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Saturday, June 24, 2006


This week's featured woman entrepreneur or executive is Susan Harrow, CEO of Harrow Communications and PRsecrets.com (San Francisco, CA).

about PRsecrets.com
Harrow Communications & PRsecrets.com is a media coaching firm for Fortune 500 CEOs, executives, coaches, successful entrepreneurs, and best-selling authors. Harrow's clients have appeared on Oprah, 60 Minutes, GMA, CNN, MSNBC, and in all the top publications including Parade, Time, The New York Times, The Wall Street Journal, USA Today, Forbes, Inc. etc. Harrow is author of Sell Yourself without Selling Your Soul, The Ultimate Guide to Getting Booked on Oprah and Get a 6 Figure Book Advance.


Susan's Top 10 Tips.


Words are the ambassadors of our intentions. Once you open your mouth to speak to anyone anywhere, you are auditioning. You are vying for their attention, for their time, for their commitment to you and whatever you have to promote. Here are 10 ideas you can use today to become a Soundbite Genius...

1. Choose the right words.
Soundbites are the lightning flashes of who you are and the message you want to get across. To say what you mean and mean what you say, develop your soundbites word for word. The process of developing your soundbitesis about peeling away the unnecessary to arrive at the essential. But before you peel....

2. Acknowledge 6 of the most important things in stories and life: beauty, poetry, music, timing, truth and nuance.
As a coach, I'm immersed in the squeezing down of concepts into a few pithy phrases that catch attention. Recently, I was talking to a client whose stories were already sifted into simplicity. That day I read a quote on the internet that said, "Simplify things to their simplest form, but no simpler." She had. But the result was more like pulp than ripe fruit. I asked for the expanded version so I could taste their full flavor and help her decide how they should be juiced down.

3. Create 6 dynamic soundbites.
In order to speak your way to the hearts and minds of people, you should have about six soundbites or talking points. Soundbites are the essential things you want to convey. They are memory nuggets, or blurbable ideas designed to be easy for your audience to digest. You can incorporate these six juicy jewels in any conversation. They can consist of anecdotes, facts, statistics, stories, or something unlikely, unusual, controversial, shocking, funny, humorous, romantic, poignant, emotionally moving, or dramatic. These six things will make your audience get their rear in gear to dash out to buy your product or service, choose you for a project or spokesperson, invest in your company, or pick up the phone right now to order whatever you are selling. More than that, they promise and deliver something worthwhile.

I try to view these soundbites as a new form of language-haiku versus open verse, a Zen fountain versus a mountain stream, flowers in a windowsill box versus a field of poppies ready to take you to a land deep in the opiated imagination. It is important to savor the lushness of nuance and the musical flow of language while shaving off unimportant details.

4. Make potent points.
Keeping to your most potent points makes any media, job, or venture capital interview move forward more smoothly. Jane Swigart Ph.D, wrote her book, "The Myth of the Perfect Mother" to help mothers parent without guilt. To convey the difficulty and complexity of motherhood, she came up with some key phrases like, "Being a mother is like asking half the population to do brain surgery without sending them to medical school." And, "There is a myth that women are divinely prepared for care giving." Both phrases are short, to the point and can be spoken in less than 10 seconds.

5. Speak in soundbites to everyone.
Getting key phrases for concepts and ideas across clearly is central to all communication. As a fun practice try to shave off any extraneous details during conversation in your everyday life. In Errol Morris' film "Fog of War" former Secretary of Defense Robert McNamara said, "Never answer the question that is asked. Answer the question you wish were asked." Begin to train yourself to speak only what you want others to hear. In this way you'll be shaping others' perception of you-which is the essence of good media and meetings.

6. Answer the first interview question with your sermonette.
In a 1989 interview on the NPR show Fresh Air veteran TV journalist David Brinkley said, "Everyone of them [his guests] will arrive in the studio with some little sermonette in mind, and determined to deliver it. So one thing I do is first ask them a dull, boring question like, what do you think about this. And let them deliver their little sermonette. And then we get to the hard core of what we're here to talk about." Your first and last points have the most impact so plan and deliver your sermonettes no matter what you're asked.

7. Frame your ideas for your audience.
One of my clients, Jennifer O'Neil, a film producer and director and author of "Decorating with Funky Shui" explained that when shooting background footage (b-roll) she uses a technique called "grounding." To "ground" the camera must end definitively on an object or scene that signals the viewer that that segment is over. I suggested to her that she probably also used the opening footage to "ground" or shape the beginning of how she wanted a viewer to perceive the scene. In this way you orient your audience to the scene or the material you want them to focus on.

You can apply the same concept to soundbites. Your opening words set the stage for what you want to convey, your final words signify the close, how you want your audience to remember what you've told them. Use your opening and closing statements to anchor your audience to the information you want them to grasp. That way you shape the way they think about your product, service or cause.

8. Tell people what to do.
I love mystery, but this isn't the place for it. Don't leave your audience guessing. Be forthright about the action you want them to take by letting them know why your product, service, company or cause is necessary for them to have a complete and happy life now. What gap does what you have to offer fill? Be direct in pointing this out so there is no doubt.

9. Find your own voice.
Your voice is as personal as your thumbprint. You may not recognize it as such, but your pets, neighbors, loved ones and colleagues do. You use phrases and have mannerisms that are like the billboards that holler over city highways. Ask your friends and family what your billboards are. They'll be able to tell you right away. Ask yourself which of these patterns should be amplified, and which should be toned down. Do you have a signature story that you tell over and over again? These stories are one way we frame our lives. Begin to notice how you talk about your experiences.

10. Live your words.
Get to the point with clarity and insight. The Latvian violinist Gidon Kremer said of composer Astor Piazzolla's music, "I don't think it's [the music] always about embellishment. I don't think it all can be expressed rightly just gliding on the surface of convenient rhythms. This music can't be in fact performed, it has to be lived. And I always can distinguish if someone is flirting with Piazzolla as a convenient item of our commercial industry or if someone really lives the life or the heartbeat of the music of this great composer."

It's the same with you and your soundbites. Are you living the heartbeat of what you're saying, what you're representing? If not, we hear your false notes, your commercial intent. If so, we know in an instant when your music is true.


Contact Information

Susan Harrow
CEO PRsecrets.com
web: http://www.prsecrets.com
blog: http://www.prsecrets.com/publicityblog.html
harrowcom@prsecrets.com
415.256.8060


A big thanks to Susan for her wise words.




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