I overthink so you don’t have to.

The Red Thread® Newsletter

Stories, examples, images, and data you can use to help bring your ideas and messages to life.

The best ideas aren’t found — they’re built. Get a weekly dose of strategies, studies, and stories — direct to your inbox from me — to help you make your ideas strong enough to build change on.

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FRESH THREADS

The Freenoter Podcast

There are lots of resources out there on how to become a paid speaker or keynoter, but what if you speak to build your business, as a FREEnoter? Each week, join me and Tom Webster as we cover all the angles of how to profit from speaking for free. If you are looking to grow your business from the stage--without "selling from the stage," this is the show for you. We will cover EVERY aspect of building your business through speaking, and even share a different craft cocktail recipe every week, just because. Subscribe now!

17 Must-Have Books on Messaging

A client asked me the other day for a “reading list” — the books she could read to become a better message-maker and communicator. I did a quick video on my “top three” a while back, but it felt like time to update and expand the list.

How can you address different pain points with one message?

There’s a new “What’s Missing From This Message?” video up this week. So, what is missing? A clean, clear path for audiences with different pain points to proceed towards purchase.

3 ways to build a 20-minute, “quaranteeny” presentation

Have you noticed this? That just about everyone wants what I’m calling “quaranteeny” virtual presentations these days?

What IS the Red Thread, anyway, and how do you use it?

It’s probably the question I get the most, “What IS the Red Thread?” The answer is both simple, and not.

Need to make your message relevant? Give ’em what they need.

In times of crisis two things are true: Everything seems to be changing Some things never do When you’re the person responsible for figuring out how to make your message relevant in times like these, those two together represent both the problem and the solution.

Are cognitive biases working for or against your message?

There’s one barrier every message has to get through for it to succeed: your audience’s brain. It’s why your message needs to be more than just relevant and remarkable, it needs to be resilient, too. It has to be strong enough to survive the beating the average brain is going to give it.

Are you trapped in the persuader’s paradox?

There’s one thing getting the way of the vast majority of messaging: The Persuader’s Paradox. What is that, you ask? Well, it’s like the opposite of the Golden Rule. Instead of “do unto others as you would have them do unto you,” the Persuader’s Paradox goes something like, “do unto others what you’d never want done to you.” The result: in […]

Why you need a “make sense machine” (and where to find it)

Sometimes what’s missing from a message is… just about everything you need to make sense of it. But how, and why, does that happen?

Why a remarkable message never trumps a relevant one

While we’re in days that all seem to blur together, the things that are different are what stand out. It’s partly why, unlike in The Time Before, I try not to do ANY work on the weekends, and why my husband, Tom, and I have closely observed Cocktail Hour (and yes, these days it deserves Full Capitalization). As […]

Short on space or time for your message? Do this.

“We must learn to be equally good at what is short and sharp and what is long and tough.” —Winston Churchill When creating content around messages, we usually focus on the “long” forms of it: the presentation, the book, the white paper, etc. And yes, in the words of Churchill, those long forms are tough.

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The Red Thread® Newsletter

Stories, examples, images, and data you can use to help bring your ideas and messages to life.
The best ideas aren’t found — they’re built. Get a weekly dose of strategies, studies, and stories — direct to your inbox from me — to help you make your ideas strong enough to build change on.