Make Marketing Suck Less

So the first two podcasts of 2020, I've been talking about some of the major epiphanies that I've had. I realized that I wasn't owning my bigger message and with that I've thrown the gauntlet down and challenged you to own your bigger message and to create a business that is bigger than you in order to create something that has much more impact and really to turn your business into a movement.

And you might be thinking, okay Michelle, that sounds great. It's super aspirational, it's inspiring. But how do I do that? And one of the things I realized as I had my downtime is that in business we tend to over complicate every little thing. We make business so very difficult and it really doesn't need to be. And honestly we are taught to do this.

One of my friends enrolled in one of the big gurus courses. It was one of those $3,000 courses that was going to give you everything you needed to have like a six or seven figure business. And she showed me the inside of this course. And honestly it was a hot mess. It was 145 videos and you might be thinking, hey, that's great. Like if I'm paying $3,000 I should get 145 videos. Right?

But honestly, you're running a business, do you have time to watch 145 videos? I can't even get through season two of the Marvelous Mrs. Maisel, let alone sit down and watch 145 videos that's going to help me build my business. How is a course like that even helpful? It's over-complicating everything. Like what the hell? Like you're paying all that money just to get a bunch of information that's not really going to move the needle ahead and really that's part of the problem.

We're making this business thing more difficult than it needs to be. And then you think, okay Michelle, but this whole turn your business into a movement that sounds like it would be super hard. But really it's not and I'm going to walk you through the seven principles of turning your business into a movement.

Some of these principles you're going to think, hey, thank you captain obvious for telling me about that. But these are the kinds of principles that are simple but not necessarily easy to implement into your business. And that's where we start over-complicating everything, right? 

Principle #1: Understand your business' job is to make money.

Its only job is to make money. I told you this was a captain obvious principle, but boy do we overcomplicate this. We overcomplicate making money in our business, or at least I know I have and I'm pretty sure I'm not the only one, but if you think about it, our business has a job of making money and it makes money by providing a valuable service that solves a problem.

For instance, I am trained in communication. I help people figure out their messaging that sells more of their services at a higher price so that they can impact people, make a bigger difference in the world, and hopefully impact millions. That is what I do and that is what people give me money for. That is what other business owners pay me for, and I have overcomplicated this for years.

Principle #2: Your messages's job is to create impact.

So you create a message so that message will reach more people. So your message goes out into the world, finds more of the right people that you want to call in to your business, into your movement, who will become your clients. Your message is for the masses. It's pretty much like the flag that you're planting that calls people in that they'll rally around and that they will spread for you. So its job is to create impact and that's what it's there to do.

Principle #3: You are the creative CEO behind both your business and your message.

Your job is to help the business and the message do their job as officially and effectively as possible. Now, when you first start your business, it's probably going to be just you and your business and your message are going to need a lot of your time and your energy.

They're going to need you to do most of the work. Your business is going to be like, hey, you need to do the sales. You need to do the marketing. You have to deliver the services to the clients that make us the money.

While your message is like, hey, you need to be the one that's promoting me, that's spreading me, that's talking about me on the podcast, that's doing the advertising of me.

So you're doing all of the heavy lifting, but as your business grows and you have more resources and more people know about you, your business and your message start to need you less and less, which is pretty awesome if you think about it, unless you're a control freak and you're like, no. And I was listening to Brooke Castillo's, The Life Coach School Podcast and she was talking about her vision for 2020 and she mentioned that she had just hired a chief operating officer for her company.

This was the first year that she felt like she was kind of free of the business, like her two sons had left the house and she was no longer in charge of the day to day operations of her business. So she was truly an empty nester because her business didn't need her as much. So she could focus on other things in her life and she could just focus on creating great content and creating the podcast and didn't have to worry so much about business and eventually that's what you want to happen.

You get to focus on the what I would think of the more fun things of doing the business and you have other people who are out there spreading the message and doing the day to day work of the business.

All right, so those are the three easy principles. Your business' job is to make money, your message's job is to create impact and you are the creative CEO behind both that is helping them do their job efficiently and effectively.

But principle number four, this is the tricky one.

Principle #4: You are not your business and you are not your message.

I'm going to say that again. You are not your business and you are not your message and this is where we mess it all up and where we overcomplicate it and we self sabotage because you've heard me talk about this on other podcast episodes, how we are told that you you are the message.

No you are not. That is a self centered message. If you want to turn your business into a movement, your message is for your audience.

You are not the message and you are not your business. It is so good to have a healthy separation from it because otherwise our ego gets involved. We make emotional decisions. It's hard to sell money mindset. All of the stuff gets in the way and I am not saying you are not going to have to like do personal development work because of principle number four.

You have to do a lot of personal development work if you want to turn your business into a movement but if you can embrace the fact that your business is a separate entity from you that is going to go out into the world and grow and thrive and do its own thing and your message as a separate entity from you that is going to go out into the world and grow and thrive and do its own thing, you have the capacity to grow both so much more than if they are an intimate part of you.

So if you feel very connected to one or both of these things, try commit this year to start disconnecting from them. It's such a healthy thing to do.

You'll be able to invite a whole host of people in to help you create a massive change in the world when it's not just you having to do it. So just remember principle number four, probably the most important principle of this.

You are not your business. You are not your message. All right. Give yourself lots of love with that one. Lots of compassion. I know I have because this is the one that's probably kept me stuck for most of my business. I would say I've only been doing this for eight years. All right, moving on.

Principle #5: Your message gives your business purpose.

So I am reading Simon Sinek's book The Infinite Game. And if you haven't read this one, I highly recommend it. Especially if you want to create a business that is not just about making money. Because Simon Sinek says in this book that a business that is about playing the infinite game is about going after a just cause a change that is bigger. That seems almost impossible and so much more aspirational, right?

That's exactly what we're talking about with a movement. That's why I love this book so much. The thing about that is when we're playing an infinite game, we have to have a sense of purpose because the business itself just can't be about the money. We have to have a message to rally behind.

And in the book, The Infinite Game, Simon Sinek talks about the CEO of Black Rock, which is a financial advisory company. They manage like hundreds of millions of dollars of wealth. And the CEO talked about having to find a sense of purpose in a Wall Street Journal op ed. And I guess it just shook up the industry because Wall Street is playing a finite game and it's about shareholder profit, right?

They don't care about a just cause, they don't care about improving the world. They care about making money. And he came out with this radical piece asking what is the purpose? What is our sense of purpose? Well, once we know what our sense of purposes, we have to put that into a message.

Our 3 Word Rebellion because our message is what fuels the business and this message is going to draw in our clients and customers. And those clients and customers feed the business money, right? They're the ones who go on the customer journey. They're the ones who say yes to our offers. So your story, your client's stories, the research, your 3 Word Rebellion, all of this is the messaging that gives your business purpose that brings in the clients and ultimately supports the movement that you're trying to create.

Principle #6: What is the business doing for your message?

Well, the business is providing money to the message to reach new people. Because here's the thing, we can only grow organically so long if depending on how big you want your business and movement to be, you need to reach new people.

At first when we're smaller, we can do a lot with word of mouth and organic and asking our friends to share and our clients to share on the people who love us to share and, you know, being on social media and growing a following.

But after a while we want a bigger audience. It's time to start paying for advertising and marketing and a PR team and getting the message out and writing a book and being on stages. And so the business can provide the money, the resources to reach more and more people with the message and that's going to create more of an impact which then brings us to the next principle.

Principle #7: Your business and message provide you, the CEO, the ability to create this movement to create the change in the world.

You are going to get the resources to hire people to create this difference. You will get the resources to give back to support causes to make a difference.

I love the fact that these principles are delightfully simple but they are not easy to implement. They're not easy to implement because we're human beings and we care and we've built businesses out of our passions and what we are good at and we've created messages out of our passions and what we deeply care about.

But if we want to make more money and we want to impact more people, we want to reach a thousand, a hundred thousand a million people and make a difference in their lives, we have to start playing more of the infinite game and seeing our business as a vehicle to make money.

Seeing our message as this vehicle to make impact and seeing ourselves as that CEO who kind of needs to get the heck out of the way and help these two entities do their jobs in the most efficient and effective way as possible. Because we must remember the business' job is to make money and the message's job is to create impact. While our job is to stay out of the way. And when we have these three functioning parts, you can build that business and a movement that is bigger than you.