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Episode Transcription<\/h2>
David Pisarek: <\/strong><\/span><\/strong><\/span>Welcome to the Non-profit Digital Success Podcast. I'm your host, David, and in this episode, we're going to be talking about having effective conversations and communicating clearly with Jason Thomson.<\/p>For more than two decades, with a thousand some odd projects, he's been a speechwriter, storyteller, and pitch specialist. Jason Thomson\u00a0has been hired to passionately win over audiences and sell ideas through content, writing, and storytelling.<\/p>
He's an avid hat collector and a super Lego enthusiast. Jason, I have to ask you, which do you have more of? Hats or complete Lego sets?<\/p>
Jason Thomson: <\/strong><\/span>Complete Lego sets by a country mile. I have every single Lego architecture set that has ever been produced. And listen, the thing is, you can bankrupt yourself with Lego and forget those RSPs people.<\/p>If you really want to make money, buy Lego sets that are about to retire because they skyrocket in value. As a good example, the Taj Mahal that was first produced (I believe, in 2006) went on sale for about $400. Now, to buy that new inbox on eBay is about $8,000 US. So there is your real investment.<\/p>
David Pisarek: <\/strong><\/span>There you go. All the non-profits, forget about investing the money. Donor brings you money, buy some Lego. And I'm just kidding. Well, maybe I'm not kidding.<\/p>Jason Thomson: <\/strong><\/span>I don't know. There's a story about a guy who bought a bunch of Lego sets and then flipped them after they retired and bought a real house, cash.<\/p>David Pisarek: <\/strong><\/span>Wow. That is a solid plan. So the key is to be tuned in to what's happening in the marketplace and the Lego sets. That's solid.<\/p>Jason Thomson: <\/strong><\/span>Drop me a line, and I'll get you hooked up.<\/p>David Pisarek: <\/strong><\/span>Amazing. Jason, I go back a few years... He's a super awesome guy (so happy to have you here on the show). We're going to be talking about content. So let's talk about conversations. To hold better conversations, what do communicators need to do? What are they doing wrong?<\/p>Jason Thomson: <\/strong><\/span>They're doing a lot wrong, but the primary way that I describe it is we are misconnecting with audiences.<\/p>Oftentimes, we look at a connection we're trying to make or a communication that we're trying to make, something we push out, like an email, social media campaign, or a conversation that we're having with somebody one on one, and our objective is the wrong objective.<\/p>
Oftentimes, it's like, \"I got to say, here's what I got to say\". Listen, I'm a speechwriter and a speaker coach, and it's the number one thing that I get at the very beginning of the journey for anybody who is putting together a presentation, is \"here's what I want to say\", and it's actually the wrong thing to focus on.<\/p>
You need to understand what your objective is, what you're trying to get out of that conversation, and what you need to give your audience to be able to get there.<\/p><\/blockquote>
And so that is the art of connection. You've got to spend less time worrying about yourself and more time worrying about them. So if you make that goal that, \"what does a strong connection look like?\", that's going to solve so much. Everything from an external facing thing like a campaign, all the way down to your spouse.<\/p>
Oftentimes we get into this whole idea of who's right in a conversation, and it spirals out into an argument.<\/p>
The thing is, your whole focus is, \"you know what? How do I better connect with this person?\". The whole game changes and it's not about who's right.<\/p>
The other thing that is really interesting, is that we're not recognizing in communications just how much content we're shoving at somebody.<\/p>
So I've just talked for about, let's say, two minutes. I could hit you with 400 words. What do you remember? Well, you'll remember what gets repeated.<\/p><\/blockquote>
That's one of my favorite lines, \"what gets repeated gets remembered\", which is misconnection. If we misconnect, then we have a problem. I like that better than \"disconnect\" because disconnect is what an audience does, is they'll just give up on you.<\/p>
Misconnection empowers you to be able to do the things that you can effectively drive a conversation in a way that is fruitful for both you and the other side.<\/p>
David Pisarek: <\/strong><\/span>That's awesome. I love the idea of spinning it and understanding, \"okay, misconnection means you can still reframe it\". You can still reconnect. You can still try to create that meaningful bond, that emotional connection with somebody else to have a real conversation. So why is that so important?<\/p>Jason Thomson: <\/strong><\/span>Why is that so important? Because we're pushing a lot of junk at the world that is already overloaded. And with that overloaded world is the response is rarely what you imagine.<\/p>One of the biggest issues with social media is we don't respond, we react, and reaction is not generally positive unless it's something that... You know, your small community. You're preaching to your community, \"I did this, I voted\", whatever that is. Everyone's like, \"Good for you, good for you\", which, of course, is endorphin rush and all that thing.<\/p>
But the truth is: if you really want to test the impact of empathy, see how much empathy you have for someone when they disagree with you.<\/p><\/blockquote>
And elections are a really great way to demonstrate that, right? If there's somebody who ran for election... Let's use our favorite pi\u00f1ata: Donald Trump.<\/p>
You hear from somebody who voted for Donald Trump. Now, if you're on one side of the spectrum, you're like, \"Yeah, good for you. You know what? We're going to make America great again\". And on the other side, you'll get, \"You're an idiot\".<\/p>
Both of those are a reaction. Neither of them is a response. If you disagree with someone voting for Donald Trump, you can't just simply categorize them as something, label them. Your goal is to be able to understand them.<\/p>
Why? Someone said to me this great thing around communication: if somebody says something that doesn't sit right with you, your first response is to become a detective and to be curious, and to understand why.<\/p>
Now, when it comes to something like not-for-profit, that is really about understanding the audience. Why are they not engaging with you? Why are they not buying into the campaign you're creating? What does it take to activate them? That's a big part.<\/p>
Like I said at the top:<\/p>
Instead of asking, \"what do I want to say?\", what you really want to do is, you want to start by saying, \"what do I want to achieve?\"<\/p><\/blockquote>
Then look at the audience to say: what can you give them effectively that helps you achieve that? To let them trust you, to build that relationship, because that's what you're doing.<\/p>
In an overloaded universe, it's very difficult to get a quick response in the exact way that you want it. You need to build this over time. That's relationship building and that comes through connection as opposed to communication.<\/p>
David Pisarek: <\/strong><\/span>There's a lot to be said for applying some business strategy around it. You have leading and lagging indicators. So you know you need donors, you know you need volunteers, you know you need participants in your programs or people signing up for your services, all that type of stuff.<\/p>If you look at project management methodology, what's the work back schedule for that? What do you need to do? How many people do you need to connect with to get one donor? And as you multiply that up, as you amp that up, as you connect with more people, you'll be able to refine what your messaging is.<\/p>
You'll be able to refine how you connect with people, the platforms you connect with people on, whether you pick up the phone or send them a message or do some ads and target them. And you'll be able to directly understand, \"Okay, if I'm doing this over here, the end result, the net result is going to be this\", and then you can increase that dial as you work on that.<\/p>
Jason Thomson: <\/strong><\/span>I do a lot of audience profiling and pitching. In pitching, it's interesting because you generally are doing it to a small group of people (5, 7, 8 people), but these things scales are up.<\/p>Oftentimes when I pitch, I ask the organization that I'm leading the pitch to tell me about who you're pitching to, and they can't. What they can tell you about is their idea, their feature set, all of that thing.<\/p>
The truth is that audiences don't buy your feature set, they do not care about you. What they care about is them, and so your job is to really build that connection so that you demonstrate how you are the wind beneath their wings.<\/p><\/blockquote>
One of the things that make me bristle about the internet is the \"About Us\" page. Nobody cares about us, they don't care where you went to school. What they care about is \"what can you do for me?\" and that does extend for sure to not-for-profit because what you're trying to do is activate an audience that has time or money in a way that gets them to shine their light on you.<\/p>
So let's take a simple example, I live north of the city, in Bradford. One of the causes that I like to support is our local food bank. Why do I do that? How are they able to connect with me? Well, for one is: it starts with me. What are the things in my values that are important? Feeding a community is something that's really, really essential.<\/p>
Then the question becomes \"how do you take them?\", much like what you just described, which is a sales cycle, \"how do you take them along the journey to where they begin to execute?\". That is a smart move by the food bank to be able to look at me and say, \"Well, here's how I'm going to move you along that journey\".<\/p>
You move me along that journey by being what I call MERV: Meaningful, Interesting, Relevant, and Valuable. That's MERV. That's what audiences want most in any way, shape, or form.<\/p><\/blockquote>
I do, like I said, a lot of presentation coaching. I even do this on my own radio show that I've got. Really, to get people on the show, I hit them where they are. \"What is it? You've got a book to promote?\" That's what people want to be able to do.<\/p>
And when you're trying to develop community or that approach of basis what you've got to do is: you've got to think about your audience first. They are everything and everything that they want, and we know that.<\/p>
We say it till the cows come home until the moment becomes, that we have to put that \"About Us\" page together. And the \"About Us\" page is about all the great things that we do.<\/p>
Again, it's not about us, it's about them, and it's about empowering them to be extraordinary and getting them on board with our journey.<\/p>
David Pisarek: <\/strong><\/span>100%, you want to create that emotional connection, that reason why somebody wants to help, and it's different for everybody. I think there are some main categories in there.<\/p>Maybe if you're focusing on Alzheimer's research, maybe somebody in their family or a friend has been affected and that's what's driving them. Maybe it's just something that their parents or grandparents were involved in and that's why they're doing it. It varies from everybody to everybody.<\/p>
Really understanding here are the main reasons why people are involved with your organization, why they give, why they care, why they donate their time, why they show up in an event, and why they gave $5 last year.<\/p>
Jason Thomson: <\/strong><\/span>That's why one of the reasons that the SickKids VS campaign is so good, is because what they've done is that they have taken families that feel that they are victimized by health issues.<\/p>And listen, I did storytelling coaching as a SickKids parent for years. There are a lot of tears, there's a lot of emotion involved in that, and they twisted it in a way that said, \"yes, I can be empowered. I can feel strong. I don't have to feel like a victim, and I can participate in this extraordinary journey\".<\/p>
They tapped into something that existed that nobody else was tapping into, and that's a beautiful way to connect.<\/p>
David Pisarek: <\/strong><\/span>And they were able to stand out with it. They understood the persona of the person, the psychographics of the person, not the geographic.<\/p>Obviously, geographics plays a bit in it, but not necessarily the demographic, but the psychographic.<\/p>
What is it that people care about? What drives them? What motivates them? Where do they spend their time?<\/p><\/blockquote>
And really getting into that idea will help you understand (what I'm going to call) your customer base, but really it's your donor base or your participants.<\/p>
Jason Thomson: <\/strong><\/span>I want to push you one step further because, in traditional marketing, we look at demographics and psychographics. Those are great to be able to begin to profile an audience, but it's a third category.<\/p>There's a guy out of Vancouver who runs a company called Value Graphics, and what he says is people do not make decisions based on demographic and psychographics, generally speaking.<\/p>
You can make the argument around the community, et cetera, but they do tend to make buying decisions based on values.<\/p><\/blockquote>
And he tells this great story. The story is there are three friends, they go out for dinner one night, and at the end of the night, they're on their way home, and they walk by an alley. And what happens is the first person whose primary value is adventure says, \"oh, shortcut, let's go\". The second person whose primary value is safety says, \"you know what? This looks sketchy. Why don't we go back to the bar and call an Uber?\". And then the third person whose primary value is friendship says, \"You know what, guys, we can work this out together\".<\/p>
What ends up happening is that I've told you all of that about how they make the decision, but what I haven't told you is anything in the demographic or psychographic space. And so this guy, David (I've forgotten his last name), what he has done is... What's that?<\/p>
David Pisarek: <\/strong><\/span>David Ellison.<\/p>Jason Thomson: <\/strong><\/span>Do you know David?<\/p>David Pisarek: <\/strong><\/span>I do.<\/p>