What’s Missing From Your Talk (And How to Fix It)

Ever feel like you’re dropping pure fire—sharing your best, most advanced stuff—and all you get back is…polite nods?

Your audience tells you that you’re brilliant, they loved your talk and that your stuff is amazing…but then they don’t actually do anything with it.

So what’s the deal?

In this week episode of The Ramble Refinery, I’m breaking down the #1 reason your ideas aren’t sticking—and the simple shift to fix to help your audience actually take action. It's the difference between being interesting and being irresistible.

We’re talking about how to stop sounding like you’re on “chapter 6” of your story (when your audience hasn’t even read chapters 1–5 yet), and how to add the one thing most speakers and content creators skip: context.

I’ll walk you through a super simple framework I use with clients called WIM—short for Why It Matters—and how to use it to make your message more relevant, clear, and sticky.

You’ll hear:

• Why starting with your most advanced advice is actually pushing people away.
• What your audience really means when they say they love your stuff but still don’t take action (aka still don't buy).
• How to take your topic (using a funny, made-up example about cold plunging!) and make it directly relevant to your audience's current problems, world, and desires.
• The WIM Framework: My simple 3-part formula (Why This? Why You? Why Now?) to make your message impossible to ignore.

This one’s short, super practical, and honestly—it could change the way you show up in your next talk, podcast, or post. Tune in to this episode and let’s turn those polite nods into a resounding “Hell yeah, how do I work with you?!”

EPISODE  SHOW NOTES👇

https://heathersager.com/episode243

Transcript

Heather (00:11)

Well, hey friend and welcome back to another episode of the Ramble Refinery. Happy July. Oh my gosh, we're officially as of today's episode into the second half of 2025. I don't know about you, but July for me is a really exciting month. I love to do my goal setting and my recalibration for my personal goals and personal life, and I can't help but also do business in July.

So July this next week is my husband and I's anniversary. Let's see, my gosh, 14 years married. Wow, holy cow, we are getting up there. ⁓ But anyways, we like to take a family trip, do a lot of walking,  fun kind of history for us is we had been coming to Bend, Oregon on like a summer vacation for like.

I don't know, a or two each summer since our oldest was born. So it's now been to be our 11th summer coming down here. And we do a lot of walking while on that trip. It's actually one of the reasons why we ended up moving here to Bend. But we do a lot of walking and revisiting around how things are going, how certain aspects of our life are doing. We talk about our personal goals, our health goals, our family goals, our financial goals. Anyways, July is just...

It's for me, it's like Christmas in July, guess, is a thing, but it's like my New Year's in July. So I just feel a lot of refresh, new beginnings and a lot of ease in the month of July. So wherever you are in your business, in your life, I hope that you're taking a little bit of time just to reflect that, holy crap, like halfway through, we're in it.

The last six months have gone by so fast and so slow at the same time as they always do and the next six will do exactly just that. So it's your call around what you do with it. This is the time where you got to think about the obligations you have made. Do you want to let any of them go? Like, what are you going to do that's going to like light you up and fuel you for the rest of the year? yeah, I'm just, I'm excited. I'm excited for you and excited about what you're creating and I'm excited for me too. 

Let's get into today's episode. We're gonna talk about how to make your message resonate more with any audience you speak. And this is a topic I talk about all the time, but I'm gonna introduce to you a new framework today that I've been using with many of my clients as a really simple reminder to get out of your expert speak and into the language of whoever is in front of you. 

What I see all the time, I've used this metaphor before, the expression you can't read the label from inside the jar, right? You've heard that too, you've probably heard me talk about that all the time. One of the things that we really struggle with in each of our own realms of expertise is we start talking to people like this, like we're reading the sixth chapter of a book, right? 

We're talking to people like they've already read the first five chapters because for us, the first five chapters seem really freaking basic and we don't want to waste people's time. We know people hate fluffy. We also know that people are so freaking sick of basic bitch content, like just generic crap from ChatGPT. So we are like, we want to get to it. We want to get to the meat. We want to make this relevant. We want to make this really impactful. Like we want to be of service to the audiences we are. So we start on chapter six and what happens is our audience loves and respects us for jumping straight to it. They're nodding their head. They're like, yeah, we love it. You're throwing down what you're, I'm picking up what you're throwing down. Like they, they really respect it. And then they don't take action, right? 

They respect you, they appreciate you, they think you're awesome, they think what you said was interesting, it's informative, it's awesome, and they're not ready yet. And they have other things they need to focus on first. And they have these other things going on. And then you're left going, why is it that everyone's loving my stuff? 

They love my talks, they love my message, they appreciate the sophistication of it, the detail of it, the meatiness of it. And it's not working. So what is that thing that's missing, right? Do you need to be more salesy? Do you need to make it more irresistible by pitching them an offer? 

Well, sometimes yes, but also probably not. I think what you're missing is context. This is the number one thing that most people suck at and it's creating context for what they're talking about.

Now a lot of people think that this has to be super freaking complicated and dudes on the internet who teach online marketing or teach messaging or teach sales, they try to make you think that you have to follow this super psychological formula for trying to convince people to need something that they don't need. And I know you resist it, but you're also wondering, should I use a formula? Like, should I follow the flow of their webinars or should I try to add in some of this language, but your body is like rejecting it, like trying to like dispel a virus that is attacking your body. 

You're like,well, I'm here to tell you that yes, you do need structure. Yes, there are communication formulas that would absolutely serve you and I'll teach you a lot of those. That's really what I teach inside my programs is a bunch of communication formulas that I'll put together into a very specific structure allow you to not only build a damn good talk, but use pieces of that in different ways in your business wherever and whenever you speak. 

So it's all based off of communication laws. But what I'm gonna teach you today is a really simple way that you can keep it clear and contextual for your audience. Now let's talk about the word context. This is a word that I use all the time. And if I were to define what is my superpower, I'm really good at creating context for something. 

Now, what do I mean by context? Okay, so context is how do you actually have like the thing that you're teaching, how do you create like relevance of the thing that you're teaching? So people are like, I get it. So for example, let's say I was going to talk about, I'm gonna go something totally wild and different. Let's say that I was gonna talk about cold plunging.

I know why we're talking about cold plunging, but let's say I'm going to talk about,cold plunging. Well, I could absolutely talk about the benefits of cold plunging and how it's so like, I don't cold plunge by the way. Just side note, I'm going to be making up here as I go and none of this is going to be true. 

So there's your disclaimer, but let's, could talk about like five benefits of cold plunging that I could talk about the cold plunging process and like these really cool ways that people are using cold plunge. And like, it makes a really quote unquote, compelling case that if you were listening going, man, I've been thinking about cold plunging. Yeah, maybe I should really try it. 

But if you're sitting there going, I've never heard of cold plunging before or if you're going like, it's a lot of money, or I don't know if I have time to commit to that right now. AKA you're sitting here with these silent yeah, but objections to it. Even if I have all the information in the world, you're still going to sit here going, yeah, or maybe even the moment you're like, I really want to do that.

And then tomorrow comes and you're like, yeah, that's a later problem, right? We put it in our brain for later, even though it resonates, even though we have already said we want it and it makes perfect logical sense, we still don't take action. So what is context? What does context do? 

Well, instead of me just talking about cold plunging as this thing that has great benefits, creating context is me explaining how cold plunging fits into your world, me describing cold plunging and connecting it to problems that you're currently facing or desires that you currently have. Let me say that again because holy shit if you do this well it will change your life my friend. So it's taking the thing that you talk about and making it relevant to their current world, their current problems, and their current desires. 

So if I were just to make shit up here creating context for cold plunging would me be talking about, if you're in a season where you are working out a lot more, actually, this would be a better one. Let's say I'm gonna make shit up. So again, this is not true information. So do not quote me on any of this nor pull any clips of me spreading misinformation about cold plunging. Okay? 

But I could say something about like, hey, if you're a woman over 40, your body isn't recovering as fast as it has been. And like with hormones going crazy, blah, blah, whatever, right? I could describe someone like me, I'm 41, describe some changes maybe in my physical body and my physical world that have been happening for like a while now, right? 

I could describe that where I would be down in my head and be like, yeah, I'm 41. Yeah, it is harder to get off the floor. Yeah, I have noticed I've gotten a little sweaty here and there. Yeah, I have like head nod, head nod. I'm like, describing things in their world. 

And then I can bring in the solution, right? A solution that I've been using a lot or something that I've really heard about is like cold plunging, how cold plunging can help insert benefit, benefit, benefit, benefit, benefit, benefit, benefit, right? 

So just by adding the little bit of context said differently, how this fits into their current world. Also said differently, how this fits into their current line of thinking. So what's top of mind for them literally today, that makes what's about to come out of your mouth relevant. 

This might sound so fucking simple, but I can tell you that like, I was gonna say nine out of 10, but that sounds like I'm a toothpaste advertiser. Nine out of 10 doctors approve this or dentists approve this. Totally unverified fact, but like nine out 10 people when I'm listening to them on podcasts, they're void of context. 

When I'm listening to people teach, guest speaking workshops. This is the huge one. I see a lot of people do guest speaking inside people's programs and they miss the context. Context is your most powerful thing that you can do to take your topic and fit it into someone's current life, their current mind share. Like what's taking up their thinking, their space in their brain right now. 

You can't see me, but I'm like jamming my palm of my hand into my forehead to like represent the brain, the brain is full. What is my brain full of right now that makes the thing that you're about to tell me relevant? Relevance, that's the key with context. 

Now there's an acronym that I like to use to help you fit this in. But before I do that, let me just, I really wanna paint this point in a different way. So I had a friend in high school and I met up with her a couple, I don't know, probably like five or six years out of high school and we would hang out, we'd go bowling, we'd go to coffee. We had some mutual friends, but we're hanging out. And I started noticing that when we were in conversation, I would share her like a story about something going on or something that someone was doing. She developed this phrase all the time that she would use. And the phrase was, cool beans, cool, cool beans.

And I have no idea when people started saying cool beans, but I was not one of the people to adopt that phrase. I've always been kind of like, what the F is cool beans? Did this come from a movie somewhere? By the way, like message me if you, if you know the answer of the source of cool beans, I probably could Google it, but I will not because I will, I want to hear your versions of it. 

But the cool beans, which I remember when I first heard her say it, I was like, interesting. And then I had the question of maybe I'm not cool enough to know what cool Beans means, but I also know that I'm not going to use it. So I will just be an observer of the Cool Beans statement. 

So anyways, but what I started noticing is she used Cool Beans as a response. I don't know if this is how it was supposed to be used. So if I'm just becoming like aware of the intention of this phrasing, whoopsie, but she would only use it. I noticed when she wasn't really invested and or listening to what I was saying. 

So I would, let me just like bullshit example here. Like I would be talking about, I don't know, like inviting some people over or like Johnny was coming over to the barbecue this weekend. And I could tell in her expression when she would be like, my gosh, really? Like, that's incredible. Like you love Johnny. There's no Johnny by the way, in real life, this is a fictitious scenario. But she's like, you've been.like pining after Johnny for months. my gosh, yada yada. 

And then I would maybe change the subject to something else around. Yeah, and Felicia is gonna bring hot dog buns. And I don't know, maybe I'd say something else. And then she'd be like, yeah, cool beans. And she would have this like nod going on. Anyways, the takeaway on this is I started noticing that the phrase cool beans was an empty response, an empty validation to when she really didn't want to agree. She just wanted to acknowledge. 

Let me say that again. When she didn't really want to agree, but she wanted to acknowledge. And as I sat down to talk about this topic today around the power of context and making things more relevant to your audience, for some reason, that damn phrase, cool beans entered my mind. And I couldn't shake it because what happens is so often when your audience is hearing you speak, in their brain, they're doing a version of Cool Beans, bro, like Cool Beans, where they're not, I mean, they might even be agreeing with you, but they're acknowledging. They're acknowledging what you're saying, they're getting it, but they're not taking action with it. And that disconnect is you aren't making this matter to them right now. 

So let me introduce to you the acronym that is going to freaking change your life and make your content so much better, which side note, I had the thought I'm like, should I share this on the podcast? Should I say this and only give it to my clients inside of my program? Cause we have a bunch of different techniques just like this inside of the Signature Talk Accelerator. 

But I'm like, no, this is the kind of good shit that could really elevate someone's next podcast interview or their next podcast episode or their next stage talk, like something just as simple. So I want you to have this and I want you to play with it. And I want it to really elevate how you talk about things but here's the acronym. 

The acronym is WIM, W-I-M. And I want you to remember, go out on a whim, give them context, go out on a whim, go out on a whim. And this WIM, it stands for why it matters. Why it matters. It is so simple, but anytime you talk about anything, you need to give it context, which means you need to talk about why this matters.

Now, why this matters isn't the statistics and the facts around this. It's answering the questions. I have them written down on a Post-it note. Did you hear that satisfying like, I don't know if you heard that or not, but like the pulling of the Post-it note off of the table. But you're essentially saying, why this? Why you? Why now?

That's what the why it matters has to answer for your audience. Why this, AKA why this thing that you're talking about? Why you, AKA why are you the person to talk about it slash qualified to help them? And why now? Meaning what is it about right now that is urgent and needs to take action? 

Now, when I say urgent, what comes to mind for a lot of people in online marketing, right? They think scarcity. They think limited availability, which is scarcity said in a plain spoken way. we think about, like disappearing offers. 

We get like, we think about like cart closing. That's not what I'm talking about when it comes to speaking, which sure there can be an element of that scarcity or urgency, but like why now we have to create urgency in the way of relevance for the person. 

So going back to my cold plunge. 40 plus woman, for her, what's going on in her life literally right now that if this issue isn't addressed right now, what's the consequence of that? What's the consequences of her not doing anything about some of these symptoms she's talking about? What's the immediate benefit of her doing something like right now? 

If she cold plunged today, if she maybe didn't have a cold punch but took a cold shower today. How easy would that be? How could we make it easier, simpler for her to do now to experience the benefit so that she would want to continue on her learning or continue on her action? 

The why now we have to figure out what is it about the season right now? What is it about the month right now? What is it about the time of their life right now? What is it about the what's happening literally today that we can make this a now thing and not a later type of thing? 

And sometimes that question might be difficult for you to answer, but I was just working with a client in my corporate speaking program this week and she helps companies with financial literacy for their employees. So helps them take the money they make at work, but be more fiscally responsible in their personal lives to achieve their own personal professional or personal and financial goals, right? 

So she teaches them financial literacy, whether it's budgeting, whether it's debt repayment, there's lots of different things. And so we were talking about for her answering these questions when she's pitching companies and in sales conversations. Why this? Why you? Why now? 

And the why now, what we really came back to is the seasonality of employees. When you think employees managing money, well, a lot of companies have cycles where they're doing promotions. So people are maybe having a new level of income where they're needing to budget. Maybe back to school is a lot of time where people are thinking, okay, I need to be preparing for the holiday expenditures so we don't go into debt. 

The new year usually brings on new financial goals. So we were talking about how to tie what she teaches to the why now-ness of her, like the company she's talking to and their employees. There's a seasonality piece. This is the same thing that happens if you're pitching the media, like you're trying to tie things to a holiday or a local event or a something going on, right? 

So we always wanna make it relevant now. So a simple way for you to WIM, describe why it matters is for you to be answering the question, why now?

So all this to say, I'm not gonna give you like a full on ass tutorial around all these specific examples around each letter. I want this to be an easy thing for you to grasp and an easy thing for you to try. The next time you're teaching a topic and you're introducing whether it's a framework or an idea or  you're answering a question, answer the question and maybe state your answer and then pause and then talk about why this matters.

So why this is relevant to them, why this might be top of mind for them, why this could really be a, I hate the phrase, but you can use it, game changer for them. Like bring up the why, talk about why it matters. And remember, it's not just the logical case of facts and statistics, gosh, that word, get anxiety over that word, statistics, but it's really making the connection case, the connection case, which is why it matters to them right now. 

That's what's going to get them like nodding their head but also moving their booties into action. So this WIM, go out on a whim when you're talking about your ideas to audiences, you can use it obviously on stages. I use it all the time, both in like the opening of my talk. I've done this a bajillion times today on the podcast episode of talking about why it matters or giving examples and more relative context for what I'm talking about.

So you can do it for sure when you're in the opening of it, you can do it when you're explaining ideas throughout your talk, you can do it on podcast episodes, you can even use a strategy in emails. If you have something that you want to communicate, back it up and say, why does it matter? 

And if you start answering the question, why this matters, side note, I would be really thinking about that before you ever step on stage so you're clear because remember, as I started out this episode today talking about as experts, we tend to start talking at chapter six and beyond. Not because we don't find value necessarily in the first five chapters, but sometimes we actually forget what it was like to live in the first five chapters. 

So a lot of times experts were not purposely skipping those first five chapters and entering the conversation at a more insolent meant more advanced levels mean, yes, in some way we are, as I mentioned before, that we want to be more sophisticated. We don't want to be fluffy and we don't want to do like the ABCs with our audience because we know that they are more sophisticated than that. But it really benefits you as a as an expert, as a teacher, as someone who has the ability to lead audiences, it would really benefit you to challenge yourself to go deeper before you get on stage and really ask, how does this message I'm delivering today matter to this audience? Why am I the person perfectly qualified to deliver it today? And why is today the right time for them to hear it? 

By asking those questions of yourself and then infusing it into your content, my friend, your shit will resonate so much more. And that's the difference if someone passively saying, cool beans.

and instead going, hell yeah, how do I work with you? 

All right, that last part sounded a little bit cheesy, but hey, we like cheese around here. All right, friend, this was a short even episode, but I hope this little snack-size episode with a really teachable topic, I hope this one resonated with you. 

So as always, reach out, me a DM on Instagram, at the heathersager. I would love to hear from you. And hey, by the way, if it's been a while and you haven't left a review on the show, if you're into podcasting, like, you know, it means the world. Like if people are scoping out the show of going, should I listen to this lady? This ramble thing? Is this worth my time? Drop in just like a sentence to maybe three or four sentences if you're feeling very generous. but leave and leave an actual text based review of the show cause yes, people read them. I read every single one. I appreciate them so much and friend I'll see you in the next episode.