The first 15 words are as important as the next 1500. Give listeners a compelling reason to listen, but without giving away your ending. Like audiences for movies, listeners lose interest in a story when they know its ending.

Once you open with a strong lead and provide some detail, you need to jump-start it with the next lead. Reclaim their attention. (“But wait - there’s more!” “But the best part is what happened next…”) This prompts the audience to rise up and ask, “Now what?”

Most impressions used to be made face-to-face. Now with email, your communication skills are like your appearance. Clarity becomes more important as time has become more valuable. Ambiguity is expensive. Power comes from the words of the communicator, and the most potent words are those that are expressed succinctly and vividly. Those who can express themselves in words that cannot be misunderstood have more power and more value.

Make yourself clearer and people will think you are an expert.

All good stories have a hero, and two other key elements:

1. A serious challenge.
2. A hero dealing with the challenge and learning something as a result. But make sure you put the audience, not you, in the hero’s shoes. People identify with themselves. They want solutions to their problems. They are interested in making their own lives better.

Simplify. What we want is certainty and simplification gives us that. Less options.

Constantly edit your story.

Find your message, keep it simple, and repeat it often.

Whatever you write, read it aloud. Edit. Revise every memo and revise it again.

Advance just one strong argument. You cannot say too little. Get your listener’s attention first with that one argument, then wait for them to ask more.

Don’t say “solutions”. That’s plural. People want one.

Your friend tells you an unfunny joke. You laugh anyway. That’s natural. You’re being kind. Same thing happens when you send someone a clever self-promotion, encouraged by the people who laugh out of manners. So you keep trying the gimmick. Same thing happens when you tell a joke in a presentation. False consensus effect: assuming others agree with us when they do not. Many people feel uncomfortable with your implication: that they lack sophistication, are easily fooled, and may even be frivolous. A gimmick also makes it appear that you have nothing important to say, so you are relying on bad puns, word play, and tricks instead.

• From Sivers notes on YouInc (http://sivers.org/book/YouInc).