Stop Over-Explaining: The 3 S’s Rule For Projecting Authority

BigDeal

Codie Sanchez

Marketing, Business, Investing, Entrepreneurship

4.9 • 970 Ratings

🗓️ 24 February 2026

⏱️ 20 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

You can be the smartest person in the room and still lose it entirely because of the way you speak. After years on Wall Street and building businesses, I learned the hard way that intelligence without delivery is invisible. Authority isn't about being right — it's about being heard. In this episode, I break down the seven communication traps that quietly sabotage high performers, founders, and anyone tired of being overlooked. These aren't anecdotal — they're rooted in neuroscience, persuasion research, and real-world performance psychology… and once you see them, you'll spot them everywhere. You'll learn:• Why excessive hedging kills your competency score — and how confidence beats correctness in credibility• How over-explaining signals insecurity and reduces processing fluency• Why talking too fast during key moments makes people distrust you — even when you're right• The three S's of landing your point: shorter, slower, stronger• Why Steve Jobs rehearsed keynotes for hours to look effortless• How self-deprecation tanks your perceived ability in hiring and promotion decisions• The shocking study showing modest candidates get liked more but hired less• Why showmanship isn't arrogance — it's survival in a world that rewards clarity• How processing fluency makes simple ideas feel smarter and more truthful• The one-sentence framework Jobs used to control entire product launches This isn't about faking confidence or pretending to be someone you're not. It's about aligning how you deliver with the outcomes you want. Smart people see complexity. Winners communicate it clearly. If you've ever felt overlooked, interrupted, or dismissed despite knowing your stuff — this episode will permanently change how you show up. ___________ 00:00:00 Introduction 00:00:32 Trap 1 00:04:19 Trap 2 00:07:26 Trap 3 00:09:55 Trap 4 00:11:40 Trap 5 00:13:22 Trap 6 00:15:26 Trap 7 00:17:45 The Pattern Behind All Traps 00:18:31 Your Speaking Reset Framework ___________ MORE FROM BIGDEAL 🎥 YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/@podcastbigdeal 📸 Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/bigdeal.podcast 📽️ TikTok: https://www.tiktok.com/@big.deal.pod MORE FROM CODIE SANCHEZ 🎥 YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/@codiesanchezct 📸 Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/codiesanchez 📽️ TikTok: https://www.tiktok.com/@realcodiesanchez OTHER THINGS WE DO 🌐 Our community: https://contrarianthinking.typeform.com/to/WBztXXID 📰 Free newsletter: https://contrarianthinking.biz/3XWLlZp 📚 Biz buying course: https://contrarianthinking.biz/3NhjGgN 🏠 Resibrands: https://resibrands.com/ 💰 CT Capital: https://contrarianthinking.biz/4eRyGOk 🏦 Main St Hold Co: https://contrarianthinking.biz/3YfGa8u Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Transcript

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0:00.0	You can be the smartest person in the room and still sound dumb and lose the room entirely
0:05.5	because of the way you speak. And I should know because I have had it happen to me too.
0:10.3	So today I am breaking down the speaking patterns that quietly sabotage us, especially high
0:15.6	achievers from founders and CEOs to everyday humans just tired of not getting heard. And once you know these, you'll
0:22.4	start noticing them everywhere. I'm Cody Sanchez and this is the Big Deal podcast. This is how you
0:27.6	get attention like a CEO. All right, let's go to trap number one. Excessive hedging. People ignore
0:36.5	everything you say before the word but.
0:38.3	Did you know that? So if you say, I could be totally off here, but and then you drop a perfectly
0:44.5	solid point, neuroscience finds you're going to get ignored. And this is actually, there's a word for
0:49.5	this. It's called linguistic hedging and it's killing your competency score. So every single human,
0:55.1	immediately, when we meet another one, gets graded on two things mainly, warmth and competency.
1:00.2	If you want to be listened to, you better be competent, even above being warm in the world
1:05.0	of business. So the research on linguistic hedging shows that excessive qualifiers reduce perceived competence and authority,
1:12.3	especially in high status environments. To say that in English, if you use but, I don't know,
1:18.5	maybe, could be, I'm not sure, prepared to be pushed around like a ragdoll. Even when the content
1:24.7	quality of what you say is unchanged. So you could be saying really smart
1:28.1	things, but you're going to be tossed. There's this classic persuasion finding where speakers
1:33.5	who presented arguments confidently were rated as more credible. Okay, that kind of makes sense,
1:39.0	even when their arguments were identical to more hesitant versions. But a really scary study, they did a follow-on study that
1:46.3	showed people who argued more confidently but were wrong, were rated even more credible than those
1:52.1	who argued not confidently, but were right. So confidence is actually a heuristic. People don't
1:58.7	consciously score your logic. They score your certainty.
	...

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