YouSaid · the spoken record

Wes Kao

lines on the record: 93
first: 2025-04-06
most recent: 2025-04-06
sittings or episodes: 1
sources: podcast

Every line below is reproduced as it was said and linked to the record it came from. Nothing here is summarised or generated. Directory · Search · Corrections

“You can find out more at westko.com. I linked my course to my coaching from my main page. I also post on LinkedIn as well so you can follow me there. And I'm always looking to meet fellow operators who nerd out about communication. So if you put any of these principles into practice, I'd love to hear about it.”
2025-04-06 · Lenny's Podcast · Become a better communicator: Specific frameworks to improve your clarity, influence, and impact | Wes Kao (coach, entrepreneur, advisor) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Could say no to something that was legitimately a cool opportunity and be really confident about it because it wasn't your core competency. It wasn't like the thing you are best at. And I've really kept that in mind when opportunities come my way of like, am I excited about this? Is this what I'm really good at? Can I shine in this setting? Because when you are solo, like you get to choose the settings that you want to be in.”
2025-04-06 · Lenny's Podcast · Become a better communicator: Specific frameworks to improve your clarity, influence, and impact | Wes Kao (coach, entrepreneur, advisor) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Okay, yeah. You said no. You said no. And I was like, wow, you know, out of curiosity, what's the thought behind it? And you said, I'm going to bastardize this, but you could correct me, but you essentially said, I don't really like doing live public speaking type things. And I've been fortunate enough to build a career where I can write, you know, I do my podcast and kind of work only on the part that I love doing. And so I'm okay saying no to these other really interesting opportunities. And I remember at that time thinking.”
2025-04-06 · Lenny's Podcast · Become a better communicator: Specific frameworks to improve your clarity, influence, and impact | Wes Kao (coach, entrepreneur, advisor) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“I actually credit you with helping me come to this realization. I mentioned you on a podcast the other day. About this, because do you remember when Maven was launching an important feature, I think it was like our marketplace or something. I'd asked you if you wanted to go on Clubhouse to be part of our lunch.”
2025-04-06 · Lenny's Podcast · Become a better communicator: Specific frameworks to improve your clarity, influence, and impact | Wes Kao (coach, entrepreneur, advisor) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“The part that you love doing most, if you could not do all the other stuff you don't want to do, and how can you think about doubling down on that”
2025-04-06 · Lenny's Podcast · Become a better communicator: Specific frameworks to improve your clarity, influence, and impact | Wes Kao (coach, entrepreneur, advisor) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“I think when you are an in-house operator, there's a lot about your role that you have a little bit less control over, basically. Like there's just certain things you have to do because it comes with the territory. Whereas when you are a solo operator, you know, running your own business, doing your own thing, you have a lot of freedom to craft your work around only your strengths, only the part that you are really good at that adds a lot of value for other people, whether it's market demand. And so for me, there was a bit of a shift where when I realized that I could craft my business, my work around only the part that I'm best at. And that can be a narrow ass slice. Like, that's actually really, really freeing. And so I would encourage folks to think about what is the thing that you are extremely good at that people find super valuable.”
2025-04-06 · Lenny's Podcast · Become a better communicator: Specific frameworks to improve your clarity, influence, and impact | Wes Kao (coach, entrepreneur, advisor) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“The other one is a riff on always be closing by Glen Gary Ross. It's always be selling. So this does not mean pawning your wares, but rather putting forth effort into convincing the other person of whatever your recommendation is.”
2025-04-06 · Lenny's Podcast · Become a better communicator: Specific frameworks to improve your clarity, influence, and impact | Wes Kao (coach, entrepreneur, advisor) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Yes, I actually have many, but I'll share two. One is everything takes longer than you think. So this applies whether you are calling customer support for something or running an errand or building your career, building skills. I find it's useful to add buffers for yourself. And this applies for launches too, right? Everything, just assume it will take longer than you think and you'll be less stressed.”
2025-04-06 · Lenny's Podcast · Become a better communicator: Specific frameworks to improve your clarity, influence, and impact | Wes Kao (coach, entrepreneur, advisor) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Its oral bee, but I've not tried any other brand. That was one that. Our dentist gifted my husband this electric toothbrush because he did invisalign. And I'm sure Invisalign is like every dentist's dream. I feel like every time I go, I get a cleaning, the dentist is like, So, if you thought about, are you interested in Invisalign? And we're like, no. And so when they get a yes, I'm sure they're really excited. And then they lock you in with the brand locks you in with these replacement toothbrush heads that are way more expensive than they should be. So it's a whole razor and blades ink cartridge and printer model here. So I was kind of horrified by how expensive these replacement heads were, but.”
2025-04-06 · Lenny's Podcast · Become a better communicator: Specific frameworks to improve your clarity, influence, and impact | Wes Kao (coach, entrepreneur, advisor) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“I recently started using an electric toothbrush and it's been kind of life-changing. So my husband got one and then a couple weeks later he gifted me one and I was like wow this is actually really nice.”
2025-04-06 · Lenny's Podcast · Become a better communicator: Specific frameworks to improve your clarity, influence, and impact | Wes Kao (coach, entrepreneur, advisor) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Yeah, they're like mystery thrillers. And I think he does a good job playing with time and revealing information over time. And like it's usually something about someone's past that is now coming to haunt them. And so he'll go, he'll skip between present day to the past and then like slowly reveal stuff. And there's always a twist at the end.”
2025-04-06 · Lenny's Podcast · Become a better communicator: Specific frameworks to improve your clarity, influence, and impact | Wes Kao (coach, entrepreneur, advisor) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“I love anything by Harlan Cobin. On Netflix. Basically, I don't even remember any specific movies or a TV series, but anything he puts out, he's an author and then they, you know, they've turned a lot of his books into mystery thriller TV series. And anything he puts out becomes number one on Netflix. And I appreciate that he gives the people what they want, that he knows his craft. He knows his genre. And yeah, he just has so many bangers. And like, I don't remember any specific one, but if it's a Harlan Cobindra, I know it's going to be good.”
2025-04-06 · Lenny's Podcast · Become a better communicator: Specific frameworks to improve your clarity, influence, and impact | Wes Kao (coach, entrepreneur, advisor) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Will like stick it under my pillow on the couch or like hide it under a notebook. It's huge. I'm always hiding my phone, so it's not in my line of sight.”
2025-04-06 · Lenny's Podcast · Become a better communicator: Specific frameworks to improve your clarity, influence, and impact | Wes Kao (coach, entrepreneur, advisor) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“One is high output management by Andy Grove, which is a classic. Another one is your brain at work by Dr. David Rock. And that one is all about Brain and attention span so that you can allocate your mental resources appropriately. So that one's great. Ever since reading that, I hide my phone from view because there have been studies that show that even seeing your phone in the corner of your eye kind of changes. It's distracting. And I do the hardest things earlier in the day when you have more cognitive resources available. So that one's really good. Yeah, those two”
2025-04-06 · Lenny's Podcast · Become a better communicator: Specific frameworks to improve your clarity, influence, and impact | Wes Kao (coach, entrepreneur, advisor) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Seen and heard, but like decline. So if I explain that's the problem I'm dealing with and like, here's what I would ideally like to be able to do, Claude comes back with something that's like pretty good. And then from there, I'll edit it to my voice because usually it's a little bit too formal sounding. And so I'll make some edits and then I'll share it back to Claude and say, what do you think of this version? Would you make any improvements? And then we kind of go back and forth from there.”
2025-04-06 · Lenny's Podcast · Become a better communicator: Specific frameworks to improve your clarity, influence, and impact | Wes Kao (coach, entrepreneur, advisor) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“I love Claude. There are days when I talk to Claude for like three or four hours prompting as a thought partner. So yeah, I think that AI is really helpful for an initial draft of something to bounce off of. Sometimes I'll paste in an email that I am not quite sure how to respond to and ask Claude to help me draft reply. And I'll usually give it some direction. So I found that sharing my point of view makes the output way better. If I just give it something and say like, what would you say? It's just not as good. Whereas if I say, you know, I am not sure about how to tell this person no. Because, you know, I previously kind of said yes. And so I kind of feel on the hook, but the street has changed. And so is there a nice way where I can be really respectful of our relationship and also make them feel”
2025-04-06 · Lenny's Podcast · Become a better communicator: Specific frameworks to improve your clarity, influence, and impact | Wes Kao (coach, entrepreneur, advisor) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Super messy. I was going to say my back end system is super messy and it's fine. I am not, you know, it's not a problem I need to be solving. It works. I find things I need to find. So I like having a simple of a process as possible. So Apple notes, like I open it, it's just on my home screen. I just add something. I'm not tagging anything and not putting it in certain rows and filling information out. I'm just including in a file. And if I want to go back and look at it, it serves its purpose.”
2025-04-06 · Lenny's Podcast · Become a better communicator: Specific frameworks to improve your clarity, influence, and impact | Wes Kao (coach, entrepreneur, advisor) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Yeah, and the great thing about that is you can then go back and analyze it and break down the structure, break down the argument, break down why was this so effective. Whereas if you're not capturing it, It's easy to just move on to the next thing.”
2025-04-06 · Lenny's Podcast · Become a better communicator: Specific frameworks to improve your clarity, influence, and impact | Wes Kao (coach, entrepreneur, advisor) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“These phrases and basically encourage yourself to be more alert to things you can borrow from other people all around you”
2025-04-06 · Lenny's Podcast · Become a better communicator: Specific frameworks to improve your clarity, influence, and impact | Wes Kao (coach, entrepreneur, advisor) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Phrases, words, you know, things you've all said that I thought were well articulated or sounded really intelligent or sounded strategic. And I don't actually go back and look through my swipefall very often. I think other people do. But for me, even the act of adding it to my swipe file, I've already gotten value from it because it's training me to be more alert, to noticing when something is working well. I think there's so much happening around us all the time that, you know, your coworker says something smart and like, oh, that was nice. And then you keep moving on, right? But when you stop and pause and think, oh, that was really effective. Like, let me add it to my file and also think about why was that effective. And is that something I can borrow? So in my course, I encourage folks to create a work journal where they can jot down some of these observations, some”
2025-04-06 · Lenny's Podcast · Become a better communicator: Specific frameworks to improve your clarity, influence, and impact | Wes Kao (coach, entrepreneur, advisor) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Yeah, so swipe files are really common for marketers. And I think other functions haven't caught on as much, but I think is really, really useful. And basically Swipe file is collecting inspiration that you can refer back to later on. So some marketers will collect examples of copy, landing pages, ads, et cetera. For me, I have a file, an Apple Notes file called Smart Things People Have Said, where I will basically paste in”
2025-04-06 · Lenny's Podcast · Become a better communicator: Specific frameworks to improve your clarity, influence, and impact | Wes Kao (coach, entrepreneur, advisor) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Yeah, I found that AI will often shorten the feedback loop and align with you as well. Like when you prompt it, when it comes back, it will not do the entire task for me sometimes. It'll say like, you know, I've done the first part of this. Does this sound right? You know, is this what you're looking for? If so, I will complete the next section. And then sometimes I'm like, do the whole thing. Just stop trying to conserve energy and just do, I want you to do the whole thing, you know? But that's what it's doing. It's breaking it into smaller chunks to de-risk that, you know, it's going to use all this bandwidth to process this thing. And I'm going to say, oh, that's not what I was looking for.”
2025-04-06 · Lenny's Podcast · Become a better communicator: Specific frameworks to improve your clarity, influence, and impact | Wes Kao (coach, entrepreneur, advisor) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“What if we waited a day and checked in on the initial direction that person was going? And let's do it even more. What if after I finish explaining, at the end of that conversation, we brainstormed a couple things that that person wants to do? So within this same conversation I'm delegating, I'm already getting a sense of, you know, where do you want to go with this? Once you start, like do you see any bottlenecks? And so just really keeping that feedback loop super tight. I found that when I run through the CDF acronym, there's usually one letter that I could amp up a little bit more. Like, oh, like I didn't really put much thought into making this exciting for the person. How can I connect this to their career goals or to the company's priorities this quarter or to something else? So it's a nice mental checklist.”
2025-04-06 · Lenny's Podcast · Become a better communicator: Specific frameworks to improve your clarity, influence, and impact | Wes Kao (coach, entrepreneur, advisor) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“I totally forgot till I mentioned this thing. Or, oh yeah, I didn't even really explain that well. Okay, so let me go into that, right? And then F is feedback. So how can you have the shortest feedback loop possible? I am a huge fan of Shorting the feedback loop as much as possible and then shortening it again. So even within that initial conversation where I'm delegating something, instead of waiting a week.”
2025-04-06 · Lenny's Podcast · Become a better communicator: Specific frameworks to improve your clarity, influence, and impact | Wes Kao (coach, entrepreneur, advisor) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“The A is for a line. So am I giving the other person a chance to speak up and make sure we are actually aligned, that they are picking up what I'm putting down, right? Because you might be explaining a bunch of stuff, but how much are they actually absorbing? You won't ever know if you wrap up your little spiel and then say like, okay, go off, like, come back to me when you're done, right? So give people a chance to ask questions, to see what parts are resonating, what parts they might be a little bit confused on. Usually when I do this, it's amazing because my team member will say, you know, what did you mean by this part? Like, how does this part fit in? I'm like, oh my God.”
2025-04-06 · Lenny's Podcast · Become a better communicator: Specific frameworks to improve your clarity, influence, and impact | Wes Kao (coach, entrepreneur, advisor) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“From delegating this. So usually when I ask clients this, they immediately think of something. They're like, oh yeah, I wouldn't want my direct report to spend, you know, a ton of time going the wrong direction, filling out 100 rows of the spreadsheet if like actually it took longer than we expected. Okay, great. If that's a risk, then maybe you have them do 10 rows, see how long it takes, see if we need all the information that they're actually gathering, and then regroup. right so what's an obvious risk another might be you know i can see this person misunderstanding and thinking i'm looking for this where i'm really looking for that okay perfect just tell them you know when i explain this you might think i mean this but really i don't want that i actually want this right so just vocalize it”
2025-04-06 · Lenny's Podcast · Become a better communicator: Specific frameworks to improve your clarity, influence, and impact | Wes Kao (coach, entrepreneur, advisor) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“To remind myself, so CDAS stands for the C is comprehension. So have I given this person that I'm delegating to everything that they need to understand what it is that I want them to do? That includes more simple things like logins to all the right software tools that they need to look up whatever you need to look up and understanding what the end result should look like, right? So that's all under C for comprehension. E is excitement. Am I explaining this in a way that is making this as exciting as it could be? There are a lot of tasks that aren't inherently that exciting, but by explaining the why behind why we're doing this or why it's important to the project we're working on, that makes people more likely to understand and be excited about how this fits into everything. So ease for excitement, D is for D-risk. Am I de-risking any obvious risks?”
2025-04-06 · Lenny's Podcast · Become a better communicator: Specific frameworks to improve your clarity, influence, and impact | Wes Kao (coach, entrepreneur, advisor) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“It's kind of like cedar, but with an F at the end. I need acronyms for myself. Like, all of these are really reminders for myself because I need a short way”
2025-04-06 · Lenny's Podcast · Become a better communicator: Specific frameworks to improve your clarity, influence, and impact | Wes Kao (coach, entrepreneur, advisor) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“That great Einstein quote about insanity being repeating things that you're doing, expecting a different outcome. And I feel like that applies so much to the workplace and to communication. You know, like most of us have certain patterns that we're used to and certain ways of responding. And if that's, if you believe that there is untapped upside, that like whatever you are at is kind of a local maximum and that there's better out there, then that's where switching things up could be useful and just doing everything that you've been doing and getting the same result that you might be getting.”
2025-04-06 · Lenny's Podcast · Become a better communicator: Specific frameworks to improve your clarity, influence, and impact | Wes Kao (coach, entrepreneur, advisor) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“And then you're off, right? So, yeah, getting that getting that energy out, I would say step one, so that you can go into the conversation clear, grounded, setting that emotional tone that is more positive and that allows you to stay focused on only the part that will get them to behave in the way you want them to behave.”
2025-04-06 · Lenny's Podcast · Become a better communicator: Specific frameworks to improve your clarity, influence, and impact | Wes Kao (coach, entrepreneur, advisor) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Yeah, I definitely think that having a space to vent and to share those frustrations is important. So you want to get that out before you go into the conversation with your counterpart. So whether it's talking to your therapist or your partner or friend, you want to basically get all that energy out because otherwise you bring it into the conversation and it doesn't take much to set you off. Like you might have a whole script, you're controlled, you're calm, and then you start talking and the other person raises an eyebrow and it's like, you know, acting a little incredulous at what you're saying. And that's all it takes for you to snap and be like, you're surprised.”
2025-04-06 · Lenny's Podcast · Become a better communicator: Specific frameworks to improve your clarity, influence, and impact | Wes Kao (coach, entrepreneur, advisor) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Better way of giving feedback is thinking about motivating the person's behavior change. The goal is behavior change. So if that's the goal, Trim everything else that you're about to say that does not actually contribute to that goal and only keep the part that will make the person want to change, help them understand the benefit to, you know, them as well as to the people around them. And so usually for me, that's trimming 90% of the initial stuff that I want to say and really keeping only that 10%. And that's made a really big difference whenever I am giving constructive feedback of any kind, I always keep that in mind. And when I don't do it, I almost always regret it.”
2025-04-06 · Lenny's Podcast · Become a better communicator: Specific frameworks to improve your clarity, influence, and impact | Wes Kao (coach, entrepreneur, advisor) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“I have a framework called Strategy Not Self Expression. And so the idea here is that most of the time, by the time we are giving feedback to someone, we have been frustrated for a while. You know, I used to be very conflict diverse. So I would wait and try to convince myself that I wasn't bothered by something until I really couldn't hold it in anymore. Then I would schedule a one-on-one with a coworker to, you know, to tell them the feedback. And it would inevitably turn into a venting session. where I was in the name of sharing the impact of what they did would share all my frustrations and all the ways that they have basically harmed me and made my life difficult. And this would be very counterproductive because the person would either feel like shit and feel really demoralized or they'd get really defensive and they'd want to argue with me about how what they did actually was like not that bad or it was partially my fault too or whatever. And so I realized that”
2025-04-06 · Lenny's Podcast · Become a better communicator: Specific frameworks to improve your clarity, influence, and impact | Wes Kao (coach, entrepreneur, advisor) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“There are a lot of situations where you might have the most visibility into a problem. You might have the most proximity into an issue. And so if you're not speaking up about it and sharing what you're observing and sharing what you're noticing, Your manager doesn't necessarily have visibility into that. And so I've heard so many managers say that they want their trunker people to speak up more because their junior people have often close contact with customers, with support tickets, with cleaning data, with a bunch of things where the manager would love to hear insights from that.”
2025-04-06 · Lenny's Podcast · Become a better communicator: Specific frameworks to improve your clarity, influence, and impact | Wes Kao (coach, entrepreneur, advisor) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“From more reactive and more Waiting to be told what to do or kind of staying in this narrow box to being willing to share your recommendation, your point of view, share what you're noticing. And this is something that even junior people could do”
2025-04-06 · Lenny's Podcast · Become a better communicator: Specific frameworks to improve your clarity, influence, and impact | Wes Kao (coach, entrepreneur, advisor) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Sharing your point of view more readily, backing it up with evidence, that's a wonderful way of making your manager's life easier. And also showing that you are an active, rigorous thinker who is thinking strategically about the business. You're not just waiting to be told what to do. You're not expecting them to figure things out and then tell you. You are actively looking around the corner trying to solve problems, forming hypotheses in your mind, observing and noticing things. And again, sharing your point of view doesn't mean that you have the perfect answer. You can share that, hey, I've noticed this problem popping up in a couple of different places. Here's what I think might be happening. Or when you share a report, don't only share the report and expect your manager to come up with insights and takeaways. You should look at the report too and point out insights and takeaways. So it's really changing that posture.”
2025-04-06 · Lenny's Podcast · Become a better communicator: Specific frameworks to improve your clarity, influence, and impact | Wes Kao (coach, entrepreneur, advisor) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“The biggest one is to share your point of view. So, this, you know, some people are surprised by because they think I'm going to say do a weekly recap of the tasks that you worked on or like, you know, what you contributed. And that is a good idea of, you know, if you want to do what you can do it. But I think the more highly leveraged way to contribute and manage up is by being more vocal about sharing your point of view. When you just ask your manager, hey manager, what should we do? You're putting a lot of cognitive load on your manager to need to think about the problem, think about potential solutions, craft the solution, and then tell you what to do. Whereas if you instead said, hey manager, here's what I think we should do. How does that sound? Where do you see gaps? Am I thinking in the right direction? You give them something to build off of. And that reduces the amount of mental lift that they have to put forth. And so”
2025-04-06 · Lenny's Podcast · Become a better communicator: Specific frameworks to improve your clarity, influence, and impact | Wes Kao (coach, entrepreneur, advisor) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Sure, that your leader, your manager, is in the loop about what you are about to try and what you're about to do and make sure that they're aligned. And so for me, realizing that managing up is something that is ongoing and that it shifts and evolves and looks different as you go in your career. That was a big unlock for me.”
2025-04-06 · Lenny's Podcast · Become a better communicator: Specific frameworks to improve your clarity, influence, and impact | Wes Kao (coach, entrepreneur, advisor) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“One of the most common myths about managing up that I definitely felt early on in my career was that I would have to manage up if I were more junior, but eventually I would outgrow it, that I would get senior enough that I would no longer have to do it. And it was a rude awakening that no matter how senior I got, managing up, I not only had to manage up, it actually became more important. So I think managing up is one of those skills that if you invest in learning it, it serves you now and for the rest of your career. And I realize that many senior people are actually the best at managing up. That's partially how they got to be so senior in the first place, but also, you know, the more senior you get, the less likely that your manager is going to give you really well-defined tasks and problems on a silver platter and ask you to solve them. You're going to be dealing with more ambiguity and you're going to be dealing with sometimes a mandate like make this number go up or like create this division where you need to manage up and”
2025-04-06 · Lenny's Podcast · Become a better communicator: Specific frameworks to improve your clarity, influence, and impact | Wes Kao (coach, entrepreneur, advisor) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“I would start with most obvious objection and also framing your conversation up front. And that kind of relates to using signposting words if needed to help you frame that conversation.”
2025-04-06 · Lenny's Podcast · Become a better communicator: Specific frameworks to improve your clarity, influence, and impact | Wes Kao (coach, entrepreneur, advisor) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Allows you to still continue that conversation in the moment. And so I call it the question behind the question. Sometimes you get a question, but underneath there's a deeper underlying concern. And many times people don't even know that it's there, right? Subconscious. So it's not nefarious. They're not withholding anything from you. But when you are explaining something and you're kind of getting multiple questions on the same thing, it's a good sign that there might be a deeper question-man than question and it's our responsibility to figure out what might that be. And so probing, asking for a bit more information, answering in that general direction and then validating, these are all techniques you can use when you are in the moment without feeling like, oh, I must have every single thing prepared and the moment that I'm caught off guard, you know, everything goes to shit.”
2025-04-06 · Lenny's Podcast · Become a better communicator: Specific frameworks to improve your clarity, influence, and impact | Wes Kao (coach, entrepreneur, advisor) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“You can ask for a bit more information to be able to continue the conversation in that moment. So, you know, let's say that your exec says, you know, what percentage of users came from mobile last month. And you don't have that number off top of your head. So person A says, I'll get back to you, you know, let me look and dog back to you. Person B might say, I don't have that number off the top of my head. But in the last quarter, the number has been 60 to 70% and it's grown in the past year. So Mobile is now a bigger part of our business, et cetera, et cetera. Are you wondering if we are investing in mobile appropriately or like where's that cushion coming from, basically? Right? And so being able to answer a similar question in the direction you think the person is asking about and then validating why they're asking that question.”
2025-04-06 · Lenny's Podcast · Become a better communicator: Specific frameworks to improve your clarity, influence, and impact | Wes Kao (coach, entrepreneur, advisor) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“I think one thing that Tended to throw people off is putting a lot of pressure on themselves to get the exact right answer. So if they are asked a question and they don't know the answer, you know, a lot of people will then kind of freak out. And I was taught early in my career that if you don't know the answer, you should say, let me look into it, I'll get back to you. So that's a fine approach. It's definitely better than making something up, right? So definitely don't make something up If you are more experienced and have some confidence in your subject matter area, just saying I'll go back to you is sometimes a missed opportunity.”
2025-04-06 · Lenny's Podcast · Become a better communicator: Specific frameworks to improve your clarity, influence, and impact | Wes Kao (coach, entrepreneur, advisor) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Yeah, it definitely helps shape your own thinking. I think communication and thinking are so much more interrelated than we think. There's a thinking as phase one and then communicating the thinking. And the reality is a lot more intertwined. And I loved your example there, that thinking ahead to what might be the most obvious objection actually then prompts you to realize that maybe there was a gap in what you were planning to present. And then you now have an opportunity to strengthen that pitch before you say it out loud.”
2025-04-06 · Lenny's Podcast · Become a better communicator: Specific frameworks to improve your clarity, influence, and impact | Wes Kao (coach, entrepreneur, advisor) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“I use Moo multiple times a day every day, every single day, like literally whatever I'm about to say, I think. How might someone disagree with this? Or what might an objection be? So whatever it is I'm writing saying it's a really good mental filter because it encourages you to think a couple steps ahead in kind of a structured way, right? Like if I'm about to say this, the person may then say this to me. Well, if I take that into account, I can volunteer that information up front or I can frame it in a way where they're less likely to think that that's an issue. And so it's muscle memory for me at this point, but, you know, this might be something we include at the end as something to start with, but putting Moo on a post-it most obvious objection, you know, what is someone likely to object about? And then just keeping that top of mind. It's a great way to train yourself to be, to empathize with your audience and with your recipient. We all say that, and we all know we should do it, but for me, this is a really...”
2025-04-06 · Lenny's Podcast · Become a better communicator: Specific frameworks to improve your clarity, influence, and impact | Wes Kao (coach, entrepreneur, advisor) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Moo stands for most obvious objection MOO. And the thought there is that a lot of times we're surprised by the questions that we get, especially in meetings where we feel blindsided. That was unexpected. And then we're on our back foot. When really, if you thought for even two minutes about what are obvious objections that I am likely to get when I share this, you often immediately come up with what some of those things are. So are you going to be able to anticipate every single objection? No. But can you anticipate the obvious ones? Absolutely. And this is where knowing your own argument in and out, including counter-arguments, becomes so important. So knowing your counter-arguments as well as you know the arguments for doing the thing. When you do that, when you have prepared in that way, you're less likely to... Feel caught off guard.”
2025-04-06 · Lenny's Podcast · Become a better communicator: Specific frameworks to improve your clarity, influence, and impact | Wes Kao (coach, entrepreneur, advisor) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Like, this doesn't actually fit our priorities right now, right? Or maybe yes, but let's right size the level of investment. So it might look like half whatever the proposal, you know, the size of what that recommendation actually was and having the maturity to realize that, to put your idea into context is huge. Like that took me a really long time to learn. And I think that goes under the umbrella of always do what's best for the company, not necessarily what's best for me, my career, my team, my wins. You know, if you prioritize what's best for the company, that helps you have a more right-sized way of still advocating free ideas, but doing it with a bit more equanimity.”
2025-04-06 · Lenny's Podcast · Become a better communicator: Specific frameworks to improve your clarity, influence, and impact | Wes Kao (coach, entrepreneur, advisor) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Said that the company wide goal is retention that year, that their biggest challenges and areas of opportunity were in retention, not necessarily in growth. And once she zoomed out and realized this, she was able to put her recommendation in context and realize that it's not just, you know, I'm the only one who cares about this company. Everyone is a hypocrite. They say they believe this, but like don't actually want to work on it. Before that was kind of her narrative. She zoomed out and realized she was being a single-minded martyr she could better fit her proposal in the context of what else was happening in the organization. I think actually this is a really big difference between more junior people versus more senior people. More junior people are like, I need to win. Like I need to get a yes for this proposal and I'm going to keep advocating for it until I get a yes. Whereas really sometimes the best decision for the company is not right now.”
2025-04-06 · Lenny's Podcast · Become a better communicator: Specific frameworks to improve your clarity, influence, and impact | Wes Kao (coach, entrepreneur, advisor) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Yeah, so in my course, I talk about not being a single minded martyr. So a single-minded martyr is someone who very much has an agenda, who wants their recommendation to go through and is presenting a bunch of evidence supporting that direction and then gets really frustrated when other people are not seeing it or are skeptical. And so one of my clients was a single-minded martyr in a recommendation she was making. So she was on the growth acquisition side of her company and was having trouble with cross-functional team members lending headcount to her project. And so everyone would say like, oh, yes, we believe in this. This is important, but wouldn't want to actually give her, you know, half of their engineer for two weeks. And we were talking about it. And as we were talking, she revealed that the CEO had at the beginning of the year”
2025-04-06 · Lenny's Podcast · Become a better communicator: Specific frameworks to improve your clarity, influence, and impact | Wes Kao (coach, entrepreneur, advisor) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Yeah, I think sharing a point of view, sharing a recommendation, and then backing it up with evidence, with logic, with first principles, with examples, with data if you have it. Not every situation, you're going to have data for, especially if you're building something new. So this is where First Principles comes in. Like even explaining how you got to where you got to and why you think this is going to work, that all gives your team, your manager, something to push back on, to poke holes on, or to align on and say, yeah, I agree here, but I disagree on this part. So you can talk about ideas with a lot more specificity when you share your thought process. And you can frame it all, kicking off saying, my initial thinking is, or, you know, based on what we know, my hunch is blank, right? So speaking accurately and then still bringing up those facts so that we can all make as informed of a decision as we can make given what we need.”
2025-04-06 · Lenny's Podcast · Become a better communicator: Specific frameworks to improve your clarity, influence, and impact | Wes Kao (coach, entrepreneur, advisor) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source