SPEAKER 1 - Candice: [00:00.3] Welcome to the Grit Reapers, the NoBS podcast for online entrepreneurs.

SPEAKER 2 - Gail: [00:04.8] I'm Gail.

SPEAKER 1 - Candice: [00:05.6] And I'm Candice. And we're here to cut through the crap and give you the real truth about what it really takes to be successful online.

SPEAKER 2 - Gail: [00:12.8] Let's get down to business.

SPEAKER 1 - Candice: [00:15.9] Welcome back to another episode of the Good Reapers. It's great to have you with us today. We talking about something I am really, really passionate about, and that is messaging in marketing.

SPEAKER 2 - Gail: [00:29.9] Why?

SPEAKER 1 - Candice: [00:30.5] And what the hell is messaging? Why does it matter? Just before recordings pushing record, Gail and I were having a chat. She shared a story with me, which we thought would be a perfect intro into this topic. So, Gail, take it over and share with our audience your funny experience.

SPEAKER 2 - Gail: [00:50.0] Okay, so as Cands was saying, she talks about messaging a lot. And I have learned a lot of my messaging and ideas around messaging from Candice because she's really very good at it. So I was just telling her that two emails ago I had written this email which I thought was really great.

SPEAKER 2 - Gail: [01:12.1] And, it was basically a story about how I was mundane mountain biking with my husband and, three of his friends and how being the only girl in the group just was really interesting because they were just chatting up a storm. So I was at the back just watching all of this unfolding and we.

SPEAKER 2 - Gail: [01:30.8] It was quite a. It was quite a long ride. We had some big hills and it was quite interesting to see how everybody was tackling the ride. So, I was on an E bike. My husband decided that his gravel bike was the bike to do. He wanted to do like 100 kilometers.

SPEAKER 2 - Gail: [01:47.8] The other guys were all on their mountain bikes. And then we get to the climbs, and again, like, one guy just raced to the top. When I got to the top, he was like, I just wanted to get that over and done with. There was another guy who was zigzagging up the climb so that it was just easier.

SPEAKER 2 - Gail: [02:05.9] Others were just like, and grinding up loose, like, head down, suffering, grinding up and again on the way up. Some people were eating, some people weren't. You know, people had their gels out. So while I was at the back there, I was thinking, you know what? This is the perfect email.

SPEAKER 2 - Gail: [02:21.4] I'm going to talk about, like, how so often we go out and we have this goal and we get to it in our own way. And when we do online business, so often we forget that and we try and, like, fit ourselves into somebody else's box.

SPEAKER 2 - Gail: [02:38.2] And I was particularly really thinking about launching because I'm going to be putting together a program on helping people to get their offers out. And I was just like, you know what? This is perfect because I'm going to tell people, like, you're an individual, you do things your way. You've got your own strengths and weaknesses.

SPEAKER 2 - Gail: [02:54.9] So you, you know, we're Going to launch in a way that makes sense to you. I'm not going to tell you how to launch. So I write this whole email and, I tell the story of the bicycle radio, and then I tell them, you know, like, if this is for you, jump on this wait list here, because I'm going to help you to launch in your own way.

SPEAKER 2 - Gail: [03:16.1] And I got an email back that said, gail, I have no idea what this all meant, but I want in because I need help. And I just laughed and I was like, well, I thought my email was clear, but for her it was as clear as mud.

SPEAKER 2 - Gail: [03:33.1] And I think that, you know, so often I had been thinking of this email. I had all the context in my brain. I had linked the two so easily. But she did not link the two. And so, you know, we speak about how important your messaging is.

SPEAKER 2 - Gail: [03:52.9] And this was just an example of perhaps something that I made too complex, you know, and should have made it easier. You talk about your messaging, being at the level of like a fifth grader, fifth grader, being able to understand it.

SPEAKER 2 - Gail: [04:10.2] So, yeah, that's just what. What happened.

SPEAKER 1 - Candice: [04:13.9] I love that story because when you told it to me and you were like, the reply said, Gail, I have no idea what that was all about. It made me think of, something I had heard by, you know, in a.

SPEAKER 1 - Candice: [04:30.4] In a program that I had enrolled in last year. And the lady who was running the course had her business mentor come in and kind of chat about some things. And he shared this story, which is true.

SPEAKER 1 - Candice: [04:45.4] It was an experiment that was done at a university. The experiment was called the Rocky Road. And basically, like cutting a very long story short, what this researcher did was she took two people, set them down opposite each other, and the one person had been instructed to think of a song that they knew really well and to hum it.

SPEAKER 1 - Candice: [05:11.1] Okay? And before doing it, they have to estimate what are the chances the person opposite you is going to know what song you're humming. And most of the people estimated really high. Like, they said, 80.

SPEAKER 1 - Candice: [05:27.6] I'm, 80 sure the person opposite me is going to know what I'm having.

SPEAKER 2 - Gail: [05:31.3] Right.

SPEAKER 1 - Candice: [05:32.4] Then they did it. And the results were shocking. Like, basically nobody got it. Like, the person opposite. The results in how many people got it were really low. They were not 80%.

SPEAKER 2 - Gail: [05:46.9] Right.

SPEAKER 1 - Candice: [05:47.8] And her whole thing was how when you're humming the song, you've got all the accompaniments, accompaniments in your head. You can hear, you know, the piano or the drums, or you've got context, right?

SPEAKER 1 - Candice: [06:06.0] What the other person Hears is not that. Okay. And, the reason he was sharing this was because he says most of the time, when business owners are trying to describe something, like in a piece of content, in an email, in a post, on a reel, whatever it is, you have the band.

SPEAKER 1 - Candice: [06:31.0] Right. You've got total context. What you forget is that the person on, the other side of the screen scrolling does not. And so you think you are being crystal clear.

SPEAKER 1 - Candice: [06:46.7] And 80% you are so confident the other person's going to actually understand what you say. And it's shocking that actually a lot of the time, which is really sad, I feel like your message is lost.

SPEAKER 1 - Candice: [07:02.4] The person on the other side of the screen actually doesn't know what you are talking about. Or they hear a word that even slightly talks to something they struggling with, they'll put up their hand, but they don't really actually understand what you've just said.

SPEAKER 2 - Gail: [07:19.4] Right.

SPEAKER 1 - Candice: [07:20.3] So he calls that the rocky road and why it's so important. In your marketing, when you're trying to tell people what you do, how you can help to remember that. That you think you're being crystal clear and the chances are you're not.

SPEAKER 2 - Gail: [07:36.0] Yeah.

SPEAKER 1 - Candice: [07:36.4] So exactly what does this mean then? So, like, are we doomed? And I don't think it's. It's that. It's that I. I think from our own observations, Gail, maybe you can also chime in if you've had similar ones, is that I feel like, you've got to wear two hats, right?

SPEAKER 1 - Candice: [07:55.9] And I know for so many of us, it's like, oh, please don't tell me I've got to do, like, another thing. You know, I just want to do the fucking thing that I love doing. Now I'm a copywriter. Now I have to learn. AI Now I have to learn all these platforms. I'm a. I'm, the marketer. I'm the copywriter.

SPEAKER 1 - Candice: [08:12.0] I'm the sales. I know, I know it is like that for a lot of us. But the truth is, the only way you're going to make sales or get inquiries and get new clients is if people actually understand what you are saying and why it should matter for them.

SPEAKER 1 - Candice: [08:28.9] Okay. So I feel like we all come in and, because we've immersed ourselves in the thing we love. So, like, Gail is really into AI, and she's immersed herself in learning all the different models and the progressions on the models, and that is what makes her good at what she does.

SPEAKER 2 - Gail: [08:50.5] Right.

SPEAKER 1 - Candice: [08:51.7] But because it's almost like it's Almost like a double edged sword because we know a lot and we have depth of knowledge on our topic. We almost shoot ourselves in the foot when it then comes to making a simple real because we are like 20 steps ahead of where our person is and we've lost touch with how do we describe things really simply at the level that the person on the other end of the screen is at.

SPEAKER 1 - Candice: [09:24.4] And I feel like that's where the messaging disconnect comes from. It's like you almost know too much. Like you have too much context, you know too much. And so when you're trying to tell people about this and how much you know and what it can do and how you can help, they thinking, oh, but that's not what I need.

SPEAKER 2 - Gail: [09:44.8] Yeah, exactly, exactly. Cands. And you know, I've had a couple of, of examples of this. I keep going back to a coach that I'm currently working with and she's that spiritual. She is, she is a spiritual coach, although she doesn't call herself a spiritual coach.

SPEAKER 2 - Gail: [10:04.9] She tells you, she told me that she could get me to whatever income level I was hoping for, whether that was consistent $5,000 a month or $10,000 a month.

SPEAKER 2 - Gail: [10:21.2] Okay, she could get me there. Right. That's what hooked me in the fact that she does it through energetics and woo. What we call woo woo didn't even come into her messaging.

SPEAKER 2 - Gail: [10:36.7] And when I look at other, what I understand now, when I look at other coaches, spiritual coaches, they all speak about the woo side of it, right? So they all speak about reaching your next level and stepping into your power and that kind of stuff, which would not even have caused me to stop for a second on the advert because I don't know, I didn't even know what that meant.

SPEAKER 2 - Gail: [11:05.5] So you have to look at very simply what it is your, your audience wants and you have to speak directly to that. Not as you said, we know too much. So we talk about, how are we going to get them there, you know, where actually all they need to link is the link between their problem and that you can solve it.

SPEAKER 2 - Gail: [11:30.7] That is the link that you need. So you need to talk about. And again, not necessarily only talking about pain points because people, and me included, I relate much better to aspirational stuff. So, you know, she could have phrased it in the are you battling with inconsistent income?

SPEAKER 2 - Gail: [11:51.1] Are you really struggling? You know, instead she was like, I can get you to 15k. You know, consistent 15k months. Like, hello, you can. You know, that's what I've been wanting you know, that kind of thing.

SPEAKER 2 - Gail: [12:07.2] So I think definitely you. I'm sure we've all heard they say to explain it like you explaining it to a fifth grader. That simple. And then you think to yourself, really?

SPEAKER 1 - Candice: [12:18.3] Yeah.

SPEAKER 2 - Gail: [12:18.7] People like, do they really need it that simply?

SPEAKER 1 - Candice: [12:22.7] Well, I mean, I feel like the fifth grader analogy is not in a, in, not in treating our audience like children. You know, it's not that. It's like, just make it simple.

SPEAKER 2 - Gail: [12:35.1] Yeah, Speak.

SPEAKER 1 - Candice: [12:36.7] Don't try. Sound clever. Speak. Simple. Like, how would you describe this in the simplest way? That's what people relate to, you know. So I, I actually was just also telling Gail, before we started recording yesterday, I filmed a YouTube video on content creation for social media.

SPEAKER 1 - Candice: [12:57.9] And at one part in the video, I obviously speak about messaging. And I said, it's like, if I know my audience, they identify the problem as content. Content. I don't know what to post.

SPEAKER 1 - Candice: [13:12.9] I don't. I'm getting no leads. I'm getting. So there's a problem with their content. Okay, if I, which I have been doing. I mean, this is the irony. Even when you know this stuff, you still fall back into these traps. Because I, know it's not really content.

SPEAKER 1 - Candice: [13:29.6] It's strategy that's the problem. Content's not the problem. Right, I know that. And so for the last four months, all my reels and my posts have been about strategy, strategy, strategy, you know, and I was like, my person's going to be like, okay, that's great, but that's not my problem.

SPEAKER 1 - Candice: [13:47.1] Strategy is not my problem. Content is my problem.

SPEAKER 2 - Gail: [13:50.7] Right.

SPEAKER 1 - Candice: [13:51.5] So even though we often know the thing that is really the problem, we know what the root is.

SPEAKER 2 - Gail: [13:59.6] If you only, going to speak.

SPEAKER 1 - Candice: [14:01.0] About the root and not symptoms, nothing is going to land with your audience. So in a way it's like, yes, you've got to speak to the symptoms, because that's what people will put up their hand and say. Yes, that's me. The symptom is I get no engagement.

SPEAKER 1 - Candice: [14:17.6] No one likes my post. I don't know what to post. That's a symptom. But if I'm going to only speak about strategy, the person's going to be like, not for me, not for me. The person who's speaking about, you know, how hard it is to get no engagement and not know what to post every day, then the person's going to be like, oh, my God, this is me.

SPEAKER 2 - Gail: [14:35.5] Right.

SPEAKER 1 - Candice: [14:35.9] Even though we both marked eventually get them to think about how it's the strategy behind it What I'm saying is that with your messaging, you've got to almost put down your business owner. And I mean that in, like, that you really good at what you do, and you know a lot about your thing.

SPEAKER 1 - Candice: [14:55.9] You've almost got to put that down and become the person you wish was following you.

SPEAKER 2 - Gail: [15:02.7] Right.

SPEAKER 1 - Candice: [15:03.1] So, like, what are they saying when they lie in bed at night? You know, Gail always laughs at me, but I'm like. Because a lot of the clients I've worked with, and I've been like, I'm really sorry, but your person is not lying in bed. And I thinking, God, just knew how to use Zoom properly, you know, oh, God, if I just knew what strategy I should have for my.

SPEAKER 1 - Candice: [15:27.1] They're not thinking that. That they are thinking, like, oh, my God, I've got this presentation tomorrow. What happens if somebody, like, asks me to share my screen? But I've only done it once, and I'm worried I'm going to look so unprofessional or, you know, I don't know what to do.

SPEAKER 1 - Candice: [15:44.2] But when I share my screen, suddenly I can't see all the participants. Like, they vanish, and I don't know where they've gone, and I'm so scared I'm going to panic. That's what they're thinking, right? We then, in our content, need to be speaking, mirroring back their experience first.

SPEAKER 1 - Candice: [16:01.8] That's the hook. Like, I get. I get you. And then maybe teaching them something that they don't know, which is, yeah, the skill that we have.

SPEAKER 2 - Gail: [16:10.6] Right.

SPEAKER 1 - Candice: [16:10.9] And it's hard. It's. This is hard. I always think messaging is, you know, you see all these people, oh, magnetic messaging. Come sign up to my course, and you just feel like, oh, my God, I'm gonna learn how to be a copywriter. It's not. It's really difficult because you have to step into kind of like both roles, you know?

SPEAKER 2 - Gail: [16:30.5] Exactly. And, you know. You know, what Cands. You know, what I. What I fall back on quite often. And I feel like I'm. I'm quite lucky with this because what I'm moving into the whole AI and helping with online strategy and that kind of thing is a path that I have walked.

SPEAKER 2 - Gail: [16:52.3] Right. So what I often do is I look back at me at the beginning of the different journeys. Not even right at the beginning, but, like, for instance. And maybe this might be helpful because so often we end up teaching in a niche that we have been.

SPEAKER 2 - Gail: [17:13.0] That we have. Would have been the ideal client early on, but we've learned enough now so that we feel, you know, good enough to teach other people. And so what I've found is that I've looked back and I've seen the things that used to confuse me completely and I often will talk to those things because those were the things that I struggled with and I know that those are the things that my people struggle with.

SPEAKER 2 - Gail: [17:48.5] So again, just an example, you know, there's a lot of AI as we know is just moving at lightning speed, right? And, and I was actually chatting with my brother last night because he's, he's very interested in all of this and he's kind of just going on his own now, just with automations and everything.

SPEAKER 2 - Gail: [18:07.2] And I was just sort of telling him, you know, my audiences, I can, I can watch, I'm watching my audience like move. It's amazing to see. I'm I'm watching the progression of my audience from just using ChatGPT and Claude and just kind of one off tasks.

SPEAKER 2 - Gail: [18:24.9] You know, we started with prompts in one off tasks and now, now people are starting to ask about you know, the automations and the GPT stacking and that kind of thing. So you can see the audience maturing kind of in front of me. And so I've started speaking more about like custom GPT stacking and AI workflows and stuff like that.

SPEAKER 2 - Gail: [18:46.5] And my posts weren't getting that much, responses weren't engagement and again I was looking at it and I was suddenly like, you know what? When you first heard about all of this you had no clue what an AI workflow was or what an automation was and you couldn't understand like I started to learn about it but I still couldn't understand like how it could help me in my business.

SPEAKER 2 - Gail: [19:18.3] And so from that angle I've started creating posts like I did a behind the scenes of an actual AI workflow and the one lady was like oh my gosh, now I understand what you're talking about. So it's that kind of thing. We get very into the jargon of our niche very quickly and because we understand it, we think everybody understands it.

SPEAKER 2 - Gail: [19:43.0] The one thing that keeps coming back to me is that when we, when we first, when AI first came out there was that sentence, you know, AI doesn't sound like you. How do I make AI sound like me? And like I've moved so far from that, but I still see that question coming up time and time again.

SPEAKER 2 - Gail: [20:07.6] And to me it's like I don't want to keep talking about this because everybody knows this, but they don't. But, they don't.

SPEAKER 1 - Candice: [20:15.3] Correct. And so even. And I love that, because your audience is going to mature. Those that have been with you are now going to know things that they never knew. And I think that's a great thing to hold in mind, again with messaging, is that your audience isn't a group of people like Jane, Jane, Jane, Jane.

SPEAKER 1 - Candice: [20:35.2] They're not all the same person.

SPEAKER 2 - Gail: [20:37.5] Right.

SPEAKER 1 - Candice: [20:38.5] They all have things in common. But as your audience matures, you're going to start developing subsets in your audience. So some messaging will speak to a group that is slightly more advanced. But we forget what got us to get traction and what is.

SPEAKER 1 - Candice: [20:56.0] Because we were speaking about the basic stuff and that never changes. People are always going to want to know, what do I post on social media? You know, what platform is the best it. But because we almost like, oh, no, no, I'm sure everyone knows that now.

SPEAKER 2 - Gail: [21:11.7] We forget everyone. Actually, they don't, you know, 100. And especially as people come into your world, you know, new people, you bring in new people in all the time. And so exactly that. And. And I almost feel like we get tired of our own, messaging, you know, But I'm watching a couple of people at the moment.

SPEAKER 2 - Gail: [21:33.0] There's one lady in particular who does. So I do AI image photo shoots, but more for, like, websites, you know, your visuals, your branding visuals. That's my focus because that's my audience. She does AI imaging for vision boards.

SPEAKER 2 - Gail: [21:49.1] Right. She can talk about a vision board. So one aspect of it every single day. Yeah, every single day. Every email that I get, it's about the same thing.

SPEAKER 2 - Gail: [22:07.2] And I'm just like, surely. But you see, that's the thing. We get bored of our own messaging. We think that people have seen our messaging over and over again, but you forget that on your socials and everywhere different people. You see such a small group of people sees your messaging on a social platform at one time.

SPEAKER 2 - Gail: [22:28.5] And so that's the other thing. Like, just because you think that you've spoken the topic to death doesn't necessarily mean that you have.

SPEAKER 1 - Candice: [22:37.3] Yeah, exactly. I mean, when you go to, like any specialist, you know, I'm thinking, like, with my experience last year with my knee, you want to go to a specialist who's been doing this for 50 years and describe things that you are not. That is me, right? Imagine if after a year he was like, oh, I'm actually a bit bored of them.

SPEAKER 1 - Candice: [22:55.7] You know, you become a specialist, you learn how to describe things so people Feel like you are reading their mind by consistently talking about it and learning about it, you know, watching how I wouldn't have described it that way.

SPEAKER 1 - Candice: [23:13.5] It's so interesting, you know, but that's actually how the person said it to me. And that's more like, how I need to be speaking, you know.

SPEAKER 2 - Gail: [23:21.3] Yeah, we can only get really good.

SPEAKER 1 - Candice: [23:23.1] At that if we stick with it. You know, you can only improve if you're going to commit to, like, this is my thing, you know, and I'm going to learn as much as I can from the people who are struggling with it. So, you know, a really good example, if anyone is listening to this, a really practical example, is think about one problem, one thing that your audience would say.

SPEAKER 1 - Candice: [23:47.4] My problem is whatever. My problem is content. Then write on one column. They say, so, like, what do they say to you? No one likes my posts. No one engages with my posts, no one reads my emails.

SPEAKER 1 - Candice: [24:06.0] Like, I feel like I'm speaking to a wall. Those are literally things people have said to me.

SPEAKER 2 - Gail: [24:11.2] Right.

SPEAKER 1 - Candice: [24:11.9] They say, then in the other column you would write, I, know it's because.

SPEAKER 2 - Gail: [24:18.1] Right.

SPEAKER 1 - Candice: [24:18.7] You know it's because, whatever. But how are we going to start our content and our, messaging is by what they say, not what you know. Right. I always say you've got to like, make a little sandwich.

SPEAKER 1 - Candice: [24:35.2] Like a little sandwich. You've got to sandwich your content. You start off the hook is when you describe things in a way that your person is like, yes, that's me.

SPEAKER 2 - Gail: [24:43.5] Right.

SPEAKER 1 - Candice: [24:44.8] Then you can deliver the gold.

SPEAKER 2 - Gail: [24:48.2] Right.

SPEAKER 1 - Candice: [24:48.6] The gold is what you know, because clearly the person doesn't know that, otherwise they wouldn't have the problem.

SPEAKER 2 - Gail: [24:53.5] Right.

SPEAKER 1 - Candice: [24:54.1] And the last bit of the sandwich is, okay, so what can they go? What do you want them to do now? Do you want them to go get a free exercise? They can try. Do you want them to get on a wait list?

SPEAKER 2 - Gail: [25:03.4] Right.

SPEAKER 1 - Candice: [25:03.8] So it's like hook, gold, cta and just keep practicing that over and over again.

SPEAKER 2 - Gail: [25:10.8] Absolutely.

SPEAKER 1 - Candice: [25:11.6] Simplest terms. What is messaging? It's like for me, it's like the literal words. The literal words you are using in any communication with your audience. That for me is messaging.

SPEAKER 2 - Gail: [25:26.8] Yep. And as you say, you, you have to get better at it. So you, you take that one problem, you start talking about it from as you say what they say, and you start to see what people are resonating with.

SPEAKER 2 - Gail: [25:44.5] And from there, like, like as I realized people weren't, weren't really resonating when I was talking about AI workflows and things like that and then I showed them, then I started giving them examples. You know, you first you would do this, then you would do this, and then people started to get it.

SPEAKER 2 - Gail: [26:02.6] So yeah, it's, it's definitely a skill. It's something that happens the more you do it. I think the more you do it, the better you get. But you have to, you have to keep at it. You have to just keep going. Yeah.

SPEAKER 1 - Candice: [26:17.2] So I'd love to know from our audience, those listening, what is your biggest struggle when it comes to messaging? Let us know and we can create a follow up video that talks directly to that. So everybody even, I mean Gail and I included, like I said, you can know a lot about this and fall back into traps where you're like, oh, my God, my messaging's just completely been wrong.

SPEAKER 1 - Candice: [26:42.6] So we all in it together. We know you're never going to nail it 100%. There's nothing to be shy or embarrassed about. Let us know what is getting you caught up so we can put our brains together and see how we can help.

SPEAKER 2 - Gail: [26:56.6] Perfect. Sounds like a really good plan. And Cands, I was just thinking, do you have any resources that we could.

SPEAKER 1 - Candice: [27:05.2] Link on messaging specifically? So I do, but again, I feel like it's only really helpful once the person's actually done something before we get to there. So yes, I have many resources on messaging, but there are a couple things you actually need to have in place first so that you can write in a way that's going to land.

SPEAKER 1 - Candice: [27:32.5] So, I'll link what I think that is like what's the beginning part for people? And then you know, the, the next step goes on to the actual content creation which is where the bulk of messaging is.

SPEAKER 2 - Gail: [27:45.8] Okay, sounds good. So we will. Cands will link that below.

SPEAKER 1 - Candice: [27:52.6] And yeah, take care guys. We love to hear from you. Please message, let us know how it's going with you, how we can help and otherwise we'll catch you next week.

SPEAKER 2 - Gail: [28:03.4] See you next week.