Saying More With Less with Mike Allen, Cofounder of Axios

If you are respectful to the audience, talk to them intelligently, talk to them like they are human, you have a great idea, make it clear, start there, don't go down too many dead ends, all that, you will be a memorable popular writer and speaker in the world. experts The Walker webcast with Willie Walker looks at who will be the next foreigner. It is a great pleasure for me to have my two guests Mike Allen and Jim Vandehey with me today. Jim came up with something, so at first it'll just be Mike and then. If Jim comes in, we'll include him in the discussion.

They're here to discuss his new book Smart Brevity, which hit bookstores last week and is an absolutely fantastic read about how to indoctrinate Smart Brevity into his life at work, into his writing. Communications with family, friends and colleagues and at their presentations, whether in the Church club office or at a high school reunion, brief biographies of Mike and Jim and then we will delve into their book, their careers, their success with Politico and

axios

and some great practical tips on how to communicate better in a digital world Jim vandehey is the co-founder, CEO and chairman of

axios

and the co-founder and former CEO of Politico.

He was a journalist for The Wall Street Journal and the Washington Post. He won the Ben Bradley Award for editor of the year. he award in 2015. Jim is from Wisconsin, which if he joins us will become evident during the discussion. Mike Allen is co-founder of axios and previously co-founder of Politico, where he pioneered the morning newsletter Politico Playbook before becoming a journalist at Time. The New York Times Magazine The Washington Post and Richmond Times Dispatch Mike Hales of Orange County, California, which will not be evident during most of this discussion. He also graduated from Washington Lee University, which I think the last time I checked is the number one school. with the most graduates at Walker and Dunlop, so Mike, it's great to have another other W and Eller giving their opinion on wnd.

I was going to start this interview, Mike, by asking you what it was like to be born at Long Beach Memorial Hospital and what it was like. influenced his career, but that might not lead to a discussion of intelligent brevity, so let's start here. The genius behind Politico axios and the book about him. Smart brevity from my point of view is his customer focus, tell us how traditional media outlets like the Washington Post and the New York Times. are oriented versus the organization uh you and Jim have founded and led so successfully Willie that's a great question uh and Gemini were the perpetrators of it we were newspaper political reporters we were the worst offenders I'll come back to that in two seconds, but first I wanted to say how happy I am that wnl represents there and I really want to pause to tell you how much Gemini I have been waiting for this because your story, your focus on family and fitness is so inspiring and we have been interested in you and inspired by you and now very excited about this so thank you well first of all you and my mom were in Time magazine and it was super fun and it's a great connection point and I thought.

Your email response telling me that my mother was something of a Time magazine legend was about as nice as I've ever heard my mother called or anyone comment on her given her 20-year career. Magazine that covers the White House like the White House photographer that a lot of people listening wouldn't have known about if he hadn't given that description, but beyond that, the way you and I connected was the Wall Street Journal article on suitable CEOs. and how in that article I got criticized for having an eight-pack, not a six-pack, and you ended up on your brief axios morning commenting on that article, um, and one of the questions I have for you, Mike, is how do you do that every morning, 365 days a year.

From what I understand, you don't sleep much, which gives you plenty of time to read, but how do you put your axios together? Yes, thanks. Willian Diana Walker, absolutely one of the greats. and The Morning News, what I do, axio, I say, was part of the Genesis of our book, intelligent brevity, so as I was mentioning, Jim and I are the third co-author and our axios co-founder, Roy Schwartz, was. Roy worked for Gallup and has always made the world a better place, but Jim and I were basically paid to produce words that when you work at a newspaper, when you're an old-school political reporter, the longer your story, the bigger the story. will be the chances of If your story is even longer, you could enter it for a prize and if it's super long, you could win a prize, and why is that for? for so long incentives were the wrong thing that all media outlets were designed to help journalists help the editor keep time on site at an exact time when no one has time and so when Roy Schwartz jimbana high and I started axios five six years ago we decided to turn that around and the first two words of the axios manifesto are audience first and that is to think first about the person who will consume your speech or your Zoom that you are conducting or a note or an email electronic, well, I love the point that, well, the fact that you mentioned in the first class meetings because the magic of intelligent brevity is very applicable to anyone who is listening, whether it's a student, an intern or an employee of the first day.

Whether you're an aspiring leader or a tycoon like yourself, clever brevity can help you communicate

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efficiently and clearly and be heard through this crazy fog of words that comes to us all, so I want to back up for a moment, Mike. to the Political Playbook because I think the Political Playbook starts you on this path to intelligent brevity, um, but you came up with the Political Playbook where you basically hosted a morning briefing and in 2010, the New York Times Magazine published an article cover story about you and the The headline was the man the White House wakes up to talk for a moment about Playbook, how it was launched and then we'll discuss why you couldn't just take Politico and turn it into axios, the creation of axios and then intelligent brevity, yes. thank you Willie and a part of the Genesis of Playbook is something that will serve your listeners and that is that the email that I wrote in Politico for you is right 10 years sad as it is uh I have written a newsletter every morning. 365 days a year for 15 16 years and that gives you great insight into what people want, what they will consume and the political playbook.

My first newsletter was based on something that your listeners will find very resonant and applicable, which is that I thought of it as a human conversation with the people who read my newsletter and that is very practical advice for all your listeners on how to communicate with intelligent brevity. and it's imagining that you're a human being talking to a human imagine that because Willie here's the reality that when you and I are sitting together having a cup of coffee having a cup of Irish coffee there are social cues that prevent me from being boring if we're having breakfast if we're happy hour, I'm not going to use SAT words, what my grandmother Powers called Ten Dollar Words, I'm not going to use, so I'm not going to use fancy words, phrases, uh, the other day, one of our reporters wrote the aforementioned.

I'm like mentioned you would never say that in a bar I don't repeat myself when I talk to you person to person I don't tell you things that you already know you like because I want you to like me and I want you to like me Invite me to breakfast again, but then Willie thinks about it, all of us , journalists, especially all of us, when we get behind a keyboard, we do all those things, so the very practical advice I learned from Politico Playbook was don't think of yourself as a journalist writing a newsletter, think of yourself as a human being who is trying to connect with another human being and this could be a newsletter for your school, this could be an update for your team, this could be something for a non-profit organization, however you are trying to communicate , think about the other person while you're talking to them and our trick for this Willie is to read it out loud, whatever comes out of your laptop, whatever comes out of your office, whatever you're trying to get. someone to interact with reads it out loud and that's a magical process because you immediately realize that if you're using those 10 words, you immediately realize if what you're

saying

is a little confusing and mushy because the reality is that If you don't know what you're trying to say, the audience has no hope of doing it and the last thing you really notice is, if you take too long, if you get bored reading aloud, imagine. what you're doing to the person on the other end of the line, so one of the statistics that Mike came up with from some of my reading about how you ended up creating axios was that you and Jim looked at the page views of the articles that everyone You guys were writing in Politico and seeing that 80 of the people didn't get past page one, um, and that's the first thing that jumps out.

I've written 1200 words and we're seeing that 80 of the people don't do it. I even got page one of Beyond, but then you created Politico Pro, which for those who don't know, was a deep dive from an industry standpoint, so if you were in the healthcare industry, you could subscribe to Politico Pro and Politico Pro within Healthcare gave you a very deep dive into that and what the data showed was that behind that summary was the ability to dig even deeper and only five percent of people dug deeper to find out

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. information, even when it was segmented into its industry. which I also found surprising, so one of the biggest things about Politico was that you started to really analyze the data about what people really wanted to find right, you got it done, uh Willie, those were the lightbulb moments because it What we recognized was that all these beautiful words that we were so proud of and spent so much time on that no one was reading them, not even my mom, who when you looked at it researched the data that you're talking about, people were not reading the long stories and the lightbulb moment that was Willy and I think your listeners will relate to this if you think about a podcast if you think about an industry meeting a zoom a sermon whatever content you consume if you think about it Willie if you have a conclusion yes there's something memorable about any of those experiences it's a win, so the other side of the coin is whether you're the person communicating if you're writing an email if you're writing a letter if you're writing an update or a report to your boss, so for your team the reality is that they will remember one thing and ideally one thing will emerge from your content and therefore what does smart brevity do and what will smart brevity book do? . help your listeners do is lean into it and recognize that there is a thing, so the key to intelligent brevity is to figure out what that thing is, refine it, have a conversation, talk to the person next to you, talk with your partner about it. that you know it's clear and so and this is the trade secret this is the spoiler so just put it at the top of your letter or your memo or your email don't waste your time

saying

I hope things go well despite this crazy stuff.

Sometimes true, that does nothing for your listener and another fact that was illuminating is that you go to some of the biggest news organizations in the world, the places we all depend on for great foreign coverage, science coverage, other types of coverage 20 seconds 20 seconds is the amount of time the average person interacts with the average content, so if you don't catch me at the top, you've lost me, so you would identify these trends, if you want, from what that the consumer wanted. while you all were politicians, um and still decided to jump in and start axios, why couldn't you just take Politico and turn it into axios?

Yeah, so Politico is amazing, what they do, they cover politics and we're very proud of them. The big idea behind axios was to create a completely new, completely redesigned experience for the news consumer and a big organization like that had 500 people when we left, now it was a lot more than that, so that's not going to change overnight in the morning, but overnight we wanted to create. an experience design that revolves around the reader, the viewer, the listener, so we designed a whole new format that became smart brevity and, uh, the architecture, the tips and tricks, the how-to's are all in the book.

The smart brevity we said is that every story continues. to start as an iPhone screen, so we'll give you the power to drill down, but we'll start with a clean and efficient reading experience and for 99 content, an efficient experience is the best and a great example of this we have in the book is that I spoke with Mark Smith, a high school teacher who is in Falls Church, Virginia, very close to where I am. I live in Arlington, Virginia, axios headquarters is in Arlington, Virginia, that's where I'm based.this moment. Is it axios? HQ and I spoke to Mark Smith and when he was emailing parents he found that they either skipped his key points or couldn't remember them, he wasn't sure what they were because they kept asking him things that he had already answered in his email.

He gets my axios am morning newsletter and he saw that I put the key points in bold and he really tried it and it was magical that all of a sudden there was a lot better acceptance among his parents and what. he was trying to say in his email and here's the magic and here's the takeaway for his listeners: It wasn't so much that the key points were bold, but that he was thinking about them and highlighted what those key points were. and then once he knew what they were, it was easier for him to emphasize them and put it at the top and that's getting into this idea that people are going to remember one thing, so don't give them eight, don't let them choose, express your spot. clearly start from the top, grab me, have a clever provocation, have a way of getting my attention, tell me what's new, tell me why it's important, maybe back it up with an example, some statistics and if you want to give the person the power to go deeper. uh link to one of the excellent reports like your colleague's uh do or or ring to link to some original source material, but that architecture is a very powerful way to communicate one to many, whether you're one person communicating towards up or down. communicate to communicate, so axios was founded on a kind of short, smart, simple and direct premise, uh, it sounds really easy, very difficult in practice, like you quote in your book Mark Twain saying I didn't have time to write you a short letter, so I wrote to you a lot, how can you take your writers, your amazing researchers, and get them to write basically the way you've both described in this discussion, as well as the way they do the morning briefing about the axios, not every day, well, is it great? period and we asked them to think about the audience, think about the person on the other end of the line, it was funny, even the Pope, has talked about this, Pope Francis, talked about how nuns suffer because of how long the homilies are. and he said that people should cut back on homilies because think about it this way, a minister, a priest, has something very, very important to say, but if we are asleep, it will not have the desired effect, so we have a great story in our book . intelligent brevity about a pastor in Alexandria Virginia David Glade uh Jim vanderheim my co-author this you already know from axios well City and Church and David Glade was talking about some advice that he gave to his children and that advice can be summed up in five words . the next thing that's right do the next thing that's right, how's that for clever brevity and a great way to live?

Will you consider all the books you could have cited or the experts or all the things you could have said but instead said it in a memorable way, we're talking about it years later and here's the secret: you spent time thinking about it as something as memorable as doing the next right thing with words like that that don't come out the first time, that's the product of work and thought, and that's what we ask our journalists to do and what I urge their listeners to do. do as part of communicating more powerfully themselves is to think from the beginning to discover what they want to say. in a Sharp and memorable way of communicating it and then just saying it, spelling it out a little bit and then stopping and, uh, Willie, one way to summarize this is to start by thinking about not writing that at Axios headquarters if you walked. outside your office where you are doing this today on the wall in axios there is a saying that brevity is confidence, length is fear, yes that is exactly right and it is written in an old reporter's notebook that goes back to the beginning from axios. and the reason that idea is so powerful (brevity is confidence, length is fear) is that one thing I think you'll agree with in your professional life is that a lot of people are faking it, like If you were Willie, would you buy the idea that even a lot of people at the top of the game are faking it, yeah, I mean, it was interesting when you were on squawkbox last week on Wednesday, right after the CEO of Patagonia was asked if Ivan Chanard had donated all the profits. the company found well a 501c4 that will basically give away all the money to try to protect the environment and in that they asked him directly if he thinks there are a lot of people that are basically trying to scam. these ESG goals need to be more than what they are and he said very directly that there are a lot of corporations that say one thing and do another and we need some standards around that, but yeah to your point, sure and it's really one of the most important ways.

What we fake it is with words, we just throw out the words because we think that will hide the fact that either we don't really know the material or we don't really know the solution or we don't have the solution and that's why the long letter is easier to write because you haven't really thought about it, you haven't really done the work to understand the context, understand the nuances and that's part of the magic of intelligent brevity: they have to be book applications. smart and short, and the smart part is that if you've really thought it through and can communicate it clearly, you can talk to me like another human being, you don't have to sacrifice context and nuance, all of that can be baked. in and so you actually have a very sophisticated idea but you're communicating it in a crisp, clear, memorable and digestible way, so this book is short and smart right here, which I would highly recommend to anyone who's watching to come out and get this, um, everyone.

My senior team has read it and many of our customers will also receive a copy after this webcast is published. It's 28,000 two words long, Mike, which is actually shorter than Jamie Diamond's annual letter that he publishes at JPMorgan and I know it. that axios and axios HQ have worked with JP Morgan to take Jamie's 32,000 words and make them much more digestible and understandable, but I found it surprising that it was 28,000 two words in his book, which is shorter than Jamie writes every anus. which obviously, like Warren Buffett's annual letter, is widely regarded as one of those annual things that you must read to understand what's going on in the world we live in, so I'm in no way trying to disparage the Jamie's letter because I read it from start to finish, but at the same time it's also interesting that JP Morgan understood that there are some learnings from what you've done at Smart brevity that they could adopt to take Jamie's letter and communicate it to their client base in a moment. more digestible form, yes, well, that's true, a curious fact about those 28002 words.

Publisher Workman, who has been a great partner in this, told us that was the exact minimum that could contain the minimum number of words that would create a book that you could put in. between hardcovers and you can buy it on Amazon or buy it on smartrevity.com or buy it at a big independent bookstore, so we have one of the shortest books in the history of books about Jamie Diamond, there's a chapter on "we had fun." Here we call it a brilliant diamond and it talks about how we reduced it at the request of JP Morgan.

A lot of people, some people wanted the maximum, Jamie had the full 32,000 words, but to try to read it, he read Beyond Wall Street and People. like you, you'll read it in full, but if you go beyond the financial and real estate industry, you'll want a shorter version, it'll reach more people, so we're taking Jamie's vision for the feature as he says and putting it into a short and intelligent format. Put it in the four cores we talked about. You start with a preview that will catch my attention. You tell me what's new. You will tell me why it is important.

They're going to give me the power to dig deeper, as if that smart, brief architecture proved to have a whole new, broader audience for JB Diamond's letter, which had been famous on the street and now its vision for the future was shared even more broadly, so it shows. how by using intelligent brevity when communicating in a way that resonates with your audience, that will give you more power to be heard in the midst of this explosion of word fog that comes from all of us and I think that's true. Interesting Mike in the sense that I think a group of people could be listening to this, they would sit there and everything would be fine, that's how Axios has been able to crack the code in the media industry, but it doesn't apply to me.

It doesn't apply to my company and one of the things it says very clearly in the book is that sharp communications equals sharp strategy and when I think about the investors in Walker and Dunlop and when I meet with analysts and people like that, yes I'm rambling and confusing when you say that precise communication equals precise strategy, confusing communication you are basically lost and if I am confused in my communication, even not only with investors but with our strategy. A Walker and Dunlop salesperson meets with a client who isn't crisp and clear and goes a little off, so the

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ons within intelligent brevity are literally applicable to any type of point in the chain within companies.

Americans. No, that's a great point and this couldn't apply to something as simple as asking for a raise now you're not going to ask for a raise, but a lot of people ask you for one and we tend to go deeper, like if you're asking for a raise, my advice and Have you given more increases than me? So, I'll let you criticize this, but I would say what I've done, what I'm going to do and then I'll just stop, while the human tendency is to keep running our mouths we sink deeper, maybe even talk ourselves out of the race. , like how accurate is that, yeah, I mean, no doubt, people will sit there and eat first, they'll try to accommodate it and a lot of other things instead of coming out and saying it explicitly um while you're saying um, you know brevity is confidence, length is scary, so if you think you have to take 15 hours to get to the joke, um, chances are your audience isn't there anymore and they've found 15 things you need to refute in your introduction before you get to the topic instead of just saying this is what I think I'm worth.

I think it's great and you see it in sales too and I'd be interested to hear your point of view. about this, but what I sometimes see is a salesperson who has a great product and maybe even has a great ending and has made the sale. I'm watching the body language of the prospect, the person they're talking to and they're ready to sign, but then the person keeps talking and asks so many questions that eventually the prospect says, Oh, I'll think about it, whereas if they had stopped , they would have come out with an order, it certainly happens all the time.

Time passes all the time and it's actually painful to watch, as you know very well, and look, you bought and sold companies, you hired people, you bought services from people you were ready to go to after 10 minutes of the meeting. and now, suddenly, you're 40 minutes into the meeting, you've thought about 15 other alternatives and other things you could do with your time, and suddenly that sale doesn't exist anymore, so I think that's one of the big problems. , but I too Mike would harp on this for a second because people might read your book and say you have to be very direct, you have to get straight to the point and hit them right between the eyes and you are very direct in saying that you know that your communication you can't lose the flow, you can't lose the emotional part and that if it's all black and white and just kind of a bullet point pointed out there, then I've lost what Mike Allen has to add and therefore being able to maintain that cadence if he does. you want, even if you're using bullet points, it's super important, am I right?

So, well, very good, but, Willie, and one thing you'll see. uh, in uh, clever brevity, is that we really emphasize that you're a human being, not an algorithm, so it's a fun story about this. This is where you read something out loud once you've written it down once it's prepared, so this could be a plan for a zoom. meeting this could be a PowerPoint deck this could be a letter you're writing to someone this could be an email this could be any type of update part of the power of reading it out loud is that you make sure you're sounding like a human and not a robot, so the other night I was reading a proof of one of our newsletters and I called the editor and told him I know a secret and I told him that he didn't read the headline of that newsletter out loud because If you had , there would be paramedics that would be doing CBR on you because you would be out of breath and that's where you have a Smart Sharp idea that you're excited about and passionate about, that you believe in and then you communicate it in a human way. voice using everyday words that you and I would use over chips and salsa, that's its power, power doesn't come in a bunch of bold or bullet points like that, it's architectural elements that help you connect with your audience. connect with your reader because one of the things we discovered as we delved into brain science and eye tracking, studies that have beendone over the years, one thing we discovered right away is that whenever you come across a large amount of text a big block of text like, do you remember the days of print newspapers where you would open the newspaper and it would just be a sea of ​​text?

As journalists we used to call it a notebook dump because that's what we just took all of our typed notes on. They and they put them in the newspaper without thinking about the audience, so they have ways of breaking up the text and that can be using the key points in bold like that high school teacher did, having some bullet points, having some numbers. uh we even like emojis and the way we use emojis is not OMG it's to help you see that there's a logical architecture to what you have in front of you so I like the bullseye, the Direct Hit Emoji , because it shows you, uh, key point I like a brain when we say uh explaining how something works um we'll use the Emoji brain as a light bulb for a new idea to zoom in and really get detailed I'll use a microscope to zoom out and, uh, I could use a telescope to give you an overview.

You could use a frame, so they are always just a sign to the reader. I thought this is worth it. Now there is a very logical division here. I recognize that if all I do is throw words at you, you won't do it, you'll miss it all, so I'm breaking it down into digestible chunks that allow you to Dive into the Big Ideas and come and be either a teacher, be it a minister, be it whether it's a business person, whether it's someone with a nonprofit or a university, come and say thank you for making me smarter today, so Mike the emoji comment is really good before I get there because I want to tell you what I did. this weekend after reading that in your book, but before we get to that I just want to make your comments on the presentations and the PowerPoints, there's not one person listening.

Today who is not sitting in a presentation from a colleague, a consultant or someone who proposes to buy something who has not sat there and wanted to tear out every strand of hair that was on his head reading a PowerPoint presentation of reading lines and you are very clear in saying get rid of the words go to the images and convey images and then talk to the images in your presentation and very few people do that and yet it is one of the main takeaways I learned from the book you are going to one of the graphics in the book, right, yeah, so smartly, brevity in your presentations and this is a whole chapter that will help you make a powerful presentation and you're right about the text on the slides.

So we've talked about how we know that if you see a bunch of text you tune out, that's equally true if it's on a slide and if I'm talking and I have a slide behind me that's full of words, one of two things are going to happen. :uh, you'll tune me out because you'll probably try to process all the words on the slides or the slide will be completely wasted if you only put a couple of words on the slide. slides four five six words on the slide that will help the listener focus on what that big idea is, they'll know what their conclusion is and so it'll be there almost as a framework for you, uh, so they know what you've thought about. through your presentation that what you're going to present is worth their time and that they're going to listen to your talk track rather than trying to sort it out and it's about signaling to your audience that you're being respectful of their time as well. that you mentioned that we published this book, uh, clever, which is twenty-eight thousand two words long and, as you know, thank you for reading axios AM and PM and Finish Line and our other great Axios newsletters, as you may have noticed.

At the top of each newsletter we give a number of minutes and a number of words and that does two things: it disciplines the writer, it shows me what I'm asking of my audience and I can almost always reign in as what I want. I had planned it originally, but the second thing Willie does is just let you know that I respect your time. I know I'm asking you to take time out of a busy day and I'm disciplining myself by putting what time number is in there. because the ideal entry point and intelligent brevity will help you achieve it.

The ideal point to enter is I won't waste my time. I will not insult your intelligence and if it is your audience, if it is your boss, if it is your team. whether it's internal stakeholders whether it's external stakeholders if you're giving, like you said, a class reunion speech if you're respectful to the audience, talk to them intelligently, talk to them like humans have a great idea and let Of course, start there, don't leave. through a lot of dead ends, all that, you're going to be a memorable popular speaker writer, so continue with the speech that you mentioned in the book very clearly, that there's a reason why the average Ted talk is 16 minutes long and I listen to Jim's Ted Talk and it's 15 minutes and two seconds okay so there's and and we have an event in a couple of weeks at wnd and someone came to me and said our keynote is going to be a fireside chat . with to be able to do it because I told the person moderating that this is really going to push you and I don't know how we can get people out of their seats and I also think that four-person panels are a complete waste of time.

I've never sat at a conference and listened to four people on stage do anything other than waste my time, but you talk about that, you also know that your morning briefing, which is your podcast, is 12 minutes long. long um and then I should be able to read your morning report in about two or three minutes so I mean time is of the essence so let's get back to the Emoji thing I just want to talk about for a second so I read. your book and I'm sitting there and I'm texting with some people and I'm not detailed in the text, but I write a lot of text, I send a lot of text messages and this weekend I said I would try using emojis instead . what words this weekend and texting people and the responses were incredible.

Mike likes, instead of writing three sentences to say something, I use Emoji, a couple of words, an emoji and immediately the person comes back with this big thing like you know, fireworks going off and everything. I thought this works, they're happy to be able to express it, but the part that I thought was so interesting was that I really had to stop and think about what I wanted to say with an image and that's exactly it. to what you're saying it's hard like I just want to write it crossed my mind I just texted hey I'll see you at the pharmacy then and it'll be a lot of fun but instead if I could just sit there and Say you know the pharmacy is the same, you know I don't know Coca-Cola and a big smile on this, they understand exactly what I'm trying to convey in a couple of images and it's much more impactful, yes, very true, and you mentioned the firecracker that I like.

The rocket is good, what looks like a cannonball could be a bomb so you have to be careful with that. In your little experiment, did you come up with a favorite emoji that you found very expressive, efficient, useful, muscular, you know what's funny? The one I use more than in the past is the thank you one with two things together that say thank you for that and I think that's probably a good thing because as much as I say thank you very much, I don't think these people are waiting. I say thank you for meeting us at the meeting at the supermarket or whatever the case may be, yeah, no, not a good point and uh, to get back to your uh, let's do emails and then speeches, uh, email, story funny about email and uh.

How's this for definitive, intelligent brevity? The first president I covered was President George W. Bush and his chief of staff was Andy Card and he was called Secretary Card because he has been Secretary of Transportation and throughout that time that secretary. Card was the chief of staff and one day we will be able to see this in the National Archives. Every email he received. One of the busiest email inboxes in the world. He only received three responses. If someone on staff sent an email. Andy Card, they got one of three answers: yes, no, or C B, that's brevity and that's muscular, so let's talk for a moment about that thing that was in the white house.

Now take it to Mike Moral at British Petroleum because I think BP adopted not only smart. briefly, your axios Avid users, but they're also axios HQ Avid users, which I want to talk about in two seconds, but I'll talk for a moment about Bob Gates at the Department of Defense, Mike Morrell at BP, the bottom line from the principle, all that for a moment because I think the way BP incorporated all of that and some of the smart, succinct things make people understand that you can really take this and incorporate it into your daily communication strategy.

Yes, BP and Jeff Morrell were real pioneers of this and quickly became evangelists for this, so what happened with BP was that many of their executives told us that we love the axio style like we love the axios newsletter and Jeff Morrell, who was someone who had been a Pentagon prosecutor and former ABC News in the White House. The journalist realized that the axios format was very popular and powerful inside and said: What would happen if I tried it? So we worked with BP and that was the birth of the axios HQ software that we have that helps you communicate with intelligent brevity, but originally it was just uh Jeff. and their team with email and what they discovered was that you put a piece of content in a morning update, anything from HR, anything that used to be long and wordy, that if you put it in smart brevity, suddenly there's a great peak in the open rate there is a huge increase in acceptance, people know what they are reading, instead of skipping it, and they added this team by team, they started with an update, just for CEOs, a leadership team and grew up. it grew until it was company-wide and they found that so many more people read their internal communications, so many people knew what the company wanted them to know that it became a very powerful tool and other heads from other divisions. other functions, as they say in BP, we all turned to Jeff, all looking at him, he came to be seen as this great Seer and this Pioneer because this form of communication was very popular and I just have to, uh, you mentioned it. one of his former bosses, Secretary Robert Gates, who helped influence Jeff's style.

The military has great expression and it really works, but very few people do, so the military teaches, like you said. Bluff, from the beginning, b-l-u-f, is great in theory, it rarely is. practiced, but the bottom line from the beginning works for all of us because it gives them the punchline, it gives them the one thing that you want to remember because the only thing we know is that they will only remember one thing, put it up and uh You'll have a much better chance of having success with your communication, so beyond the I love the bluff advice.

I know you also gamify some of your editing. Talk for a moment about how you gamify your editing. I thought this was fantastic, yeah, thanks. Willie and this is uh axios HQ, which is the software we have for organizations, anyone who wants to communicate one to many and you open cshq and it gives you the template that I had when I start my newsletter in the morning and that helps. you communicate with muscular, memorable, intelligent brevity, so what my colleagues at axios HQ did was data scientists took all of the axios content, the entire six-year-old library of axios content, and used it to develop algorithms. that can help any of Viewers of this webcast communicate with intelligent brevity, so if you open it, it will help you write a strong subject line, it will help you write a sharp provocation, and it will help you make sure that your potential client is something a human can read aloud. instead of drowning you out, it helps you with why it's important, you paste some text in there and maybe let's say let's divide this to buy the numbers or we could say this in an easier way or here's a satirical word that you could say in a clearer and larger way is the subject line.

We'd like a subject line to be three to five words and the reason for that, Willy, is that's how much space you have in someone's iPhone inbox. your target audience, right, you want them to see it and get caught up in what you have to say in your email and after three to five words, it's all for nothing and those should also be strong, powerful words, so one of the secrets of intelligent brevity. is that the shortest words in the English language tend to be the strongest, all strong, high-pitched words, so when I write a headline or the subject line of an email, if so, if a word has three syllables , I'll see if I can make it two syllables, if it's two syllables I'll see ifI can make it one syllable because I know that it will be stronger and that is why that strong subject line because as one of the Magics one of the discoveries What we have done is that if you do not write the subject line well, all the others Words are a waste, because I'll never see them, so our tendency is to make the subject line an afterthought, while we say, uh, think about it. axis HQ helps you do that and for anyone who wants to communicate you need to align, your team's axios HQ can help and Willie, as if you have experienced it yourself, since the pandemic we all have to communicate in totally different ways in any organization that is is communicating.

The same way I did before Covet is losing the battle because if you have one person working remotely, even part of the time, you have a big gap to make sure that everyone is aligned, everyone is connected, so we practice, we practice well, we preach in axios. Every Sunday night, Jim Vandehei, our CEO, sends a newsletter with five important things to the 550 people in our company and what he does. He helps everyone know what our great goal is. Our mission. It helps everyone know what each of our teams is doing. everyone lined up Roy Schwartz, co-author of Smart Brevity and president of axios, now the CEO of axios HQ, he does this with all of his direct reports, they all send him an update on axios HQ using our format and what does that Willie.

The magic of this is that when people send you a regular update on Cadence weekly, when you have a one-on-one conversation with them, when you have time with them. You're stuck and you may be talking about the future, you can talk about building and growing instead of what's in the rearview mirror because something we have learned at axios and this is something that Jim Benhai lives and I have learned from him. is that you can almost detect someone's success by the amount of time they spend thinking about the future and instead of thinking about the past and so having regular internal communication that actually HQ helps you do helps you to make sure the time you're Spending your human time is about the future so a couple of things in practice for that and then I want to go to headquarters for a second so I went to DC last week and I had a lot of meetings with clients and partners. congressmen Senators, blah, blah, blah, so I was done with Washington and wrote before reading his book.

I wrote a long email to everyone within Walker informing them of my trip to DC and uh, I'm a bullet-shaped person and I try to stay very grounded. uh, Chris Ogden, uh, now the late Chris Ogden, who died tragically a couple of weeks ago in Hawaii in an accident, but the former Time magazine writer, uh, helped me tremendously when I was applying to business schools. . Mike, I showed him my business school essays and Chris. I took out a red marker and I just went and I just terrorized, terrorized my essay which I thought was a great piece of work and I learned from Chris how to be and how to be concise, so to speak, so it was pretty concise, but I submitted it. and then I read his book, so I said I wanted to know how many people were really ready, so we did a quick survey of Walker and Dunlop employees on Friday saying that Willie's email went out on Thursday.

Did you never open it? Did you open it? and flip through it, did you read half or did you read the whole thing? So far, after sending it out to 1,500 employees, we've received 720 responses and of the 720, 520 presumably read the whole thing, which I'll take a lot of credit for. What do you know, a large majority of them actually say that they read everything. I'm not sure if I really believe that, but the point is, then I sat there after reading your book and, as you saw, because I sent it to you, I said, you know, I'm going to start Monday morning with a week of walkers and I'm going to say the four main things we need to focus on this week from the things that came up last week, I sent them to you and like you I can tell it's choppy, it's bullet-pointed and it's out there, so I would just introduce your book, It is a user manual for communication and it has so many good things that are very practical for all our communication, whether it is what we are doing back and forth, talking to each other, whether it is a PowerPoint presentation, a presentation at a conference or the daily communication in internal or external written words, yes, no, that's very true and I would just turn that around a little bit or Modify that a little bit Willy and I would say it's a user manual to be listened to and that's what you got with those four points and Walker's week, that people saw what you wanted them to remember, they're not going to remember this, no one will, but to sum it up and you thought about those four points probably more than you gave my entire week. in Washington, no doubt and and and and now you're seeing the power of that and the results you're going to get from those people.

I'll be aligned, people will be inspired, so I want to close with axios for a second and then I want to move on to your view of the political world we live in because well, I've got you on this, it's just me. I can't pass up that opportunity, Mike, but before we get to that benchmark, Jeff Bezos bought the Washington Post a couple of years ago for $250 million. Cox Communications bought axios for more than double that price very recently, so I first Let's say it's amazing to turn old media into new media and what you and your partners have done when it comes to creating a new way of communicating with your audience and really turning media and digital media on its head, um, and I think That's just an incredible credit to the three of you for what you've created.

My question to you, Mike, is: how much of the asking price? how much of the purchase price is for axios in terms of content versus axios HQ? is related to technology, yes, Cox Enterprises, which is a fantastic partner that has journalism and its bones and blood, so Cox Enterprises goes back to its founder being in Dayton, Ohio, in the late 19th century he bought what then it was the Dayton Evening News. they became the Dayton Daily News and built this incredible media footprint across the country when I was in the papers we brought the Cox news service directly to our terminals.

Cox Enterprises has now moved into other areas of automotive cable and away from Legacy Media. but now we're excited to partner with them on future media and they looked at us and said oh, like this is a company built for the future. They especially like local axios. We now have Axios reporters on the ground. 24 cities across the country will soon be 30 cities, all with a morning news bulletin for those cities, whether it's Des Moines, San Francisco, Tampa or Seattle, with smart brevity that covers your news in a crisp, efficient and reliable way, so axios and Cox Enterprises are very aligned. in our long-term thinking about the importance of journalism and that is why they are investing more in the future of axios, they are the dream partner and they said we like what you are doing, we want to do more, do it faster and we said we are good, Another thing about what you said at the top that the value that has been created is a lot.

I'm grateful for my partners, Jim Benai and Rory Schwartz, but the value that's been created is the hundreds of Axians, as we call our colleagues, over those six years who helped refine Intelligent Brevity, here we make it clear that Intelligent Brevity It started as an idea and has been refined and is now available to you among hardcover books because of the hard work of our colleagues, so we had a great team of innovators. Pioneers when we started, we decided to go work for axios. There were much easier places to go. uh you are an entrepreneur and you yourself are a pioneer and you know that many times people can make an easier decision they could choose many easier places to work people did something difficult what they came to we are grateful for it and now we can all benefit from it in the smart book ready sir two quick things one all employees of axios own shares so if Mike and his partner sold the company all the CEO of ACT would you call them axioms axios yes axians they all benefited of that?

The second thing is that all profits from Smart brevity go to a foundation which is axios. created to try to recruit and keep more diverse writers in the world of media in the world of writing in the journalism profession, which is absolutely fantastic. Well, I really appreciate you mentioning it because our profits go to the axios fellowship program which, like you said, brings journals from underrepresented backgrounds early in their career, allows us to pay them to join our newsroom and one of the key points in uh axios in a clever short summary of the book that I think will really resonate with viewers of this webcast: we have a whole section on inclusive communications and we say if you're not communicating inclusively and that can cover all types of diversity that make a company stronger, you are not communicating effectively and I have a little preview for you, a fascinating chapter of this book that was written by Roy Schwartz, one of the three founders of axios.

In one of the three intelligent brevity authors, he writes about his dyslexia and how when he came home from school after finishing. his MBA when he became a consultant when he was Gala that his dyslexia forced him to communicate efficiently and he had to summarize things and that is part of what became the magic of intelligent brevity that is now replicable in our advice and tricks. for your listeners, viewers, we even have a cheat sheet to help you and your team communicate more powerfully, so finally, in a quick overview of politics, I could talk to you for another hour about this, but I want two .

One of the things, when you were squatting last week, one of the things that I thought was so fascinating was that you practiced what you preach and was that they asked you to open up about what President Biden was going to go to the UN and talk about, and instead of sitting there and pontificating about all the things that you know he could go talk about what you said that was what I would be paying attention to this and when I went back and listened to it again, Mike, I was fascinated by how you sing, that It tells people where are you going to look for what's not here?

I'll tell you all the things I know because I talked to everyone in the White House about what he's going to talk about and I'll tell you the five bullets you were on. I was paying attention to this and I thought it was very captivating and it's exactly how you write axios am it's like these are the things you need to know today when you were speaking verbally you went to this is what I would be paying attention to and it immediately caught everyone's attention, so that was point one, move on because I see you want to say something about that.

No, I was just going to say real quick, you're amazing, thank you for picking up on that and that's one of the What you're going to learn smartly and briefly is that we talked about the importance of T's. Grab me two of the first words in the book because we want to practice. what we preach. Hold me. Therefore, the things I like to say are the ones that are reported. show, I've got a scoop for you, here's something new, here's something that's going to be news tomorrow and those are all things that your listeners and viewers can apply, no matter what kind of update they're doing, catch me, here it is.

I've got the goods, this is going to be worth your time, so what you said about Trump, which I found fascinating, was that the more his legal and financial problems mount, the quicker he declares a candidacy, yeah, which I would be on the lookout for. Donald Trump will declare for president shortly after the midterm elections and Willie is Donald Trump, so who knows? He might change his mind. Well, we can tell you what our reports show: People around him expect him to announce his candidacy for president soon after the election. The midterms partly because these investigations get heated like you said because he sees it as protection and then he can say the investigations are political, but here's something new, here's a scoop, Willie, it's one of the reasons why I would see.

For him to do it fairly soon after the midterms is that he doesn't want other people to have an advantage. He knows that after Ron DeSantis it seems that he can be re-elected governor of Florida easily and that after being re-elected he could announce that there are other Republicans who are going to want to leave, one of the reasons why Donald Trump I think we will do it sooner rather than later or at least the people around them expect them to do it sooner rather than later so that no one else gets ahead, since my grandmother said that he will be in front in that race and then, in the midterms, you know, he was going to be a red wave, it's not going to be a red bleed. if you're thinking that or a red truck you have whatever you want to play with but they're going to get 20 seats in the House and the Democrats are looking right now from the numbers that you said last week right now I think it's 68 62 39 um which one um I don't know where the other one is that uh two things like the first um I used to say there wasn't anynow I found one but very few Democrats will argue that they will hold the House of Representatives.

Republicans only need to pick up five seats and they could win as many as you mentioned the range is 15 to 25 of what they could win so it looks like barring any surprises at this point. uh it looks like we're going to have a speaker Kevin McCarthy from California uh what I said before was that there was a time when it looked like a red tsunami and people were talking about them winning 40 seats, now it's more like the Red Wave uh uh again and better than the Red Wave that we had a few weeks ago and then on the Senate side uh people will now tell you that it's a toss-up that uh the two sides have come and gone, but you can take it seat by seat, race by race, state by state and very easily defend either one, but what that means is that, Willie, the chances are that you're going to have a Republican house, you're going to be You're going to have divided government, you're going to have a Democratic president, at least one Republican House of Congress, and that will mean a political war and not much achievement in the next two years, and your election of Barack Obama in September 2006, if that makes sense, so your dark horse for 2024 in which no one is thinking right now.

September 2006, no one would have bet on Barack Obama as a senator. Freshman Senator Barack Obama, who is the person who could get there and suddenly change the outlook for 2024. Yes, I'm wiser than I was in 2006, so I'm

less

likely to make a choice like that, but here There is a conclusion for you that, for some reason, the nominee is. not President Biden, I would look outside of Washington to see there are a lot of Democratic governors, look at Governor Whitmer in Michigan, uh, Governor Newsom in my home state of California, Democratic political governor in my home state, uh and uh, add in Pennsylvania, add in North Carolina, so the bottom line of that between those lines is that it's going to be a pitched battle in which no one is going to postpone that, uh, it's going to be that if for some reason it's not President Biden, It's going to be a real fight on the Republican side right now, President Trump has a lot.

As for the cards with the Republican base, the party is more triumphant than the day it lost because of all the work it has done in the primaries to get its nominees in and there is something to note is that at least in the beginning other Republicans are not If they are going to want to be angry with him, they are not going to want to repudiate Trumpian ideas because they are not going to want to be attacked by him, as a result, the Republican Party is going to sound very Trumpist for at least a while.

Mike Allen, what a total Joy, the Smart Privy book is fantastic, you are amazing, keep doing everything you are doing. I hope to see you next time I'm in DC and I really appreciate you spending an hour with me. Well, Willie Walker, thanks for that and if you're a listener watching this webcast, go to smartbravity.com, you'll see other data and other tips there. It's also very easy to be smart. Gravity from independent booksellers, the big ones, there are many options. and Willie, thank you for inspiring my co-authors Roy Schwartz, Jim Bennah High and me, your attention to the Fitness family and your success in business, are eye-opening, all worthy of emulation, so thanks for this conversation, thanks Mike, to everyone, thanks for joining. us this week see you again next week my guest next week is Molly Bloom from Molly's game, who ran the largest private poker game in America until the feds shut it down and there's a book, uh, there's a book she also wrote. like a movie made by Aaron Sorkin about Molly's game and I can't wait to have Molly on the webcast next week, so Mike, thanks again everyone.

I hope you have a great day, thanks Willie smartbravity.com.