This week in the world’s #1 newsletter on leadership communication:

The Secret to Being Memorable
On the Show: How ADHD Leaders Develop a Communication Edge
Book Recommendation: How to Achieve Breakthrough Results

The Secret to Being Memorable

In a coaching session last week, I asked a CFO which speakers he admired and why. He mentioned a few names. When I asked what made one of them stand out, he said: “Because she speaks in quotes.”

He’s right.

If you want to break through – in your team, your company, on social – you need to live in people’s heads. And to do that, you need to be quotable.

The idea of compressing a complex idea into a single sentence packed with meaning isn’t new. Will Storr calls them atomic statements. We used to call them soundbites, and before that aphorisms.

Speechwriters have mastered this for centuries – think Martin Luther King or Ted Sorensen’s famous lines for JFK.

What’s new is two things.

First, anyone can do it. You don’t need to be a president with a team of speechwriters.

Second, quotes travel through social media, podcasts, newsletters and screenshots, giving you reach beyond your wildest day dreams.

In a world drowning in noise, the people who win are the ones who are remembered.

Like Naval Ravikant with bangers like “It’s not 10,000 hours. It’s 10,000 iterations.”

I’ve been practicing this for decades. A few days ago, someone I hadn’t heard from in years sent me a LinkedIn DM. He wrote: “You told me something twenty years ago that’s still stuck in my mind.”

The sentence was: “Be a spokesperson, not an answerperson.”

I use it in media trainings and crisis simulations to this day. Under pressure, even executives tend to answer questions politely instead of shaping the narrative. If I explain that in a paragraph, it makes sense. But it doesn’t stick.

“Be a spokesperson, not an answerperson” sticks.

I recommend you do the same. Build a portfolio of quotes in your area of expertise that people associate with you and your key ideas.

There are two ways to do it:

1/ Collect other people’s quotes.

2/ Create your own.

Do both: collect & create.

This week, I’ll focus on the first. Next week, on the second.

Is using other people’s quotes shameless stealing? Absolutely not – as long as you give credit.

When I teach storytelling to leaders and they ask what a story is, I use Matthew Dicks’ definition: “A story is a tale of transformation.”

Honestly, I don’t think it can be improved. It works because it alliterates. It’s short. And it captures the essential difference between a story, a narrative and an anecdote.

Some sentences simply can’t be improved. Use them.

Here’s how I do it.

Step 1: Whenever I hear or read something powerful, I immediately write it down in Apple Notes. That makes it searchable and retrievable.

Step 2: I immediately start to use it. In conversations, in content, in coaching sessions. Using it makes it stick.

Here are three quotes I picked up from podcasts and audiobooks in the last few days:

“Intensity transforms. Consistency maintains.” (Jonathan Goodman)

“Simplicity is selection, not compression.” (Carmine Gallo)

“The brain doesn’t pay attention to boring things.” (John Medina)

See what I’ve done there?

I wrote them down again. That alone increases the likelihood that I’ll retrieve them in the right context.

Or take “beliefs are tools, not truths.” Nir Eyal said this to me a few times in our last conversation. Clearly, it's important to him because it captures the core idea of his new book Beyond Belief (see below). He passed this idea on to me, and now I'm passing it on to you.

Now do the following: Is there a quote in this newsletter you want to use yourself? It takes 3 seconds to copy and paste it into Notes, Notion or your swipe file.

Those 3 seconds could mark the start of a new habit. You’re not just admiring the secret of being memorable in others. You’re turning it into a habit.

Scott Galloway, who earns millions with writing, speaking, and podcasting and is arguably one of the best in the world at speaking in quotes, happens to do the same.

When asked how he comes up with “lines that compress 10 years of wisdom into a single sentence”, he said: ”It's mostly IP theft. I get most of my ideas from other people, and I'll pause when I see something really interesting or that kind of moves me. I'll repeat it a bunch of times and try to cement it into my grey matter.”

It’s true – speaking in quotes doesn't happen by accident. I'm currently working with a thought leader on a new keynote, and once the structure and the content are clear, we will make sure it has quote-worthy lines in it that I know she will deliver with conviction on stage.

Next week I will share how you can create your own quotes.

ON THE SHOW

How ADHD Leaders Develop a Communication Edge

I do a weekly show to help you become a top 1% communicator. Subscribe on Spotify, Apple, or Youtube.

If you’re a leader with ADHD, you’ve probably wondered: Is my brain helping me or hurting me when I communicate? You think fast. You jump ideas. You feel the room. And sometimes you worry it doesn’t land the way you want.

In this episode, we show you how ADHD can become a real communication edge – not something to hide, but something to leverage.

We’ll cover why masking creates anxiety, why over-scripting kills your “flavor,” and whether the future belongs to ADHD leaders.

My guest is Andy J. Pizza: bestselling author, speaker, and host of the long-running podcast Creative Pep Talk. He has spent years studying storytelling, creativity, and speaking with ADHD – and built a career on turning different wiring into influence.

If you have ADHD or you are working with people with ADHD, this episode is for you.

Watch and listen to the full episode here:

BOOK RECOMMENDATION

How to Achieve Breakthrough Results

You’re not lazy. You’re not undisciplined. And you definitely don’t lack ambition (after all, you made it to the final section of a newsletter called Speak Like a CEO :)

So why do you sometimes stop just short of reaching your goals?

Nir Eyal, bestselling author of Hooked and Indistractable, spent six years researching the science of motivation for his new book Beyond Belief – and what he found explains why even highly motivated leaders limit themselves.

He makes a provocative argument: the real limiter isn’t motivation or willpower. It’s belief.

Not positive thinking. Not affirmations. Not mantras in front of the mirror. That stuff hardly works. What does work is to treat “beliefs as tools, not (necessarily) truths.”

One study he shares stuck with me. Rats placed in water swam for about 15 minutes before giving up. But if they had previously been rescued once, they swam for 60 hours the next time – 240 times longer. The only thing that changed was their belief that rescue was possible.

The key insight I’m taking from this book?

Beliefs can limit us or liberate us. And most of us are still carrying a few that stop us short of reaching our goals.

Luckily for us, Nir joins me next week on the Speak Like a CEO show to unpack how we can identify – and overcome – the limiting beliefs that hold us back.

Have an inspired weekend,

Oliver