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Matthew Burns:
So Jack.

Jack Heald:
Matthew.

Matthew Burns:
I was curious about a couple of things. So we do all of our stuff here on YouTube. This is our format. We’re going to eventually launch out and put this into a podcast. So the episodes can be listened to on the go. But the video is very tricky. The visual memory that we have is very poor. The eyes are at the front of the head. The visual cortex is here at the back of the head. And so lots of travel information to get lost in.

And then we have echoic memory and echoic retention, which is here in our ears and goes in here at the ears and then goes into the audio cortex, which is right behind the ear. So it’s much more powerful, more succinct. We have a much larger audio cortex than we have a visual cortex, right? Isn’t that weird? Yeah, it’s really crazy.

So our eyes lie to us all the time and fill in blanks. Our ears don’t do that as well. We actually hear things the way they are.

Jack Heald:
Oh my God, that is so true.

Matthew Burns:
Right. It gets crazy. Anybody who’s-

Jack Heald:
Okay, so I’m going to interrupt you. I’m just going to show this real quick.

Matthew Burns:
Okay. I’m not reading it out loud.

Jack Heald:
Okay. I left it there long enough to illustrate the fact that our eyes lie to us.

Matthew Burns:
All the time. Our brain makes up the information that it wants to because we are pattern recognition machines. And so Jack and I were talking about proper communication and not proper communication, that’s probably not the right way to say it, but communication-

Jack Heald:
Effective communication.

Matthew Burns:
Effective and powerhouse communication. What did it actually mean? And I thought of this, and I think it’s important to understand. So, usually we talk a lot about The Wizard Academy, and at the Wizard Academy, you can take a course called the 12 Languages of the Mind. Jack, you’ve taken the course. I’ve taken the course vicariously through my partners who have taken the course. I haven’t been able to take this one yet. So now I have to go. So anybody who wants to go with me to the course, just put a comment in there. We’ll go together, and you can meet me, and we can hang out.

But the 12 Languages of the Mind talk about sounds and inflections and a whole bunch of other things that we add to the written word. So we talk a lot about radio. And even in this, even in doing this video, you’re not remembering our faces, you’re not remembering the expressions, you’re remembering what we said and how we said it and where we were in the way we said it.

That’s what usually connects with you. And so we do our best. I show up in the same outfit every single time so that it looks like I’m doing these back to back to back to back for every day of the week. We set up our backgrounds, great, but nobody really cares about that kind of stuff. I mean, did anybody actually see that I got a Batman bust back there? I don’t know if you did or not. Who cares? I got my do epic shit bottle right there, my ad writing statue, my award for writing ads. So we have all this stuff, but you’re not remembering that.

When you get finished with this video, you’re going to like, oh my God, that premise, that idea, the power of emotion and words, put together. Jack, I’m rambling now. And what I wanted to really talk about was, why is it … Roy H. Williams, the founder of the Wizard of Ads, the founder of The Wizard Academy, he is in love with writing and words.

I mean, you said something right before I got on the call that you are a lover of words. And we are writers by trade. Okay. But we write for the media. We write for a medium. We write for the radio. We write for TV. We’re not authors per se. We’re not writing novels. That’s not where we spend most of our time. Doesn’t mean that we can’t, we haven’t, or we shouldn’t. And a lot of the partners actually do write books for business. So I just want to put all that out there to say, why is it that we write for a medium like radio versus writing just for print ads? What’s the difference between them?

Jack Heald:
What triggered it was this book I just showed. It’s the guy I follow on X who goes by Doctor Hypnosis. I truly don’t know who this guy is, but anything about influence, persuasion, I’m going to consume it. I own all of Cialdini’s works. I own all of Scott Adams’ works. If it has to do with how to speak, write, or behave in a more influential way, I’m interested in it.

And shockingly, this random dude on X has written the best one I’ve ever read. And I’m reading this morning and working my way through it. It’s extremely well written, but more than that, it’s exceptionally well conceived in how he communicates all the different bits and bobs. And he had a section where he talked about the reality of communication via language. 80% of our communication when we’re talking with one another is not the words we use, but the tone of our voice, the inflection that we use with our various words, the speed at which we speak, the cadence of our speech.

It’s, by definition, nonverbal communication, and that’s 80% of it. And because all of my work starts at some point and is written, I have to write it to give it to a client. I have to create a script for a client to read, even if they’re doing a TV ad, a radio ad, or a video ad on YouTube. And that really struck me because one of the things that we struggle with is having our actors, our performers, communicate what we intend, even if they read the words perfectly.

And the other part of that was how much of our ability to communicate with our target audience we lose if we restrict ourselves to nothing but the written word.

Matthew Burns:
Right. Well, because, okay, well, how interesting is it to read an instruction manual, right? No, no. And this is a great example, right? Listen, the people who are watching are on YouTube because this is where you go to learn things. I just recently got … Here, I’ll give you a good example. I just recently picked up, because I’m doing a lot more blogging and stuff, I picked up some lavalier mics, and they come with a manual inside this box. It’s a great manual that I’ll never read.

What I did was I went to YouTube, and I had a guy explain it to me from DJI, because it was more interesting because he made certain parts kind of standard in his communication. And then he got really excited when this was really important. And it’s this really cool thing that this is the only… If you learn one thing about how to control these mics, this is the one thing, right? You can have this or this. And if you’d use this, it’s for this.

So it’s the ups and downs of the way he spoke. It’s the eyes lighting up or getting sullen. It’s more interesting to learn from somebody’s experience than it is to learn from just like, “Here’s my instruction manual.” And so I completely understand what you’re getting at, but I mean, novels… Look at how much the Bible has moved people in the world. The Torah has moved people in the world. That’s the written word, but it’s usually because it’s spoken to people from believers that they move. It’s the sermons and the analogies and everything else.

Jack Heald:
It’s so good.

Matthew Burns:
Right?

Jack Heald:
Yeah.

Matthew Burns:
Right? Listen, guys, I’m talking from a belief system here, but the stories of the Bible, the stories of the Torah were passed along generations orally. It was not written down. It was an oral translation of the story. And then it became written, and then it’s been passed along. But you don’t go to church and read the Bible. You go to church and hear a pastor. You go to church and hear a priest, you go to church and hear a rabbi, you go to church.

Jack Heald:
Your church can speak the creeds together.

Matthew Burns:
Exactly. And so it’s the emotion behind the words that kind of means everything. Now, you can make those emotions up yourself. So great novels do that all the time. Great writers are a brilliance added. They do that by leaving things out or knowing when to embellish and when not to. And so I don’t want to take away from novels, and I don’t want to take away from good writing. Good writing leads to better communication.

Jack Heald:
Oh, yeah.

Matthew Burns:
So I just want everybody to understand if you’re telling somebody… Listen, sales guys know this. Sales guys don’t say, “Hey, here’s our offers.” They don’t just put the offers in front of you. They go, “Here’s our offers. You pick which one you like. ” They talk about the one that they want to sell you and the one that’s going to hopefully do the best job for you. And so then they emphasize that one and we’ve got this one, it’s okay, but we’ve got this one and, oh my gosh, you’re going to get this and this and this and this. It’s not about just like, well, we’ve got these three packages. The first package is basic, and the second package is standard. And the third package, it’s never delivered that way because it’s not interesting, it’s not persuasive, and it’s not moving.

Jack Heald:
Isn’t that interesting that I’m imagining two scenarios here? The best salesperson I know, I could do a recording of him pitching whatever it is he sells. I could transcribe that recording, and I could hand it to somebody who’s really very good at reading what’s written.

Matthew Burns:
You could hand it to the computer of the Starship Perfect Plumbing.

Jack Heald:
Right.

Matthew Burns:
Right? You could give it to Siri and have Siri read it.

Jack Heald:
And even though the words would be identical, the communication would not be the same.

Matthew Burns:
You got it.

Jack Heald:
That fascinates me. That reality fascinates me. And if you’re not watching Matthew and me on screen right now, you’re missing a whole lot of the communication. And it fascinates me that even though I’m using language in my head, words, I’m using a lot of other things too. I’m using facial expression. I’m using tonality. I’m using strategic pauses that can’t really be communicated in a written form.

Matthew Burns:
Ah, there you go.

Jack Heald:
Isn’t it wild?

Matthew Burns:
Yeah. And take the visual cues out of it because again, we’re not talking about the visual cues. It’s a part of language. It’s one of the languages of the mind. Absolutely. But take the visual cues out of it. So if you’re listening to this on a podcast, thank you. One.

Jack Heald:
Thank you.

Matthew Burns:
Yeah. Two, you are getting the message better than if we were to give you the transcript. If you were going to read it in a blog, you’re going to get the message a little bit more powerfully. You’re going to understand that we truly, truly believe that if you’re going to persuade and move people in the direction that’s going to help them, that you truly believe is going to help them, you have to be emotional. And you can’t get emotional, it’s hard to get emotional in business on flat paper just with words, with no extra tonalities.

Jack Heald:
Well, there’s more to it than that. You are trying to persuade someone to take action. Why would you intentionally limit your bandwidth?

Matthew Burns:
Oh, okay. See, that’s incredible. I love that. Okay, don’t limit your bandwidth. Don’t stop yourself from using all the tools in the toolbox. I think that’s incredible. That’s a great way to say it. Okay. So truly, honestly, this one was just kind of fed our souls, guys, so thanks for watching this video. We just really feel passionately about something, we think you should understand it and hear it the way you do.

This one probably doesn’t have a great lesson at the end, outside of don’t limit yourself. Don’t cut off an arm because you can. Use both arms to do the thing, and use everything in your toolbox for communication that you possibly can, and be awesome at it. Go lean right into it and get as emotional as you possibly can. Get all the nice jokes in the world and let people feel things.

And you do that by all the things we just talked about in this video. I really appreciate you, Jack. Guys, at the Wizard Academy, you can learn the language of the 12 Languages of the Mind. Check them at WizardAcademy.org, and we will see you guys on the next episode.

Jack Heald:
See you on the next side.

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