The problem with online and text is people try to bundle everything into one communication. The best analogy I can think of is if you were playing chess by text, would you put seven moves in your text? No, you'd only put one move in. So only try to get one point across in a text.

Don't explain, don't throw a whole bunch of stuff in, text or emails. They're all almost always too long, and it's going to come off as cold. So do what you can to soften, soften it. There's a documentary film that's been done on my company called Tactical Empathy. Nick Nanton won 22, 23 Emmys.

The filmmaker DNA Films, it was finished last year, it's not out yet. For a variety of reasons, we haven't put it out. So we screened the thing in Vegas last year. I see it, I love it. I'm not a good judge of a film about me, I'm going to love it no matter what, it's about me.

But I tell Nick that night, oh man, I love it, this is great. Two days later, I find out, I realize there's a huge problem. I've already told him it's okay. So I got to get him, I'm going to text him, and then I'm going to call him, and we got to fix it now.

Sunday, text message, I sent him a two line text, it's now bad time to talk, I got something you don't want to hear. Two lines. Now, what were my other options? I could have called him, Nick and I got a great relationship. I call him, if he's in a position to pick up the phone, doesn't matter what he's doing, he's going to answer the phone.

He was in the middle of a Zoom call. If I'd have called, he'd have picked up during the Zoom call, and both conversations would have been bad. He immediately fires back to me, I'm in the middle of a Zoom call, I'll call you in half an hour. He already knows he ain't going to like what he's going to hear.

I'm prepping him for bad news. Get him on the phone, like look, I know what I said, we got a problem, we got to get Derek on camera. Derek is a guy in my team, and I'm shocked that I haven't made him part of the documentary. This is going to be incomplete without Derek.

We got to get Derek on film, we can't show this to anybody else until we get him on film and make a part of it. Immediately, he's in problem solving mode. He goes, okay, I got to get a crew to Derek or get Derek to a crew. I need to know when we can do that.

We got another showing of the films scheduled in LA, less than a month away. He says, I got to get Derek on camera, and we got to edit it, it's going to take three weeks of editing. I said, I'll give you access to Derek's camera, he goes, done, or Derek's calendar.

He says, done, it's done. We go through this whole conversation in less than 10 minutes. Now think of the normal negotiation, hey, Nick, how are you? What's going on today? Are you in a good mood? Hey, hey, hey, how are the kids doing? All this time wasting conversation, if I had set him up with that normal, he could have legitimately said, are you out of your mind?

We've been working on this for a year, you didn't bring this up in a year. Not only that, you already told me two days ago at the showing in Vegas that you loved it. Now, a year, year and a half into this project, you're bringing up all these new problems.

That would have been the normal negotiation. But since we got a highly collaborative relationship, two line text, we're done in 10 minutes. Now, since Nick's a very generous guy, when he gets done, and he says, by the way, you understand how much this is going to cost me, it's just three weeks of editing.

This is three hours of shooting and three weeks of editing. I go, yeah, he goes, but I'm happy to do it. Calls him back the next day, he's got a favor to ask of me. You got it. It doesn't matter what it is. Because we'd gone through what would have been a very complicated negotiation that started on text.

I sent him a two line text on a Sunday, and we got to solve that fast. If I understand correctly, by setting the context in a very direct and succinct way, he goes into it in a problem solving mode with you. Whereas if you do the tour of all the things that are going well in life, and the sort of the, we'll keep this PG, the mud sandwich approach.

They teach you that. When you get a laboratory, most scientists have no skill running a business. You get a laboratory, all you've done is experiments, and then suddenly you're in charge of people managing budgets and all this stuff. Most scientists, 99% of scientists are completely unqualified to do the job they do at the level of running a laboratory.

When they start, you learn it on the job. And eventually, you end up having to let somebody go. And so the typical thing they teach you in these online training things is you tell somebody something nice, then you give them the bad news, and then you tell them something nice on exit.

That's kind of the mud, so to speak, sandwich. This is not that. What you're talking about is saying, hey, this is the problem. You're not going to like the problem, or there is a problem, you're not going to like it, so that they show up with the context of solving a problem, as opposed to giving them the tour of all the things that are going well, and then the problem is really in contrast to that.

And then it's like, ugh. So what I love about what you're describing is it's direct, it's honest. You're not doing the tour of the garden before you take them down to the septic tank. It's what I would call the difference between being blunt and being a straight shooter. A straight shooter tells you the truth.

They just tell it in a way that lands softly. (upbeat music) (upbeat music)