How to Create Stronger Openers: The 3 Choices You're Making Every Time

“It’s not how you start, it’s how you finish.”

Ever hear that phrase? I love it so much. It’s full of hope. It lets us know we should remain resilient despite any initial moments of friction or failure, because despite a poor start, you can still finish strong. Pick yourself up, dust yourself off, and proceed.

Heck yeah.

Except...

Heck no.

For as much as I love this phrase, I need to admit that when it comes to storytelling, it's actually wrong.

Whoops!

Don’t misunderstand, there’s truth in the idea. If we feel we've had a poor start, we should still try to persist and end strong anyway. Pick yourself off, dust yourself up, and proceed.

Wait. Hold on.

Nevermind.

“It’s not how you start, it’s how you finish.” Actually, if "it" is our ability to resonate with others, then "it" is very much about how you start too. That's what we can learn from two related psychological phenomena called the primacy and recency effects.

These ideas suggest people form memories most especially from their first and last moments with something or someone. Primacy and recency. That’s because people remember those moments most clearly. The way something begins and the way it ends both have an outlandish impact on their recall. Their ability to recall facts and feelings in turn has an outlandish impact on their memory, which itself has an outlandish impact on their perception—of the experience and of you.

So if you want people to trust and love you, then you need to focus on nailing your openers and closers more often, no matter if you speak or write, record podcasts or videos, pitch through a deck or chat over coffee. The first and last moments matter SO much.

They are also SO hard to get right, no? I talk to professional keynote speakers who deliver 50+ paid gigs a year, sometimes for more than $40-50k per speech. The parts of their speech they work on the most or the parts they adore the most once locked in? Openers and closers.

They're hard, but we can make them a bit easier if we understand the choices we're making. Today, let's look at openers.

When you open any experience, written or spoken, you're making three distinct choices:

1. Literal or figurative?

Literally literally means literally. (Give it a sec.) You speak directly to and about the topic you're teaching. If I'm giving a speech about differentiation, then I'd deliver material overtly about differentiation. I'd talk immediately about the need to get picked or to stand out. That's literally me speaking literally. And I know what you're wondering, and the answer is yes: Rob Lowe could literally give a talk where he speaks literally about the literal uses of the word literally.

(If you understood that reference, we just became best friends.)

(If you didn't, we're still friends, but also you need to ​watch this​.)

On the other hand, maybe you won't communicate literally. Maybe you want the audience to consider something that seems unrelated, because by understanding that other thing, they can better understand your topic or idea. Said another way, opposite "literal" openers we have "metaphorical."

If I'm using a metaphor to open a speech about differentiation, I would surprise you by first talking about parenting or animals (or, in my case, a metaphor involving both which I really use), then later, I would pivot back into my area of expertise.

So how do you want to teach? Or at least, how do you want help others "get into" your ideas? You have to lead them there and show them what you already see. Is the best way to begin that process literal or figurative, according to your gut?

That's the first choice.

Once you've decided the type of language you prefer to use to teach, at least to begin, then you face the second choice:

2. Story or statement?

What kind of content will be the harbinger of your literal or figurative lesson or moment? You know HOW you'd like to teach to start something, now WHAT will the audience receive: a story or a statement?

If I wanted to teach you something in literal fashion, I might talk about a friend who differentiated her business in a remarkable way. To tell a story about my friend would be to place you with her at a specific time and in a specific setting, then advance the action forward towards a resolution. But I could also merely tell you in a statement: "My friend Sam likes to say [THIS awesome phrase.] Doesn't that immediately strike you? Isn't that powerful? That's an example of a phrase you could merely whisper. It has power, so if it drives your marketing, you need less volume. That idea matters more, so Sam can market less."

That is me TELLING you about Sam.

Thus, a literal, illustrative example or moment of teaching can be delivered as a story (showing you something beat by beat) or a statement (telling you something).

The same can be said of figurative language, the other option in choice #1. I could share a figurative story, which would require me to take you with me to the aquarium with my daughter, where we encountered a turtle and an aquarium staffer, which served as a metaphor for differentiating your message and your content. Or I could share that figurative idea as a mere statement. ("How would you describe a turtle? If you work at the New England Aquarium, you might describe it like X, Y, or Z. And that's a problem because, just like in our work...")

How will you teach? Through through literal or figurative language.

What kind of content will you teach through? A story or a statement?

Finally, you have the last variable of a strong opener: your performance. Here's your choice:

3. Cold or warm?

A cold open merely begins, like rewinding the script and hitting play.

• "The other day, my daughter and I had a meaningful interaction with a turtle. To be clear, I saw the meaning. She just saw the turtle. But in her defense, how great are turtles? Here's what happened..."

That's a cold open. It's also a figurative story. I'm taking you somewhere, meeting characters and advancing the action, before arriving at a metaphorical comparison between that moment and our own efforts to stand out through our marketing.

A warm open is more nuanced and more difficult to execute well. Mind you, I said "execute well." Because like so many performance-related things, it's easy to "execute." It's the "well" which gives us trouble.

To understand what I mean, let's first look at BAD warm openers, since we've all definitely experienced those.

When a speaker says, "I know I'm between you and happy hour!" ... that's a (bad) warm opener (because it gives away all the speaker's credibility and power by saying, "You'd rather be elsewhere, but you can't be.") Or when a speaker spends just a bit too much time talking about their outfit, or an event's welcome party, or their microphone, or the stage layout, or how wonderful previous speakers were. Done quickly, sure, maybe it can work, but mostly, it burns precious runtime and wastes the audience's time.

The thing is, it's still a warm open. Because a warm open does something a cold open does not: acknowledge the humans on the receiving end. When you think warm open, think body heat. Silly, maybe, but it's true! Through the written or spoken word, the storyteller acknowledges that we're in THIS place, sharing THIS experience.

"Stop me if you've heard this phrase about your marketing..." is a warm open. It makes overt something only implied during cold opens: you.

Us.

We're here, doing this, together. This is an essay. This is a speech. This is a video. We acknowledge it. But ideally, we do it effectively, in a way that serves the purpose of the piece, rather than wasting the audience's time. A cold open dives right in. A warm open should slide in, connecting whatever you say about a shared experience with the actual content, seamlessly.

Far better than this:

• "I know I'm between you and lunch! So anyway, about differentiating your business..."

...would be this:

• "Thanks, Nashville! I realize next on the agenda is lunch, and can we just acknowledge how great the food has been at this event, and how SURPRISING that is? I think it matters we talk about this out loud, because the bar is SO low for good conference food. Speaking of, the BAR has been great too, right? These are the kind of things that feel so simple to do differently as a means to stand out, because everybody else does them in the most forgettable ways. It reminds me of this time I went to the aquarium with my daughter..."

(Side note: I'd still probably not touch the idea that lunch happens after me, but you get the point. A BAD warm open talks about stuff totally disconnected from the actual material. A GOOD warm open uses stuff about your shared experience as a means to "smooth the edges" as it slides into the "real" content.)

In my current keynotes, I use the following line to open:

• "Thanks so much! So, uh ... what's the best Disney film of all-time?"

Merely saying that line makes it a cold open. To warm it up, I might say this instead:

• "Thanks so much! You know, I realize that standing here, on this stage, in front of you, wearing this suit, which is just screaming at you to please take me seriously ... I know being up here, I'm supposed to have answers. But to be honest, I've got a LOT of questions. Questions like, 'Why is my photo THAT big on the screen?' Nobody needs that THIS early in the morning, come on! I've got a lot of questions. Questions like, 'Is AI really worth the hype? Maybe it's useful, but how much of this is really real, yanno?' I've got a LOT of questions. But here's a question that matters more than the rest of them to our work right now: 'What's the best Disney film of all-time?'"

* * *

When you open your next story or speech or post, a lot is at stake. You're loosening their grip on whatever they thought or did before they arrived to you. Your work is meant to create a before and after moment with them. You're here to change them.

You're using the opener to set up what comes later too. Everything you'll discuss and explore (and also HOW you'll discuss and explore it) is framed by the opener.

You aren't just grabbing one moment of their attention. You're securing their continued, eager attention. You're shaping their perception of you by helping them form a positive memory. That process begins right away, in a very big way.

Will you communicate literally or figuratively?

Through a story or a statement?

Will you deliver it cold or warm?

These are the choices you're making when you create your next opener.

It's not how you start, it's how you finish.

Also?

It's how you start.