Matt and Alper go into three skills fundamental to everyone’s success in life. In fact, they are so fundamental that Matt, a professional communications trainer, recently felt the need to improve them in himself. Today he mentions what they are and how he is going about “sharpening the sword.”

Episode transcript:

Matt Krause
Alper, the title of today’s podcast is the cobbler’s children, which, of course is short for the phrase the cobbler’s children have no shoes. And it’s a pretty well known a phrase it’s basically means the expert gives out his expert advice to other people. But his own his or her own family doesn’t benefit from it. So the cobbler’s children have no shoes even though the cobbler is making shoes. There’s a similar phrase to that in Turkish right?

Alper Rozanes
Yes, I was just thinking about that. Except we’re not talking about shoe making. We’re talking about tailoring clothes. The tailor cannot fix his own cloth, something like that.

Matt Krause
How do you say that in Turkish?

Alper Rozanes
I wasn’t familiar with the cobbler by the way.

Matt Krause
Yeah. How do you say that phrase in Turkish, the one about the tailor.

Alper Rozanes
That would be terzi kendi sokunu dikemez. In this case, we’re not literally talking about fixing the cloth, but we’re talking about I don’t know how to call it English, but this part of the cloth where you need to intervene. Otherwise, it’s going to break looser.

Matt Krause
Ah, like the seam?

Alper Rozanes
Yeah. And it’s a very typical easy fix. And for some reason, we have come to believe in the country that the tailors are incapable of fixing their own clothes. Which is something that I don’t buy, by the way, and I can challenge you on that. But let me hear your thoughts first.

Matt Krause
Okay, so, so I will tell you my thoughts first. And then before we wrap up the podcast, I want to hear why you don’t believe this phrase. Because I do. I totally have a cobblers children problem. And in order in order, in order for this podcast to not become just Matt going on and on rambling about the problems that he has…

Alper Rozanes
I think we’re way past that in the past 48 episodes.

Matt Krause
Let’s give our listeners some value. Let’s let’s let’s package this in a way that is of some value to our listeners. And that is that for a communications trainer, or for a communications coach, these are the three fundamental skills that are so important that when a communications coach, a communications coach is always watching out for these three skills.

Matt Krause
And when the communications coach realizes that these skills are atrophying in him, he’s, he’s like, Oh my God, I need to do something about this. So that’s the that’s the value. That’s the value that it could bring to others is that these are the three fundamental skills that you need.

Alper Rozanes
I’m all ears.

Matt Krause
Okay, so the first one is public speaking. And you and I know we’ve both been through Toastmasters and we could go on and on for days about everything that we don’t like about Toastmasters. So in no way am I saying that I have, you know, drank the Kool Aid and I love all things Toastmasters. In no way am I saying that.

Matt Krause
But I recently realized that as much as I tell people, that public speaking is important. And as much as I’ve spent years developing that skill and probably have that skill on a on an above average level. Still, it’s not as good as I would like it to be.

Matt Krause
And so I recently, rejoined a Toastmasters Club. And it’s a Toastmasters club that mostly meets virtually which you know, when you and I went through Toastmasters. We went through it in the pre COVID era, where everything was face to face. And so we worked on the skill of getting up in front of a group of people who are actually sitting in the same room as you and speaking to those people. And that skill has atrophied in me somewhat.

Matt Krause
But a skill that has definitely atrophied is the ability to do that well when you’re speaking in a virtual environment. And Toastmasters for all of all of its problems, and you and I could go on and on for days about all all of Toastmasters problems, but one thing that Toastmasters is brilliant at is teaching people the skill of being able to stand in front of a group of people and still function well.

Matt Krause
There, I stay away from saying, being able to stand in front of a group of people and not be nervous because some people, you know, they magically get over their nervousness, and others are nervous all the time.

Matt Krause
And me, I’m definitely in that second group, even even 10 years later, I still get nervous when when standing in front of a group of people. So that’s why I say that Toastmasters doesn’t teach you how to stand in front of a group of people and not be nervous. Toastmasters does teach you though, how to stand in front of a group of people and still function well.

Alper Rozanes
And it also teaches that you’re not going to die.

Matt Krause
That’s true, it teaches you that you’re not going to die.

Matt Krause
So that’s one is the importance of public speaking, and Toastmasters as a valuable organization for being able to work on that skill.

Matt Krause
The second skill that has kind of atrophied in me, and that I want to work on is the skill of storytelling. And, you know, we give this advice all the time to to our clients, we tell we tell them, Okay, you need to be able to tell a story, tell a story, tell a story, tell a story, and we hear this word storytelling all the time. And, and I’m pretty good at figuring out how to tell a story in three sentences. And I’m pretty good at figuring out how to tell a story at book length.

Matt Krause
But in the middle ground there, like a telling it being able to tell a story in like a few minutes, I’m not particularly good at that. Or maybe maybe actually, my skills in that department are above average, but still, they’re not what I want them to be.

Matt Krause
So the ability to do and what I’ve done for that recently, and this is very recent, just within the last couple days, I joined a an organization called Pitch Club. And it started out and I guess its core, is being able to pitch as a startup founder, being able to pitch your idea as a startup founder.

Matt Krause
But this group has expanded that definition to other things, too. So if you, you know, want to convince your wife how awesome it would be to take a vacation in the mountains rather than you know, sitting on the beach in the Bahamas. Or if you or the benefits of buying a house or something like that. This club, this organization teaches you how to do that.

Matt Krause
So in addition to in addition to pitching your idea for a startup, it teaches you to do these other things, too.

Matt Krause
And so we’ve got number one, which is public speaking, we’ve got number two, which is storytelling.

Matt Krause
And the third skill that’s really important, is visual design. And first of all, my visual design skills have always been pretty much average and the the I’m one of those people who like looks at good visual design and thinks that’s awesome. So but I’m not, I have a hard time reproducing it myself. So I it’s like it’s okay, you know how that saying in art goes. I’m not an artist, but I know it when I see it. It’s kind of like, it’s kind of like that for me with visual design.

Matt Krause
And in my line of work, which is, you know, coaching for communications to tech people and finance people, the bar for visual design is pretty low. So if you have average or slightly above average visual design skills, you’re going to do fine. No, no visual designer in the world would look at me and say, Oh, wow, you know, Matt has some great skills of visual design. And and I hit… Not Not yet. Yeah, that’s the more optimistic way of putting in. And I am definitely not yet on the cover of Architectural Digest magazine, or, you know, I’m not the featured graphic designer in Graphic Designer Monthly. Maybe one of these days I will be, but I’m definitely not now.

Matt Krause
So when I say that I’m working on my visual design skills. They’re pretty basic things like you know how to put together a color palette, what colors are complementary? What colors are grating to the eye? Why do you not put Why do you not put blue text on a red background, stuff like that?

Matt Krause
And for for that group of people who want to learn that level of visual design skills, there are plenty of free resources. I mean, you can go to YouTube and watch like graphic design tips for the rest of your life, if that’s the kind of stuff that you’re studying. So there’s no shortage of materials on that.

Matt Krause
So those are the three fundamental skills that that I that I’m thinking of. One is public speaking. The second is storytelling. And the third is visual design. And for me, as a communications…, I think that these these skills are fundamental for pretty much all human beings.

Matt Krause
If you need to present your idea to a group of people, you’re going to need something from these three skills. So when I in myself see them atrophying that those skills need to be worked on.

Matt Krause
You said earlier that, the thing you said earlier about disagreeing with this phrase, the cobbler’s children or the the what was it in Turkish the tailor. Yeah. When you say that you disagree with that? Tell me more? What do you mean?

Alper Rozanes
Before I come to that, let’s make a mental note of talking about visual design in a future episode. Because I have I have, I can make some contributions to that too. But what I mean, what I mean by the tailor is okay, I’m sure there is a reason why this this proverb came to exist.

Alper Rozanes
Maybe there was one tailor, or a couple of tailors or several tailors in history that actually couldn’t fix their own clothes. But it doesn’t sound logical. I mean, it’s like, I’m a presentation designers, apart from the coaching and I designed visuals, and I designed slides for other companies.

Alper Rozanes
It would be like, I design good slides for my clients. But my own presentations are horrible in design. I don’t think, Well, I don’t think that’s the case, and I don’t think that would be the case. Therefore, it’s kind of difficult for me to believe that if you’re doing something professionally, in this case, the tailor or the cobbler, you would be able to do a mediocre job or a bad job when it comes to fixing your own thing. So it doesn’t, it doesn’t make rational sense.

Alper Rozanes
I’m sure that there is something more profound behind but strictly speaking from a from a rational point of view, I don’t think it just makes any sense.

Matt Krause
I think that I agree that there is a problem with this phrase, the cobbler’s children or the the tailor’s clothing, etc, etc. I think there’s a there is a potential problem with this phrase.

Matt Krause
And it’s highly likely that actually the cobbler’s children actually do have nice shoes. And the tailors clothes actually do fit well, those things are highly likely. And it’s highly, it’s also highly likely that if the cobbler feels that there’s a problem with the cobbler’s or with the children’s shoes, or if the tailor feels that there’s a problem with the tailor’s clothing, they’re looking at it not from the perspective of an average person with other things to do. They’re looking at at it from the perspective of a cobblers idea of perfection or a tailor’s idea of perfection.

Matt Krause
And it’s kind of like that here for me, you know, when I mentioned that public speaking, or storytelling, are important, current focuses for me, or foci, I guess, whatever the plural of focus is, it’s that for me, when I mentioned those two things, it’s not like I’m saying that my skills in those area are terrible, and I’m a worthless human being, I’m just saying that my skills in those areas are probably above average, but still, there’s a lot of room to grow. And if I’m going to tell people that they need to improve those skills, I should probably be doing the same thing myself.

Alper Rozanes
You need to put your what was the phrase with the mouth and the foot?

Matt Krause
You need to, yeah. How does that phrase go? I don’t think there’s a foot. That’s a different phrase, completely different meaning, but you need to put your mouth where your money is, or you need to put your money where your mouth is. Does that sound like? I’m on to the right phrase there? You need to

Alper Rozanes
Yeah, I think there’s somebody in mouthing words. I don’t know the exact phrase we can look it up.

Matt Krause
The one with foot is, uh, foot in mouth which means that you’ve said the wrong thing and you have insulted somebody when you did not intend to. So I don’t think that’s the phrase that you were looking for.

Alper Rozanes
Unless you’re insulted, no.

Matt Krause
Okay, so before we wrap up for today, is there anything else that you wanted to cover?

Alper Rozanes
No. Like I said in a future episode, let’s cover the visual design. Okay, and talk about its importance. And I think that will be it for today.

Matt Krause
Great. Well, thank you very much Alper, and I will talk to you soon.

Alper Rozanes
Thank you.

Matt Krause
Bye bye.