The language experts from maslansky + partners take on the smartest, savviest, and sometimes stupidest messages in the market today. CEO Michael Maslansky and President Lee Carter bring their experience with words, communication, and behavioral science to the table — along with a colleague or client — and offer up a “lay of the language.” Their insight helps make sense of business, life, and culture, and proves over and over again that It’s Not What You Say, It’s What They Hear™.

How can a simple shift in language revolutionize perceptions? In this special episode of HearSay, join Pile of Scrap host John Sacco as he engages with communication expert Michael Maslansky where they explore the rebranding of the recycled materials industry. From redefining raw materials to spotlighting its vital role in iconic products, Michael’s insights guide listeners on embracing recycled materials’ value, changing the narrative, and encouraging responsible disposal.

Listen below or on your preferred streaming platform:

LINKS MENTIONED IN THE SHOW

Michael Maslansky’s book, The Language of Trust

maslansky + partners newsletter

maslansky + partners LinkedIn

maslansky + partners Twitter

TRANSCRIPT BELOW

Michael Maslansky: 

They said what? Welcome to Hearsay, a podcast from the language strategist at Maslansky Partners, where we give our take on the strategy behind the smartest savviest, and stupidest messages in the market today and what you can learn from them. Our philosophy is it’s not what you say, it’s what they hear, and that’s why we call this Hearsay. This is Michael Maslansky, CEO of Maslansky Partners and author of The Language of Trust. And today we have a special episode of Hearsay for you. It’s an interview that I did on a podcast called Pile of Scrap with John Sacco, who is the CEO and owner of Sierra International Machinery and a fantastic interviewer. In the interview, we focus on work that my team and I have done with the recycled materials industry, but really what we talk about is what it takes to reframe old narratives and shape new ones. I hope you enjoy. 

John Sacco: 

Well, hello everybody, and welcome to another episode of Pile of Scrap, and today I have the language guru with me, Mr. Michael Maslansky. Michael, welcome. 

Michael Maslansky:  

It is great to be here, John. I’m super excited about this. 

John Sacco:  

Well, fantastic. Michael, we first met with your work with ISRI, the Institute of Scrap Recycling Industries, about the language that our industry uses. Let’s first talk about your role in your business. You are a language guru. What is that? Tell the people who listen to this. What is a language guru? What are you specifically focusing on through your clients? 

Michael Maslansky: 

So our business is built around this idea that it’s not what you say that matters, it’s what your audience hears. And if you think about the way that organizations communicate, very often they build a message based on what they think sounds good, but they have a whole different set of beliefs, experiences, and attitudes than their audiences have, whether it’s their customers, regulators, or other stakeholders. And what often happens is you go out and communicate and people don’t like your message or they don’t understand your message or they don’t believe your message because they don’t know you. The way that you know, our job is to understand where that gap is and then find the right language so that we can close. 

John Sacco: 

We’re going to get into the recycled materials industry, but tell me about an industry that has come to you that they needed your help and how did you help shift from what to what? And tell us a little bit of the success story, because I think people need to understand what it is you do besides just for the recycled materials industry, but let’s talk about work you’ve done outside so people could start thinking in the way. Okay, I get it.

Michael Maslansky: 

So words matter, right? The language that we use to describe things makes a big difference in how it’s perceived, the way that we talk shapes the way that people think. So I’ll give you a couple of examples. In the energy industry, we’ve been working with the electric companies across the country for a long time, and when we started with them, they were perceived as kind of utilities as big monopolies, expensive, not terribly innovative, not necessarily focused on clean. The work that we’ve done with them over really built around this one idea of getting as clean as we can, as fast as we can without compromising on reliability or affordability, kind of focusing in on this one idea and hitting it over and over again and all of these different communication tactics that they use. All of a sudden you start to see a reputation shift. They start to be associated with being really committed to clean, investing in clean, with making changes to support a cleaner energy future. 

John Sacco: 

I’m out in California, PGE for example. I’ve noticed a real shift in their branding about how they’re there to help us keep the energy flowing to our houses in a clean energy format. And so I would imagine, I don’t want you to disclose who your clients are, but that’s obviously a shift in the branding using different words for their audience. 

Michael Maslansky: 

Yeah. Well, I’ll tell you, I mean, one thing that has been true in the energy industry and in many industries is that successful industries get closer to their customers. They use language that their customers understand. They use language that their customers respond to. They don’t speak the insular language of the industry. They don’t use the jargon of the industry. They make it about the customer. And when you do that, you tend to be more successful. 

John Sacco: 

Well, that’s segues into this. You’ve come to do work for Israel, and we as an industry have hidden from the public and we have stuck to our words. And your research really showed how bad the words we were using and we were focused completely on the wrong stuff, the inputs. But you’ve done a lot of research on our industry and you’ve helped our industry. Tell us, what was the first thing when you took this project? What was the first thing you went, whoa, what was your first like, oh shit moment with our industry? 

Michael Maslanky: 

Yeah, I mean, so every time you ask people what they think of when they think about recycling, they say the same thing. They say the blue bin. If the blue bin isn’t doing the job that you want it to do, which it wasn’t, then you got to change it. And the challenge that we heard, so you say recycling, people focus on the blue bin. When they focus on the blue bin, they focus on the stuff that isn’t getting into the blue bin or the stuff that once it gets into the blue bin, they don’t think is actually getting recycled. They think ends up in the waste stream going into garbage. So it is focused on all the stuff that doesn’t actually get recycled. It is not focused on the stuff that does, and we had to change that. 

John Sacco:

So that becomes problematic because policy makers and regulators are the same people who think, when you say the word recycling, it’s all about the blue bin instead of the industrial nature of what we’re doing. So continue with, you started that now, how you’re building, what’s changing the way we’re going to talk, what did you find?

Michael Maslanky:  

So if that was the view from the customer and from legislators and regulators, the view internally was let’s look at the scrap yards. Let’s look at the stuff that we’re getting either from the blue bin or from industrial customers and all the cool stuff that we do with it. Right now, if you look across at almost every other industry, they don’t talk about the stuff that they do to the raw materials. They talk about the stuff that comes out, right? If you’re a home builder, you don’t talk about putting up the walls, you talk about the house. Apple. You don’t talk about the wires and the chips. You talk about the iPhone and the iPad. And so one of the big things and one of the big shifts that we recommended was instead of focusing or starting with the inputs, start with the thing that people care about. Start with the outcomes. Start with the outputs. And so that was really the biggest shift that we found is that the more that you started where customers were, where regulators were, where legislators were, the more that they could see, this contributes to stuff that I care about now let me learn about the industry instead of the other way around. 

John Sacco:

So the word scrap is a bad word. We know that in California, I don’t use the word scrap anymore. To me it’s recycled iron, recycled aluminum or the recycled materials industry. A lot of pushback with that word. People want to, they want to hang onto it. What’s your message to those who want to hang onto these words that are really detrimental to our industry? Why do they need to understand the change? 

Michael Maslansky:  

I think this happens a lot, right? Change is hard. Changing language is hard, particularly when it’s your industry and your emotional about it. The question that we ask is what are you trying to achieve with your communication? Are you trying to satisfy yourself or are you trying to achieve another objective? If your objective is to educate, to engage, to persuade outside audiences, then why are you using language that they don’t like? Because every time that we test it with those audiences, it leads to negative associations. So you may like it, that’s fine. Talk about it at home when you’re trying to do something with your communication, use the language of the people that you’re trying to communicate with. 

John Sacco: 

So my biggest takeaway and was the timing was incredible when you said, let’s focus on the outputs. Because when I started hearing what you were saying about the output, we started creating the docuseries repurposed. And when you start with the metal recycling yards that are the raw material suppliers for electric art furnaces and their output is new steel, and that new steel is going to bridges and to highways, things that people can connect with stadiums. When you started looking at this and you started seeing the output from our industry, where would light bulbs go off with you? Or what did you say? Wow, I really didn’t realize all the output that this industry is responsible. What is the recycle materials? In your opinion, when you saw it, what was the surprise on the outputs? 

Michael Maslansky: 

I was a consumer, so when I thought about recycling, I thought about plastic and paper also. When somebody pointed out that there was metal that was recycled, I got it, but I didn’t know that the aluminum that is in existence today has probably been around for a hundred years. I didn’t know that all the steel or 70% of the steel that is produced today is recycled steel. These things are, this is, it’s huge numbers. It’s a huge component of so many of the things that we take for granted or don’t think about. And when you start to look around as you point out and repurpose, when you start to look around and say, go live a day without recycled materials, it’s a powerful idea to think about.

John Sacco:  

It really is because of the work that I was, because I was part of the committee that worked with you, Michael, on this, it really for me was an aha moment about we’re going to stick to the outputs. So to people who will see this, who aren’t in our industry, what do they really need to know about our industry? What would you say to those who are going to watch this on Amazon Prime or who watch my podcast, but who watch repurpose when they see it? What do they need to know? What would you say to them about us? Yeah. 

Michael Maslansky: 

So if we think about some of the topics that are so important to us today, infrastructure, supply chain, the environment. If you think about infrastructure, so much of the infrastructure that we need to build today needs to be built out of recycled materials. If it’s not built out of recycled materials, it’s going to be mined. It’s going to have to come from virgin places, forests, mining, otherwise. So it’s bad for the environment. So the fact that we get to use recycled materials means that not only can we build the infrastructure, but we can do it in a way that is more sustainable and it’s a renewable resource. And then when we think about supply chain and we think about the costs and the challenges of either getting raw materials from overseas, from places that we may not have the best relationships with or that cost a lot to get the materials from or that are bad for the environment. When we got to ship ’em overseas, now all of a sudden we’ve got sources that are renewable sources that are sustainable and they’re secure because a lot of them are coming from here to be recycled. And then to put in materials here, a fantastic point. So recycled iron saves over 60% of CO2 emissions versus virgin material. Recycled iron saves over 60% of energy consumption. And if we’re going to be sustainable, isn’t that an important message to get out? 

Michael Maslansky: 

Absolutely. I mean, we are a renewable source of the raw materials that we need to build the everyday items and essential infrastructure that makes our economy go.

John Sacco: 

I have a saying that CO2 emissions don’t have a border. So in America, there’s activists who don’t particularly care for the steel industry or the foundries for aluminum and copper or paper mills. They would like to see this go someplace else, but CO2 emissions don’t have a border. So what’s their shortsighted, what do they need to know? Why we can’t just put everything overseas because those CO2 missions come out, but what else are they missing in this?

Michael Maslsanky: 

It depends where they’re coming from in terms of their opposition. If it’s a not-in-my-backyard kind of opposition, it’s the kind of opposition that every industry faces whenever they want to put any infrastructure, any investment that is not big, beautiful park or skyscraper in a neighborhood. And the point is, it brings all of these benefits here. It is better for the environment to have it here than to have to ship it from overseas. It is more secure to have our supply chain here. It’s good for the economy as a result of having the industry here. And so those are the messages that to the extent they’re going to break through with these audiences are the ones that break through. And what’s really important I think, is that the more that people are focused on the yard, which doesn’t look good to an outside person, right? It just doesn’t anymore than a quarry does or a mine does. So the more that you focus on those things, the tougher job you have to do, the more that you focus on the benefits on the outcomes, the better off you are because then people see that they want this here. 

John Sacco: 

I think that’s incredibly important. Great comment. When people really understand that we are the raw material supplier for so much of our daylight, we’re here in Washington DC and we’re looking out over Reagan airport, you can’t build that airport. Those runways need rebar. That rebar comes from almost a hundred percent recycled iron, all the aluminum in the aircraft and the copper wiring and the jet wastes and the building of the steel. You could just say when you look at it, 72% of all the steel in that airport is from recycled iron. People need to understand this message. This to me is an opportunity.

Michael Maslansky: 

It’s a huge opportunity. And I’ll say one other thing is that a lot of the criticisms that I think are still out there, they were certainly out there when we started this process, is about the stuff that doesn’t get recycled. And again, the more that you focus on the process, you’re focusing on how well the process works and what it misses. When you start saying that 70% of the rebar goes into those things, 90%, 90% over 95%, but still the terminals. But basically, when you say you can’t build those things without recycled materials, you’re focused on how much is being recycled. And so it flips the whole mindset from the deficit, like what’s missing to the positive, the asset side of the equation. 

John Sacco: 

So in season one of Repurpose episode one, we talked about food, the machines that harvest the food, the grains, the crops out in the fields that’s made from steel and there’s aluminum in it and that’s coming. John Deere has foundries that they’re using recycled iron to make the tractors. And then when they harvest, it goes to food processing plants that have steel in it and aluminum in it, and it has to have electrical. And there’s so much recycled content in it. We don’t eat without this industry. We all like eating, right? We’ve got to eat to survive. Health can’t build a hospital without, what would a hospital look like? If you think about it, if you don’t have rebar for the foundation, well, you can’t build the structure if you don’t have the recycled aluminum and the recycled copper and steel for bed frames and the electronic equipment, the stainless steel operating rooms, we’re going to look like a civil war hospital. See, that’s the opportunity of the messaging. 

Michael Maslansky:  

Absolutely. And all of it. And when you tell these stories, you’re starting from the end and you’re working backwards instead of starting from the stuff that you’re collecting, processing and then ultimately turning into something that you weren’t even in many cases, a lot of the storytelling in the past hasn’t even gotten to what it goes into. It said it was essential, but most of the focus was on how it was created, not what you did with it.

John Sacco:

So Michael, our members at ISRI, some of ’em just don’t seem to understand this lexicon. You have a chance because the people in our industry are listening. They listen to a pile of scrap, please, in your best encourage, how would you encourage ’em to understand why this lexicon and this language that we want to use is so vitally important for the future as our industry comes out from behind these fences that we hid from? Because we’ve hid for a lot of decades, and that’s why our image sucks. Explain to the people. 

Michael Maslansky: 

Look, I think every industry to some extent has the same refrain. We don’t get credit for all the good stuff we do. They don’t understand us. They don’t appreciate how important we are. And the answer to that is often, well, let’s just educate. But people don’t want to be educated. They’re too busy, they’ve got too much going on. What they want is a shortcut, a mental shortcut to better understand and better appreciate what it is that an industry does. The simplest way to do that, the highest return on investment way to do that is to find the words that emotionally instantly, credibly and effectively resonate with the audiences that you’re trying to reach and use those words. 

John Sacco: 

Knowing our industry now you’ve been working, what are some of those things that resonate with people? 

Michael Maslanky: 

Yeah, I mean the simplest thing, the simplest thing is called the recycled materials industry because you’re starting from the end and working backwards because as soon as you call it the recycled materials industry, you start talking about it from the stuff that you create perspective. You can go backwards. You can still talk about your team and your technology and your innovation and all the stuff that you do, but you’re starting in the right place. 

John Sacco: 

Okay? 

Michael Maslanky: 

Talk about the fact that you are a raw material, right? When you say scrap, first of all, people don’t have positive associations with it. Second of all, they don’t understand where it fits within a supply chain. They don’t understand what you do with it, right? Even if you say you recycle the scrap into what if you say that you create, you have a renewable source of raw materials for infrastructure, everyday items, healthcare, whatever it is, now you’re explaining to them where you fit within the supply chain, why you are valuable. Scrap is not valuable. Raw materials, they’re valuable. 

John Sacco: 

See, that to me, that’s just fantastic. And I’m glad we’re being able to help people understand. I’ve had a lot of people talk to me about it, but I think in the end you articulate so well because you’ve done the research. You can’t see the forest because of the trees. Well, we’re seeing the trees. We’re not seeing the forest. You see the forest and these words and you see, so what is the, give us an opportunity now, our industry for decades has been stuck in one place and we’re coming out of it. Give us the opportunity. Michael, what would you tell the audience? What is the opportunity for the recycled materials industry? 

Michael Maslansky: 

So I think we started to talk about it this way at the convention, the idea that recycled materials are what we’re made of. And this idea of what blank is made of, what roads are made of, what planes are made of, what cars are made of, what healthcare equipment is made of that. If we want people to create one association in their mind, it’s that when they go out the door in the morning, when they look around, they see the stuff that they use that they love, but they start to appreciate the fact that the stuff that’s inside is not brand new. It wasn’t mined as virgin material. It’s a renewable raw material. It’s been reused and that there’s an industry behind that that makes it happen. But that if you beat that drum, you go into legislator’s offices and you start telling that story, they’re going to be much more likely to want to support you than if you’re something that they can’t really relate to. 

John Sacco: 

So I was up on the hill talking to a particular Congressperson. I’ll leave them for the purpose of not disclosing because people will think it’s a political thing. So in the restroom in that office, they had Kohler toilet and faucet and plumbing. Well, Kohler in Wisconsin makes all their product from recycled metals. And when I told them that, now they changed. Now they know you can’t have plumbing without what we do because brass is zinc and copper mixed, and it’s melted in foundries here in the us and Kohler’s a US brand they can get that. They can latch onto that. People can latch onto this. And this is what I try to encourage people, and obviously that’s what you’re trying to get the masses, because you’re kind of the outsider. I’m like, you’re the one who I think has influence because I’m the choir. You’re not. 

Michael Maslanky:  

Yeah. I mean, and I’ll just say one thing that is important that industries often don’t recognize is that communicating is hard. Doing it well is hard. Getting it to break through is expensive. And the question becomes then you can change your language. And that is not expensive. But to get that message out tends to be, it takes a lot of work. The question is, is it worth it? And I would go back to why we were brought in to begin with, the industry recognized that it was not being perceived the way that it wanted to be perceived, and it wanted to change that. And so the question is, if you know that you can change perceptions, because seeing it in one-on-one interactions, and when you tell the story the right way, you get a different reaction. Why wouldn’t you want to invest the money to tell that story so that more people understand it, appreciate it, and respond to it.

John Sacco:  

That’s incredible. I think it’s very well said. So you’ve talked a little bit, there’s an expense to it, but also with social media and your cell phone, it’s not real hard to put something out there and that doesn’t cost you really from Instagram to LinkedIn, TikTok, Facebook, these social media platforms, there’s so many people. And if we’re going to get people outside our industry to know our story, to know what we do, it’s going to take more than a handful of people. I think everybody in our industry should be doing this every day. Thoughts? 

Michael Maslansky: 

Yeah. I mean, look, that’s where it starts. The best ambassadors for the industry are the people in the industry. And that is low cost. It’s actually low effort, and it is a really important place to start. It makes everything else go further, whatever it is that you decide to do. And if you don’t do it and you’re not sending a consistent message across the industry, then you’re just shooting yourself in the foot.

John Sacco:

Consistency. But that can be exhausting. Being there every day can be exhausting. I’ve had several people tell me, how do you do it every day? It’s the first thing I do. I sit down at my coffee shop every morning and I make my post, and I’ve been out there talking about it, and I am encouraging you people. Okay, so maybe you can’t do it every day, but you can do it five days a week. 

Michael Maslansky:  

Look, maybe you can’t do it five days a week, but you can do it once a week. I mean, if you think about where a lot of the people are coming from, you build habits one bite at a time. And so make a habit that you can live up to. If you had everybody in the industry posting once a week, how big a multiplier would that be on what’s being done now? 

John Sacco:  

It’s game changer. 

Michael Maslansky: 

So start there, then people will see that they get the positive feedback and then maybe they do it every day.

John Sacco: 

Well, there’s that old saying, you wish somebody would do something. Well, then I realized I was that somebody, and that’s why I started to do repurposed because in the end, I do want to change the narrative of our industry because I realized talking to some very important people and government and people throughout the community, they just have no idea what we do. They don’t know that our raw materials actually is how they live their life. There’s this marina right below us, Michael, all the propellers, bronze. Well, where’s that material coming from? It’s from recycled, all the stainless steel railings, all the aluminum in the marine industry, so much recycled content in it. And we can keep going. 

Michael Maslansky: 

I mean, I’ll tell you, so my team that worked on this to a person thinks that this is one of the most important things that they’ve worked on. And I think when we talk about it, we talk about the fact that this industry sits at the nexus of so many of the most important trends that are going on right now, and it isn’t getting the credit for it. And it warrants a lot more credit for what is being done as opposed to the criticism for what could be done and what isn’t being done. And so this is a message that needs to get out there. It’s got to be repeated. We tell people that until you’re ready to throw up from having said the same message so many times that it makes you sick, you have not said it enough to break through.  

John Sacco: 

Well, I think that’s something incredibly powerful. What you said, your staff that worked on this, they didn’t know how the impact on their data. So just think about that you’re hired to help our industry change the way we talk about it. Your staff is going, wait, what my daily life is dependent on. That’s just is as powerful as anything out there that your staff who does all these language projects realizes that the recycled materials industry is probably on the forefront of the most sustainable, environmentally friendly industries. There is 96% of all the materials recycled in this country by weight. It’s not coming from the blue bin. We need to celebrate that 96%, right? 

Michael Maslansky:

Absolutely. Absolutely. And we need to shift the focus from the blue bin. And that’s another reason why changing the language is really important because recycling has been recycling with the i n G has been tied to the blue bin. And so even when you use that word, which is meant to suggest something really positive about what we’re doing, it tends to bring people back to the blue bin. That’s why, again, just shifting from recycling to recycled has that major impact on how we think. 

John Sacco:  

Well, I’ve been using it and I think it’s very effective in our messaging and the growth of our audience on our social media platforms. And the response that I’ve received from policymakers and communities and educators, they want to use repurpose. I’ve had several people bring this to classrooms, be it even on the college level, to the elementary school level, because people don’t know how new steel is made. They don’t know where copper, the electrical wire comes for the electrical grid. They don’t understand it. And I think it’s very important, and we’re seeing people want to put this into schools as a curriculum as just for educator school bus. Okay, kids go to school, a lot of kids go to school in America on school bus. What do you think the materials of that school bus where it’s coming from, the recycle materials industry. So I think the education of what we do is vitally important too. So it’s a full court press as far as I’m concerned. Our message needs to get out there and everybody needs to participate.  

Michael Maslansky: 

That’s the only way that it works. And it’s hard. It takes a lot of work from everybody. There are a lot of other industries out there who are trying to get their message across. There are a lot of other companies, you got to got to be in it to win it. 

John Sacco: 

Oh, but that’s truth. There’s truth to that, Michael, because in the end, the steel industry in America truly is dependent on our industry because when you have over 72% of all steel mills in America are electric art furnaces, they don’t melt material to make new steel if we’re not around. So they need us, we need them. 

Michael Maslansky: 

And you go further with a lot of this, but if you think about what it is that the industry can kind of associate itself with, it is the Mercedes of the world and the Adidas of the world and these big brands that really create the products that we love, and they’re celebrating the fact that they’re using recycled materials more than the industry tends to celebrate the fact that it supplies those industries. And that’s got to change. 

John Sacco: 

I shake my head because it’s so well said, and I think this message, I think people are going to change their minds and it’s going to start jumping on board. Because you have articulated with me today so incredible with this one-on-one. But people as they listen to this podcast are going to get this one-on-one. They’re going to be in my seat listening to you that yes, they hear my questions, but they’re going to be listening to on the why this is important. And like you say, Mercedes is out there saying their car is made from all this recycled material. We need to be saying, Hey, Mercedes, that recycled material that you’re using came from our industry, right? Adidas, your shoes, you’re using recycled plastics in your shoe. Well, where’d that come from? Came from the recycled materials industry. So that’s incredible. I got a comment, and I want your feedback on this. I took some videos of the crap in the water down here in the rivers, and I do this often on the Mississippi. When I was in Davenport, I see a lot of plastic in the water and people associate recycling with plastic and plastic not being recycled. Now I believe it’s a people problem that plastic gets in the water. People aren’t doing their job. John Q Public, stop putting your crap in the water. What would you say to that? It doesn’t grow legs. Is it the problem of plastic that it’s in the water? Or is it the problem that people don’t properly dispose of it so it doesn’t get in the water? Is it a fine line there?

Michael Maslansky: 

I would say if I’m talking to you as a representative of the recycled materials industry, I’d say it’s not your fault, but it’s your problem. Because the history of industry is trying to put responsibility where it may belong, but on their constituents, on their stakeholders tends to fail. Now you can collaborate with the public and you can look for ways to better engage them to say, your neighbors are recycling. Why aren’t you? Or you care about your neighborhood. Why are you letting it get littered with plastic or other mechanisms that could be used to encourage customers and the public to recycle? But if you as an industry try and make it their fault, it will backfire. 

John Sacco: 

Fantastic. Instead of blaming, encourage the proper way. I love that. Well, I’m going to change my message because No, that’s fantastic. I get it. Absolutely. It is just like the light bulb goes on with me because I think, well, I never considered that. So let us encourage the people how to do it properly. Industry in America does not by any stretch of the imagination, the residuals from manufacturing all the metals in paper, in the manufacturing of products, they know the value of it. Last question before we finish up here, before we bring this in, before a landing, if a pile of gold, it’s not considered waste, why would a pile of recycle iron be considered waste? 

Michael Maslansky: 

Because gold tells the story about what it becomes, and iron in the past has not, but it’s going to now, right? Because you can’t visualize what that pile of iron’s going to be become. You can visualize what that piece of gold is going to become. And so it’s on the industry to reshape the perception of that because they both have a lot of value. But if we don’t help people see it, then we can’t expect them to value it. 

John Sacco: 

Fantastic. Michael, this has been an incredible podcast. Probably one of my favorite ones because we get talk–

Michael Maslansky: 

Just one of the favorites…?

John Sacco: 

Well, I’m going to be dissing a lot of people if I say you’re the absolute favorite, right? But one of my favorites to get you right up there. Right? Okay. Can we agree on that? That’s great. I’ll take it. Well, that’s fantastic, Michael. Thank you for coming with me on this journey to tell the story, and hopefully we can change the way people see what we’re doing. People will get on board and change the way they talk about our industry, and we’ll make positive change for the future. I appreciate all your help, all your commentary. It’s just been fantastic.

Michael Maslansky:

Well, thank you. It’s great to be a part of it.

Michael Maslansky: 

So that’s it. I hope you enjoyed the conversation that I just had with John. For more language insights and to be in the loop on all the other fun stuff we’re doing, please follow us on LinkedIn at Maslanksy and Partners. That’s it for now. Stay tuned for more episodes of Hearsay because when it comes to truly effective communications, it’s not what you say, it’s what they hear.