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Did you know your communication skills matter more to your career than your technical expertise? In this episode, Sharran reveals three communication frameworks that can help entrepreneurs, leaders, and professionals make complex ideas easier to understand and more likely to stick.
First, he explains why organizing ideas into three key points makes communication more memorable. Next, he shares how geometric shapes can turn complicated ideas into mental snapshots people can easily recall and share. Finally, he introduces the Why–What–How–Now framework, a simple structure for helping an audience understand why an idea matters, where they’re going, how to get there, and what happens next.
Sharran also shares lessons learned from investing $50,000 in a speaking coach and demonstrates how AI can help structure complex ideas.
“Your communication skills will determine your compensation more than your technical skills ever will.”
~Sharran Srivatsaa
Timestamps:
00:00 – Introduction
01:08 – How the Rule of Three makes ideas easier to understand
02:59 – Using geometric shapes to communicate complex ideas
07:28 – The communication structure that changes everything
12:37 – How to use AI to communicate complex ideas
Resources:
– The Next Billion by Sharran Srivatsaa
– Board Member: ARC Multifamily Real Estate Investing
– Board Member: The Real Brokerage
Connect with Sharran:
– X
– YouTube
– Threads
Transcript:
[00:00:00] Your communication skills will determine your compensation more than your technical skills ever will. And I had to learn this the hard way because when I first came to the US I was told that because of my thick Indian accent, I probably would not get employed until I was able to fix that. Now, I didn’t have any money at that time as a poor college student to hire a speaking coach or an accent coach, but twenty years later I was able to hire Tony Robbins’ speaking coach for $50,000 to give me the exact skills on how you can communicate to anyone in the most effortless way.
[00:00:33] And I think there’s three big pieces of this puzzle that you need to know that at the end of this video, if you know this, will dramatically change the trajectory of your career just by knowing these three things. And the first thing is the one, two, three, too many rule. Now, uh, I first realized this when I was on stage doing keynotes, but it applies to both keynote presentations and it applies to normal one-to-one conversations.
[00:00:59] Because most people when you talk to them, they can’t keep too many ideas in their head. I always thought that, uh, it was about giving insane value, so I’d show up on stage and just machine gun a bunch of ideas to people and, uh, not be sure why their eyes were glazed over. Or I– if I was talking to a friend, I would just talk about the seventeen reasons why I did not like something.
[00:01:20] But then I realized this, this truth about one, two, three, too many. I’ll give you an example. If you think about taxes, and I had to put three ideas in place, I would say you need to reduce your taxes, you need to defer your taxes, or you need to eliminate your taxes. And then I would give you ideas on how to reduce your taxes, how to defer your taxes, meaning put it out in the future, or how to eliminate them altogether.
[00:01:43] These three big ideas now allow you to put your consciousness around like, “Oh, wow, the thing that I’m invested in is two and three,” and it allows you to focus on that significantly more than anything else. So the next time you’re having a conversation, maybe in a meeting or with a colleague, or if even if you’re talking about fantasy football and sports, the way you want to explain an idea is in the one, two, three, too many.
[00:02:05] They call it the rule of threes. You’ll see Simon Sinek do it on stage with the why, what, how framework. You’ll see in the titles of books called “Eat, Pray, Love,” or you’ll see it in the, uh, ways of identity and, and, and manifestation, which is do, be, have. There’s a reason why it’s not four things, it is one, two, three, too many.
[00:02:25] So next time you’re packaging an idea up, see if you can put the three ideas together and that will allow you to be a significantly better communicator, and that way you can say anything to anyone. The second big idea is to, uh, explain things in geometric shapes. Well, what do I mean by that? When I hired Tony Robbins’ speaking coach, I paid him $50,000 for three hours, and this was entirely based on the past experience that I had with Tony.
[00:02:52] You see, when I first came to the US, I was a janitor, and I was so embarrassed that I had to, uh, work and pay my bills, and I- no one else would hire me, uh, except the janit- the, the midnight shift or the graveyard shift, uh, you know, mopping and scrubbing floors. And I remember my m- manager telling me that for me to get ahead in life and actually get a decent job and be understood by my friends and have a decent social life would be if I g- had to get rid of my thick Indian accent at that time.
[00:03:25] But I had no idea how to do it. And so he suggested that I go to the library and check out some English accent tapes. And of course, I went to the library and asked for some English accent tapes, and the librarian told me that since this was America, she didn’t have English accent tapes. I should just talk to a friend.
[00:03:41] But she had Spanish tapes, she had French tapes, she had German tapes. And I felt stuck, but then she had a better idea. She said, “Well, what about a book on tape? What about an audiobook?” And at that time, uh, she handed me a box with a bunch of CDs of a, you know, an audiobook. I had no idea what it was. I popped it into my Sony Discman, and I started listening to it while scrubbing and mopping floors.
[00:04:04] That audiobook ended up being Tony Robbins’ Personal Power, and which is why my wife makes fun of me that I yell while I talk in English. I, I learned how to speak English through listening to Tony Robbins’ audiobooks. And that brings me back to why I hired Tony Robbins’ speaking coach, because I was so enamored by what a great communicator that he was.
[00:04:26] And after watching me for two to three hours do various exercises, Richard Greene, Tony Robbins’ speaking coach, explained to me that I was trying to communicate so many ideas in a, uh, in, in a, in a, in, in a short amount of time. And so he explained that Each of us spend a lot of time and our experiences, and from a neuroscience perspective, our, our ideas are discombob- discombobulated.
[00:04:54] They’re complex. They’re connected. There’s so many neurons, and if you actually went into your brain and do the connection set of your ideas, it would be a very complex web. So what we had to do is take that complex web of ideas out, package it into a little box, and then put that box in the other person’s head, because that allows them to know exactly what that idea is, and it gives them recall of that idea.
[00:05:17] Well, I frankly did not know how to do this, and he explained a great, uh, strategy to me, which was to use geometric shapes, and that is whenever you’re communicating an idea, use a simple shape, like a circle, where you can divide it into four parts, uh, or a triangle, where you can label the three sides, or a square, where you can label the axes, or, um, a- an- another, or a combination of a rectangle or different shapes like that.
[00:05:44] Because once your brain sees a shape, it’s able to take a snapshot of what it is. I’ll give you an example. Uh, if you may have read Rich Dad Poor Dad, which is a classic in the investing space by, um, uh, Robert Kiyosaki, [00:06:00] and the thing that most people remember from the book is the cash flow quadrant, and it tells you it’s got a geometric shape.
[00:06:07] It has the employee, the business owner, uh, on one side, and it tells you exactly what goes on, which is the self-employed or, uh, the investor. And it tell– And it’s a clean bus- uh, geometric shape that allows you to take this idea and, and have it etched in your mind. You don’t have to remember the four, five, six different things.
[00:06:25] And once I started using geometric shapes, it allowed me to communicate significantly better. It made my, uh, diagrams on the whiteboard in discussions with my colleagues better. It made me, uh, build better slides. That way, when people saw it, they saw the raw nature of it, and they were able to snapshot their ideas.
[00:06:44] And I also noticed that the people that I were talking to were, were now reusing my own geometric shapes because they were taking my idea and putting it in other people’s heads, which is really powerful. So if you want your ideas to spread, especially if you have a good idea and you want it to spread, you want to try and use, uh, geometric shapes to, to package your idea in overall.
[00:07:04] The third big idea is, uh, the structure in which you communicate. Now, this doesn’t matter whether it’s a keynote presentation or whether you’re jump– standing up in front of your, uh, colleagues and presenting something in a boardroom, or whether you’re on Zoom and presenting an idea. Uh, this one strategy has completely changed how I communicate completely The single most important communication lesson that I learned was created by a kindergarten teacher, and it is called FORMAT.
[00:07:36] It’s a strategy that allows you to break down ideas in a very simple way, and it has four parts: the why, the what, the how, and the now. You actually have to figure out exactly how each part works in unison to make it work simply together. And once you figure it out, it completely changes how you think about every piece of communication.
[00:07:54] Let me give you an example. Let’s say you’re… I, I was presenting about financial freedom. Uh, the first thing that I need to do is talk about why. Why is this important? Why is this important right now? And why me? That’s a… That’s called a why frame. It allows people to figure out and settle their snow globes, ’cause you have no idea whether they’re in traffic or whether they, uh, are talking to their son, or whether they are, uh, have unfinished text messages, or whether they have 400 emails to write, or whether they’re overwhelmed with their work, or whether they’re tired from the night before.
[00:08:25] Their snow globes, their, their mental states are shook up. You gotta get them to refocus and come back to the exact topic that you wanna have a conversation with. And to do that, you need to give them the why frame. The why speaks to them as to why they should be interested in the idea right now.
[00:08:39] Otherwise, they’re just gonna tune out. So when I s- talk about financial freedom, I could say, “Why is this important? Uh, the financial freedom is important right now because they, uh, there are more… The 1% of the world owns 40% of, of all, all the stocks, and so everyone else is having to fend for themselves.”
[00:08:57] Why is it important right now? Well, uh, inflation is at a, at a massive clip, and the inflation is a silent tax on your purchasing power, and the, the coffee that cost $2 today is going to be $4 tomorrow, and you’re gonna have to spend more money for the same coffee. So you have to kind of watch the m- your, your overall money investing.
[00:09:16] Why me? Hey, I’ve been a banker at Goldman Sachs. I’ve advised the billionaires. I have seen exactly what they do and how they manage their money, and I want to share those lessons with you because what… if what they do is so simple, we can learn from that overall. What. So right now I’ve created a why frame that allows you to say, “Okay, I’m gonna settle my snow globe and actually have this conversation.”
[00:09:36] Instantly when I talk about the why frame, the next thing you want to y- you ask is like, “Okay, I understand the why frame. I understand that financial freedom is important. What are you talking about?” The what is the 10,000 foot level, which is the strategy, and this is where I would say, “Here, I have something called the wealth ladder,” and the wealth ladder allows you to figure out how to actually progress in time and get to financial freedom.
[00:09:58] The first level of the wealth ladder is getting your active income to be greater than your monthly expenses. The second level of the wealth ladder is to get the surplus and build a money factory around it. The third level of the wealth ladder is to actually make sure the asset allocation is done correctly and you buy, buy your first tiny income-generating asset.
[00:10:13] And the fourth level of the wealth ladder is you, you build passive income greater than monthly expenses. Let me show you. So what have I done here? I’ve given them a roadmap. The what frame provides a roadmap. It’s a bird’s-eye view on where you’re going. It is a map, uh, from a high level that shows you, “Hey, this is the lay of the land, and this is what we’re gonna talk about.”
[00:10:31] This allows you to reorient yourself, which, which says, “Ah, this is where he’s gonna go next,” and it gives me context overall Once you’ve given somebody the what frame, they really start to yearn for the how frame. The how is the next part where you– This is where you actually can start to talk about the steps of this is what you do, A, B, C, one, two, three.
[00:10:49] This allows people to realize that now you have the actual implementation mechanism. Most people go straight to the how, and I would, I would recommend that you don’t do that, especially in meetings overall. And the last part of it is the now. The now is what I call the first domino. What is the first thing that someone needs to do to actually make this come to life or the first thing that you are going to do?
[00:11:10] This is especially important when you’re in meetings or when you’re communicating an idea on a Zoom call or when you’re talking to a friend where you can talk about why the budget process is important, what have you done so far, how the process is going, and the next step that they can expect, which is you sending them a report tomorrow.
[00:11:30] Now you’ve actually taken this, this format process and implement it in a very simple way, as opposed to saying, “Hey, you’re gonna get the update tomorrow.” Right? It’s in isolation, and it doesn’t actually make a lot of sense. The– When you start to combine these three ideas, which you can put into work right away, which is first, the one, two, three, too many rule, which is always talk in rules of three.
[00:11:50] The second is put your ideas in big geometric shapes so that it’s easy to take it out of your head and put it into box in their head. And the third is use the format process, where use what a kindergarten teacher came up with to teach the children so that it actually affects, uh, i-impact your fam- you and, and your, your clients and your coworkers as well.
[00:12:11] I will also give you a pro tip. You can actually use AI to make this entire process much easier for you. So if you have a complex idea and you want an easy way to communicate it in your team meeting, instead of putting your idea into AI and asking for it to, uh, give you a script, you put your idea into AI and talk to it in, in voice mode.
[00:12:33] Make it as complex as you need to. Just dump your idea and then ask AI to restructure the idea into format. Why, what, how, and now. And then once you get the overall structure, use that to communicate your idea. AI is a really powerful way of taking the most complex things and putting it in the format that you want.
[00:12:55] So unless you give it that direction, it’s going to come up with its own direction, which may not be the right fit for you. Remember, your communication skills will determine your compensation more than the technical skills ever will, and this is the exact way that you can share anything with anyone.