Make Marketing Suck Less

How Messaging Wins When Life Sucks with Nicole Trick-Steinbach

Nicole Trick Steinbach [00:00:00]: “I know that I'm extraordinary at what I do. And because I have messaging, because I have my packages, because I have my pricing, I can keep moving forward in confidence in one area of my life”.

Michelle Mazur [00:00:19]: Welcome to Make Marketing Suck Less. The podcast that knows marketing is freaking hard, especially when you're a solo business owner trying to juggle it all. I'm your host, Dr. Michelle Mazur, author of the 3 Word Rebellion and founder of the Expert Up Club. Forget the latest marketing fads and tactics promising social media stardom. I'm here with research-backed strategies to help you clarify your message and get twice as effective with your marketing. And while I can't promise you'll ever love marketing, I'm here. to make you hate it a tiny bit less.

Michelle Mazur [00:00:59]: This summer on the podcast, we are going behind the scenes of expertise driven businesses just like yours to unpack why marketing sucks and how these business owners adjusted course to make their marketing suck less. Inevitably, there comes a time when the shit hits the fan in your life and you just can't keep showing up the way you like. And the first thing that always goes is marketing.

Michelle Mazur [00:01:34]: And my friend, I speak from experience on this one. And let's face it. Most of us don't have the option of just stopping marketing altogether. We can't put our businesses on hold because we need it to pay our own bills. So how do you keep going? When marketing already sucks for you, how do you keep going when your personal life has gone off the rails? I am thrilled to have Expert Up Club member, Nicole Trick Steinbach, on the show today to talk about how she made marketing suck less even when the proverbial shit hit the fan in her personal life. We also talk about why you absolutely need to market your business in a way that aligns with how you want to show up. A bit about Nicole. She is the international bravery coach.

Michelle Mazur [00:02:38]: She is a former executive in technology, has worked in over 25 countries, and is at home in both the US and Germany. Nicole is a lot of things, but naturally Brave isn't one of them. That's why she teaches and coaches other women all over the world to build their own brave career so that they can stress, work less, and then begin to earn. Buckle up as Nicole gives us the unvarnished truth about how to keep marketing your business when life just keeps” life-ing.” Enjoy the conversation, and I will see you on the flip side for some takeaways.

Michelle Mazur [00:03:26]: Nicole, welcome to Make Marketing Suck Less. I am so excited to chat with you today.

Nicole Trick Steinbach [00:03:33]: And I feel like I made it. Is this what it feels like on Hollywood when you get your star? I'm not sure.

Michelle Mazur [00:03:39]: Perhaps it does. I would like to think it does. So my first question for you is, like, what has felt hard about marketing your business in the past? Like, what has sucked for you?

Nicole Trick Steinbach [00:03:55]: I love intimate conversation. I love listening to so when I listen to podcasts, like, I listen to your podcast for probably a year before I found out about your other podcast and then discovered that you had a group. And I felt like you and I were having conversations. Like I will say things like Michelle said to me or Glenn and Doyle said to me or the best of all best, Abby Wambach said to me. And I really love that one on one,, I started my business on August of 2019. So I was still traveling And then March 2020 came. And as comfortable as I am virtually and as scalable as I know how to make that because of my career in technology. The one to one is not what marketing what I was taught marketing Is focused on.

Nicole Trick Steinbach [00:04:49]: So my first experience with marketing was through PR. Right? Mass market PR for Heinz ketchup. If anyone is old enough to remember the colored ketchup, I'm sorry, but also you're welcome. That was my project. Then I went back into tech and again, mass marketing. So when I came into my own business, I worked with someone as my first business coach who was just fantastic for me and helped me unravel a lot of corporate jargon and someone else's word choice which was great, but it was still…

Michelle Mazur [00:05:31]: So what how were you trying to market your business through this mass marketed lens? Like, what were you doing?

Nicole Trick Steinbach [00:05:39]: Well, I was failing. First thing is I was failing. So I'm actually quite comfortable on LinkedIn. I have a really fantastic professional network. And since I lived in Germany for so long, people have a very different relationship with social media. Also, the rules are very different outside of the United States. And so LinkedIn was really the place where I was already comfortable having a lot of private conversations and DMs.

NicoleTrick Steinbach [00:06:08]: So that was functioning. And then I was just posting more. I was writing articles. I was sharing about my podcast. When I started my podcast, I was sharing client wins, but not with the expectation that it would go “vira”.. Or we would have all of this engagement because I know that women in tech, unlike men in tech, men in tech invest in themselves. They get a certification. They go to a conference. They do training or coaching and they're seen as more dedicated. Women are seen as confirming that they know they aren't skilled enough. So I knew there wasn't gonna be a lot of, like, traction. Well, I fell into this not lovely hole because 2020, I had a lot of clients. 2021, I had a lot of clients. 2022, not so much. I fell into this hole where it was like, oh you should do Instagram.

Nicole Trick Steinbach [00:07:03]: Instagram is horrid for anyone who has disordered eating. I had to leave. My block game is fierce. It's the first thing I find on any app is how do I block people? I'm not even playing. Right? But it made me an even bigger target. And I literally was bombarded with “Thin is in” nonsense. Wow. Oh, my gosh.

Nicole Trick Steinbach [00:07:31]: Like, I would look at other people's Instagram. I'd be like, how do you do that? How do you how do you get it to show you bags and jewelry and shoes? Because that doesn't bother me. I don't buy them and I don't care if the ads are there. Bombarded everything. And so that was horrible for me. So now I'm having therapy conversations about Instagram, but I need to do Instagram because I need to be doing mass marketing and getting hundreds of people, thousands of people onto a list. No, thank you.

Nicole Trick Steinbach [00:08:00]: So Instagram and then, somebody tried to talk me into YouTube. It's all gone, people. You cannot find it. It was deleted because it was horrible. And then emails, but sales emails - I'm a published author, but I cannot, for the life of me write a salesy structured “buy my stuff” email because that's not intimate. That's not who I am. So I started a podcast in December of 2020, and I started as an act of service. The number one word for women in tech is lonely. Lonely. But when we share stories, we're not lonely. So even though technically a podcast is like mass, a mass market kind of thing, It's longer form and I actually choose a person that I talk to for every episode. And then I feel more intimate.

Michelle Mazur [00:09:11]: So what I'm hearing from you, it's like you value relationships and intimacy. That seems to be the number one thing. And then you were pulled down into all of these mass marketed techniques like Instagram and posting on LinkedIn and sales, emails, and all of those were for lack of a better word, not aligned with how you want to show up.

Nicole Trick Steinbach [00:09:39]: That is correct.

Michelle Mazur [00:09:42]: And then it seems like the podcast was a way to bring that value of intimacy through to help nurture people. So you start the podcast and then what other decisions did you make to start doing less marketing?

Nicole Trick Steinbach [00:10:01]: Oh, that's a really interesting question. Well, there's one piece of the story to get us to where I was like, “Excuse me!” Because I don't listen to podcasts in order at all. I am, like, my own podcasting nightmare. So at some point, I got on to one where you were sharing that you had the Expert Up Club. I was like, “Wait, one moment please. What is this?” And I checked it out and I was like, “Oh, it's indeed!” But there is one story before I realized that.

Nicole Trick Steinbach [00:10:31]: So I was listening to your podcast and I was also working with a coach that I don't recommend to anyone. Right? This person is unfortunately not telling the truth a lot of the time. And I had asked a couple of people the same question. I said, I'm struggling with the intersection of the skill of bravery and the audience being women in technology, Women in tech. And for everyone listening, women in tech is a very, very broad audience. So it can be from strategy, the office of the CEO, operations, HR, all the way down to like services and support. Okay? So we're like a very diverse group.

Nicole Trick Steinbach [00:11:17]: And I've been asking people like how can I bring this together? Because I know that it made the skill of bravery helped me become a director when I was 30, helped me work in 25 different countries, helped me like do all these cool things. And I finally just heard so many times “drop the women in tech thing” that I did that. I did it. It was horrible. I didn't know who I was talking to. I didn't know what I was talking about.

Nicole Trick Steinbach [00:11:47]: Quite frankly, I am fantastic at career. Okay? I know how to make good money. I know how to work well. I know how to establish relationships. I know how to, like, negotiate into perception, but please do not ask me about relationships. I am 43 years old and I feel like I'm finally understanding what friendship is, Like, finally. Okay? Parenting? I mean, sure, I'm surviving. Well, I'll talk to you in 2 decades. Right? So, it was an absolute mess, which meant I had to market even more. Doing things even more that I'm not good at. Calling in people who really desperately needed therapy. Not coaching. So it was a mess.

Michelle Mazur [00:12:33]: So it sounds like you received the advice to niche up, which is not great advice.

Nicole Trick Steinbach [00:12:41]: No, it's not. And what I really needed is, “Oh, hey, Nicole, here are 5 sprints you can do.” And if you don't know audience, if you don't know what I'm talking about, you need to come in. I'm not I'm not doing a whole sales pitch for you, but it's because I believe in it. But it's like, here are the 5 sprints and you're gonna do them at least once a quarter. I don't know if you know this, Michelle, but in my Q1 I didn't share very much because I'm going through a lot in my life, which I'm gonna share later. But, I did each of the sprints twice over.

Nicole Trick Steinbach [00:13:12]: That's all I needed to do. Now look at my “About Me” page. Now look at my front page. Now look at I can make podcast episodes that went from multiple hours of preparation to like 90 minutes. And it's done. It's recorded. Girls, it is done and done. It is dusted. It just has I have to send it off for editing, and then I have to post it.

Michelle Mazur [00:13:36]: I love that. So you did so inside the Expert Up Club, for everybody who doesn't know, we do these minimum viable messaging sprints. There's 5 of them, and you go through them, and it creates your whole messaging for your business. And it sounds like for you, one of the things that made your marketing suck less is doing the sprints. And then you started saving a ton of time with the podcast episodes.

Nicole Trick Steinbach [00:14:01]: With everything. And then I needed to ask - I needed to continue to I know this isn't exactly marketing, but, like, I needed to continue to ask questions and have expert true experts in whatever it is that they're doing come back and be like, “I'm not sure. Is that the question?” The amount of private messages that I've gotten are, like, in one on ones where, like, I saw that you asked about this, but I think you were actually considering So, like, I have a different CRM now. Saves me buku money, but also significance amount of time. And I was able to set it up very quickly because I know what and who.

Michelle Mazur [00:14:53]: It's really interesting because I think one of the things people worry about coming into community and I was just having this conversation with a person who I thought would be a great person to have (in the club) and she was worried that everyone would “tell me something to do a rabbit hole thinking like, oh, I need to write a book or, I need to do, you know, like, do some of, like, podcast pitching or something.” And I'm like, yeah. That's not that's not how we roll.

Nicole Trick Steinbach [00:15:21]: Okay. So if I hear that and I think about my own experience, what my experience has been Let me back up and and be a little more humble. So when I came to the United States in 2016, I did not understand US social media. Social media in the United States works very differently than in Europe. Very differently.

Michelle Mazur [00:15:48]: Interesting.

Nicole Trick Steinbach [00:15:49]: And so when when I would I was already in groups and I've been in groups for a while, but then I get here and they're just full of sales pitches that I didn't see all the time in Europe because of the way that, you know, these groups are legally defined. Here they're considered technology companies, they're more often considered publishing entities. Meaning they're responsible for what's on their platforms Oh. Oh. Oh. Oh. Oh.

Nicole Trick Steinbach [00:16:18]: In a different way. And the fines are very big. So I got here and I was like, “Why am I constantly being sold things I don't need? Why are all these people able to contact me? Why are people doxxing people?” Like, this is the weirdest thing. And I would report people thinking, oh, I must be the first one to see it. No, I'm not.

Nicole Trick Steinbach [00:16:38]: The social media just is different in the United States. So when I hear that concern, I think perhaps that person or many people have never been in community with actual experts who are a bit more emotionally mature, who have some financial space, so some privilege. And know truly know. Not, like, at the front of their head they say this, but truly know in every single bone, when I uplift and celebrate others, I uplift and celebrate myself. Because people in our group will be like, “Hey, consider, hey, what about this?” I have never been pitched inside of the Expert Up Club. Never. And I even hired one person!

Michelle Mazur [00:17:30]: So I'm not privy to a lot of what happens between all of you members.

Nicole Trick Steinbach [00:17:38]: Which is another sign of emotional maturity. Michelle does not need to know what is going on between all of the grown ups!

Michelle Mazur [00:17:48]: No. I don't. It's always so interesting to me because I hear, like, oh, so and so hired so and so, or, oh, somebody's on somebody else's podcast, and I'm like, oh, or, like, y'all had a Voxer chain going at one point in time. I didn't know about that.

Nicole Trick Steinbach [00:18:03]: Voxer chain. I'm a little stinky about no, actually, I'm not stinky at all because I I always forget I have Voxer And then I go over there, I'm like, 5 notifications. Oh, crap. There's so much support.

Michelle Mazur [00:18:17]: And I think that's one of the things that does make marketing suck less is actually having support from people who've been there or who might have tried something and it worked or it didn't work, and then they can share from their experience and their expertise vs just telling someone, like, “You should write a book!” Should you, though? Is that the right move for your business? And most of the time because, you know, like, I think about you. And the fact is, it's like, you need a handful of clients every single year. You don't need mass marketing. So is there anything else that has changed for you since you joined the club, started doing less marketing, more impactful marketing?

Michelle Mazur [00:19:07]: Let's take a quick break, and we'll be right back.

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Now back to the show.

Nicole Trick Steinbach [00:20:18]: I'm not gonna go into incredible detail, but I do wanna share this with people. So the reason I'm not gonna go into incredible detail is because I did so much tech work with privacy and with data governance, it's really important that people get to control their own story. So I tell my story. This is probably one of the toughest phases of my life, and I have not had the easiest life, Wonderful life, but not always the easiest. I grew up really poor, single mom, abused, etc.. But this has been a very hard 18 months. And just as I, I think I even like was silly enough to post it like, Oh, I see the light of what's been going on. One of my beloved family members had a pretty significant health crisis which has turned into a 40 hour a week minimum effort for me making phone calls to the health insurance, trying to get office staff to understand that it's urgent and get into the doctors and then all of the driving just to get to the treatment center.

Nicole Trick Steinbach [00:21:30]: It's 40 minutes one way every day. So it's 3 hours of driving minimum. I'm sharing all of that to say the following. I have continued to create podcast episodes because I can do it in 90 minutes now, and I can do it without the cognitive load of creation. I can take what I know, what I am an expert in. I can take the - and quite honestly, I haven't filled in the whole messaging brief - but the amount that I have. I can take that. I can listen to my clients and my client conversations And I can put that into my messaging and I can still be active.

Nicole Trick Steinbach [00:22:19]: I can still be supportive Because I'm not trying to figure out the benefit of what I do. I know that. So did I want to spend this quarter in hospitals and treatment centers? No. I wanted to mature my messaging, but I can't. And I have a really solid foundation that simplifies everything and keeps money coming in.

Michelle Mazur [00:22:48]: I mean, you're making such a great point because as solo business owners, shit is going to hit the fan, sometimes multiple times in just a few years. And you have to know what you need to do at a minimum to just keep the business going. And you're making such a great point about if you have your messaging dialed in and you know how you want to market and what's most effective for you to market. Like, you can keep going even if your life is exploding around you.

Nicole Trick Steinbach [00:23:29]: Because right now, I feel insecure in every single part of my life except for my career. As I mentioned earlier, I'm best at career. Right? And because I know I'm actually extraordinary at what I do. I have never consulted somewhere without them asking me to please stay and raising my rate. That's never happened.. I've never had a client who says to me, you didn't help me at all. I've had clients who quit one on one coaching clients who were like, I can't do this anymore. I'm gonna go do intensive therapy or whatever. I'm gonna move back to India or whatever.

Nicole Trick Steinbach [00:24:13]: But they'll always come back in a year or two years and say, “Hey, I know that I quit, but I want you to know it really helped me”. Right? So I know that I'm extraordinary at what I do. And because I have messaging, because I have my packages, because I have my pricing, I can keep moving forward in confidence in one area of my life. If this had taken place in the period of time where I was like, Who am I talking to? What what am I what am I doing? Like, why does this matter? My entire life, professional and personal, would be so much more up in the air, so much wonkier, and I would have less emotional energy to focus on my family member who needs me to be present.

Michelle Mazur [00:25:03]: Thank you for sharing that..

Nicole Trick Steinbach [00:25:11]: She always starts out funny, but she catches you in the middle or at the end.

Michelle Mazur [00:25:16]: Well, and I just, I relate to that so much just because, like, when my husband had his accident a year and a half ago and had did not have use of either arm for a significant amount oh, you didn't know about this?

NicoleTrick Steinbach [00:25:31]: I have not listened to those podcast episodes.

Michelle Mazur [00:25:33]: Oh, yeah. I think it's called Minimum Viable Michelle.

Nicole Trick Steinbach [00:25:36]: Oh, okay. I'm gonna be listening to that one.

Michelle Mazur [00:25:39]: Yeah. So my husband had an accident where he fell and he broke his right elbow, left shoulder. Was in the hospital while we were on vacation, was in the hospital in Palm Springs. I stayed an extra week and came home and had to fly back down. It was like a whole thing, but I found myself being a caretaker and having and I'm not a great caretaker, Nicole. Holy shit. I'm so bad at caretaking. But the question I had to ask myself in the business, it's like, what is is my Minimum Viable Michelle look like? Like, what does my marketing look like? And I was like, alright.

Michelle Mazur [00:26:17]: Like, I need to deliver for my clients Yep. Because I was still primarily working one on one, and I was like, they are my priority. And I was like, and I'm gonna email my list. That was all I did. Like, that was the marketing that kind of kept the business going because I was like, I'm not doing social. I dropped the podcast. I was like, y'all, I have, like, 300 episodes. If you miss me, go to the back

Michelle Mazur [00:26:43]: And I think once but since I had the body of work, since I had my messaging and all of that, like, I was able to execute on what I could do. And that is so nice to know because we're we can't always fully be there for the marketing of our business, especially when we're like a solo shop. It's not like working for Heinz and having a huge marketing team behind you where if somebody gets sick, they can pick up the slack. I'm really happy you found that as well.

Nicole Trick Steinbach [00:27:23]: For sure. Yeah. It's it's a game changer for sure. And just like you, I was like, okay. What what's the most important most important? Clients. And if I only have I think I have 4 hours a day that I can actually do work right now.

Nicole Trick Steinbach [00:27:40]: That's it. When, treatment is actively happening, I can't be there. So I come home, I do about 4 hours and everything else everything else, new speaking engagements, a new contract for consulting. I had to say, “Look, this sounds great, but I can't rush for you. I have a family health thing going on. I wish you all the best. Think of me next time. Thank you.”

Nicole Trick Steinbach [00:28:04]: Here are 2 people to reach out to. Like and I'm doing this podcast episode with you, Michelle, because I really want other women, especially women who are also parents, to hear this - Having children doesn't mean you can't run your business. Being a caregiver is a wonderful reason to run your own business.

Michelle Mazur [00:28:32]: Yes. I think we're gonna leave it right there because that was beautiful. So, Nicole, can you tell people how they can find and connect with you and about your podcast?

Nicole Trick Steinbach [00:28:43]: If you wanna hear really great stories and insights about building a brave career, especially if you're a woman in technology. And spoiler alert, everybody works with tech, so we're all women in technology, whether or not we want to own it, but come on over. My podcast is called Build Your Brave Career, and my email is nicole@tricksteinbach.com . Obviously, I love one on one communication. I'm on LinkedIn at Nicole Trick Steinbach, and please do remember the trick, like trick or treat, because Nicole Steinbach in Germany is like Amy Miller in the United States. But there's one of me on Google with Nicole Trick Steinbach. You'll definitely find me.

Michelle Mazur [00:29:31]: And we will hook that up in the show notes. So check out Nicole's podcast, connect with her. And Nicole, thank you so much for sharing so openly about the realities of marketing your business during this time.

Nicole Trick Steinbach [00:29:48]: You're welcome. You're welcome.

Michelle Mazur [00:29:53]: This was such an important and vulnerable conversation with Nicole because I think a lot of us will face this situation where life is just untenable and we have to focus on our families, on our health, on our partners, on our pets instead of marketing our business. And there's just a few key takeaways I wanted to reiterate from this episode.

Number one, if you value intimacy, market your business in intimate ways. Market in a way that allows you to create that intimacy. For Nicole, this was podcasting and creating things. And in the episode with Elise Enriquez, she also mentioned intimacy and connections, and she wanted to foster that by showing in front of people. So you don't have to market to the masses. Instead, market in a way that aligns with how you want to show up.

Michelle Mazur [00:31:14]: Number two, and this one really surprised me, and it's about how dialing in your messaging allowed Nicole to keep on marketing because she's not wasting her time trying to figure out what to say. And if you think about the time saving, she went from spending 3 to 4 hours on each podcast episode to 90 minutes. And considering she only can work 4 hours a day, saving that much time allows her to keep serving her clients, doing her sales activities, and marketing. And I think we really underestimate the amount of time we end up saving because we know what to say in our marketing. And the final takeaway is if social media isn't working for you, if it's triggering, if it's bad for your mental health, then get the fuck off of social media. You don't need to be on these platforms. You still have a business even if you're not active on social media. Don't do marketing that sucks and don't do marketing that is harmful to you or your mental health. Let's face it. Life comes at us and we never know when it's going to hit, whether it's a family crisis like Nicole was facing or an accident like I faced in my business where I had to spend more time caretaking, know that you can still market. Your business doesn't have to just stop. It can still be profitable and you can save a shit ton of time along the way.

Michelle Mazur [00:33:19]: If the Make Marketing Suck Less pod is making your marketing more effective so that your clients can find and hire you, please share the show with a friend. The easiest way to do that is through pod link. You can find the show at pod.link/rebel, and that page will allow anyone you share the show with to subscribe and start listening in their favorite podcast player.

That's pod.link/rebel.

The Make Marketing Suck Less podcast is a production of Communication Rebel. Our production coordinator is Jessica Gulley-Ward. The podcast is edited by Steven Mills, our executive producer is me, Dr. Michelle Mazur.

The make marketing suck less podcast is recorded on the unseated traditional lands of the coast salish peoples, specifically the first people of Seattle, the Duwamish people, original stewards of the land, past, and present.