Hint of Hustle with Heather Sager

Is Your Message Being Ignored? Make This One Change to Stand Out and Resonate with Your Ideal Person

February 28, 2022 Heather Sager Episode 138
Hint of Hustle with Heather Sager
Is Your Message Being Ignored? Make This One Change to Stand Out and Resonate with Your Ideal Person
Show Notes Transcript

I don’t have to tell you that getting your message noticed in this era of CONTENT OVERLOAD takes work.

But did you know that you could actually be causing your ideal client to pass right by your amazing tips and juicy insights?

It doesn’t matter how deep your experience or good your results, if your ideal client never hears, what chance do you have for them to love it, sign up for your free guide or join your program?

In today’s episode, I’ll share with you one of the top mistakes I help my clients correct when speaking to their ideal person. More importantly, I’ll teach you how to FIX IT so that your message will get heard and get them into action.


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If you’re loving this episode, please take a moment to rate & review the show. This helps me get this message to more people so they too can ditch the hustle 24/7 life.

1:33  

Well, hey friend, welcome back to another episode of the podcast. This is your coach, Heather. And my goodness, y'all let me just say I am, as my grandmother would say, I have just tickled at the love notes I'm getting from you all, from this new guide I put out a couple weeks ago. If you haven't grabbed it yet, the 19 magnetic phrases that you can say on stages, podcasts and live video so that your ideal customer goes running to your opt in page. I know that's a mouthful of a title. But it's super clear, right? 


2:09  

I am hearing so many notes from people that are using it to write emails, to go live, they're using on webinars. In fact, I wrote down, just got a voice note this morning from someone saying that the if then training I did for the call to action has changed everything. That's literally a quote, just changed everything for me. It's so wonderful to know exactly what to say. It was like, it was like it totally eliminated all of the awkwardness. I love it. I love it. I just had to share because I am, you know, as a creator, as an educator, as a teacher, as a coach, as a whatever you call yourself, the one of the best things is getting feedback around how your work helps other people. 


2:49  

You know, let me go off in this little tangent here. I always do tangents. But I just feel I need to say this in case you're on the spot here. You know, when I first started my online business, I had all this expertise as we all do, right? It's why we started business because we know something that we think we can teach other people. But I had all this experience and quite frankly, I had this really, really great track record. I was at the top of my game in the corporate world. I'd climbed the ladder. I was in an executive seat. I was traveling around the world on stages. And you know, it felt good to be in that big important job, big important role. But I knew I wanted to do something different. I wanted to work for myself. I was ready for change. I was ready, so I jumped in. 


3:29  

And you know, it's a little jolting and I think that you is probably resonates with you. Jolting from going from being in your growth in the corporate world or or maybe in a brick and mortar business jumping over the online space. But jumping in and and seeing that you know, it's different, you have to figure it out yet. It is so much. I don't want to say harder. It is like a puzzle that you get really frustrated that you just can't solve. And what I mean by that is we know we're smart, right? You and me both. I know you're wicked smart that you have really great experience. But it's it's like this mystery trying to crack the code for growth in the online space. It's frustrating because you see all these other people who I don't know, whether or not they don't have experienced but you just see people it seems like they're passing you by and you wonder like how can I frickin make this work? And it feels like you're alone, not sure what you're doing? Why is it not working? Like is it me? Is it my content? Is my message? Is it my strategy? Like you question all these things, but in the beginning, you don't really get a lot of feedback. And if you do, it's from your mother in law, it's not the greatest. My mother in law is very, very supportive but I've heard from clients that, you know, family posts things and they're trying to be supportive, but it's not your ideal person so therefore it's not very helpful. If you're in my family listen to this, I love you. All of you are very helpful. I'm not talking about you.


5:01  

You get the point here. It can feel very much like you're in a cave and you don't know if anyone's listening. So I'm here to tell you today, this little love note reminder, you keep going. I have a quote here on my wall. I've read it on the podcast before, but let me read it again. It's a quote. I don't remember where I got it. I don't remember where it came from so I can't give the person credit but I can just say thank you. It says, the early stage is all about not quitting, get people reading and encouraging you. So the reason why I started today, thanking y'all for those little love notes about that new guide I put out is, it really means a lot. 


5:47  

You know, if you find something online that you appreciate, you listen to a podcast episode of somebody who said something really great, you know, it's a rarity for us to go out of our way to tell people that we appreciate their content or that their content is helping us. And when you go out of your way to do that, it means the world to me. And I cannot wait, if you're not getting those love notes for yourself with your content, I can't wait for the day they started coming. And they might be foreign to you and I want you to savor them. Take a screenshot, create a folder on your phone, where you go to those little favorites and just look at them when you're feeling not great. But that encouragement when you get those moments, that's the validation that you're in the right spot, you're doing the right thing. Keep pushing. It might not be going as fast as you want it to, it might not be moving as smoothly as you pictured but it's all unfolding. Just as its post, you don't want to go all like fufu thing I I'm not a religious person. I don't go to church. I'm not like, we don't need to go into that story there. But I do believe that we have to find the meaning in things and the only way we're going to get through really hard things is for us to see them as beautiful opportunities to take away the lessons. 


7:07  

So I don't know, maybe this is a little too deep, too insightful, too whatever for the show today. But I don't know, I had this feeling on my heart somebody is listening thinking, why is it not moving fast enough? What if it's moving at the exact pace that you need  to learn the lessons you must learn to elevate to your next level? What if that were the story that you choose to believe instead of the story that you're not where you should be or not where you want to be? That latter story is not going to help you. So let's instead shift it to say how could this actually be perfectly training me for my next level, for what's to come a month from now, six months from now, a year from now. Heck, it might take 6, 7, 8 years. I have no idea what your dreams are, what your goals are but I do know that if you want them bad enough and if you listen to the people that you serve, it might feel like you're moving at the pace of a sloth. And that's okay, sloths are cute, not very effective, but they're cute. It's okay. Keep moving. And I want to do my best on the show to continue to serve you up with reminders of that. But also strategies that will help you speed up that pace a bit if that would be valuable to you. 


8:30  

So today, we're going to talk about, you know, one of the things, actually, I would say the number one thing that I correct when people share their content with me. And I wanted to share this today, because it's something that is actually very, very simple. It's very nuanced, however, it's pretty difficult for you really to execute, because it goes against what our natural tendencies want us to do when we communicate. So today, we're going to talk about specificity. I know I just like left turn there and like let's get down to business. We are seven minutes into the podcast. We were gonna make this quick today and I've already fired you up now. Let's actually give you a tip that's going to help you. 


9:03  

So specificity, what do I mean here? So this podcast is dedicated to helping you show up in a more magnetic way. How do you take up space, share a message that actually serves and impacts the lives of others and grow your business along the way. So communication obviously is a huge part of it. Y'all know I'm a speaking coach, I want to teach you how to speak more better so here's the tactic for it. I want you to think about a recent podcast interview, or live stream, or video, or conversation with a client that you have had, not when you've listened to but when you have had. So just think for a second, can you pull one back from a memory rolodex? You might have to go far, maybe you have to go back to like a webinar that you did. Something where you are speaking to an audience, even if that audience is just one person when you think back through it.


9:19  

And I want you to think about, especially if it was a live stream, or a podcast interview, webinar, when you described your ideal customer and what was the problem, what they were experiencing, I want you to ask yourself, was I extremely specific or was I a little more general? You might have to think through this for a moment. You might like, what the heck do you mean? One of the things that I notice is we have a tendency to generalize experiences and I'll use this example with story. So one of the things that I see happen a lot when entrepreneurs share their story is what they want to do is generalize their experience to make it relevant. So for example, somebody saying, like I spent, you know, I spent years working in sales and then I switched to go behind the scenes where I got some experience in computer programming. This is not true, by the way, I'm just making this up. And then I decided to leave that job and start my business. All of that is, how do I phrase this? It's like a chapter summary. Not the specific, what actually happened. 


11:48  

One of my favorite books, if you want to learn a little bit more about how to be effective specifically with storytelling is from Kindra Hall. Kindra, she wrote Stories that Stick and most recently, Choose Your Story, Changed Your Life. It's an incredible book. I just finished up. Kindra, I talked about her on the show before. I had the honor of booking her as a speaker for one of the last conferences I produced in the corporate world. Kindra was an upcoming speaker at the time. She was recommended by my friend, Seth Madison, who was another speaker at that I booked multiple times at a conference. So Kindra came out and she taught me something really incredible. I didn't realize that I was already doing it with my storytelling, but she broke it down and helped me understand why stories were so effective. And she talked about stories are effective in the human brain when they are specific to a moment in time. 


12:38  

So coming back to the story around if I were to use the pretend of I worked at a shoe store before that computer programming and before that I worked in sales, just kind of like mentioning those things. Logically, you're following it but there's no memorable nature to it. There's no connection between you and I. But if I were to say something like, I'm going to make this up here. You know, a few years ago, I found myself working in a shoe store, in a shoe store. Yeah, with like people's feet. And you know, there was one day specifically that a woman came into the store. And she was trying to find a pair of heels because she had a date with her husband and they hadn't been out in years. And she told me that you know, her husband, they had just kind of fallen out of their groove over the last few years. And with everything going on in the world, they were just feeling really sad, and hold on. Let me just pause here for a second. I'm making this up so it's not the best story ever. But can I just ask you a question? Are you already invested in the story? Are you picturing a shoe store? I don't care what shoe store you're picturing. Are you picturing a woman? Are you wondering in your head, is she older? Okay, she's been married. Are we talking about like a little old lady for years, so we're talking about a younger lady? 


14:01  

There's imagery happening in your mind when you illustrate a moment. You notice how that's different in me saying just a few years ago, I was working in a shoe store. And I remember a very specific day when a woman walked in. Do you notice how that sets a scene that hooked you in versus me saying, you know I used to work in a shoe store and we see a lot of different people coming through our doors every single day. General, passive, fine, but just few years ago, I was working in the shoe store and I remember one day specifically when a woman came in. I never forget she was looking for a pair of heels to go on a date with her husband. And she shared with me it was such an important moment because she and her husband had been struggling lately. Maybe let's go dark here for a moment, maybe they lost a child. 


14:51  

I went super dark there. Sorry about that. You don't have to have a sob story. But you notice how I'm painting a picture of a very specific woman. You may wonder like, why the hell would I talk about that? Obviously, there has to be a point to this story. But when we talk about specificity with storytelling, shout out to Kindra for teaching me that that moment in time matters, because that's how you pull people in. But for me, what I've also realized is specificity helps us with our marketing and our messaging. So here's what happens is when you are, let's say you're a coach, and specifically, you're a business coach, and you help, let's say you help entrepreneurs getting started in their businesses and you have this picture in your mind that people have this dream that they want to chase, but they're scared to go chase it. So you help people, a phrase I hear a lot. And in fact, many of my clients inside of Speak up to Level up, they use this term,  they want to help people design their dream life now.


15:51  

This is where I push a little bit. When we talk about helping clients design their dream life. It sounds really good, right? But it still is like the passive, oh, once upon a time I worked in a shoe store. There is a general nature about it we're trying to put a word to describe a ton of things. So for you, a dream might be like my client, Sarah, to live on an island in Mexico with her family like now while her kids are young and not wait for retirement and that while running her business, that's her dream life. Or for me, my dream right now with my husband is for us to spend six weeks in another country every single year with our kids. A new dream we have during life is I want to be able to work while my kids are in school and as soon as that bus lands in front of my house, I am done working and I take summers off. That for me is a dream. A dream for you could be taking a trip around the world while there's a lot of travel on the streets. But another dream could you be finding a partner who fully supports you and creating a business together. I don't know what your dream is but for me to try to label dream on it. It kind of dampens the sparkle of what a dream is. 


17:10  

So what I want you to think about, it's not that I don't want you to use the word create your dream life. But what I want to encourage you to think about is how can you use more specific language to spark a picture in the mind of your ideal person. So an example of this, let's say you're on a webinar and you're talking about how you help women create a business to design a life that they love, their dream life? Could you say something more like, you know, one of the things that I love doing is helping women start businesses so that they can create a life that they want, the one they picture about. So whether that's working from a beach in Mexico while your family plays on the beach and you just work an hour each morning, or maybe that's you sitting on the front porch done with your workday when your kids step off the bus. Then you can go in and talk about whatever the next thing you're going to talk about. 


18:16  

What I'm saying is we don't want to stop at the general, if you're speaking in general language, help you with a lifestyle business, help you with a dream business, get more freedom, flexibility in your life, get a handle on these, because these are the ones I hear and see a lot. I want to really challenge you to say, are you using general language because you're trying to categorize all these different specific realities of your ideal person. So you're putting a label for lack of a better term, a label on it, thinking that oh, if I label it my style, if I label it, dream, if I label it, hell, if I label it, whatever label you put on it, if I label it that then more people will see themselves. But what happens is when we say lifestyle business, dream life, achieve your goals. All of these sounds good. There's nothing wrong with them but when we say that it's easy for us to pass right by it. 


19:09  

So imagine, let me give you a little analogy here. I want you to imagine that you're walking down the street of one of those little tiny towns that you would see on the Hallmark Channel when you're watching Christmas movies you know in the winter. Oh, here we go. You know, they're all based in some little town. There's always like a town square with a big Christmas tree lighting ceremony that happens on December 23, 24th, which make me think like, they're not lighting the tree like what a waste of a tree because then the trees only lit for like 24 hours. Okay, here I go on a tangent. But are you with me or are you in a little Christmas town in your mind right now? Okay, I want you to imagine it's not Christmas. It is summer time or whatever and you're walking down the sidewalk of that little town. And there's a table on the side and there's a little girl and she has a sign that says cookies. Now, I want you to think here for a moment.


20:05  

You might be like cookies. Hell yeah, I'm in. Right? You might be a hell yeah, I'm in. Like, give it to me like, here I am. I don't care what you're selling. I will buy it. Sure. Okay. Now I want you to imagine what if you were on a diet? Now nothing good or bad about diets here by just go through an example. What if you were on a diet? What in your mind would you possibly think like cookies? Or let's say that you're gluten free? Like my sister, she has a gluten free bakery. Let's say that she's like, Oh, I love cookies, oh gluten free. And you just see a Santa has cookies. And I'm not sure if it's for you. Let's say that you totally like cookies. But there's one particular cookie that you really, really do like, but the other ones are just like meh, right? You in your mind are happy to evaluate like, do I really want to go out of my way to stop? Let's pretend that it's not your night and we'll have a conversation this girl. Okay, give me like, throw me a bone here. I know there's all these like, well, why don't we just ask? Why don't we do this? Why don't we do that? 


21:03  

Here's the thing. When it comes to marketing, let's say you're the little girl selling cookies. If you put the responsibility on your audience, the person walking by on the sidewalk to come ask you questions of what kind of cookies do you sell? Is it for me? Do you have this? If you do that, you are turning away business. They're walking right past you. Do you follow what I'm saying here? So what if instead, new scene, same town, same road, same table? You walked down and the sign says freshly baked gluten free chocolate chip cookies.  Oooey gooey made from Bob's Red Mill Gluten Free oat flour. I don't know, right? I'm getting like real specific here. So somebody's walking on the sidewalk who has this association of, oh gluten free, yeah, tastes like cardboard. They're gonna keep walking by, right? But for the person who doesn't eat gluten who freakin loves cookies, what are they going to do? Oh, Mother Frick, they're going to stop and be like it's back, okay, right? And they're gonna stop, they're gonna stop because you said ooey gooey fresh chocolate chip gluten free cookies. They're not just gonna be like, maybe I'll stop. They're gonna stop because they know it's for them. 


22:18  

But here's the interesting other thing that happens. Let's say that the sign it had gluten free, but it was kind of more subtle. Let's say that it said ooey gooey, fresh baked warm chocolate chip cookies, gluten free but you'd never know. Okay, as you're walking by, let's say you're not gluten free but you love warm, fresh baked chocolate chip cookies. You're like I am in. You're going to stop and you smell them, you're in for it. The point that I'm making here is the more specific we get the more irresistible that thing becomes. And what's fascinating is, even though you might not, your mind going well, what if I hate chocolate chip cookies? Let's apply this to something that's not food. So let's say, let me use my, okay, I'll use my example of my business. So I am a speaking coach. Have we met? Hi, I'm Heather. I'm a speaking coach. I teach people how to communicate more effectively, right? When I started my business, I was more specific on teaching people presentation skills. I would use that language. I help good presenters become exceptional speakers. I think that was my very first tagline. And what I realized very quickly, I was talking about helping people elevate their presentation skills, helping people elevate their speaking skills. 


23:34  

What started happening was, I was talking about it but there was kind of different people coming my way. I'd have people in corporate, people doing TED Talks. I was getting people in not consistently, but I started realizing that fellow digital course creators, coaches, people in our online industry, they started asking me more questions. And I will tell you this, the moment that I specifically started speaking to online business owners, describing the online business owner who isn't new to business, isn't new to the idea of a professional career like they're not just getting started today. They have experience but they're relatively new to the online space. When I started talking to that person getting really clear around who you were, what your hopes were, what your experience what your hesitations are, what your judgments were, all those things when I started using very, very specific language, you know what happened? I mean, you can guess, the line in my cookie shop, does that sounds dirty? Is that a dirty phrase? I don't know, but you know what I'm saying the line of my cookie table. Going back to the analogy, it started lining up. 


24:42  

And you know, what's funny is, I still attract people that aren't specifically digital course creators or coaches. I'll attract a broader audience. So for example, one of my, well she's still I guess, a digital. There's still a through line there. I was thinking, Ann, who's in my program. She specifically sells trading to, just training and consulting for organizations, so she's leveraged a lot of what I teach to negotiate her speaking fees. And she's doing incredibly well at that. Just last week, one of our Speak up to Level up members, Jessica, she's so awesome. I talked about her on the show before. She teaches cooking. She's a freelancer. She does different, like recipe building cooking classes, but she leveraged the sales skills she learned in Speak up to Level up to negotiate a, gosh what was it. She's helping produce a food segment on a show. So helping with all of that, she's not opening her mouth to speak at all outside of that sales presentation. She's responsible for the food, but she's used it in a very different way. 


25:44  

So my point here is when you get way more specific, not only with who you help, which by the way, we tackle that whole who to help more specifically in the niche episode was the first one of the year, go back with Jessica Osborn. She was a really, really good guest on that show. I'll link to that in the show notes. But what I'm talking about here is going even more micro than say who I serve. I want you to start asking how can I be more specific in this moment? So when it comes to who you serve, yes, but I want you to think about the problems and challenges that you talk about with your ideal client, how can you make them more specific? When you are talking about stories, when you're sharing your experience, when you're talking about a client experience, instead of saying, you know, many of my clients struggle with this, you can add to it and say, you know, just the other day, I was talking with a client of X, like I just did. Just the other day I was talking to a client Ann or just talking with a client Jessica. Using specific people, specific examples, that specificity piques the interest of your audience and gets them listening through one example that gives them the picture that you know you're doing, you work with people. It gives them the imagery in their mind, just like I gave to you earlier with the shoe store, and what happens it pulls them in. And even if the specific scenario that you are describing isn't their scenario, just the picture you put in their mind allows them to unlock another image. That's their scenario.


27:19  

So what do I mean by that? So let's okay, I'll use this other example here with my business and speaking. Not everyone that comes into my program does webinars. They don't have digital products or courses. Many people who come into my program, they just want to become more articulate and leading seminars and workshops, or they want to get more proficient of going live on video. So they're not saying how do I do sales based messaging because I'm selling a digital course? That's not what they do. They're speaking is their product. It might sound similar to you when you are hearing that, but they're two very, very different things. 


27:56  

So one of the questions I always get from people when they come into SULU of going oh, but I don't have a webinar, but I don't have a course. Well, here's what's funny. I talk about specifically having a course, or having a program, or having this in all of my sales messaging. Yet, that specificity still attracts another audience that I can help really well with my program. But it's the gist of the speaking itself is the product or service that they sell. You follow that nuance there. I get a lot of questions sometimes like, Heather, how do I approach it with two different audiences? In a moment, speak to one specifically, and it needed, you can do what I did earlier in that dream scenario where I gave you a list. So you say maybe you give the label or you give the specific situation, and then you add it in or, or maybe you're a blank, or maybe your scenarios more like blank. You don't have to just give them one specific scenario. You can give them a list of two or three. It's like you're laying out a buffet of appetizers. Give them a couple things on their plates, they can choose from it. But what we can't do is just give them one generic example because rest assured they will keep walking right by your cookie table. 


29:14  

So this is my provocative thought today for you, I want you to really start thinking about where can I bring more specificity into my language, whether that's in an email, or it's in a live stream, it's in a webinar or whatever it is that you're doing, how can I be a little bit more specific? Now, it doesn't mean I want you to make everything under the sun specific because that's just a little too much. But I want you to think about how can I pick a few moments to lean in and be a little more specific with my language? And hey, if you liked this conversation, I'd love to hear from you. Just talk about the show. I love your love notes. So please send me a note on Instagram and tell me what resonated today even better if you think it'll resonate with your audience. Please screenshot this. Share it but I I do want to say that if you're really resonating with this idea of oh, simple tactics that you can use just to make small tweaks to how you show up, if you're loving that and you're like, oh, Heather, I'm going to run with this. If you loving the freebie that I rolled out with those specific phrases that you can use around how to be more effective at getting people bought into your ideas, your offers or your freebies, friend, you're gonna love the speaking workshops that are coming up. 


30:27  

We just made the executive decision that we are delaying the start date a little bit. So if you've been following along originally, the workshops, we're going to start in February, early March, we've just had a lot of things going on in Q1 with me having the bug in January. I have my virtual assistant had her baby and gave her some much well deserved time off. And now here we are headed into March, we've decided we're going to kick off the workshop series a little later than expected so thanks for your patience. If you've been waiting, the speaking workshops, registration is going to open up very soon. Most likely it'll be live at the time of this recording. So if you're listening to this when it comes in live, head on over to heathersager.com/speaking workshops, and we're going to get started here pretty soon in the month of March so just make sure that you're on that list. 


31:13  

The speaking workshops are the event where I'm going to help you get into motion with building the skill of speaking. Obviously, we can't master it become a Mel Robbins level speaker in the span of three workshops, but how you definitely can get in the motion. You see the thing with speaking, it's going to take repetitions to get the skill down just like a muscle. However, just like with a muscle, there is proper form and what I noticed with most entrepreneurs is they are winging it, just trying different strategies based from presentation skills they want to do in college or in corporate. And friend, it is not corporate or college anymore. You're an entrepreneur and you're using your voice as a marketing tool so you need to be equipped with the right kinds of strategies for communication to effectively get your audience on board with your ideas. It's about creating buy in, it's about creating connection points, about storytelling, and it is about selling like it or not, I'm going to teach you how to like it. 


32:13  

So the speaking workshops are all about how to stand out and captivate an audience, connect with them authentically, leveraging psychology based communication strategies that are not like manipulative, but they're authentic, choosing what's natural for you and how you naturally and authentically connect with your audience, so that was captivate, connect, and then convert. So most importantly, I know so many of you struggle with the idea of selling. You don't want to be pushy and you are so tired of the selling tactics that other people use that seemed to work but they're just not for you. Friend, I'm gonna teach you how you make selling effortless, how you infuse it in what you do so it doesn't feel schmucky. If you've ever thought, I hate Heather's selling style. Well, then don't come,  but you're probably listening to my show. But if you like the way that I sell, right, you know, I'm selling I'm selling you right now on these workshops. But if it feels more authentic to you that you feel like I can learn to be a little bit more clear, I can be a little bit more assertive when I speak and I know I have something really highly valuable to offer, well, the workshops are for you. So you can grab your seats, 37 bucks to join us for the three part series. You get access to a private community to ask you questions. I'll be jumping in answering questions, bringing in an expert guest speakers. We're going to be having a lot of fun in those workshops. So you can grab your tickets just 37 bucks to join me. You can head on over to heather sager.com/speaking workshops with an 's.' It's plural. And hey, if you're listening to this after the workshops are finished, still head to that URL. We'll have the link in the show notes. But you get on the waitlist for the next time that we offer it or another relevant one. 


33:51  

Alright friend, I hope today's little rah rah around, keep going. Send praise to people that you appreciate and savor the appreciation that you get followed by our little mini training pep talk around being more specific. I hope that you found a lot of insight in this episode and I hope it resonated with exactly where you are today. And more importantly, I hope it equips you with some tenacity to keep chugging along. Alright friend, I'll see you in the next episode.