Eliminate These Two Words
Let’s start back a few years ago. Ok, maybe 15.
I was at ServiceMagic (now HomeAdvisor) and was helping grow the company into the Home Services powerhouse it became (now part of IAC).
We were a heavy performance marketing shop, at one point, we had the largest Google Adwords account with around 1 million words, and started to dive into SEO, which was a pretty new field at the time. I always was impressed with that number, until later I had a customer that had 16 million keywords. Amazing.
Our CEO, Rodney Rice, had contracted with an SEO firm, and no one was particularly excited at the results. After a couple of months, I turned to Rodney and said “I think I can do better.”
“Prove it.”
So I did. Over the next year or so I built our “free traffic” into about 25% of revenue (many multiple millions), which I called “turn out the lights” revenue. Meaning we could fire everyone and still make the turn out the lights revenue.
It didn’t start that way. I spent the first months making error after error. I studied everything I could get my hands on, even going to the largest search conference at the time (Search Engine Strategies run by Danny Sullivan).
As I sat in sessions, I kept thinking to myself “I know this! That person is saying what I already have tested and learned!” again and again. For the next few days, my confidence grew.
When I returned, I decided that no matter what I was asked, I would never start my answer with “I think” or “I believe,” because I knew.
All of a sudden two things happened.
- I felt better about my knowledge and skills and my output improved because I had a bias for action vs analysis.
- Everyone else felt better about my knowledge and skills because my confidence was projected, and I was able to get additional buy-in.
“I think” and “I believe” are givens when you state an opinion, but are used as hedges in case you are wrong. They are crutches, no different than “um” or “ah,” but carry the additional baggage of a lack of confidence, and therefore a barrier to trust.
Removing those two statements removes any doubt about your trust in your opinion. It allows people to focus on the data you are providing, rather than having to determine if they should believe you since you just think it’s right.
Try it. Today spend the day counting how many times you say “I think” or “I believe” in conversation with others. And tomorrow eliminate it.
It’s not easy. If you have ever had a conversation with me, nestled among the elongated sentences and swear words, you will hear me say “No, I don’t think/believe it; I know it” as a simple reminder that I do know what I am talking about.
Most of the time.