave a name to that so that we could talk about it so that people would be empowered to talk about it, and that's essentialism: a disciplined pursuit of less—a way of operating.

Here are the three things they do.

They explore what is essential, they eliminate what is not, and they create a system that makes it easier to do those things that matter most.

And that's the repeated process that they follow constantly in their life to be able to break through from this pattern we've just been describing and break through to the next level.

Ryan Foland: Wow, that's some good stuff.

So like speakers' success can come from clarity, which creates this opportunity, which can create chaos if you start to sort of spread yourself too thin or you start to talk about too many topics, which could lead to failure.

Greg McKeown: Yeah.

I would think that most speakers have already experienced this pattern.

And most of us experienced this pattern multiple times. It's not like you experience it once and then you're done with it.

It's on an ongoing basis but most speakers have identified at some point that they want to speak, that they are that kind of person.

They've had a moment of clarity when they go, "I like that, I'm drawn to that".

A lot of people aren't. For a lot of people it's the last thing they want to do it.

Ryan Foland: It's the most people. For the most people it's the last thing that they would want to do.

Greg McKeown: It's not a natural thing to do. I mean that's not like a normal thing.

They've already had this moment of clarity, but then that clarity will generate a certain level of success, meaning you start to learn about this field.

That is its own succession, you start to read other books, you start to learn about the industry.

You start speaking at various smaller locations at first.

This is all success, and just because it isn't primetime yet, it doesn't mean it isn't success.

Right from the beginning, there's such a proliferation of ideas, and so many principles that are interesting to people, and so many principles that you think the world could use this, needs this, that you've already done it.

You've already plateaued.

You've already, completely, massively, out of clarity.

I mean, it happens almost immediately, because how many ideas are interesting? How many things are good?

This I really do think is the number one issue, is that people haven't identified the right essential message.

Now, it's not enough to choose one message. That's not the idea.

I could choose the wrong one message.

It's a special form of non-essentialism. That's like just doubling down on the wrong thing.

I have absolutely seen people do that.

They want to teach, they've got the motive, and then they choose a subject, and they maybe even feel passionate about it.

"This, the world needs this."

But nobody buys what they need.

People buy what they want and then you must provide them with what they need.

You've got to find the right idea amidst trivial many.

Ryan Foland: Okay. So let's play on this right?

We usually get into some tactical speaking topics and I think even the step before that, the essential part is finding what we're talking about here.

What is the “right” topic or what is the “essential” topic?

I'm curious, could you step me through some parallel logic of what you outline in your book and some of these strategies and methodologies for somebody who is trying to, from a tactical standpoint, come up with something that resonates with the world.

Is there a certain process that you go through?

Because what I really liked is that you said it's not about choosing one, because you can choose the wrong one.

How would you help somebody who is an upcoming speaker verify that what they've honed in on is essential, or how do you help them to audit what they're doing to find what is non-essential?

Greg McKeown: Yes. Let's go through the three steps, explore what is essential.

You've got to create space, first of all to do that.

It's not enough to just keep reacting. Not enough to keep adding topics.

You've got to actually explore.

Ryan Foland: Coming out the gates, would you suggest writing a list of: here's all the topics I'm interested in talking about. Like as a number one.

Let's say when it comes to business, you want to empower entrepreneurs, for example, it's like here's all these topics.

Or if you want to speak to an executive crowd, you've got things like leadership and sales and then marketing, and then all these other elements.

Is a first step making a list, like filling the closet first before you remove the clothes that you don't want?

Greg McKeown: The idea would be to get it all up.

Ryan Foland: What if we imagine like the same for both, in that if you're an experienced speaker, you've got some traction.

Greg McKeown: You take all the ideas out. That's exactly what I'd recommend to people.

Every idea—good, bad, indifferent, it doesn't make any difference—you want it all out. You want it all out of your head where it's doing you no good at all.

Because the RAM of our brains can only absorb so many ideas at any one time. So it's trying to process something that can't be processed in your head.

You've got to get it out. You've got to look at all of it.

Ryan Foland: I love the RAM of the of the brain, by the way. I think that's your next book—Brain RAM 2.0, or something.

Greg McKeown: Yes. “What ideas am I passionate about?”— that's one set of clothes. That's one set of Post-Its.

The next is “What are people hungry for?”

Ryan Foland: What's the fashion?

What is the current fashion or the current trends?

Greg McKeown: Relevancy.

What's hurting right now?

I go back to this quote because it matters the whole story: people buy what they want, not what they need, and it's the number one mistake that I see authors and speakers making.

The number one mistake is that they are too consumed with their own sense of what the world needs.

We have a massive supply of that. But a huge disconnect between that and what the buyer actually wants.

What do they want?

Ryan Foland: Now to know that, just because there are so many different people wanting so many different things, do you then have to like stop and do customer avatars and figure out who those people are that you want to get in front of? Like who wants to wear the clothes in your closet?

Greg McKeown: Yes, I think so. You've got to think pretty hard about this.

It's not that you happen to be passionate about it. The world needs it.

No, it's… I mean, often the person who's actually putting on the event is buying, "Will this make me look good in front of my executive?"

Ryan Foland: Interesting.

Greg McKeown: Yeah. What defines whether somebody's going to go to the next level up?

And this now has to do with, I think, what we're describing.

I read something years ago that might sound wrong to some people, but it definitely grabbed my attention, and it was this: They said,

"All you need is the one right idea to live like a king for the rest of your life."

Ryan Foland: This idea of like the “one idea”, there is a book that is called The One Thing and I actually did listen to it, and it was a little intense because it was so focused on finding that one thing.

When it comes back to this essentialism concept, I feel personally in my life that sometimes I'll come down with what I call and self-diagnose the “Sort-of disorder”, right?

I sort of have finished this project, my speaker page on my website is sort of done, and then I've got this Gingy-bot chatbot for speakers that I built—sort of.

This idea that we only have a finite amount of time, so talk to me about the parallel between choosing one thing and it being the right thing, but in contrast with testing the waters for other things, right?

It's like it's kind of a slippery slope.

Greg McKeown: Yes. I don't think it's a slippery slope, but you do have to recognize reality.

The idea is a winnowing process.

The first principle of essentialism is to explore. And the paradox is that essentialists explore more broadly than non-essentialists.

The reason that that's true is because non-essentialists are too quick to commit to something.

"This is it. This is great. I'm going to go on this thing," and they can maybe go big on something for a moment and then suddenly, the next day there's another idea and somebody else is talking about some other thing.

They go, " Oh, that wasn't the thing. I should have gone in this direction," and it's “Shiny-New-Object” syndrome, but they are sort of running after each one.

Whereas an essentialist looks at each one, doesn't commit to each one, instead they...

Ryan Foland: They vet them out beforehand

So what about this?

This is a concept that I often turn to when I find myself chasing after squirrels.

It's worrying once really, really good, instead of worrying continuously.

Worrying is a natural self-defense mechanism.

If you worry all the time, you're going to be a mess. So I attribute this worrying or due diligence-ing onto these different ideas or topics.

Greg McKeown: It's the right idea, but you don't just stop in terms of idea development.

I think we have tools to experiment with this better than ever, ever, ever in history.

But if we use them incorrectly or if we let them use us, then we won't get good at this either.

For example, I think that Twitter, if you're used by Twitter, it’s a terribly distracting tool and will take you away from what you're trying to achieve.

But, it's also extraordinarily helpful to have a micro-publishing platform to test out not just general ideas, but the precise way of expressing them. It matters enormously.

You're not trying to shovel coal with ideas.

I remember I've worked with professionals in the learning and development space who reminded me of sort of shoveling coal.

"Here's a new presentation. Here's a new thing. Look. I've got 50 slides on my new thing I spent two days working on. I've got the new thing and I'm going to send it out to everyone in the organization now and train everybody."

And now, a month later they've got a whole new thing. They've got decks coming out everywhere.

This is easy.

This is easy to create good, rubbish, junk. That's easy.

What you are looking for is diamonds. That you go, "This just hits, it's so relevant”, it's the power of relevancy, people want it now, they're interested in it.

Now, in the process, of course, what you're doing is step two which is eliminating non-essentials.

You are removing things, at first just the rubbish, the stuff that nobody's asking for, the stuff that you just know, "I'm passionate about it, but they don't care."

Start with the easiest stuff. Start with the stuff that that's just not working.

Ryan Foland: Okay, I'm digging it.

Greg McKeown: That's right. And then you're going to keep working up the continuum where you start to say, "I really like this idea, but it just doesn't feel right."

Ryan Foland: It's almost like it makes me think of an actual game show competition where—oh my gosh, squirrel, literally a squirrel just walked across the fence.

I thought that was on point.

Wow, okay.

Greg McKeown: You were literally just distracted by a squirrel.

Ryan Foland: I literally just saw him and his little fuzzy tail going across.

Okay back to the focus.

Greg McKeown: Yes, it includes going and teaching for free, anywhere. But testing the idea and recognizing ideas will bomb. Recognizing that certain things will not work.

Be honest about that.

Generating the ideas in the first place, but then also going out and starting to test them with audiences.

Did they listen? Are they staring at their hands or are they staring at you? Did they laugh? Did they lean forward? Did they ask questions? Did they push back?

I mean, all of this is feedback.

I just don't know of any way to be a speaker without actually speaking and getting feedback.

Ryan Foland: I dig it.

Once we've got that and we've flushed it out, we've spoken and we've failed and we've bombed and we're crafting this together.

What's that final step that brings it all in together?

Greg McKeown: Well, explore, eliminate, and the third is execute.

What that means is building a system that makes execution of what you've identified as being important as effortless as possible, so that you don't re-think what you're not supposed to re-think.

You don't build a system that's hard work.

Here's what's hard work: trying to cold call your way into being a speaker.

You think you've got a good idea. You think you've got something to share to the world and nobody knows about it, and you're going to try and take it as a door-to-door salesman.

One after another?

I know of nobody that this has worked for.

I'm not saying there aren't people, but I just don't know them.

Ryan Foland: Do you think there's a certain amount of, I don't want to say but I want to say, like cowardice about sort of self-sacrificing, being like, "Okay. I've got this idea."

"Yeah, I'll just call," or "I'll cold call my way into it," or like not fully taking the plunge and not fully committing at that execution point.

Is there a bit of cowardice if you're not executing?

Greg McKeown: I don't know, maybe.

That feels a little harsh to me.

I don't think any of this is easy, but I got a call from a best-selling author recently, and they've been very honest and open and vulnerable about it, asking,

"Why isn't my speaking business working? I've got the best-selling book” and at least he’s hit the lists.

Ryan Foland: Which is not an easy thing to do by the way.

Greg McKeown: Exactly.

First of all, he's achieved this, but he is also like running a business on the subject of his book.

He's got the book and now he also wants the speaking business on the side.

Again, sometimes that can work for people, but I haven't seen it work very often because a book is a business.

It's obviously more than a business, but it requires that kind of thinking—who's the audience? What's the product? How do you design this?

How can you really meet a want that also meets, eventually, a need? All of that that you would design for some business plan exists just for the book, I found also exists just for the speaking business.

You can't do it as like a, "Hey, it's a side thing."

Wouldn't it be so great if, every so often, someone does call them and asks them to speak, and they liked it so much.

They think, "Oh, yeah, I'd love to do more of that."

Well, that's not going to get you there. You've got to do this kind of process we've just described.

Again, to make this clear, you've got to build a system to make execution as effortless as possible.

You want it so that you're building a machine that gives you the results that you're trying to get rather than yourself just constantly pushing for every single result you can get.

There are really two ways of thinking about execution, just to put a summary on this.

You can either think about execution as something you just go out and directly do yourself to get the result that you want, or you build a machine that gets those results for you repeatedly.

The essentialist thinks about building machines so that the results come whether they're really working on it today or not, and that's sort of a wrap.

Ryan Foland: You try to figure out what you want to be, but you take the clothes out of your closet, then you explore them, you eliminate them and you execute on the ones that you think will work, test to see if it works.

If it works, you're onto something.

And it can't just be something cool. It's got to be amazing. It's got to be something that people resonate with, within whatever general topic you're talking about.

And you've got to rinse and repeat.

All right, so Greg, I feel like I've just read your book again, but I will read it again, and I'm not just going to say that.

For all of you out there, get his book and read it.

When you're done with it, maybe eliminate it.

If somebody was to find you online or learn more information, what is the essential piece of contact information you would give them?

Greg McKeown: I think that just going to Greg McKeown.com is a place that you can connect, sign up for a newsletter that I send out just actually quite infrequently, but I do send things out when I think that they can be really helpful.

LinkedIn is a platform that I've used a long time, I am one of the influences on that platform. That's a way to get the latest thoughts that I have on these subjects.

I look forward to continuing the conversation.

Ryan Foland: Excellent.

Well, I usually like to say let's share the stage some time, but I think we are soon, and I'm looking forward to shaking your hand, meeting you in person, and continuing to implement all of this essentialismness this for my speaker centralismness to help use words, the right words, to move the world in a just a little bit of a more simple way.

Thanks again Greg. This was a lot of fun.

Greg Mckeown: Done.

Ryan, thanks so much.

Ryan Foland: Ladies and gentlemen, this has been another podcast here on the World of Speakers.

You can find more on SpeakerHub.com. If you liked this, leave a comment, show Greg some love, share this podcast, help everybody else get this information.

We've got a lot of great guests who are speaking around the world to help you become someone who can feel confident and comfortable speaking around the world.

I and Greg, I don't think that's proper, but it doesn't matter—we're out.

All right, later, Greg, we'll talk to you soon, buddy.

Greg McKeown: Bye. Thanks a lot.

Ryan Foland: Adios.

A bit about World of Speakers

World of Speakers is a bi-monthly podcast that helps people find their own voice, and teaches them how to use their voice to develop a speaking business.

We cover topics like: what works versus what doesn't, ideas on how to give memorable presentations, speaking tips, and ideas on how to build a speaking business.

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