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Personalization, Not Generalization

The first step to doing that is the quiet power strategy that I mentioned earlier personalization not generalization personalization not generalization what I mean by this is that individual people are much easier to read than groups of people when we try and write read a group of people we end up falling back on our own assumptions and those assumptions by and large end up being incorrect they lead us astray and what's more than that is groups don't talk back individuals talkback and so if you make a generalization if you make an assumption about a group and you put that out there which is what we do all the time this is not something new you've done this like this week right uh then if so if you make that generalized message the community won't respond and so what you get is I'm putting stuff out there and people seem to be reading it but no one leaves a comment no one writes an e mail back to me no one really tweets it but they kind of showing up does that sound familiar? That's wha...

t happens when you try to leverage assumptions instead of individualized information so instead we need to think about individual people in your world the clients that you have absolutely loved working with the customers who keep coming back over and over and over again to buy the t shirt to buy the piece of jewelry teo you know but use your services for their wedding for their baby shower for their family photos year after year after year right? We need to look at those individual people because you have a lot of information on those people and what and if you're brand new to business there are people you could imagine selling teo and those people work as well ok, so when you think about an individual person, what you're able to do is tap into social information and social information is something that's largely beneath the surface our analytical brain doesn't access it most of the time all right? But when we're in a social situation like when we're sitting across from someone over coffee or over a glass of wine or a delicious portland type a um we re body language we read between the lines we think about all of those things that might be going on behind what someone else is saying and we do it extremely naturally even better it's a skill that can be honed right? You can learn how to better read body language you can learn how to better think about what someone was thinking while they're talking to you. So if you can pin point three five, seven people who you have loved working with or who you would love to work with and then you think about them in a situation like a coffee shop or the wine bar or the pub you could tap in to that social information that gives you actual almost facts in which there was a word for something that's like an almost fact right you still need to test it you still need to make sure that it's true but you khun b ninety five percent sure that that piece of information is right because we are social beings and we have been doing this stuff for a long time and we are really really good at it it's only in our businesses that these things break down right alright so enough about that I want to put this to you to the test right now so I have arranged for us to have a little coffee shop experience here and I'm going to invite meghan roop up on stage and tiffany han up on stage and while they're coming up I will give you kind of an idea of what this is going to be they kind of know what they're doing but not really so this should be interesting I want to go this way no let's find however you wanna go go ahead and have a seat I'm going to set the stage here. This is actually really beautiful set up because I want you guys to kind of pretend that you've got coffee cups in your hands and your you're chillin and this is a fun little coffee day you guys don't know each other d'oh well, you should because you love looking manner okay, so why don't uh who would like teo let's see let's use um tiffany's business because they think it's most widely applicable tiffany is the life coach tiffany what you specialize in uh creative women creative women doing way working right now I'm focusing a lot on created women who want to become entrepreneurs or get a business something okay, well, I have really good news. This is a creative woman who have been studied getting a creative business off the ground. Now I don't want you to play yourself okay? This is the one particular problem with this exercise is that you need to pretend to be not you. Okay, okay, so super boring and no, no, you guys are friends this's not coach to koji this is friend to friend, right? And so what? The typical kind of issue that people come to you with they don't know what to do to get started with their best business. Okay, so this is perfect because this is exactly where you are, right? And well, you've had some training with someone I hear is an excellent strategist I would like you to kind of channel where you were maybe a year ago and the kinds of frustrations and things that you had and um talk to tiffany like you were talking to your girlfriend it's at the time, okay so what's what's that what was maybe the number one thing you were talking to people about uh not knowing where to begin and feeling overwhelmed because it felt like there was so much to do yeah let's talk about that overwhelm and the so much to do and just start downloading to her all the crazy stuff that was going on okay um I got a switch brains I so yes so I'm trying to get my business up and running I've been working really hard but I'm so frustrated right now because you don't know there's just so much to doing that then I'm just going to overwhelm and I just look at my long list and then I also look and reach out to so many different people there's so many different experts with advice and opinions and none of it feels right for me so I just stay paralyzed like what the hell did I do? Right? Right? Yeah overwhelmed yeah I mean I feel the same way of like there's so much out there for you it's hard to know window just hit start and stop researching because there's so much great information but it's like everyone's kind of shouty you have facebook and twitter and like reed this reed this is great on you by the book something you have time tio to go ray to get out the gate yeah, yeah yeah, okay, I'm actually gonna stop you right there because something very beautiful happened and I'm curious I'm actually going to ask you guys if you heard what I heard, there was one particular thing that tiffany just said that would make an ideal headline on a sales page and ideal topic for a block post. Um sasha, you're nodding your head. You have an idea for me? It popped when she said oh, there's. So many things to read, download this did it did. And then there's, no time left to just go or something like that. The overload of it. Buoyant vice. All right. Creating pearl paralysis. Alright, cool. Karen, did you hear something? I know how you feel. Okay. Good. Anything else? Yes, I heard. Stop researching and just do it. That's the big. That was the thing. When do you stop researching and just do it so you could turn that into a headline. Right, that's, this is the time to stop researching and start doing here's your thirty day challenge for starting your business today. One little step at a time. Okay, that's. The kind of conversation that happens on a daily basis that you can tap into and actually pull those little nuggets out of now, both what karen said and what sasha said are also equally applicable I my ear happened on that one little piece that I was curious if anyone else heard it but there was so many things you could have pulled out of that conversation that are actual things that your clients say now I want to try something where we're going to reverse roles and megan I'm going to give you an opportunity to tell everybody about what you do on dh then I'm gonna put you in the spot of being your customer and we're going to try and have this conversation again on dh I think this this could be interesting tiffany I just want you to ask questions be curious and kind of see what happens but megan tell us what you do in the kind of women that you work with yeah so I work with women who are in the late stages of eating to sort of recovery and have been there for a while and I help them get to complete freedom okay awesome and so um is there any kind of demographic information that you know about your client's that'll help us even further get into this space definitely I work with all women that's probably helpful and usually um twenties to thirties and usually my typical clientele work with a lot of women who are in a transitional period like they want to start a family or they want to go to grad school, start a business make, uh, job change, urban life change, but are unable to make it because they feel really hold back. Still, they were limiting thoughts, believes behaviors from yeah, recovery. Okay, so let's, cut pause, switch switch brains this time I want you to play your client like I said. And so, just like we started with you thinking in terms of what your greatest frustration is right now, in terms of starting a business I want you to start with maybe one frustration that your clients have and then let's just have a conversation about it. You don't have to pretend to be an expert, just be a friend. So frustration um, there's a lot of, um, I'm I'm really frustrated because I've been working so long at this and so hard and putting so much time and energy, but I still feel like it's in the back of my mind are always there and that I can't just be present in my life and tune in to what I really want so that I can move forward. I'm still trapped by the thoughts and beliefs, especially even though like, I can have coffee with you and have a scone and enjoy rights review, but it's still there, what are some of those thoughts, um like right now I would love to be present with you but I'm thinking about like wow she's like house butter all over her skull in like manner love teo be ableto not be thinking about that right right? What are some of the things that you would want to dio if the butter conversation was off the table I would want to enjoy you and have fun and people to focus on the things that matter most to me um and really be present my relationships yeah and I find, like even like when I'm working like it takes too much of my energy away and too much of my focus I can't be fully with the things that I really want it sounds exhausting exactly at do you find that it's just easier tio keep yourself kind of closed off to everything yeah yeah perfect. Thank you. Um was there anything that meghan said in this particular conversation that you felt like was megan the expert instead of megan the client? No, I didn't either. I just was double checking that. Did you feel like there was anything that you said that was making the expert not making the clams in the beginning I had to really like um sink into that person in her shoes and put myself in her place? I don't think I said anything, but I was definitely thinking about staying and okay, her and not me. Good. Yeah, it's. Perfect. But it was something you were totally capable of doing right? And like, we kind of mentioned, you've got some practice with this on, and it does take practice and you get better and better and better and better and better at it, too, where you can just kind of flip off your own brain for a little bit, I think, but I think he did a fantastic job, just like we did in the first exercise. Was there any little nugget of something that either tiffany or megan said that tripped your brain? Like, oh, man, that was dollars good. Winnie, when meghan said, I want to just be present so I can enjoy the things that I value the most. I thought that was so salient and really powerful. Absolutely. I agree, I think the president's peace and that and the enjoyment piece this huge. Do you think that your clients have had a problem with just sort of a lack of enjoyment in general? Yeah, yeah. So that sounds like a message that would really, really matter to somebody in their position. Anything else that kind of really landed for you, no, from the beyond our thing, like it was so specific the way that you're like I want to talk to her but oh my god she is so much better on that scone and it's the thing that really I feel like people could really really like that specific peace yeah so thank you so much for bringing that up because it's the other great thing that happens when you personalization not generalisation, which is you find these teeny tiny details seem inconsequential or almost irrelevant because they're so specific but in their specific in their specificity there's this great relevance to a huge number of people. And so even if you tell a story about the butter and for somebody else it's a big bowl of olive oil right is the same it's the same story and it's core it's the same story but that detail is what makes it come alive that detail is what makes it really matter and turn it it turns it into turns it from something conceptual into something riel just like that and you could do that with the word you could do that with image you could do that with video you can do it talking to someone face to face you could do it talking to somebody very far away we're talking to thousands of people at once it's the thing that I landed on was that you said you wanted to focus on what matters most and then in my head I added to that focus on what matters most not focus on the food which I like because it was a literate tive but but that was another thing was very similar to what whitney kind of picked up on but yeah any questions about what we just did here that's awesome thank you cool so you guys can head on back there and we're gonna turn this into an exercise that everyone can dio um oh first let me explain what just happened in a little bit more detail with an image all right, so the peter this is my flipped sales funnel arm I flipped marketing funnel really? This is how I understand the pinpoint messages and pinpoint details that they're going to turn into something that can create scale whatever scale means to you whether that's filling your slate of fifteen coaching clients or ten weddings for the year or whether that filling your course for two hundred, three hundred five hundred people ok so that's scale and whatever it means to you but the people who matter most are on top and the people who matter most in this case or the people who are most likely to buy they're the people who are most ready for what you have to offer they're the people who are ready to take action they're the people who really value what it is that you're putting out whether they know it yet or not those are the people who matter most all right, so think about who that might be in your audience or in your circle even then the next thing you do is listen for corps needs and desires and so twice now we saw with megan as b as tiffany's potential client and then we saw meghan playing her own client and how you all listened and heard those core needs and desires that just come out in everyday conversation in fact, they come out, I think in everyday conversation much more salient lee than they do when you're talking to a business owner. One of the number one tips I give people is to stop thinking about your client's talking to you I don't actually care what your customers or clients say to you because here's the thing they want to impress you, your impressive people you own a business and so they want to ask for the thing that's going to be impressive to you that's going to be the right thing to ask for? Not even if it's not aspirational they they want to be right people naturally want to be right, right? And so instead of thinking about what people say to you, you think about what people say to their friends or their spouse or their partner or their mom or their kids think about the everyday conversations they're having at the coffee shop they're having at the dining room table there having over the phone don't think about what people are saying to you, and as you're doing that listened for corps, needs and desires those little nuggets of complete relevance to those people, then analyzed messaging opportunities that's what we did next, right when I said, hey, what landed for you guys? What kind of major ears wiggle a little bit that's analyzing messaging opportunities? I know it sounds scary when I put it on a graph, but when you're just doing it, you know what? Really easily and really well, you understand when someone says something that is fundamental to their core needs and desires, you hear that you internalize it, and then you look for a way that you can flip that messaging around or that you can just use it verbatim. I love seeing sales pages that have quotes for headlines if you khun, if you feel confident enough that you can quote your audience in a headline that's perfect, you don't even have to switch it around, right? But then sometimes like what I did here in that that that very last thing I said, where megan talked about focusing on what matters most and I added not focusing on the food that's also analyzing a messaging opportunity, there's an opportunity to call out what's actually going on and just pairing it with something that she actually said makes sense yes sasha how do you eavesdrop for the corps needs and desires when people aren't like how do you actually do that? Thank you for asking that wonderful question so we live in a beautiful time called the social era you are eavesdropping on these conversations constantly because here's the thing people are over sharers and so when you go on facebook or you go on twitter or you go on pinterest or whatever people are actually having these conversations that were once private conversations they're having them online now not this isn't necessarily true of every single market or every a single type of person and you may have to do a little bit more kind of on the ground research and you might have to do a little bit more massaging of the data but I'd say probably for at least eighty percent of you that your market is online having relevant conversations that you can pick things out of what they actually say okay um and then the other thing is when you when you start to get to know people better either as a business owner or as an aspiring business owner who's talking to people in learning about what the actual needs are you can open up and say don't don't think about what you'd say to me think about what you'd say to your spouse what what kind of conversation did you have last night around the dinner table so right, so instead of asking in in market research conversations instead of asking the question, what problems are you experiencing right now? What do you how would you like this situation to be different? What frustrations are you experiencing instead say, tell me about the conversation you had at the dinner table last night? When was the last time you talked about your, uh when was the last time you talked about your wedding with your mom? Tell me about that conversation, maybe if you're a wedding photographer, you're a jewelry designer you could ask tell me aboutthe last time you stood in front of the mirror in the morning and got dressed just so maybe that's not even a conversation? Maybe then you're talking to tapping into someone's internal monologue, right? So that's that's how you do it, but ah lot of that information is just widely available online now it's kind of a beautiful thing all right? And then that's how you create oh and identify a message that matters you identify a message that matters that can scale that's not just going to matter toe one person or three people or five people, but because that message is space ziff iq is personalized for those people it actually creates scale, it actually is going to resonate with a thousand five thousand, ten thousand a hundred thousand million people because even though we're all different and we're all special, snowflakes were all not special snowflakes, right? There are other people who are going through the eggs exact same things we're going through right now there are people who want the exact same things that we want and largely the details are the same all right now this is a great opportunity to introduce something that we're doing new here which is called this to five. All right, fist to five special shout out to my name is brienne dot com who helped me come up with this particular activity this is super simple. I'm going to ask you if you understand give me a fist to five five zero I do not understand. Five is yet I got this I could teach this three is I've got it let's move on! Alright for the studio are for the audience out there online you can put in a zero one, two, three, four, five just right into the chat box and then john murray can tell me if we understand or not. Okay, so studio audience fist to five how are you on personalization? Not generalization. Good. We are all set here we all set on line still coming in okay, I think I think we feel good in here, so we're going to keep moving on but well I'll check back in from time to time I'm also going to take a minute to answer a reader question right now so I'll check back in with jamari as soon as I'm done there how important is it to choose a niche and start there for example? I have family opportunities and corporate opportunities my strength right now is working with parents but I don't want to forego the corporation which corporations which would allow me to potentially to make some money so I could give some time to lower income families and schools and that's from rene mehdi, the founder of the cove school and with paws so how important is it I'm going to ask you guys how important is it to start with the niche or to choose a knish and start their how important to shout it up barry on not only that but to start with individuals so renee if absolutely you want to focus on both parents and schools right now, what I would do instead of trying to build out offers for parents and schools is I would start with a school or two that you could personalize an offer for individualized and offer four and then you'll be essentially learning how to build out that niche from there and then you can do the same thing with parents but it's so in this case is about really finding those one or two people that you can sell teo immediately. Write. That said, when you go to put your marketing out online in a much bigger way, I would start with one or the other, and you can keep selling on the sea side to the whichever one you don't choose. In this case, that would probably be corporation. So you would market widely to parents based on what you learn in the beginning stages. And then you keep just pinpointing corporation after corporation. As you have the time, the energy you keep getting those contracts, and over time, you'll have built up a presence in the market that allows you to go big with that. Messaging us well.