The Language of Fools: Don’t Believe The Hype
“You believe it’s true; it blows me through the roof.” – Public Enemy, Don’t Believe The Hype1
Nearly a year ago I first started pushing around business pitches to anyone that would listen. The habit of idea generation wasn’t necessarily new, but never before had I tried to mold them into sustainable revenue models. After realizing that I could, and that it was a viable option for after college, it became an addictive habit to tell friends, family, professors and even strangers about what I was working on.
Any vocal confirmation, even negative, was better than telling myself I was on or not on to something.
If you approach a pitch the right way, people will feel like they want to listen. Or even better, that they need to listen. My goal was, and still is, to make people feel like if they don’t hear me out, they will be missing something big.
A strategy I’ve discussed previously is called verbal hedging. The strategy I suggested, contrary to the positive positioning of the post title, was to actually avoid hedging your words, and to speak with a sense of certainty.
Benjamin Franklin covers the concept of practicing the verbal hedge in his autobiography:
I made it a rule to forbear all direct contradiction to the sentiment of others, and all positive assertion of my own. I even forbid myself to the use of every word or expression in the language that imported a fixed opinion; such as certainly, undoubtedly, and I adopted instead of them, I conceive, I apprehend, or I imagine.
It appears that Benjamin Franklin was keen on the escape factor. Meaning, if he was caught in an argument or dilemma in which he was wrong, he could easily back out by saying that he had only “conceived,” and really didn’t know.
When someone asks me what I think, I’ll hypothesize accordingly. But for business pitching, I say what I know, and build from there. The goal should be to say things that you understand so well that you don’t need a safety route or a verbal hedge to act as an escape factor.
Avoid the absurdity. Hypothesize wisely and timely. Facts don’t exist in a startup; only opinions. So, don’t think; just know. Or, at least think that you know.2
- I enjoy the fact that this is the only blog that mentions both political hip-hop super group Public Enemy and wig wearing founding father Benjamin Franklin. [↩]
- The common backlash here is that you will either get caught in a lie or get caught being wrong. Lying shouldn’t be an issue unless you are actively not telling the truth. That’s not what I’m suggesting. And, being wrong isn’t a major problem unless it costs to be wrong. Avoid the costs of wrongness by quickly adapting. [↩]
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