Make Marketing Suck Less

You're in the weeds. You love what you do. You're passionate about it. And if you could just sit down with someone one-on-one for a good 30 minutes and explain it, you know they would be all in. They would be ready to buy. And what you do is so complex that you feel like you need to spend that time rambling just to get people to understand what your business is all about and how it can help them.

Does any of this sound familiar? If it does, you're suffering from what Steven Pressfield calls the “curse of knowledge.” And that “curse” is keeping you from marketing your business. That “curse” is actually forcing you to rely on word of mouth and referrals instead of being proactive with your marketing. So what can you do when you are so close to your own work that it feels impossible to create a marketing message that other people will grok quickly?

What I want you to know, my dear expert friend, is that it is possible to find that message. And this is exactly what we're going to talk about on today's episode: how to find your message, explain what you do when you're far too close to your work. So let's do this.

You're listening to the Rebel Uprising Podcast. This podcast is dedicated to helping passionate business owners become recognized leaders who make more money and impact the world by turning their messy, complicated ideas into thriving thought leadership businesses. I'm your host, Dr. Michelle Mazur. And I'll be your no-BS guide in the art of building a business that gets noticed.

Each week. I share strategies, tools, and insights on how to turn your complicated ideas into great messaging and solid business structures. Are you ready to create an uprising in your industry? Let's do this.

On the last episode of the podcast, we talked about multi-passionates.

Now, multi-passionates are people who are interested in a lot of different things. They bring a lot of skills, tools, and knowledge to their work. That makes it difficult to describe. And my multi-passionate clients tend to think that people with deep expertise who are focused on just one thing, well, those people have it easy. They've got their one thing. They know how to talk about it versus having, like, a million different things.

But what I always tell them is that it's difficult for experts to find their message as well. It's just a different kind of challenge. So what is an expert to do when you find yourself in this situation -- this being in the weeds, being too close to your own work to see it clearly?

The first step -- and this is crucial -- to admit that you are an expert in what you do.

I see far too many of my clients, most of whom are women, doubting that they're really experts, even though they've been in the field for 25 years or have gone to school for it or been in business for five years delivering this kind of work -- there's still that lingering doubt. “Well, I'm not really an expert, so I have to prove my expertise to you by overwhelming you with all of this information about the complexity of my work so that you can see that I am really an expert.”

Honestly, we've got to cut that crap out. When you are rooted in your own expertise, when you believe that you are an expert, that you are the best in the world at what you do (and I define “best in the world” loosely, it's meaning that you’re amazing at what you do). So we have to admit that to ourselves so that we don't go into our messaging thinking that you have something to prove. Because if you're an expert, you don't have anything to prove. Your ideas stand on their own. And that is what you're there to contribute.

So once you can accept that, “Yes, I'm an expert. I don't have anything to prove. I know my shit,” it changes how you look at your messaging because you no longer will overwhelm people with the details, which brings me to my second tip for you.

Remember what it's like to be a beginner.

And this is really hard when you've been working in your area of expertise for quite some time. In the book Art of Explanation, Lee LeFever (which, man, I still love that name), he talks about the fact that we can rate expertise on a scale of one to ten. And one is “I don't know anything about this topic” and ten is “Yes, I'm an ultimate expert.”

And I talk about this phenomenon in my book, 3 Word Rebellion, because as experts, we’re at a nine or ten, our audience is at a one, maybe a two. So what we do is we think, “Okay, well, I'm going to bring this message down to their level.” And what happens is you bring it to a seven. Or a six. And your audience is still at a one or two. So what's really good to do here is to think back to what it's like when you first started learning or applying your expertise when you weren't the expert who knows it all. And if you remember back, at first it was difficult. You didn't know the basics. You asked a lot of questions and it took deliberate practice to get good at what you do.

I always remember when I first started off on my public speaking journey. I was terrible at speaking. Terrible. It was horrific. I was so nervous. I wasn't very good at it, but I knew I wanted to be good at it. And I knew I had the skills to master speaking. So I joined the speech and debate team to learn that skill competitively. And I will tell you, if you want to learn something, start doing it competitively because that will get you in the deliberate practice zone. And now it's really easy for me to get in front of an audience and speak. It's easy to create a speech. It's easy to do messaging for clients.

But I always think back to the struggle of where I was when I first started out on my communication journey. And your audience, your ideal client, is where you were when you first started. And this is the reason they want to hire you because they don't want to become an expert in what you do. My clients do not want to become experts in messaging and communication. That is not their jam. They have expertise in other areas.

We have to, as experts, meet people where they are and remember what it was like to be a beginner. 

Now my third tip for you is really related to this beginner's mindset when you're thinking about your expert message, and this one might be a little hard for you to accept, because as an expert, you get really into the details of how you do your work. It's fascinating to you. But as my father always used to say:

“No one cares about how the sausage is made. They care that it's delicious.” And it's the same for your work.

No one cares about all the minutiae that it gets your clients results. They just care that it gets the results. They want to see that you have a process, a framework, a method to guide them through your work. And I believe whether you're a multi-passionate or an expert, everyone can have a framework for their work. It's one of the things I help my clients with in the Three Word Rebellion, because having that framework is structure and structure creates trust.

And it's important for experts to remember that what interests you about your own work is not going to be interesting for other people. The work I do in the Three Word Rebellion Messaging Intensive is actually based on seven different communication and psychological theories -- seven different theories.

And I rarely talk about all of the different theories I use to inform my work. Even though those theories fascinate me. Because you want to know how many of my clients have asked me about the theories that inform my work in my nine years of business? Two. Two whopping clients wanted me to nerd out about my theoretical grounding and how I approach messaging.

So take that to heart. They're hiring you to be the expert. So be the expert and don't overwhelm them with all of the information and details. Ask yourself, “What do they need to know?” They need to know the process. They need to know a structure, a framework. And then also answer the question why is that important to them? And, hint, it's important to them because it solves a problem and gets them to a result or an outcome that they want.

And my final tip for you is the importance of outside perspective when an expert, or actually anyone, is developing their message.

Because most experts can't see what makes their work compelling. We're in our work every single day and it comes easily to us. And we forget that our work doesn't come easily to other people. Like I can sit down and structure a client journey from a messy, freewriting in under an hour for a client. I'm good at that. It's such a skill that it's almost an intuitive habit for me at this point in time, but my clients can't do that. They can't look at their freewriting and think, “Oh, how do I structure this to move people from being unaware to wanting to work with me?”

So the key for you is to ask your past clients, “What was valuable about the work you did for them?” And this is not just about the results they're getting. This is about how you uniquely brought value to the process. What were they unable to do that you were able to do for them? So ask your clients about that.

And, also, you can always get support from a professional in messaging. And I'll tell you a little bit more about that in a second. And I want you to know that I even get help with my messaging. I'm always hungry for outside perspectives because it helps me see my work clearly because I am in it every day. So don't be afraid to get support, to hire support from people. Because people tell me all the time, like, “I should be able to do this on my own. I do it for other people.” Yes. You can do it for other people because you have outside perspective. You're not so close to your work.

So let's reflect on this episode.

Question number one I would love for you to reflect on is where are you losing people when you talk about what you do?

So if you're in a conversation on Zoom talking about your business, where do people tend to look confused or where do they tend to drift off? Because these are key indicators that you're probably over-explaining your work.

Question number two to think about: where are you too far in the weeds with how you work with people?

Are you over-explaining yourself? Do you need a higher level framework? The key to this is like, how can you back up what you're saying? So back the truck up to meet their level of experience and expertise with your topic so more people grok it, so more people understand.

My third and final question for you is where do you need help so that you can market your expertise and how can you get that help?

Speaking of help, if you're ready to get expert support so that you can serve more people with your expertise, you're just the type of person I love working with in the Three Word Rebellion Messaging Intensive. In the Intensive, we create all of the messaging your business needs for marketing, sales, and PR for the next three to five years. I'd love to help you craft your Three Word Rebellion, that one-of-a-kind message, that client journey and signature stories so that you can make an impact in 2021.

Right now I only have two spots remaining to work with me in 2021. So if you're interested in one of those, the first step is to go grab the Three Word Rebellion Service and Pricing Guide at drmichellemazur.com/guide. And the second step is in that guide, you can book a discovery call with me to discuss working together.

And the bottom line for me is more people should know about your expertise and how you serve them. Don't let how you talk about your business in your marketing stop people who need you from finding you.

Thank you for listening all the way to the end of the show. Your support means the world to me. Did you know the Rebel Uprising Podcast has a quiz that can help you pinpoint the number one way to build an audience of superfans while staying true to your unique personality? We do. And it's called What's Your Rebel Roadmap to Exponential Impact and Influence and you can take it at therebelquiz.com. If you're loving the podcast, do us a favor and rate and leave us a quick five-star review wherever you listen to your podcasts. It helps more people like you find the show.

Until next week, remember: your ideas matter. And now get back out there and cause an uprising in your industry. You got this.