Oh, with the curse of knowledge, you're an expert. The listener is a beginner. How do you explain with clarity and how do you become a better explainer, better at explaining that is what this episode is going to be about. Content creator, kickstart. My name is Rodriguez. I'm 32 from Copenhagen Denmark, and I make a living from explaining.
I used to create explainer videos for clients. Now I teach others how to explain. I have something called explain academy. My world is very much full of explanations and explain the videos. So I hope that I am the right person to talk about this, how to explain. Better all things, not certain things, not certain industries or topics, but everything.
How do you structure or communicate something complex in a simple way? That makes sense for even a beginner, because it becomes really hard. The more, you know, the less able you are to explain it in a way that makes sense for someone who doesn't know a thing about what, you know, something. But I have a few tips up my sleeve that I want to present to you to hopefully give you some tools in your toolbox.
So you can more easily explain what it is that you need to tell the world. The first approach to explaining things better is to research the question, plus the question level of the beginner. What does that mean? Let me explain. So how do you research the question? Let's imagine that I wanted to talk about Einstein's relativity theory.
Okay. So this is a theory that is quite complex. How do I approach this in my little explainer video or my podcast or whatever format I want to package this explanation of real relativity theory in. So what I do is that I jump into. That's my approach. And I write in what is relativity. Then I had insur and I don't really care about the search results.
I look for the box that says people also ask. And when you look at that box, you will see different questions that relate to what you typed in. You'll see something like what is relativity in simple terms? Why is it called Ren? Eh, how does relativity relate to. Eh, how is relativity used in everyday life?
So these are examples of questions that beginners are askers, new beginners, who well, want to find out what relativity is, no matter what their skill level knowledge level is. These are the formulations, the different phrasings of questions that relate to relativity. I use. You can use Quora. You can use Reddit, you can find YouTube comments on the popular videos around relativity, and this can be your way into the topic.
So this is your little open a door with a light pouring out. This is your hope, your open door into the. From an ankle that makes sense for the beginner, right? So you don't start from what you think is the right way in you look at these questions that people ask around the topic, and that is your door.
That is your starting points. And you get inspired by these people. Also ask questions and let them guide your, eh, what, what angle you should attack this topic from? That's how I do it. I use these questions as my kind of guiding light. When I write videos. And another way to explain things better is to progress fast.
But logically I think a misconception is that the beginners are stupid. They are not stupid. I use a sentence. I repeat the census to myself when I want to strike the right the right balance in my words and sentences and how I explain things, the sentences, your viewer is just a smart but less. Just a smart but less informed.
So my view as just as intelligent as I am, they just don't know what I know yet. And they're not kits. They're probably grownups. So don't talk to them like they're kits, right? That's also a common mistake made by experts who want to explain something to begin us. Some, someone who, who don't know anything.
Right. I was a student at the Copenhagen business school and I've experienced this many times. It doesn't help a beginner or a. To have something complex explained slower. You can't explain it badly and then explain. Students to understand what you're saying, just because you say it slowly, that's not the fix.
The fix is to progress fast where you're to that from YouTube and Netflix and HBO, everything happens fast. There's no nothing to win in, slowing down the pace. Really. We want you to progress fast through your line of argumentation, but you should do it in a logical way and simplify. So one point leads to the next, without detours.
You want to stay top level. And a good example, or maybe it's not good. I made it up myself. So you'll, you'll be the judge and example of how to go from one point to another without taking any detours, is this little thing I've written on Harry Potter? Big fan. I read all the books when I was a teenager.
So an example of how to do it, right. How to stay top level when you explain something it's this. So it's a three-part thing. Harry lives a normal life in Godrick's Hollow. One day, he gets picked up by Hagrid. They fly to Hogwarts school of wizardry, where Harry becomes a great wizard. So this is an example of explaining the storyline Harry Potter or the beginning of it, a top level.
This is , kind of a, the bad example of how to take a detour with this. So it starts similar, but then it takes a detour. Harry lives, a normal life in Godrick's Hollow. This is actually official town made up by the author, J K Rowling. She was born in a small town herself near Bristol in England. Right. So now we're already kind of digging ourselves down into a related topic, but a topic and like a strain of the main storyline that confuses the listener more than it helps.
It might be difficult to grasp this concept, but the overall idea is that you want to stay kind of over the water and don't drown in details and the detours. When you're trying to explain something, stay top level progress, fast and lucky. That's it. That's the point. If you want to dive into this kind of a kind of idea, more, I have an exercise in my white book called zero to finalize video.
It's free. You can find it in the sidebar on my block. It's a route reese.com/blog. The exercise is called, get the bricks and get the. Means get the story blocks, get the, get the small containers of information in place. Choose a few and to go from one to the next, to the next to the next. Right? So this is a way to make sure that you stay top level and that you don't take any detours down into some details that are not serving your overall explanation.
And you'll just end up with a bad explanation with too many detours. The last thing I want to say about how to explain things better, a small kind of a trick from the hip is to be connected. Yes, of course. That makes sense. That's obvious. Eh, it's actually not as easy as it sounds. I struggled with it myself sometimes when I ride video scripts and I read through the first draft and it's all very top level, very general, general terms, kind of considerations.
That's nothing to grasp onto. You need to relate it to the real world. You do that by using examples, use numbers, statistics, analogies, you stories this general talk. It just kills attention completely. It's not relevant. If you just talk in general terms, very, very mechanical approach to make sure that.
Idea, eh, gets applied. So your video scripts or your explanations is to tell yourself to include an example effect or a quote. Every third sentence. It might sound stupid that to kind of constrain yourself in that way, but this constraint can actually be super kind of catalyze or for your creativity. It kind of forces you to come up with a quote.
Effect and an analogy, a story, some kind of concreteness that you instill into your explanations, every third sentence, when you kind of get into that rhythm that you know, well, there is a certain level of concreteness in my script. You can ditch. Every third sentence rule and just a roll with it, be creative with it.
You don't have to continue with that. With that rule. It's just a way to it to get started on it. Right? So those were three super concrete ways to become a better explainer, to explain things with more clarity, to avoid the curse of knowledge, which is to be too high-level when the beginner just wants you to start from the, from the bottom and go up.
I hope you learned something from it. Thanks for listening in and I'll see you in the next episode.
