The #1 Shortcut to Effective Communication

(5 Minute Read) Start with "So What?" and Build Your Message From There

👋🏼 I’m Alek, a repeat founder with a successful exit. I share my experience navigating career and company-building challenges in 5-minute reads every week. My posts typically focus on building resilience and applying a practical, data-driven mindset to your ambitions.

The #1 Shortcut to Effective Communication: “So What?”

After over 200 hours of writing these articles, one insight stands out: the most valuable edits happen when I ask myself, “So what?”—what does my reader genuinely need to hear?

Too often, these realizations come late. I might write an entire section, working to make the message clear and concise. But as I near the conclusion—wham—I realize the content wasn’t as helpful as I thought. The next step? “Highlight. Delete. Start over.” I’m now learning to force these “So what?” moments earlier and more often in everything I do.

Today, I’ll share how this learning has sharpened my communication across various channels, including Slack, email, meetings, blogs, and websites.

When You Know Your Audience (Slack, Email, Meetings)

For any communication, the first question is, “Who is my audience?” This may seem obvious—just check the "To" line—but understanding what they care about is the real challenge. Ask yourself not just what they want but why they want it. The deeper your understanding, the better your message will resonate.

With this knowledge, I focus on the takeaways I want my audience to walk away with. I spend time challenging these takeaways from the perspective of each member of my audience. Once I’m happy with the takeaways, I expand each key point into a full narrative. Finally, I cut any information my audience doesn’t nand I run spell check and my Grammarly app to quality control my writing.

This process may sound time-consuming, but it becomes second nature with practice. Here are some practical tips:

1. Audience Size vs. Length: Keep messages to larger audiences shorter. You can be more detailed with smaller audiences.

2. Different Contexts: Everyone should receive the same base message. If some of your audience doesn’t have certain context, provide it separately to avoid cluttering the main message.

3. Different “So Whats?”: Customizing messages based on audience segments may take more time upfront, but it saves work in the long run. Tailor your message for each group’s specific “So what?”.

4. Handling Follow-Ups: Anticipate follow-up questions but avoid overloading your message. Instead, provide resources like links or attachments where they can find answers.

These principles apply equally to meetings and verbal communication. Know your audience, understand what they care about, and tailor your message accordingly.

When You Don’t Know Your Audience (Blogs, Websites)

It’s often the case that you won’t know exactly who your audience is (think blogs and websites). Anybody can stumble onto these pages, and you don’t know who they are. I’ve found this to be a challenge.

When I can’t visualize my audience, I create user personas—profiles of potential readers. This practice is common in product design and marketing but often overlooked in other roles. Skipping this step was a significant oversight when I started building my company. Without knowing my audience, addressing what they cared about most was impossible.

Now, when putting a new product out there for an unknown audience, I spend a few minutes crafting personas. I consider who might read my blog or visit my website. I give them:

1. A first name

2. A job title and industry

3. A 3-5 sentence "About Me" section

4. A problem they need solving by what you offer

5. What frustrates them about their current process (or lack thereof)

For help, I’ve created a small, free app called Character Chameleon. If you want to try it yourself, input your product or service description, and it will generate five user personas for you.

Use these personas to focus your messages on the “So what?” that your audience cares about. Then, apply the same principles from “When you know your audience.”¹

Lessons Learned and Moving Forward

Have you ever spent hours writing or building something, only to realize at the conclusion that it wasn’t valuable to your audience? You end up deleting everything and starting over, or giving up entirely.

Writing A Founder’s Life for Me over the past year has taught me to consider what’s valuable to an audience. We often overlook a critical step in putting a product out there (whether it’s writing or software): identifying your audience and understanding their priorities. You can’t make something valuable to people if you don’t know who they are.

When you don’t know your audience, create personas to guide your communication. Personas should be rooted in reality, but if you’re looking for a shortcut, you can always generate user personas with the free tool Character Chameleon and ask these personas to provide feedback on your communication. This process will save you from “Highlight. Delete. Start over.” moments and ensure your message lands effectively.

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By sharing my experiences, I hope to provide insight and advice to entrepreneurs facing similar hurdles. Please leave a comment or email me with any questions.

Photo by Solen Feyissa on Unsplash

1. Bonus tip: As of August 2024, you can train the out-of-the-box ChatGPT model to remember these personas with its “memories” feature. Just say, “Remember these user personas as the […] user personas,” and then you can reference them later on by saying, “Review this email from the perspective of each of the […] user personas.”