Welcome to the Elevated Edit, the weekly reset for ambitious women who are done with chaos and ready to actually follow through.

I'm your host, Blakely Ramsey, strategist, systems girl and execution coach for entrepreneurs who want structure that sells in a business that feels like peace.

Here, we don't chase hustle.

We edit what matters.

Let's get into it.

You don't need to talk more to be seen as credible.

In fact, most people talk way too much, and it's costing them influence.

Today we are going to talk about saying less and meaning more and the power of strategic silence.

So I was reflecting on one of my magical morning walks.

You know, I love a good morning walk.

All of my best thoughts come to me during a morning walk.

But I was thinking about this season of growth that I've had this year in 2025, and I was thinking about the changes that I have experienced and the different rooms that I've been in and the different people that I have been able to learn from and been influenced by.

And it is almost a startling difference to me now, now that I feel like I've been in the trenches of this massive wave of growth that I've experienced over the last year.

And what I have realized, there's like almost two very distinct schools of people is there is one group that is curious and they listen and they're strategic and they're constantly just have their ear open to provide value or to find a story or learn a lesson or pull a piece of evidence from something.

And then there is the second group that over talks to prove that they're smart or helpful.

And I want you to picture this.

And look, I'm not casting judgment.

I am Chatty Cathy, okay?

I could talk to a wall for like three hours.

But I want you to pict conversations that you've had with people, and I want you to think about conversations where maybe someone was talking too much and it made them lose credibility in your eyes.

I can very distinctly and specifically think of certain conversations with certain people where they started off with a certain level of credibility to me, and then they started to lose it because they just kept talking.

They kept talking, they kept talking, they kept talking.

It was almost like they were desperately trying to prove their value.

But the truth is, is oftentimes rambling signals insecurity.

And I think especially when you are like in a sales situation where maybe you are trying to pitch yourself or pitch a product or persuade someone to work you or sign with you or whatever it is, it is so easy to want to fill all of the white space.

I think a lot of people get scared of silence.

And I can definitely think of times in my life where I have been terrified of silence.

It's like awkward.

Whether you're, you know, on the phone with someone or you are talking to them face to face, there is this just panic of like, oh my goodness, if there is silence, then I must be doing something wrong.

Then I must be, you know, lacking credibility or lacking knowledge or lacking whatever the case is.

But I've really tried to practice this year letting silence happen.

I think even sometimes it's so crazy when you think about this.

But like, we've got to give our minds a minute to process information.

I even with this podcast specifically, I used to try to trim it down like I would an Instagram reel or an Instagram TikTok.

So you know, on Instagram you want everything to be tight, tight, tight, tight, tight because you're trying to capture attention because people are scrolling fast.

But with a podcast it is so much different because we're me and you are in this together.

We are having a one way conversation.

I am definitely imagining that you were talking back to me.

Does that make me crazy?

Maybe so.

But I used to try to edit the podcast in the same way that I would a reel.

And I had someone, you know, say to me, they were like, why don't you just allow those silences to stay in the podcast?

Like, why are you trying to cram everything in and make everything so tight?

Let it breathe.

And ever since they said that to me, I don't know if you noticed, but I have tried to slow down my voice.

I have tried to leave pauses.

That one was very intentional and very corny.

But I have tried to leave pauses.

And if I am processing my thoughts, I try to not edit that out because that's just normal conversation.

You know, in regular conversation, you don't always know the answer.

You don't always know what you're going to say next.

Sometimes you have to pause and think about what you're going to say next and then you say it.

In normal conversation.

There are a lot of ums, there's a lot of wells, there's a lot of white space, a lot of blank noise.

And so I have really tried to implement that into the podcast and just leave it.

And I have noticed that my retention rates in terms of people listening to the entire episode and people returning week after week has gone up substantially since I started leaving those pauses in.

And that's just on a podcast.

Like imagine if you Started intentionally doing that in your conversations every single day.

If you just allowed a pause, allowed a space to be in there, how impactful your conversations would be.

People could actually process what you're saying.

They could learn instead of just listen to what you're saying.

And I just think it makes conversations so, so much more powerful.

Now, something else that I thought about on this walk and something else I've really been thinking about lately, because it is something that I am heavily getting coached on right now, and it is something that is extremely difficult for me.

Once again, I am a Chatty Cathy.

I am very chatty by nature, but I am in a season where I am wanting to, you know, be a guest on podcast.

I'm wanting to get on certain stages.

I'm wanting to speak in front of groups.

I'm wanting to, you know, level up my coaching program.

There's a lot of different areas that are good, but I want to take them too.

Great.

And one of the ways that I am doing this is by learning to say less.

And it is so much harder to say less.

I think most of us naturally just want to provide all the information or we just want to prove, oh, my gosh, I've got so much to say.

Listen to everything that I have to say.

You know, I'll say that that is my natural tendency, especially if it's something I'm unexcited about, like systems or productivity or time blocking.

I. I could just talk about.

I get so excited, and I could talk about those things for days and days and days and days and days.

But oftentimes when you get on a ramble and you just start spewing off information, people tune out.

They don't want to hear.

They.

It's just like.

It's so lost on people.

I've noticed that with my husband.

I love him so dearly.

And actually most men in general, because I do this with my male clients as well.

If I tell them too much all at once, they.

They only listen to what they.

They pick the part of what I say that they want to hear, and that's the end of it.

They.

It's like they don't even hear anything else.

And same when I'm texting my husband.

I have learned to ask him one question at a time.

If I ask him two questions, I will not get two answers.

I will get one answer, and he'll.

He will pick.

He will choose what is most important to him, and it's often not what is most important to me.

And so this.

This skill, this goes way beyond business.

This goes deep into your personal life of being concise.

And being concise is so hard.

Being concise is so hard because it requires you to get very clear.

And that clarity requires a high level of discipline, you know, especially when it comes to, like, content or a podcast episode.

It is so there's just this urge to want to say everything, to want to put all the information out there.

But what I'm learning is the best information, the best messages, the best social media content, the best podcast episodes, the best YouTube episodes, they aren't just a blurb of all of this information.

You throw all the information out, and then you make it more concise.

You make it smaller and smaller and smaller and smaller.

There's actually a project that I'm working on right now that is really requiring some massive discipline from me because I have so much to say.

I have so much to say.

And I get to typing and I'm type, type, type, type, type, type, type, type, type.

I'm just going crazy.

And then I see send it to be reviewed, and it's like, okay, this is good, but it could be really great if you could maybe take this information and make it about half, like, oh, okay.

And it really does.

It requires you to go deeper and to get so in depth and in depth on a.

On a level that you might not have explored before.

You know, I was listening actually to a podcast earlier, and she was talking about how there are only three primary colors, but there's like 10 million variations that you can make from those three primary colors.

And so, you know, you might feel restricted by, okay, I only have these three color options, but when you go deep with that, there's all these.

All of these different creative ways that you can pull from those three primary colors.

And that is what I'm learning when it comes to being concise.

Saying less, getting really disciplined on information is.

You can go so much deeper.

You can be so much more creative.

You can expand your thoughts when you focus in on one thing.

This has really been true for me in my coaching program this year.

You have got to see it grow.

And, well, we'll say there was.

Okay, it has always grown.

Yes.

But the growth didn't necessarily look like an upward trajectory for a little bit.

It was like, down, up, down, up.

And it's so funny looking back.

I can look back and laugh now.

I wasn't funny for quite some time because I was like, what am I doing with my life?

But starting in January, I was going to be a clarity coach.

And Then I went to.

And so it's like, okay, clarity on what?

You know, clarity is so big.

You can talk about so many different things when it comes to clarity.

And then I got some very gentle guidance from one of my coaches.

I will never forget when I told her out loud that I wanted to be a clarity coach, she was like, okay.

Like, I'm like, okay, wait, that message is not hitting.

So then I went to a systems coach.

Okay, so we go.

We get a little bit smaller.

We're not just getting clear.

We're not just having clarity.

We are getting clear on productivity.

Okay, so we have systems.

Systems coach that was getting a little bit more clear.

Okay.

And then we brought it down to.

I was going to be a productivity and time management coach for solopreneurs.

Like, okay, we're getting even closer.

Solopreneur.

So you don't have a big team.

It's just you or maybe you and an admin or you and a team or whatever the case is.

And then through the very gentle.

When I say gentle is very, very blunt, very brutally honest advice from my coach, she was like, blakely, why don't you just coach real estate agents?

And I'm like, huh?

Okay.

She said, you can give clarity, you can give systems, you can give productivity, you can give business, all these things to real estate agents.

And so the visual I want you to paint here is like, clarity was me talking way too much.

It was all of the information.

It was all of the things.

And then as I whittled it down, I was able to become more powerful.

I was able to send a real message, and now I'm actually making real movement in the coaching program that I wanted to from the beginning, but I had to whittle it down in order for it to become powerful.

I think so often we want to make everyone happy.

We want to speak to everyone.

Well, if I.

If I niche down, then I'm going to, you know, lose this or lose that.

And I'm telling you, when you get so crystal clear on, like, one thing, it will unlock so many things for you.

So if you're in a place with your business or maybe even your personal life where you feel like you are just all over the place and you can't figure out what it is exactly that you're doing, who it is exactly that you're serving, what exactly you need to be talking about.

First off, give yourself grace.

This is hard.

It's a lot harder than it looks on social media.

And then second, just give your time.

Give yourself the Space and time to like explore it and then go deeper, Go another layer deeper, go another layer deeper.

And I promise you it is going to open up so much for, for you.

It really is.

Okay, let's circle back, circle back season.

Let's circle back to why it is so powerful to pause and say less so.

I have been very fortunate to be in rooms that made me very uncomfortable this year because I was not the smartest person in the room.

I am learning that that is one of my.

That is a real negative about myself is I love being the smartest person in the room.

I'm actually getting ready to go to a in person training three days in Atlanta and I had to catch myself because as I was prepping for this event so they sent us a list of things that we really need to have ready before we get there.

And I found myself almost being competitive with the other people in the room and I was like, well, how can I be the best?

How can I, you know, do the most?

How can I?

And I'm like, whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa.

It that pulled me back to such a two years ago me where I felt this urge to like, be the best.

And what I am realizing being in these rooms, there are people who are super magnetic in these rooms.

They just, they attract all of the conversations, they attract all the clients and they do it so easily.

They do it with absolute ease.

They are not burning out, they are not hustling, they are not desperate.

They are not the loudest people in the room.

They are the most curious.

They are listening to other people.

They are listening to conversations.

They are, you know, doing research on people before they get in the room.

And then they're asking them these really high level, super solid questions.

And it's just so powerful because these people are not talking at all.

But at the end of the day, summit or the event or whatever it is, they're the person that everyone's going up to at the end and like, hey, I really enjoyed talking to you.

Hey, I really enjoyed that conversation.

Hey, I'd love to connect.

And watching it from a bird's eye view, I mean like, whoa, these people are so magnetic because they're not talking at all.

They are asking other people questions.

They are getting super curious on other people.

And when they do talk, they're being so concise with their words.

They're not rambling, they're not giving off this desperate energy.

They are being very clear.

They are saying the most things in the least amount of words.

And it's just been Such a.

A big shift for me.

I think this was something that I subconsciously always kind of knew.

But even looking back on earlier parts of my real estate career, you know, if I'd be in a showing, I would want there to be.

I would want there to be so much noise.

Like, if my clients weren't talking, I just felt like I needed to talk, talk, talk, talk, talk.

And now I pull back, I'm like, blakely, this is like a massive investment for them.

Give them a second.

Like, let there be silence.

Let there be a pause.

Let there be quiet.

They.

I know I go off into my own world, and I think sometimes when we're in our own worlds, we can sometimes make the best decisions.

And so some of the best decisions are made, and in that really quiet, really silent space.

And so I want to encourage you a to be super curious when you're in another room with other people and you do want to be the most magnetic person.

Ask a lot of questions, be curious.

If someone says something really interesting, dive into it.

Like, get so deep.

And then I also want you to practice saying things in fewer words.

You'll stand out so much.

You will stand out in your brand, in your pitches, in your content, whatever it is, you will stand out so much.

If you are curious about other people, you genuinely want to provide value, and you say less.

It's so wild.

And I know as someone who has just rambled now for 18 minutes, you're like, that's the pot calling the kettle black.

But you know what I mean.

Even on this podcast, I constantly try to ask myself, okay, what's in it for them?

Am I rambling?

Am I providing value?

Am I speaking directly to you?

Am I actually here to change a belief or plan a new thought or something?

Or am I just rambling?

And I'll be super honest, sometimes I will scrap a whole podcast episode.

Like, if I listen and I start going off in left field, which is very easy for me to do.

It is very hard for me to keep these episodes around 20 minutes.

Naturally, I could talk for an hour more.

I truly could.

And I've had people ask, you know, why aren't your podcast episodes longer?

I'm like, I. I want to pack the most punch in the least amount of time.

I don't necessarily think that the longer the podcast episode is, the higher the quality is.

Some of my favorite podcast episodes are 15 minutes, 12 minutes, and it's because the host gets in there.

They know what they want to say.

They're sharp, they're relevant.

And it makes them so much more magnetic.

So I want you to think about this in your day to day, whatever it is that you do.

Whether you are, you know, a stay at home mom and you're communicating with your kids or you are building a business and you're talking to a team or, or you are, you know, high content and you are recording reels, stories, whatever it is.

When you're thinking about building trust, start speaking in truth and evidence.

Say less, but say it better.

Lead with curiosity.

And that is how you are going to become the most interesting person in any room that you're in.

So use this episode as your reminder that credibility isn't always loud, but it is clear.

And clear comes from that intentional curiosity.

Okay, hope you got some value from this episode.

I am getting ready for launch your ads live in Alpharetta, Georgia.

I'm so excited.

I've been waiting six months for this event.

I cannot wait.

I am going to be taking notes after notes after notes after notes because there are seven and eight figure business owners and in this room and you better believe I'm showing up with curiosity.

I'm going to be asking all the questions.

I'm doing something that I have never done before and I'm not bringing any reading material with me.

So I am literally just going to be listening, journaling, listening, creating content listening and letting the input just soak in.

I.

It's such a habit for me to be like, okay, I'm going to read this entire book or I'm going to take this course while I'm there.

And I am not doing any of that, that I'm going to be present.

I'm going to listen not just to the speaker on the stage, but I'm also going to listen to the conversations in the bathroom, the conversations in the hallway, the conversations we have at dinner, the coffee shop conversations.

You better believe I've got coffee meetings booked back to back to back.

I. I am.

If I'm going to leave my husband for three days, I'm going to get as much value out of it as humanly possible and I'm going to bring it back to you.

It's going to be super fire.

Okay, hope you have an amazing rest of your day and I will see you in the next episode.

That's it for this edition of the Elevated Edit.

If this episode hit, don't keep it to yourself.

Screenshot it, share it, tag me on Instagram.

And if you're ready to structure your business like the CEO that you are, you know where to find me.