2025’s communications are a hot 🔥mess

No time for small talk, Inbox Hackers. But if you wanna discuss the fascinating details of daily pollen counts and other titillating weather topics, just reply. I’ll listen. 

If not, we’ll get to today’s Feature Story. It gives you only the highlights you need from a new report on all the pitfalls of poor communication in business. These findings can be applied even if you run a one-person shop. 

• The Knowledge Base (includes 100 branding trends)

• Self Help (same ole news)

• Facts & Stats (Reddit use)

• Get Hacking (time saver) 

Appetizer: Which states get the fattest tax refund checks? See the interactive map.

Now, let’s creep into today’s Feature Story…

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Feature Story

The High Price of Poor Communication

Feel free to download the full report here (U.S. survey of 800 knowledge workers and 450 leaders).

But I think the highlights I’m about to sling at you will suffice (aka be good-nuff).

The idea of the report is that if you strengthen internal communication in an organization, the business will see improvements overall. 

I’m down with that, and this idea applies to small companies and solopreneurs too.

So, let’s get into the key takeaways.

🔑80% of leaders believe their communication to teams is “clear, engaging, relevant, and helpful.” Bad news is only about 50% of staff believe those four things are true.

If it ain’t obvious, this poor internal communication leads to falsely believing your company’s messaging to customers is clear, engaging, relevant, helpful, etc.

How to improve internal comms? Watch Slack co-founder Stewart Butterfield break it down.

Moving on to the next takeaway…

🔑The top three topics employees feel they need to be aligned with leaders on in order to do their jobs well:

1. Operational changes

2. Organizational goals

3. Business updates

Two topics at the bottom of “must-knows?” Competitive insights and world news. 

I can’t imagine how world news even made the list of options in the survey. Imagine a welder telling their boss they couldn’t get anything done because they didn’t understand the company’s thoughts on NATO.

Makes my head hurt. And this kind of distraction also hurts people running a business by themselves. World affairs are always stressful. Always have been. Trying to monitor them is fruitless.

Onward…

🔑67% of employees prefer email or email newsletters for staying updated on internal company news.

Lots of gizmos out there to make communication easier. But email has stood the test of time. It just works and everyone in the galaxy has email.

Next up, what happens when employees are clear about company goals and engaged at work?

🔑63% of the workers polled said their productivity shot up. 59% said the same for their motivation. And satisfaction rose for 54% of employees.

Any boss in America would be giddy to have those three feelings ramp up in their team members, no? 

I don’t think employees need to have “warm and fuzzies” about their jobs 24/7. But I’ve been both an unmotivated employee and a motivated one. There’s a big difference in the two!

I worked for a plastic factory in the late 90s. New plant manager replaced the retiring manager. Few months later, the new guy gives the HR director a pink slip (let her go). She had been there since the place opened and had hired the new guy! 

Motivation sank for everyone at the company, and it showed in nose-diving productivity. The 50-minute naps on night shift were great, though. 

Next is the dollars lost via poor comms.

🔑Below is the average employee salary lost (time wasted) due to having to “search for information, chase a timely response, or clarify context.”

This depended on the salary of the employee. The range of lost time - aka lost employee salary - was $3,640 to $37,440.

Umm, you don’t want an employee earning $200k to be wasting four hours a week sifting through an unorganized pile of digital documents. 

This is a major problem for small teams and individuals running a business too. Even though there are a million systems and apps designed to organize our crap, there is simply too much crap to be organized.  

Important stuff is always getting lost. And if not for the Googsters being good at search, I’d lose even more stuff in my Drive (and I hate giving Google credit, as you know).

Final takeaway…

🔑41% of leaders think they’re gonna have a hard time addressing the safe use of AI with their teams.

This is backed up by Shopify’s CEO changing his tune from a milder stance on staff utilizing AI to…

“Frankly, I don’t think it’s feasible to opt out of learning the skill of applying AI in your craft; you are welcome to try, but I want to be honest, I cannot see this working out today, and definitely not tomorrow.” ~ Bald Man in charge of Shopify

Conclusion 

The full report gets into various communication initiatives that successful organizations are using. Good to know the good with the bad.

My 5 suggestions for improving internal communications are below:

1. The Art of Plain Talk (summary)

2. Nobody Wants to Read Your Sh** (focus on the concept)

3. Writer’s Diet (tool)

4. Smart Brevity (video — *though I disagree with their use of bolding for uniformity over importance)

5. Hand-write notes to yourself neatly (you can actually read them later, plus writing slower produces higher-quality thoughts)

Let’s crack open The Knowledge Base that includes that pile of branding themes some wonderful human put together for us…

Self-Help

The endless tariff talk is like all news. It’s designed to strike fear in us plebs. 

Most of the crap we buy in America is crap anyway. Not only is it low-quality, we don’t need the vast majority of it. 

Walk into a Dollar Tree and tell me different.

Oh, and I’m kinda bummed Apple got a reprieve with the “smartphone and laptop” tariff exemption. Would’ve been nice to see if the nation’s mental health improved when smartphones became unaffordable.

(BTW, I’m not retarded. I know used smartphones would still be affordable. Yay for reasonably-priced depression!)

Facts & Stats

Bonus: The top 3 marketing skills on the rise, according to a new LinkedIn report, are performance measurement, AI literacy, and __________. Answer at end of email.

Get Hacking

A specific strategy to implement today

Do it in one take. 

Editing is the great eater-upper of your valuable time. 

So, when you’re recording video or audio, do it in one take (edit after). 

Starting and stopping will kill your output. 

Yep, this will take practice to find a flow that works for you.

However, once you have your process set, you’ll gain mountains of time you would’ve spent starting over repeatedly… for the next five years. Think about it.

This thought came from a recent Duct Tape Marketing Podcast where John Jantsch mispronounced the guest’s name. He apologized, then said, “We do this in one take, so I’m not gonna break my one-take rule.”

I would’ve never guessed that was his method if he hadn’t said so. Neither will your audience - nor will they care. It’s the content that counts. Not perfection.

ALT Hack: Find ways (by any means necessary) to generate membership revenue. Why? It’s insane money. Membership fees make up 90% of Sam Club’s profits, according to The Hustle.

Thanks for reading Inbox Hacking. Please share it with your peeps - it’s sugar-free but stings a bit.

Shane McLendon - Copy Kingpin

Bonus answer from Facts & Stats section:  The top 3 marketing skills on the rise according to a new LinkedIn report are performance measurement, AI literacy, and growth strategy.