325. Message Market Fit: Turning Great Ideas Into Communication That Lands
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What is message‑market fit and why does it matter for founders?
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What is your signature saying about you? My name's Matt Abrahams, and I teach strategic communication at Stanford Graduate School of Business. Welcome to Think Fast, Talk Smart, the podcast. Today, I am excited to talk with Oliver Oust. Oliver is founder of Speak Like a CEO Academy, where he coaches executives and founders how to refine and strategize about their communication. He's written several books, including Unignorable and Message Machine.
How can you shift from talking about features to selling outcomes?
And he hosts the popular podcast, Speak Like a CEO. Welcome, Oliver. I am really excited to be chatting with you and it's great to be here in person. We've done a lot of chatting over the years and I really appreciate your work. Thanks for joining.
Thank you for having me. It's so great to be face to face after usually chatting online. Normally six thousand miles and nine time zones separate us. So it's great to be here in person.
Excellent. Shall
we get started?
Lovely. Excellent. Here at Stanford, we teach our MBAs a lot about product market fit to increase the likelihood that their offerings will hit the target and they'll be able to be productive. You talk about message market fit. What is this and how can all of us benefit by maximizing it?
Every company that wants to be successful needs both product market fit, there is a market for your product, and message market fit, which means that you find the right words, the right story to convince top talent, customers, and investors to work with you, buy from you, invest in you. And if you do that, then you can achieve message market fit. And you need both. So in my most recent book, Message Machine, we looked at why 90% of startups fail, plus established companies. Their lifespan gets shorter and shorter as well. And more often than not, it's the lack of message market fit, right? You have a product, it works, but there are just so many products out there, it's just very hard to get traction because let's face it, no one cares about us, our company, our products.
We have to make them care. And for that, we need the right words.
Have you found in your
research Certain words that work or certain ways of determining which words work? Yeah, a common mistake I see is that companies like to talk about the product, what they do and why it's great and why they're so excited about this. That doesn't work. You want to talk about the outcome. What's in it for them? What's in it for your customer? You probably heard the phrase: people don't want a quarter-inch drill, they want a quarter-inch hole. But I think that's even falling short because who wants a hole in the wall.
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Chapters
8 chapters
1
What is message‑market fit and why does it matter for founders?
0:00–2:05
2
How can you shift from talking about features to selling outcomes?
2:05–4:08
3
What steps make a brand “unignorable” in a crowded market?
4:08–5:45
4
What are the Mindset, Message, and Method pillars for clear communication?
5:45–7:29
5
How do you craft a distinctive, audience‑focused message?
7:29–9:12
6
What is the PACE framework and how does it boost LinkedIn reach?
9:12–10:38
7
How can you manage communication anxiety with the BMW (Body‑Mind‑Words) system?
10:38–12:44
8
Why is storytelling essential for leaders and how can they become better storytellers?
12:44–22:53
Speakers
1 identifiedMore from Think Fast Talk Smart: Communication Techniques
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320. Quick Thinks: How to Prepare, Stand Out, and Ace Your Interview
319. Open the Portal: The Simple Science Behind Impactful Storytelling