(Listen to this post, here.)

The last date I ever had occurred towards the tail end of the Reagan Administration, when I met my now wife, Linda.

Leaving that phase of life was fine by me and even more fine by the single women of Boston who were subject to my inept attempts at flirtation.

My problem, in addition to having zero discernable game, was that I never knew what to say to a stranger in a bar.

I did my best, but I’d typically end up just blabbing away, with opening questions like…

What are you drinking?

Where are you from?

How about those Red Sox?

One day, following yet another weekend of failure, I sought the counsel of my older coworker Tom, who always appeared to do quite well in the meeting strangers department.

He offered two suggestions:

#1. Go someplace with dancing.

#2. Walk right up to the woman in question and say just one thing: “Do you want to dance?”

There was a lot more detail in his response, but his point was that all the preamble and assorted blah blah I was providing was getting in the way. Get right to the point with a simple question.

This is the part where I’m supposed to reveal that I met Linda at a dance bar the very next night.

That’s not what happened. We met years later in my apartment (long story), a venue that greatly increased my odds of standing out from the crowd.

But, thanks to Tom’s advice, I did end up having a lot more dances.

Stop Getting Ready to Say Something

One of the big mistakes many short-format writers make – and public speakers, for that matter – is they take too long to get started:

They explain why whatever it is they are about to tell you is important.

They give you a bunch of background information … stats, news items, industry data.

They – biggest mistake of all – tell you why this particular topic means a lot to them.

This kind of thing – something my friend Gordon Graham refers to as “throat clearing” – isn’t terrible. But it is unnecessary and often boring.

Remember, you are not writing a novel in which you have the freedom to slowly creep up on the reader over several pages. In an 800-word newsletter, you are going to lose many (most?) people by the third paragraph if you are still warming up.

Look for the Hook

As to where you find this fast start, it’s a little hard to give you a generic answer without having actual content to point to.

But I can tell you that often, when rewriting something a client has written, I find the “hook” – the intriguing start of what matters – sitting quietly, several paragraphs down in whatever they’ve written.

It’s nearly always there, it’s just hidden. So I grab it and put it up at the very beginning.

Some recent examples of fast, strong newsletter openings…

“Dad, the house alarm went off!”

When I was young, I was always happy whenever a friend invited me to their house for dinner.

I’ll just come right out and say it — I hate the RFP process.

These don’t need to be earth-shattering. But you want things that grab attention and pull the reader in, as you might if sharing a story or insight with a friend over coffee.

Note as well this isn’t the kind of thing that only works in the B2C world. The examples above, in order, come from companies selling cybersecurity, biopharma recruiting, and IT services. Serious people selling high-ticket professional services.

Here’s the bottom line.

People are busy and easily bored. And they’ve got a lot of choices when it comes to deciding what to pay attention to.

So if your readership consists mainly of humans, you need to grab attention quickly, before they move on to something else.

And Tom, wherever you are, I owe you a beer. And maybe a dance.

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Discussion Questions:

1. What are you drinking?
2. Where are you from?
3. How about those Red Sox?
4. Do you want to dance?

Share your answers below…

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