Loom

I’m almost certain that when you need to communicate something complex to your team, you sit down and write an email/Slack novel.

You’ll spend fifteen or twenty minutes composing it, choosing nice words, worrying about tone, etc. And what you then produce is a wall of text that the recipient will scan in ninety seconds, misinterpret roughly a third of, and reply to with follow-up questions that could have been answered in the original if the format allowed for it.

I’d like to propose an alternative…

Loom.

I use Loom a TON more than most people would think.

I'm apparently in the top 1% of Loom users every year, and have been for years 😅

A three or five-minute Loom easily delivers 10x more context than a twenty-minute email, and it takes a fraction of the time to make.

A twenty-minute email of, say, four hundred words gives the reader only those four hundred words to slog through.

A three-minute Loom gives them the same information density - plus your tone, your emphasis, and, most importantly, whatever you were pointing at on the screen while you were saying it. Which means the recipient sees the artefact you're referring to, in context, at the moment you're referring to it.

Zero ambiguity! I love it.

You saved fifteen minutes writing it, they understand it way better and the follow-up questions largely don't happen, because the visual context answered them upstream.

I think the reason a lot of people don’t use Loom is that recording feels a little uncomfortable at first - the muscle for it isn't built, the first few come out clumsy, and it feels safer to write an email even though the email is objectively the worse communication.

For me the fix was just deciding I was going to be a person who records things.

Once you tolerate the awkwardness of the first fifteen or twenty it becomes the default.

Every time you use it after that, you're saving yourself fifteen minutes and delivering a better outcome.

One caveat: not every message is a Loom.

A quick question is still a Slack message.

What Looms are for is any communication where visual context, tone, or nuance meaningfully improves the recipient's understanding.

If you’re thinking to yourself “oh you know I do write twenty-minute emails all the time” then try recording a Loom next time time and watch how much comms between you and your team improve.

Nick

P.S.

When you’re ready here are three ways I can help:

1. Find out what your agency could sell for

2. Identify the biggest profit leaks in your agency

3. Book me to deliver a keynote at your event