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Balancing Bits And Improv For Maximum Success: My Top JUST PRESS RECORD '24 Moment #4

feat. Josh Spector and Dennis Moseley-Williams

Author

Matt Zeigler
January 03, 2025

How and when did you learn to talk to adults, or professionals, or anybody who would clearly be labeled as not-a-peer, as a peer?

In other words, how’d you learn to talk to people?

Not just your immediate family or friends, where the statuses and relationship rules are already in place, but - people?

Josh Spector and Dennis Moseley-Williams learned this skill at a very young age.

It wasn’t the exact reason I wanted to introduce them to each other, but I realized in hindsight that it was the core of everything they’ve accomplished.

Both Josh and Dennis obsess over efficiently and effectively curating the experiences they want to create.

Josh helps all types of business owners get clients from their (online) content.

Dennis helps financial service providers to set the right vibes around how it feels to work with them, so current clients come back and new clients come looking to find out for themselves if what they’ve heard was true.

In both cases, their work involves talking to outwardly successful people in an inwardly raw, direct, and clear way.

How do they do it?

A mix of improvisation and bits.

The same way you learn to talk to adults when you’re a kid.

You start with your bits. Your proven communication hacks that level the playing field. Your methods for getting the guards down, where you quickly can get confirmation that everyone’s on the same page.

Your bits trigger a response. And, because you’ve tested them, they trigger an expected response. All great communicators have bits.

And, since all great communicators are also great listeners, people like Dennis and Josh are masters of improvising with the reactions. They read the room. They tease out what else. They engage with the uncertainty. They pick up the otherwise dropped or skipped over crumbs people leave behind if you’re paying attention.

It’s the same way a comedian wins over a room, or a musician captures a crowd—Josh and Dennis are just applying their improv + bits balance in novel ways, with a targetted focus on where the performance will lead .

Here’s why this is my #4 clip of the year. Watch how Josh puts these ideas together to help focus a client, and then how he reflects it back on himself (lightly edited for clarity):

A lot of it is improv and this also gets back to what we talked about as “listening.”

Someone might have a question and I can help them, and give them advice, and find the answer, but what I’m really doing is pulling it out of THEM. I can’t just be like, “Here’s what you should do.”

Usually in these conversations they’ll say, “I wanna know how I can grow my newsletter. How can I get to 10,000 newsletter subscribers?” My answer’s not going to be, “Well, here’s how you get to 10,000 newsletter subscribers.” The first thing I’m going to say to them is, “Why do you need 10,000 newsletter subscribers?” “Oh, I want more clients.” “How many clients can you work with in a year?” “20.” “You don’t need 10,000 newsletter subscribers, you need 20 clients. You’re asking the wrong question. Let’s talk about how you can get 20 clients from your newsletter instead of how you can get 10,000 newsletter subscribers,” and go from there.

There’s an improv element to all of it. The other thing that I’ve realized, both in my own podcast and being a guest on other podcasts—and it’s funny, because even with starting this show and you asking, which I didn’t know you were going to ask, about the story with the Sam Kinison tape—what I’ve realized is that after years of watching comedians develop and do bits, I am now developing and doing bits.

Josh Spector, Just Press Record

Bits to set the tone and get a response. Improv to flesh out more of the experience. Bits again, to bring it home, and create the right memory.

All learned at a young age, all honed masterfully.

It’s why I had to get them together. It’s not just because they can talk to anyone, but they know how to get the right message to the right person. In the room or on the internet.

This is why Josh Spector and Dennis Moseley-Williams are my #4 moment from Just Press Record in 2024. Watch the clip in the episode below and don’t miss their FULL episode if you haven’t seen it yet either. There’s a reason it was the most popular episode of the year!