Michelle Mazur [00:00:00]: Strike up the band. Cue the confetti canyons because we are here. Episode 400 of Make Marketing Suck Less. And let's be real for a moment. I never set out thinking that this podcast would make it this far because most podcasts don't even hit episode 10 before pod fading away into the digital abyss. But somehow, through recessions, algorithms, changes, personal crisis’, and so much more, I'm still here. We're still here. And that's worth celebrating.

So today, I am sharing four rebel truths that this podcast is built on. Truths that are absolutely hills that I would die on. Truths that if you only listen to this one episode, it would make a huge difference in your business. You'd be able to ditch marketing misery and finally fix your message and get hired for what you're great at over those charismatic marketers. So let's celebrate and let's do this.

Michelle Mazur [00:01:33]: 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 [00:02:14]: In celebratory fashion, let's just get this party started with our first rebel truth. This is something that is so near and dear to my heart. Whenever I see it, this pisses me off like nothing else. The people who say they help experts often frame expertise as a liability. And this first truth, your expertise is not a liability. It is your superpower.

Michelle Mazur [00:02:52]: When I grew up, people who knew their shit were a rare breed. They were someone to listen to, someone to respect. Somewhere along the way, expert became a dirty word, and we just had to be one step ahead of our clients. But since you're listening to this show, I know you are not just one step ahead. You are, like, a light year ahead of your clients. And because of this anti expert bias, we got flooded with marketing advice telling us not to be too smart, that we should be more relatable, that we should be more curious. And my personal favorite that made me see all kinds of red when I read it on somebody's website, “Don't be an expert, Be an explorer.” That's real fucking cute.

Michelle Mazur [00:03:54]: But here's the thing, and here's what I know about you. Experts, we are explorers. We are curious. We are human. I mean, what's more human than loving something so much that you dedicate your life to continually learning about it? And guess what? We do experiments. Expertise doesn't make us lesser, and it doesn't cancel out our humanity. We are not robots. Instead, being the obsessive weirdos we are, it enhances us.

Michelle Mazur [00:04:35]: It enhances our ability to market. And it sure as hell shouldn't be hidden so you can come off as more palatable and less intimidating. Because your expertise isn't just the result of the time you've spent in the woodshed earning it. It's the byproducts of skills most experts don't even realize they have, such as discernment, humility, because we know that the more we know, the less we know. Our expertise is a dot in the ocean of knowledge. And guess what? We're willing to admit that we don't know. We're willing to admit that we don't know things about business or how to market. And the best part about experts is we want to figure it out.

Michelle Mazur [00:05:30]: And we do have the ability to stay focused and course correct without beating ourselves up for things not working. Right? We have those powers, And, my friend, those powers, they are marketing superpowers. They are all the skills you need to be a great marketer, even if you fucking hate marketing. So the next time someone tells you to tone it down so you can fit in a nice little creator shaped box, tell them you'd rather be hired for what you know rather than how cute your Canva carousel is. Whew. Alright. Let's go to rebel truth number two. You are a business owner, not a creator.

Michelle Mazur [00:06:24]: A few years back, I was on a panel with Jay Acunzo and Jay Clouse. Two Jays, both brilliant. And while they were dropping gems about positioning and messaging, I realized something big, that I disagreed with everything that was coming out of their mouths. And before it was my turn to speak, where I knew I was going to contradict everything these guys said, and these guys have much bigger audiences than I do, I had to figure out why I saw things differently so that I could give context to what comes next. And I realized it pretty quickly. I'm not a creator like the Jays. I'm a business owner. And you, since you are listening to this, you are a business owner.

Michelle Mazur [00:07:20]: The people I work with are business owners. The people in the Expert Up Club are business owners. There is not a creator to be found. Creators get paid by monetizing attention, monetizing their audience. Business owners get paid when someone hires us for a service, whatever that service is. Creators give away how to content to build trust and grow these massive audiences. And business owners, we don't need a massive following. We need a clear message that gets the right people to say yes.

Michelle Mazur [00:07:59]: We need a message that leads people to our offers. We need a message that says, “Hey, I understand your problem, and this is how I can help solve it.” But the problem is business owners keep taking advice that is meant for creators, and 95% of the advice out there, my friend, is meant for creators. So post three times a day. Build in public. Give it all away. And then you wonder why none of it converts because creators don't need it to convert.

Michelle Mazur [00:08:32]: You need it to convert. And if you're sitting here going, okay. Yeah. That's me. I've been following all that advice, and you wanna figure out how to market like the expert you are, then we're just gonna take a pause here, and you should pause this as well and grab the Market Like An Expert crash course because it helps business owners stop marketing like creators and start doing what actually works to get clients. So you can do that by opening the podcast app, clicking on Market Like An Expert, or going to drmichellemazur.com/mle. So remember, you don't need more content. You do not need to post more or to be on YouTube or TikTok.

Michelle Mazur [00:09:16]: You need a clearer message and a simple marketing strategy that lets you market like a business owner and not a creator. Rebel truth number three. Fix your message, and everything else gets easier. This is what the one truth that people email me about the most, because once your message is clear, really clear, and you know how everything you say leads to your offer, everything else feels like it drops into place. It is literally the one thing you can do that's gonna make everything else in your business easier. Writing emails becomes faster. Sales pages write themselves.

Michelle Mazur [00:10:06]: Okay. They don't write themselves, but you know what to say on the sales page. And then it's about piecing it together and zhuzhing it up. Sales calls stop being awkward and you having a realization that this isn't the right person or they don't even really know what you do, so why the hell are you talking to them? Because the people who show up actually are ready to hire you, and it's more about fit. Right? It's all of those things. But when your message is off or you don't have a message, which I know a lot of people are doing content buckets and other things, and they don't have a marketing message that leads to their offer. Marketing feels like rolling a boulder up a hill, like you're Sisyphus with a Kit account. And every time you send an email, that boulder rolls right back down the hill because you know you gotta send an email next week, and it's still going to be hard as hell.

Michelle Mazur [00:11:08]: When you're working hard and nothing is sticking, it just sucks. It sucks the life out of you. But if you fix the message, if you know how to talk to your people so they see themselves, if you understand what makes you different and can position your solution in a way that's like, “I didn't know that. I didn't know I needed that.” It's literally the highest ROI move you can make. So fix your message, and I swear everything else does become easier. It takes less time, and it's lower left. And this final truth.

Michelle Mazur [00:11:55]: Stop doing marketing you hate. Just stop it. Please stop. This podcast started as a rebellion against crappy marketing advice. And after all these episodes, that still stands. I had a conversation with my community consultant, and she asked me what some of my best Expert Up Club members have in common. My people, they are all, yes, solo business owners. They're established.

Michelle Mazur [00:12:25]: They're experts. But they all do different things. They all have different marketing strategies. They work with different clients. But when I looked across my very favorite members, they all had the same experience. They've been burned by bad marketing advice. One was told to create a course even though she hates traffic marketing, and that's what she would have to do in order to have a business with a course. One was told to, like, have an email list, post on social media, and realize, like, “Oh, I'm a B2B consultant.

Michelle Mazur [00:13:05]: I don't need to do any of that. My business can grow based on the relationships and fostering those relationships.” And even advice like “Niche up.” I swear to God that was a piece of advice. Like, your niche is too narrow. Spoiler, it wasn't. And telling her to be on Instagram when that was truly the worst place she could be. And these are real clients.

Michelle Mazur [00:13:30]: The first one with the course creator, her name is Elise. We'll hook up her case study so you can read that. Camille was our B2B consultant. If you're a b to b consultant, please look at that case study. And the final was Nicole Trick Steinbach, who is a bravery coach for women in tech. And you should definitely check hers out because, whew, it is eye opening. And the bottom line is they were all told to follow formulas that drained their energy. Their marketing strategies were prescriptive based on what worked for their coach.

Michelle Mazur [00:14:07]: They diluted their message, and they questioned themselves and their own damn brilliance. And here's the truth. Like, what I do with my clients in the Expert Up Club, there is no prescriptive marketing strategy I'm giving you. I'm not gonna tell you to be on a podcast or to do YouTube or any of that shit because I know there's no right way to market. There's only the right way to you, and I am committed to helping you find that. And one of our other Expert Up Club members, Heidi Taylor, said it best that she's not spending as much time on marketing anymore because what she's doing feels easier. It is aligned with her, her values, and her strength. And that is not an accident, my friend.

Michelle Mazur [00:14:57]: That's what happens when you drop the one size fits all bullshit and focus on your messaging first and then creating a marketing strategy that doesn't make you want to walk into the sun. Alright. So here we are, 400 episodes in. And if you've been with me since episode one, you are a fucking MVP. Or if you just stumbled on here in the last week, thank you. Thank you for being here. Thank you for listening. I do this podcast for you.

Michelle Mazur [00:15:33]: And my goal is still the same, to make marketing suck less for experts who deserve to be heard, seen, and hired. So remember, own your expertise. Stop marketing like a content creator. You are not. You are a business owner. Fix your message first as it will make everything easier. And for the love of all things good, stop doing marketing that you hate. And if you want help with all of that, I'll be back next week or just check out Market Like An Expert.

Michelle Mazur [00:16:07]: It's going to really help you figure out your own path forward. Thank you so much for being here, and here's to our next 400 episodes. Okay. Screw that. I'm not committing another 400 episodes. Here's to our next 50 episodes. I'll see y'all next week.

Michelle Mazur [00:16:28]: 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.