107. Meera Kothand: Speaking to an Audience That Doesn't Look Like You

Most marketing gurus tell you to nail your messaging you have to know exactly who you’re talking to. And they’re not wrong, but what if your audience doesn’t sound like you, look like you, or even live on the same continent?

You’re about to meet Meera Kothand, a digital marketing strategist and Amazon best-selling author who built her successful online business working with clients on the other side of the world. Get ready for a refreshing, insightful and tactical conversation on elevating your brand voice and connecting with your audience on another level.

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Transcript

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Meera Kothand  0:00  

Yeah, and I think a lot of people when I share things like this, where I push them a little bit further to figure out like their own parking space, as I like to call it, and they say, I don't think I have anything different to share. Ethically, all do is just that we don't give it enough thought or enough time and we are all about putting content out there, getting out there, and which is good, but I think we all have something different to say. It's just whether you want to be led by, led down that trail, whether you want to kind of follow those little breadcrumbs. We all have those hunches where we think that doesn't sound right. You know, something is just not right about this and we are just too quick to follow the existing narrative that we don't want to change it or explore it in greater detail.

Heather Sager  0:58  

Well, hey friend, welcome to another episode of the Heather Sager show. It's me Heather Sager and I'm honored to be your speaking coach here today in this episode, I've spent the last 15 years studying and building my communication skills to inspire and teach business owners and their teams from stages around the world. I've had the honor of speaking on more than thousand of stages on topics of leadership, premium brand positioning, sales, and of course communication. And now my focus is helping fellow online entrepreneurs become magnetic speakers, so they can make a bigger impact in the world while growing their income. This show right here was des  igned to give you a dedicated space each and every week to grow your skills and keep your big goals front and center. And if you liked today's episode, be sure to grab a screenshot and share it on Instagram and tag me @theheathersager so I can give you a shout out and celebrate the work you're doing. Alright, let's dive in, friend, it's gonna be a good one.

Well, Happy Monday friend! Welcome to another episode. We are rounding out our four-part series around helping you get more confident and being uniquely you with your brand voice as you show up in a bigger way on the second half of this year. I just wrapped up recording with my last guest of this series, Meera Kothand. Oh my goodness, I am so thrilled for you to hear this interview. I don't recall where I came across to knowing Meera. I think she or potentially someone on her team sent us a pitch for the podcast and immediately I was like, yes. This gal she knows what she's doing. She's been in the industry for six years. She is an accomplished author. Let me pull up the official bio because it's fancy and she's got the swagger and the skills to back it up. She's an email marketing strategist, a three-time Amazon best-selling author of the book, The One Hour Content Plan, which side note we'll link that in the show notes. We talk about it. I think it's a really great one for you to snag. She's also written, The Blog Startup and the But I'm Not An Expert. She's also the publisher of meerakothand.com, an award-winning site listed as a top 100 site for solopreneurs in 2020, 2018, and 2017 and the popular Create Planners. 

Now we talk about all the things digital marketing and kind of share with you a little bit more about what she does and who she works with. But one of the things that I thought was really fascinating was, so Meera was in a completely different timezone halfway around the world and at the time of the recording, I mean, it was first thing in the morning for her, last thing of the day for me. But you know, we talk so often about in this world of online, there's this idea that we have to figure out our brand voice and to do that we have to study so intimately who are ICA is, our ideal customer avatar, as they say, and we name her and we know what kind of coffee she drinks, and we know what she likes to read and where she spends her time online. And quite frankly, if you are a white woman business owner, most likely your ICA as you describe her looks exactly like you, but you six years ago, and it's just how we've been trained to do ICA is, it's just inherently we choose to work with people that look similar to us, or feel similar to us, or have similar struggles like it just makes sense on that model. 

What we talked about today was with Meera working halfway across the world that her clientele is primarily here in North America. So she shares her story of understanding her brand voice, knowing that she lives in a culture where when she grew up entrepreneurship wasn't really a thing but she somehow still stumbled into it, and then determine that the people she wanted to work with were the people who were talking about this online business thing here in North America and that's where she wanted to do business so it's been really fascinating, listening to her story. I'm talking about how she was able to stay authentic to her voice and understand the voice of her audience and connect in a way that was authentic and meaningful and she's really built a very robust and amazing business, working with people that don't sound like or look like her. And it's really powerful as she talks through her approach to brand voice, her approach to what voice looks like in business, how we need to be listening to our gut more, and challenging the ways that other educators are just telling us to do things because that's quote-unquote, the way it's always been done. We need to trust your guts a little bit more and I just love the conversation. I think you are going to love it too. And for all the links we talked about today, you can grab them in the show notes if you want a little bit more visual experience, remember, you can watch these episodes at heathersager.com/podcast and you can find the related episode. We also talk about storytelling today and I'll link to all those episodes here around how you can unlock the power of telling even better stories. I think you're gonna love this episode. 

And hey, before you jump in if you've been listening to these things around wanting to get your brand voice down and you're thinking, oh man, I really want to show up more confidently and authentically to connect with my audience. If you want to nail your messaging and start attracting the kind of people that you want to work with into your business, be sure to head on over to heathersager.com/speak where you're going to get access to my latest free training where I'm going to teach you step by step how you go through and create more confidence to nail your message on any kind of platform you speak on so that you're attracting the right people that you want to work with, and not attract the people that you really don't want to do business with. So let's say you are wanting to attract higher and higher tickets, we got to make sure your messaging is dialed in to represent that. So head on over heather sager.com/speak, and now let's jump into the episode.

Hey friends, welcome back to another episode. I am thrilled today to be rounding out our series all about your brand voice with my guest, Meera. Welcome to the show.

Meera Kothand  7:23  

Thanks for having me, Heather. 

Heather Sager  7:25  

We were just joking before we hit record that we are like two ships passing in the night right now of like, this is like the quintessential different time zones. It's the end of my day, very start of yours. So I will embrace if you're drinking all the coffee on today's episode. 

Meera Kothand  7:41  

Coffee is pumping. I've already got it down. 

Heather Sager  7:44  

It's perfect. Well, I am super excited to get to know you further today to have my audience get to know you. We're talking about brand voice and personality and specifically, what I love when you so eloquently pitched this idea over to my team around connecting with your audience, not just in an authentic voice but how do you connect with people who are different than you, with different experiences, they look different, sound different, all those things. I'm so excited to dig into this today because I feel like this is something that people don't talk about and it needs to be talked about. So before we jump into all that good stuff, why don't you share a little bit with my audience around who you are and what you do?

Meera Kothand  8:24  

Yeah, absolutely. So I'm Meera. I'm a digital marketing strategist and Amazon best selling author and through my digital courses and books, I help solopreneurs, small business owners go from sub-zero when they're just starting out to getting to that first milestone of making a full-time income from their online business and then going on to get into the 80k or 100k a year. So I think my zone of genius really is in sharing strategies that are what I call minimum viable so doing just what is necessary. Nothing more, nothing less and really drilling down into just working on what is necessary for your stage of growth so that you make the biggest impact in the smallest amount of time especially if you're a time-strapped person. Maybe you're working a nine to five, you're trying to transition over, you have a child, you've got kids at home and stuff like that. So yeah, that's in a nutshell,  kind of like how I helped my audience.

Heather Sager  9:24  

Yeah, okay. When you talk about this, like minimal viable product. That's like a very, I guess it's a common language, but I think a lot of people don't really realize what that means. Thinking about the digital course space, thinking about coaches and course creators, we're going to go on a random tangent here for a second because I see so many people get stuck trying to build these products and programs that are like the Tesla version of an online product or program. I would imagine that's why you do what you do. Can you talk a little bit about why did you land on this idea of the minimum viable products?

Meera Kothand  10:02  

Yeah, absolutely. So for me, when I started out, just to kind of lean into how you presented me. I'm like 15 hours, 12 hours away from where my ideal audience is. So if it's the end of the day, it's the start of the day for me and I really had to drill down into just what I can do to get launched, to get started out and I didn't have a lot of time because when I launched my business six years back, I had a two-year-old and she was really fussy eater and sleeper and all of that stuff. 

Heather Sager  10:36  

So that's a very short amount of time. 

Meera Kothand  10:39  

Yeah, exactly. So I had a very short amount of time so I really had to drill into what I could do that would kind of enable me to show up and do the work and still feel like I'm making progress. So I feel minimum viable, very often people just tie it to products but I bring in that concept or mentality into every little thing, in terms of content, or in terms of dealing with email marketing, or in terms of dealing with visibility, or with social media. And I had to do it because it was a necessity for me to really survive and feel any kind of growth attraction. So I had to really throw out a lot of things that people were saying at that time when I was launching when I was really getting to get my business out there. Being everywhere, having a presence, you know, the requirement to have a presence on lots of different social media platforms like Instagram, or Facebook, showing up on live streams. So I understood the need for visibility and I prioritize that but I still wanted to do it in my own way and show up in a position where it was still within my zone of genius, and this is what I like to share with everyone in my audience who comes to me and says, I don't think I have the time, I don't think I have this. And I say yeah, then do the minimum viable piece, you know, just do these elements that will require you, that will allow you to launch and still feel that traction, still feel that growth. This is all about the tiny steps.

Heather Sager  12:16  

Yeah, and where do you think people get stuck in that approach? What what is it that holds them back thinking that like, is it just that in their head like if that's too simple, it wouldn't work?

Meera Kothand  12:27  

I think it's not. It's not just about them. I think it's all of these different regions around in the space, in the online space that has just breeding for years about the need to launch really massive products, and courses, and memberships which is why I loved your conversation with Zach's Spuckler about the tiny product which I absolutely love. I think this is where people kind of go down the rabbit hole, they think they need to do this, they think they need to do that so I don't think it's so much the issue with them but the issue with the conversations and the way things have been going on in the space. And people who have had success because they started 15, 20 years ago, kind of translating that narrative from 20 years back to today which doesn't really work but that's what people buy into. So I think it's more reason because of that rather than what they think.

Heather Sager  13:26  

Yeah, okay, it's so funny. I was having this conversation with Zafira Rajan who is on the show two episodes back and we were just talking about this idea that people are launched out, that exactly what you were just saying where it's like these big launches, with all these bells and whistles and all these different strategies for lead magnets and we see it happen, right, with a really big player is and then people try to model that. Like what you said, what happened, or what worked 10 years ago, or what works at a $10 million business level, it doesn't translate for somebody who's trying to launch their first program or product. It doesn't really mesh. 

Meera Kothand  14:07  

Yeah, absolutely and the thing is many of those narratives, I just don't, when I heard them and when I was starting, I'm like, ooh, that doesn't really sound right. You know, like, your first product has to be this or if you're not having a six-figure launch, it means that you're not doing something right, or it's all of these different things. And at the end of the day, it's all about the type of business you want to run. I think there's a saying where, you know, I don't want to build an empire. So it's yeah, it really depends on what you want out of it and what you have the time for because I think people have seasons in their life and some seasons, you focus on something, and some seasons, you focus on others. Just because you're not doing all of the things doesn't mean that you don't have success, or you're not growing, or you're not having any type of progress. 

Heather Sager  15:02  

Yeah, you got to figure that out for yourself. You know, figure it out for yourself. Let's talk about brand voice because I know that's a huge part of what you work on with your clients. This idea that I think, I don't know, I think people think that there's some like secret unicorn recipe when it comes to having like the perfect brand voice to connect with your people which I don't know. I just think it's comical. So tell me a little bit how do you describe like, what is a brand voice and where do you feel like the role of having a brand voice is for these business owners trying to attract the right people?

Meera Kothand  15:36  

Yeah, so obviously, your brand voice is a manifestation of your brand's personality whether you are the brand or you're under a different name. I think it also has come up like this symbiotic relationship with your beliefs, and your values, and your messages. I think you cannot see it as being separate and it really feeds into one another. So when I started out, obviously, I had the practical, the logistical kind of difficulties in terms of the timezone and all of that. But that was like very minor version or a very minor problem compared to the other things that the fears, and the uncertainties, and the anxieties. I mean, any creative for that matter when you're putting work out there, any type of work, whether it's a post, or a product or a book, you have all of those things coming in, self-doubt and being afraid. But for me, I felt I had this different, another layer. I didn't want to be judged by the way I spoke, or the color of my skin, or where I was from, I wanted my content to speak for itself. So I wanted that to be the first place before they got to know me, not the other way around. So I really double down into trying to figure out my talking space within all of these different conversations. So one of my favorite quotes is from, The Cluetrain Manifesto, that says that markets are conversations. It was really that struggle into figuring out okay, amidst all of these different conversations, where is my spot? Where is my tiny little stake? Where can I put that stake in my ground and because I felt I needed to not be judged, wanting to show up to that audience that doesn't look, doesn't sound like me, it's in a completely different time zone. I really dug deep into trying to figure out where exactly is my spot, and I always refer to because I did use this triangle kind of thing in,  I call it like the three C's, so the first thing is to change. Where exactly do I think I can present things in a way that can be said better or be explained better. Things that are already out there that people have been talking about for years, but that are not necessarily serving the audience. So putting a different spin on it or representing it or sharing in a different way, so that's the change. The other one is conflict or contrast. So where is it that you have an opposing point of view? So this doesn't mean just going out on purpose to find an opposing point of view or you're trying to be, to rant about it. It's to be led by your hunches or to be led by, you know, that doesn't really sound right. I had that for a lot of those instances when people were sharing, creating memberships for a membership site for someone who's brand new, who has no sales engine, was no audience and you're telling them to go and create a membership. These are the things where I was like, this doesn't sound right. I always kind of follow the trail and where does that lead me into forming my own message. So yeah, that's one other C. And the last one is to what I like to call sowing seeds of discord. You know, where you are trying to kind of create some conflict, where you're getting them to rethink their existing perspective on it. So just to kind of, you know, rethink. Do you really need that huge course? Could you start with something smaller? Could you do this? So I would always think along these three C's, you know. Conflict, contrast, and then change. Any type of content that I put out there, I wanted to make sure that I was speaking along these angles, so that I would stand out and this fed into the evolution of my brand voice. Obviously there's an element of what is important to you, what are your values? But I also have to clarify, okay, if I'm going to say I want to show up, this is my brand personality, maybe it's compassion, maybe it's being confident or maybe it's being smart, but you have to clarify what it is and what it is. Because there's this really thin line between being schmucky and then being arrogant, and then just being on the line and confident. Even if you're compassionate, what is the other end of the spectrum? When let's say your site is down and then you are trying to apologize to your audience. What is too apologetic or what is the other end of the spectrum? I think all of these are discussions and it's not something that you get on day one, it's really an evolution. The way I spoke about, the way I wrote, the way I showed up, just my voice, in general, has changed over the years and I think that's fine because with each year of your business, you get more and more clarity with the people you serve, what they look out for. And yeah, I mean, I think it shouldn't be something that you feel you need to get right from the first day.

Heather Sager  20:59  

I agree and I think it's one of those things that in my opinion they're never ever is a perfect right because it's evolving because your audience is evolving, you're evolving as a person as a business. When you were talking about the contrast piece and you're talking about the balance between figuring out, is it too much, is it not enough? I always envisioned this like a balance scale or a teeter-totter, whatever analogy works for anyone listening who has not seen my hands, where you are constantly dancing one under the other, and most often, business owners go a little too far one way. And I think the people who rise up and have stronger voices are the ones who don't get scared and jump off. They're like, okay, that was a little far or that didn't feel right, let me come back over here. It's constantly figuring out the balance, not where you sit in the middle because if you aren't bold and you don't go out and share your opinions, in the middle isn't gonna get you connection with people. But you have to be comfortable going out and teetering one way and then having the confidence to come back. I think when you talk about like that ego versus way too humble, I talk about confidence versus humility all the time. It's that same piece. I think that's the sexiness, we talked about this a few episodes back, the sexiness of the people who show up that we're attracted to are the people who are confidence of knowing they don't know everything, but they sure as hell believes in what they're saying as to be a really good strategy or a good way of thinking. I think it's really important.

Meera Kothand  22:31  

Yeah, and I think a lot of people when I share things like this, where I push them a little bit further to figure out like their own parking space as I like to call it, and they say, I don't think I have anything different to share. Ethically all do is just that we don't give it enough thought or enough time and we are all about putting content out there, getting out there and which is good but I think we all have something different to say it's just whether you want to be led down that trail, whether you want to kind of follow those little breadcrumbs. We all have those hunches where we think that doesn't sound right. You know something's just not right about this and we are just too quick to follow the existing narrative that we don't want to change it or explore it in greater detail.

Heather Sager  23:21  

And why do you think people are so quick to dismiss their hunches? Because I noticed so a lot of people, especially people in my audience are badass women who have had really powerful careers that they're now wanting more flexibility. They want more of the kind of work for themselves life. But there's something that happens between like, hey, I'm a badass in corporate, or I'm a professional attorney, or whatever it is, right? We move into the space and then they don't trust their gut. So how do you help, why do you think one they're not trusting their hunch even though they might have such great experience?

Meera Kothand  23:55  

I think there are a couple of things. One is because of there can be really huge looming voices in the space where we think that they're doing it this way and they're saying that, it has to be right and I'm new to this so I might as well follow that, you know, because who am I to craft this brand new narrative, or who am I to judge this, or who am I to say this? And they are earning big bucks and they seem to have it together so that could be one thing. Another thing is I do feel that it really goes back to that time of one, in having that feeling that I have to get launched, I have to get this out there and when you have the time piece, you want to kind of numb down on the other aspects. You don't really want to dive deep into those hunches and this and that. Like for me, there are certain things that I kind of had a vague idea and I knew I wanted to explore this further, but at that point in time, the idea wasn't really fully developed, and it took me some time for anything, like when I was talking about digital products, or even talking about content or brand voice. Some ideas, it takes time for them to evolve in your own head so that you get some clarity like, yeah, this is exactly how it fits in. You might have these pieces not really gelling together and that's fine. And I think we all have this feeling of just sitting with something that's unfinished in our heads and feeling like we need to put it out there and it is just not going anywhere. You know, let's just chuck it aside. So I think we hesitate to just sit with something that's unfinished or share something that's unfinished. I think it really boils down to that.

Heather Sager  25:41  

Yeah, I agree with that. I think people are, as you said, they have enough experience to know that somebody knows how to do it so they may as well just model that piece. But when they have that little like, ah, you're right. There's like the speed at which they want the results, mute that gut feeling. I think that it is just very fascinating to see that happen. Okay, I want to hear from you. One of the things that really struck me was when you were talking about the fact that you built your business in a completely different culture halfway around the world, so are most of your clients and customers in us, like North America?

Meera Kothand  26:18  

Yeah, yeah. So I serve people from all around the world, but a lot of my audience, I would say, 70% of my audience are in North America. Yeah. 

Heather Sager  26:26  

Okay, so this is what's fascinating to me and you probably see this all the time in Facebook groups with your clients, how much time people sit going, who's my ideal customer and they write down and they journal, what cozy sweater is she wearing? Which magazine is she reading? What candle scent? And we spent, like we have to visualize to imagine who we're talking with, right? We got to know who our audience is. But I would imagine, I mean, it's difficult for most online business owners to really get their person. But for you, you have the additional element of like, my person is halfway across the world, I am not. My person doesn't look like me, doesn't sound like me. As in building my client like, so walk us through, how that experience was for you and how you were able to figure out your voice to connect with somebody who was different in a variety?

Meera Kothand  27:16  

Yeah, well, I love that question because it is so true that all of these exercises about your ideal audience, you can only use them to a certain extent. after that, it's really the dealing with them, engaging with them on one to one or when you're interacting with them by emails, that has to come in. So whatever exercise you're doing that just maybe carries you 20 or 30%. For me, yeah, like you said, I didn't really, the lot of cultural things, like spaces and shops and like whatever they visited, things I didn't really understand or I couldn't really relate to, like, you know, there's a difference between shopping at Costco versus shopping at Target versus, so there's a different type of person who shops at all these different places so it took me a little bit of time to understand all of these different nuances. I still going, to be honest, I still don't get the full extent of it because I haven't really lived in the states for me to understand all of this. So why is it that my ideal client is in the states is because I was led by the conversation? I knew what I wanted to be a part of and I wanted to go where they were having that conversation. So when I started out six years back where I'm from in Singapore, it was still a very nine to five type of culture. It still is. So people starting blogs, people starting podcasts, it was very new at that point in time. It was like a very novel idea. It still is. It hasn't, it's not as evolved, I would say as how what people are doing back there. There is a very small number of creatives in Singapore who are kind of venturing out into all of this so which is why I wanted my ideal client was someone in the States because I was led by the conversations. So for me, it was, yeah, like I said, I didn't know all of these nuances but I really went deep into identifying who I didn't want to serve because it was very hard to identify who I wanted to serve but I knew what didn't jam with my brand. So I kind of, and this is what actually helped me, knowing okay, this person, I may not really get a full picture but I definitely know this is not who I wanted to serve. People who identify with, maybe people who identified with calling themselves like a mom boss or a mompreneur, like those terms I knew were not part of my brand. So these are things that I kind of,

Heather Sager  29:49  

I got a laugh for a moment because there are people in my audience, I'm sure that people in the audience that use that but I also know there's a huge segment of my audience who are like, do not call me that, like they are offended by it. And for me, I'm like, meh, either way, but it is people are very hell-bent on like, whether or not they call themselves a mompreneur, or a girl boss, or whatever else anyway. If you have feelings around these terms, just know you're not alone whichever side of the spectrum you're on.

Meera Kothand  30:19  

Yeah, yeah. So yeah, go boss is another thing that reminded me so I knew these are the things the audience was attracting. I mean, sure, there would be people who probably kind of still view themselves like that or call themselves and which is fine but I would not use, those words were not a part of my brand vocabulary. 

Heather Sager  30:38  

Yeah, correct. 

Meera Kothand  30:38  

It's just not for me. So I think that helps me more in identifying what I was not, what my brand vocabulary would not include, like 'Xo', signing off with 'Xo', or calling my audience lovelies, or babes. Yeah, it's just not me. It's not needed. it's not a part of,

Heather Sager  30:58  

But do you call them on boo, like, hey, boo? No, I was joking on that and it was like, no. Immediately, no, but I'll totally be the 'Xo' thing and I call everybody friends.

Meera Kothand  31:09  

Yeah, yeah, friend is fine for me. But you know, it's just clarifying what you're not about so that exercise helped me more, especially when I didn't really get a grasp of who this person is. So I had this idea of who this person was roughly in a sense of, okay, maybe she's going to be a stay-at-home mom trying to start a side hustle. She probably had two kids. I had that. And over time, within a year, I realized that there is completely different and I didn't really want to speak to that audience anymore. Sure, there are lots and lots of people within my audience who are moms with kids, as am I, but I felt no. Iwas not really doing that person justice because a lot of the things I spoke about, the way I communicated was just not speaking to that one person. So it evolved and it shifted just a year, a year and a half into it. So I think my only takeaway is if you have a struggle figuring out who this person is, clarify who that person is not. What are the words will not be a part of your brand vocabulary? It helps you a lot with knowing how to write and how to show up and how to when you're visible, getting visible. What language would you be using? So that helps to kind of counter the weakness and everything that comes with trying to figure out who this person is.

Heather Sager  32:29  

Okay, I love that you went here on you're like, hell no, this is my 'not' list. I know it's so funny because it's like, that's kind of negative and it's totally right up my alley because if anybody listening, think about this. A lot of people struggle to articulate what they want their brand to look like or feel like. So for example, when you're working with a graphic designer and you're trying to describe your stuff, like there's no way, but when somebody sends you a draft, you're like, I don't like that, I don't like that, I don't like that. And people think like, oh my gosh, I don't want to tell the designer that because that's mean. But designers are like, it's the only feedback I'm going to get. Give me the feedback because it shows me what you don't want so I can do different. I say this like side tangent, but this idea around identifying what you don't want or what don't resonates, that's sometimes way more powerful than describing the like, quote-unquote, ideal because the ideal, let's be honest, y'all, when you're writing that stuff down, it still feels kind of fluffy but like the 'don't' list is like laser specific. Like when you call out like I do not say 'Xo, xo', or I do not say lovelies, or I do not say girl boss or like those things like laugh about it. It also is very concrete, creating a picture of like closer to who you are and how you want to show up. So I think it's beautiful because I think a lot of people get stuck on that so if you're listening, Meera, just dropped a really incredible, like powerful branding voice piece. Make your "do not" list. I see people griping about it all the time on Instagram of like, I hate the term, hustle, or I hate this term, perfect. Add it on your 'do not' include list. it doesn't mean it's bad for other people. It just means it's not for you.

Meera Kothand  34:09  

Yeah, and I actually had someone in my audience, I think it was a webinar or training I was doing some time back and I actually said this very thing. And she was like, wouldn't that be, like I said, isn't that negative? Or isn't that a little bit blunt, because you're trying to say all of these people are not a part of that. And you know, any kind of content that you put out there, any work, any piece of work that you're getting, putting out there, you're automatically going to attract and repel an audience whether you know it, you what to or not. It is just the way it is so you rather repel people early on then attract everyone in and then when it's time to do business with you, they realize no, she's not my person or I can't see myself doing business with it so you would rather get only the right people in. Keep it a tight group then kind of open the gates and welcome everyone in and yeah.

Heather Sager  35:04  

It's just that it as a funny conversation in general. Okay, I'm curious, what were some other things that you work through, kind of figuring out your brand voice working with once you identified who your person was not, right? So what are some of the other things that you had to work through to really figure out what voice would connect?

Meera Kothand  35:24  

For me it was, yeah, like one of the things I said, it was clarifying what my voice is not, what my voice is about. The other thing is the type of channel that I wanted to use. There's a lot of misconception or I feel there's this unnecessary pressure of thinking, okay, you have to show up on YouTube, or you have to show up on a podcast, or have to show up on a blog and do it in all of these different all of these different mediums. But sometimes I feel the channel that you choose kind of attracts a separate audience to something else and there's a lot of pressure to be in all of these places. But sometimes you show up in what are you writing, there's a little bit of difference in your voice. So for me, it was kind of like bridging the gap between, okay, I'm showing up on writing a post, this is my voice. And now when I'm starting to do video, how am I going to bridge that so that they don't feel like who they're watching? Sounds like someone who's completely different from who they just met on the blog or the type of things that you're sending in your email. So, yeah, this is one thing that I really had to get clear on and I actually went far enough to kind of do this brand sheet in a sense of keeping note of, okay, these are my words, these are not and this is how I would say so that is a little bit of consistency in how people view me. So every single node, wherever they viewed me within my brand ecosystem, whether it's on Instagram, or on a podcast, or YouTube, or back in my email. Besides the brand voice is also the messages that I wanted to put across because you don't want to send anything that was contrasting, that's contradictory to what you are about and when you've been in business for some time, sometimes you realize, hey, no, that's not what I believe in. Why could I just say that? Or, you know, how did I, it kind of misses you or certain things where you've shed and you stand by and it gets lost with all of the content that's out there. So it's useful to have this little tiny brand sheet where you have all of your important points and what do you believe in, what are your values, what do you stand for? The words and all of that. So for me, that was very helpful in helping me bridge all of these different channels that I was showing up on because initially, it was very simple. It was just a blog, it was just email but after that, you know, it was like a podcast, or summit, or this and that, and just trying to bring it all back to your brand anchor and keeping it there. That was very helpful. 

Heather Sager  38:09  

So I hear, okay, my brain goes and a lot of different places so we'll take this wherever you feel comfortable going with. I would imagine writing a blog, right, and emails, you have a lot of control over the language, right? That you use the words that you use. And one of the things when I do Q&A's is with my audience, I get a lot of questions from people who live around the world in other countries or people who live in the states that have accents. I get questions around delivery skills around like, how do I navigate my accent on video to be able to better connect with my customer? So I want you to go here and talk for a minute is that there's a shift, right? Just when you feel like you're getting your groove in business, like writing things down or like, aha, shit go live. So like there is a, it's not just a stair step to like go live, like someone who speaks in the same language with their audience, like shows up like it's oh, there's there's a lot of privilege there for someone who looks like me, who sounds like me to be able to do a podcast. But for someone, especially when you're working with people in a completely different countries around the world, I would imagine that hurdle was pretty high. So can you talk a little bit about like that because I know there are people listening who, they're struggling.

Meera Kothand  39:21  

Yeah, absolutely. Definitely certain words, the way I say it is very different from how someone else would say it. And we know we have this whole British English, American English and yeah, naturally, initially, a lot of my content, the writing part, I was following a lot of British English because that is what we were kind of taught, that's like our first language here. But, a lot of people didn't identify with and they would actually say, what is this? Why is it spelled and this should be spelled in this way, that was one element. But coming to the accent thing and I knew that this will be an issue and it was one of my fears when I started out. When I started to create digital products, obviously, I would make sure there was a transcript there, there's the captions there. Those I would say is the bare minimum, I would do those. But I would still, every now and then I would get someone who would say, you know, I like you but I don't understand what you're saying I can't follow through. And it was, initially, it was painful that even though I did all of that, they still came back with this feedback. But I had to kind of switch into knowing that it's not about me, it's just the way it is. Some people are able to catch on quickly when you give them all of these resources, they're able to catch on and some people aren't. The only thing to do is, yeah, give them a refund and just not take it on yourself. It's not about you. There are times when I would be doing live streams. This was I think, a couple of years back when every now and then we would be having discussions in the chat and they would be, what is it that Meera just said, I couldn't catch on. And then someone would clarify, say, oh, she meant this. It is just her accent. I would be going back and I think you laugh. Seriously, I would try not to let that affect me at that point in time. Now it just doesn't because there are some words, not a lot, a few words where I've changed the way I say it so that they would understand it better. But it was more of just how, especially when I use it a lot in terms of when I'm teaching something or trying to get a message across, I want to make it easier for them. But generally, I still show up the way I am. I have not done anything differently to change my accent as you can tell. It's just the same way. 

Heather Sager  41:54  

It's beautiful.

Meera Kothand  41:54  

Yeah, I've not worked with anyone. I know people sometimes work with people to try and change their accents. I've not done any of that, like a couple of words, I've changed my way just because it helps the audience better to grasp it better but beyond that, no. I feel when I show up in my authentic self, it serves them better and I don't want to become another like a cookie-cutter version of someone else. And it's very interesting because I was having a discussion with someone the other day. It was on another podcast and she said something. I knew the moment it was out of her mouth, she regretted saying it and she said, you know I love talking to you because you're so animated with your gestures and all of that. I embrace it. I'm like, yes, exactly. I am very animated, especially when it's a topic that I love to speak on so I bring all of these quirks. I know that sometimes, a lot of influences that I see on video, probably not as animated as I am but this is me. And when they buy your products and services, they buy into a little bit of you and a little bit of your brand story and I want that to be the case so I'm going to show up the way I am, accent and you made it gestures and all of that stuff because yeah, this is the brand that they're buying into, not not a mini cookie cutter or someone else's.

Heather Sager  43:22  

All the hand gestures are welcome here. All of those. Side note, I recently discovered that I have very long if anybody who watches the videos. They know I'm tall. I'm 511 and I don't know how that translates in the metric system but I'm very tall. I have very long hands and arms and my hands. I've gotten comfortable with it but I totally have gangly arms. I have some videos on YouTube around hand gestures on video. It's very weird getting comments from people around the world around my hands. They're a little couple creeper comments on my videos around like my hands so now I'm like, meh, whatever. Take it or leave or I have very large head gestures. I'm okay with that. Hey, one of the things that you said around when you were talking about some of those moments where you're like, oh, in the chat, it's like what's happening? It reminds me of what you were saying earlier around how you have to take risks and we talked about that teeter-totter. And that was I think, a really beautiful moment that I want to honor and point out where each of us has our own thing, right, where we start second-guessing or doubting ourselves for a variety of different ways. In that moment comes when like, you can play that story in your head around, like oh my gosh, people don't get me or someone might be like, oh, I'm not smart enough for this or qualified enough for this or whatever else and when that happens, it's like that split second, you go out on that, like teeter-totter and your resiliency to come back and be like, nope, I know what I'm doing. I know this is me. They're gonna get the real me. I love that you talk about that. It's fascinating with me. I'll never share this publicly before but I talk openly about my hearing loss so I wear hearing aids. I've had a hearing loss for 15 years. And one of the things that people don't realize is when it comes to hearing loss, we actually hear through our brains and so our brains are trying to like make sense of different sounds. One of the things that I really struggle with is communicating with people who have accents because my brain, my ears, and my brain have been programmed to process sounds and I'm around people who speak English, I mean, in person. Now that I'm working with people all over the world, my brain is not used to hearing all these different accents so my brain literally cannot make out the sounds. So one of the things that have been really fascinating for me is how uncomfortable I get in conversations not because of the conversation but because I literally cannot understand the words. It's one of those things where I developed like this awareness of going, okay, communication is two ways. Anyone who has any kind of communication challenge, whether it's in speaking, whether it's someone who's terrified of speaking, somebody who has an accent, someone who has a hearing loss. It just reminds me that each of us has our own stories and how we communicate can really impact how we approach our relationships with other people. Sometimes us being in our own head can really, I don't know, really be destructive on that. So I just wanted to share that, it's just interesting because I've never really had a conversation around just that piece before. It's a fascinating conversation and I hope that more people are, I don't know, talking about things that say we all communicate in different ways, let's figure out how to be even better at it. 

Meera Kothand  46:49  

Yeah, yeah, actually. 

Heather Sager  46:52  

It's fascinating. Okay, that was a random tangent here. Okay, you have a couple tips and strategies for people who are really wanting to get stronger with their brand voice, they want to start showing up more boldly. When you think about this digital marketing space what tips would you give people for showing up more consistently or more boldly, more authentically with their voice?

Meera Kothand  47:17  

Yeah, I think one of the things is to really drill deep into knowing and figuring out what stories you want to keep as part of your, kind of like your brand package and we all have different stories. Some stories work because they aligned with our business, and some stories you may choose to, you know, this is not for this audience and this is not for this particular brand. For me, one of the things that I was a little bit hesitant on sharing when I started out was, how, because I can resonate with this narrative at the start of everyone sharing that they knew they wanted to be an entrepreneur, they knew this from five or six, or whatever that is, and they had these credit cards, they were the kids with a lemonade stand and all of that. I couldn't resonate with that because it was not a part of how I grew up. So my cultural experience in the sense, the family that I was raised in, whereas you went to college, you got your degree, go get a job. Entrepreneurship is for others. So doing this in itself is, I'm the first person in my family so I couldn't resonate with all of that and choosing to share that story about, I'm the last person who ever becomes an entrepreneur, I was very hesitant because I didn't know if people would go the other way and in all of the best who chose to use that. I'm so amazed because in so many people, you know like I mentioned, my main audience is in North America. They writing back and saying that they felt the same way and how they also couldn't identify with how others felt entrepreneurship was in their bones and they knew it. So when you choose to share certain stories, there's a lot of fear and you know, hesitation around them so the main thing is to figure out what stories you're going to share and how that relates to your audience because you don't just want to share something for the sake of it. How does that relate back to them? Helping them identify or helping them understand your brain better so those are the type of stories that you want to pick and it's perfectly fine for you to take that story out and share something else. It's not that you're changing your story. It's not that you're lying about it. It's just that you're choosing to share a different story that's part of your life, and sometimes your audience evolves, your brand evolves, and you can choose to share different things. In the early days, a lot of the stories I was sharing were about being a stay-at-home mom but when my audience shifted and I decided to kind of pivot, story that I chose to share shifted as well. It's still mine. It's just that I'm sharing something else. So it's it's really figuring out what forms a part of your brand package. You know, that's one of those things. So yeah, that was very helpful for me to do and it took a lot of kind of like getting over that, kind of like crossing over that little bridge. So yeah, I think with every stage that you are in business, there is a lot of, there's always that fear, there's always uncertainty. It just comes in lots of different forms. First, trying to figure out the accent in the brain, then the brand voice and knowing, seeing of these, identifying with you, and then crossing that hurdle into something else, and then it just moves on. I think knowing, getting comfortable with being uncomfortable is very important when do our industries.

Heather Sager  50:57  

Yeah, I totally agree with that. I think when you were talking about the different stories from the different angles piece. It's brilliant on what you said. It's okay to tell a different angle on your story. It doesn't mean that you're being inauthentic, it doesn't mean that you were lying the first time. It's all of us like I like to imagine this. It's our stories are like a book on the shelf that you can open to any page and that in itself, that page is perfectly great to share or you can share a different chapter in the book. It doesn't have to be so sequential. I think that's what people struggle with so often is they think that they have to have this perfect, I hate the term, the perfect origin story. I just say "BS." The story you share is going to be based around who you're speaking to and the message that you're trying to convey so which spoiler, like if you're thinking, oh, my gosh, I need help with that. Go back to the signature story episode we'll link to, there are quite a few episodes we've done on the show to around storytelling. So if what Meera is talking about is really interesting, binge listens to a few of those. Well, do you have like, we're gonna wrap it up here, but do you have any little gems that you'd like to share with people when it comes to sharing stories? Any tips that you give people around what makes a really great story for an audience?

Meera Kothand  52:13  

Yeah, you know, well, there are the types of stories you can share and like you said, the origin story is one of them but there are also stories that you can share around why you created a product. So I have a few different categories that you can kind of attribute different products, different stories to like the origin, or why you came up with the product or even with your clients. One of the short stories that I've shared when it relates to trying to teach people about email and email marketing was an interaction I had with someone in a Facebook group where she was sharing with me that she had a list of about 20,000 people who she had not emailed in, I think over a year or something of that sort. She was terrified because of the idea of emailing that list again and getting all of those unsubscribes and having that in this goal stale. It was kind of like the realization from that very well could be a reality so sharing that story, that interaction, helps your ideal audience learn something about what you want to take away. So don't just look at stories from, okay, my story, my origin, but lots of stories all over the place from your interactions, or with clients, or with anyone in that space for that matter. But the main thing about the story is and I think this is where people get it wrong. Always try to relate it back to what does this, how does this serve my audience? I think that's the main thing. Always come at it from an angle of service. Every single thing that you do, how does this serve them? How does this relate back to the goal that I'm trying to help them reach or the transformation that I'm trying trying to give to them? I think this is the main thing. If you're stuck and you think that you don't have a storytelling bone in your body which is what I thought. I think we're just complicating the thing, you know because there are stories everywhere. We tell stories to our partners or we tell stories to our friends every single day. Oh, you know, this happened. Blah, blah, blah. So there are lots of things like this that you can share with your clients and for me, this was like a huge aha in knowing that, yeah, why am I complicating it? You know, it doesn't have to be like you said, this beautiful package story. It could be anything The main thing is how does it serve them? So I would say that is like my biggest tip when it comes to trying to figure out what stories to share. it is just the all over the place. You just need to know where to look and how to put it together so that it makes sense for them.

Heather Sager  54:44  

You totally pluck them out which we can help y'all with that, that story of how to build a bank of stories, we'll connect to that episode in here. But one of the things I'm going to paraphrase here when you were talking about how you saw somebody provoke something in Facebook group, like this question people can ask themselves is like, when we see someone posted in a Facebook group and we're like, oh, we would handle it this way, or, oh, this is our thought, or oh, this is our solution, ask yourself the question, what prompted that thought or what prompted that idea and that is the story. It's like, what's the story of the person struggling in the Facebook group? What challenge was your client are having? What was your challenge or pain point? What prompted or provoked that idea or that piece of advice? I think people are so quick to jump into the solution. Solution, everyone's giving like tips in the carousel posts and all the things on Instagram. Those are a dime a freakin dozen, y'all. I'm done with like, just the easy like how to fix something. Isn't anchored in context? what's the problem surrounding it for why it actually matters? That's what's going to land you eyeballs and actual engagement so you have to think about what provoked or prompted the idea or solution.

Meera Kothand  55:56  

Yeah, that's so good. Yeah, it's true. I think. I think there is this, we want to, like you said, give solutions but we don't want to sit to at what brought that thing, that whole content. Yeah, that's a good thing. 

Heather Sager  56:12  

You're going to the doctor and having them like pouring medicine down your mouth without, like, what's happening? What's going on? Nobody likes that.We need to understand the context. Oh, my gosh. Okay, Meera, I could talk to you all morning your time. I would love to pour myself a little latte and sit here because you were just a pleasure and your hand gestures are perfect. I don't know. You and I are kindred souls here with the hands. But I know people are gonna be so excited. They love this idea of being authentic. I love how you just approach things around connecting with people from storytelling and with heart and just leading with what they actually need, the not less, like so many good gems we had in here today. Where can people continue to learn from you, connect with you, and learn more about what it is that you do?

Meera Kothand  57:02  

Yeah, so I'm over at meerakothand.com. I think since we're just talking about brand voice, one of the first things that you can do if want to dive in a little bit deeper is to go on Amazon and check out my book, The One Hour Content plan, kind of like the first thing that if you want to get and dive a little bit deeper into my perspective, so this is the book that they can find on Amazon. So yeah, and I think on socials all over. I'm just meerakkothand, so it's easy to find me.

Heather Sager  57:30  

Okay, perfect. W link to all of that including the Amazon link, everything in the show notes ao if you guys could head over into the show notes that will take you over to the blog to get all the details and the summary up today. We covered quite a few tips and strategies so I'll summarize those in the notes from today but my goodness, Meera. You are a gem. Your clients who work with you. They are very, very lucky and I feel very blessed that we connect today. 

Meera Kothand  57:52  

Thank you so much. 

Heather Sager  57:53  

Of course, thanks everyone for listening. Be sure to take a screenshot of this episode and tag both, Meera and I on Instagram and tell us what you learned. You know, those shares really mean the world and it helps us get this message out to more people. So thank you, thank you for your shares and we will see you on the next episode.