Laddering Down Your Ideas: Using 3 Short Phrases to Share and Get Buy-In for Your Message
⏪ Last time, I wrote about how to assess your communication style to find your natural tendencies, then craft stronger messages and content by leaning into strengths and addressing areas to improve. That's here.
⏩ Today, I want to talk about a concept I'm calling "laddering down," meant to help your thinking connect more deeply with others.
My communication archetype is an evangelist. I speak emotionally through stories, and I can often be found urging people to think differently. As a lifelong creative, it's common for me to jump all the way to my idea, past the argument for my thinking that others might need to hear, landing on the conclusion I've reached already. My passion takes over, as does my impatience for anyone who "doesn't get it."
That communication style creates a problem for me:
It's easy for me to leave you behind.
Early in my career, I would make huge leaps in logic in my writing, my speaking, my podcast episodes. I would miss key points along the way that you may have needed to hear first to then embrace my ideas. Basically, I could get you fired up in the room no problem. The question was always whether you'd actually adopt my ideas and apply them to your work.
Maybe you've endured this too. You thought they would care about an idea, but the response to your content is muted. You believe they should adopt a change, apply a concept, and generally make moves using your ideas, but do they? You were told they were eager to learn more from you, but then ... crickets.
How do we ensure our ideas move people so much, they care and they act? We want to change the world, but can we change their next action?
Fixing my problem (and maybe yours) began with a simple switch I forced myself to make, one which I'm still learning to master: rather than try to get one single moment of buy-in, we can get lots of tiny moments of agreement. (Turns out, that's what a great keynote speech—a project I'm quite familiar with—actually does. It secures small moments of agreement, one after another, to lead you along the speech.)
"Are you trying to achieve this? Right. And you're doing this and that and that to achieve it? Yep. But you're encountering these problems, no? Oof. So if that's the case, then it follows that..."
Small moments of buy-in, beat after beat, moment after moment, to secure the big buy-in we need at the end. They "get it," they love you, they care about your ideas, and they actually use your thinking in their world—or hire you to help them do so.
Too often, when we're passionate, creative, or fluent in Our Thing, we struggle to get others to see it the way we do. We're too close to it. We're already at the end of the journey, but others are just starting theirs. Making matters harder, we didn't arrive to our ideas through a slow, plodding process. Your last idea arrived because of some combination of years and years of experience meeting a single moment where something hit you. Next, however, you need to craft the logical argument as to why others would arrive to a similar conclusion as you.
A creative realization
Earlier this week, I was talking to a remarkable client of mine. He's an established speaker, author, and entrepreneur from Australia. He and I have been doing important, foundational work to clarify his message by turning his expertise and his perspective into a distinct, tightly articulated premise for his work. We've found a big idea he wants to own, and now we're busying ourselves constructing the argument he can make on his website, in his guest appearances, through his content, and most notably for his business, through a keynote speech we're co-developing. That's when he told me:
"Man, I love those three phrases you hit people with. You go back to back to back, and it's like..." (mimes the mind-blown motion).
Wait, what three phrases?, I thought.
"Yeah, they take me on this awesome journey with barely any words, and I'm going, 'Yep to that. YES to that next one. Oh my GOSH, yes to it ALL!'"
He's talking about securing tiny moments of agreement. Three of them, actually. Through tiny bursts of language.
Let's call this "laddering down." You have a surface-layer means of connecting with others based on a surface-layer change they can agree to make with you. Then, you go one level deeper. Then deeper one more time. Each has a different purpose, in order. You help them reach the deeper insights you bring, the foundational message you share, by getting two smaller moments of agreement first to arrive at the toughest ask third.
My client was referring to three phrases of mine, which you've maybe heard from me too:
1. Don't market more. Matter more.
2. Think resonance over reach.
3. Don't be the best. Be their favorite.
The thing is, I'd never consciously considered what these are doing for folks or why this list is, happily, the right order to say them. My client showed me that I was unknowingly taking you down this ladder, where each line takes you deeper and deeper. The first is easiest to agree with, then comes the next, then the last one.
Each line represents a change. There's a before and an after, tightly articulated.
Don't market more. (BEFORE) Matter more. (AFTER)
Think resonance over reach. (You're currently obsessing over reach. Flip the script. That'd be better.)
Don't be the best. (This thing you've long tried to be or others told you to become or people convinced us we need to convey through our marketing to get picked.) Be their favorite. (The very desirable AFTER we're... um... after.)
Three lines, each with a before and after moment.
Three changes, suggested in the order others need to hear it.
Three moments of agreement to take people on a journey.
Let's break down why this works. As I go, please think about your versions. What three little phrases do you say or could you create?
✅ Don't market more. Matter more.
My audience (hi, that's you—I'm a big fan, btw) might not walk the earth thinking, "I should stop trying to be the best. I should be their favorite." Starting with that phrase wouldn't make sense.
You might also NOT think about putting resonance over reach just yet either. That can't lead.
But you likely DO think about your marketing and how to connect deeper with others. If I'm going to align with you first before walking with you the rest of the journey, then I better meet you where you're at: "Don't market more. Matter more."
Ask yourself:
What is your audience already thinking about?
What's their current approach to that now?
What do they already wish was happening, but isn't?
My audience (oh hey, buds!) arrives to me thinking about marketing.
My audience (ciao, amici!) tends to do lots and lots and lots of stuff in their marketing.
And my audience (hola, amigos!) wishes more of their marketing was beloved by others. They wish it connected better, deeper, more. They wish it mattered more.
Thus, consider this change. "Don't market more. Matter more." Can we agree we all want it? That should feel easy. Of course we want it! It's an easy moment of buy-in for me to secure to start unhooking you from existing beliefs and realities, NOT by critiquing anything foundational just yet, but by challenging some loosely held beliefs. Agreeing to the first change I request of you doesn't feel like a huge leap or scary step. Moment of buy-in #1, secured.
If we agree, we're aligned. If we're aligned, I'm starting to resonate and can continue to move you down the ladder.
✅ Think resonance over reach.
IF you want to matter more so you can market less, THEN let's embrace what that requires. We have to resonate more deeply than we are now. But where is that time, energy, and initiative coming from? It has to come from somewhere. We can't just add time and resources magically to our plate. I think we steal from all that time we spend obsessing over reach. (Today I saw a person on social media who re-shares his own posts using a shell account with zero followers, which for some reason was under his own name. Imagine if he took all the effort he spends doing that and probably trying other gimmicks to get his ideas to spread, and reinvested it back into developing ideas people actually cared about, instead of continually trying to get dud rockets into orbit.)
Anyway, we needlessly obsess over reach, often to little to no benefit to our businesses too. We're losing the script. We're outta whack. Rearrange the priorities. Resonance over reach.
Even if the only agreement I secure from you is the agreement to hear me out, that's a positive step. Now I can define reach and resonance. Now I can talk about what resonance feels like and why it matters. And so on. (This counteracts my natural urge to leap all the way to my ideas before you're ready: I'm getting permission to continue towards the conclusion each step of the way, rather than just shout about my conclusions.)
IF we agreed to the first line ("Don't market more, matter more") THEN we might be able to agree to the second ("Think resonance over reach.")
But where does this lead us? Where is this going? What is the best-case landing place for all of this?
To the third line we go.
✅ Don't be the best. Be their favorite.
IF we want to matter more to market less and IF we agree to prioritize resonance over reach to do so, THEN the absolute best-case result once you extrapolate out from where we began is that you end up as their favorite.
We want that! But we need one more change to achieve it. We've got to set aside this bizarre focus on projecting to others that we're "the best" in some objective or academic sense which frankly doesn't exist and isn't how people make choices anyway.
We're three layers down now. Given previous moments of agreement, I can ask for a change that when we began would have felt hardest to embrace, or maybe even unthinkable.
Where we began was producing more and more content, sharing more and more tips and tricks, and generally pressing harder and harder to market more. Then we agreed we'd try to matter more instead. Which requires us to resonate deeper. And a poor way to do that is to tell others, "Pick me! I'm the objective right choice! Heck, I'm the best!"
Nope. You can't tell them. You must show them. No need to be the objective top pick, nor the top-spender in the category, nor the best-known or biggest. Instead, you need to tap into the personal, emotional reasons others would care. Resonating deeper than anyone puts in you a rare, important place. You're among their favorites.
The choice we each face
I believe you face a choice in how you show up in the world: try to compete on competency in a vast ocean of options, thus becoming a commodity ... or learn to differentiate and resonate. More than "an option," you're THE pick.
That's what I most want for my audience: to empower people with substance, and creativity, and a desire to serve others—people who bring genuine expertise and an intent to change things for the better—with the communication tools needed to stand out easier and get picked more consistently. Quite simply, I want your ability to resonate to be your advantage.
You deserve their time, attention, trust, and dollars, much more than all those hucksters and charlatans peddling overpromised secrets and hacks. But to earn those things, you first need to earn small moments of agreement en route to the big one.
✅ Don't market more. Matter more.
✅ Think resonance over reach.
✅ Don't be the best. Be their favorite.
That's the absolute best outcome of resonating with someone. That's the logical extrapolation from making things that matter more and prioritizing resonance above reach. That's the most desirable and defensible result of marketing possible.
Regardless of the other options, regardless of your competitor's resources, and despite all distractions, YOU are their preferred choice. They pick you, stick with you, and refer you, against the odds. That sounds amazing.
Don't you agree?