My dad called recently with a pressing question that he’d been wondering about for a while. Bracing myself for something much more serious, the simplicity of his request was a surprise: he was curious what it meant when someone said they were going to “Google” something.

There were two ways which I could describe this to him:

1. Going to google.com in your browser, typing in a search term, and looking through the results.

2. Just like “xeroxing” is a nickname for making a copy of something, “googling” is a nickname for searching the internet.

The first approach describes the actual process, but doesn’t give it any context. The second uses an analogy of company as verb from his own generation. If it wasn’t already obvious, it was the second explanation he understood best (I described that one to him first, then proceeded to go into the details of the process–at which point I lost him).

Get in the habit of customizing your message for different audiences. To communicate successfully, you have to think how they think, talk how they talk.