Introduction
Welcome back to the Entrepreneur Mindset Podcast. I am so thrilled that you’re here with me today because if you pay attention to the Entrepreneur Mindset Podcast, you’ll know that last week we started talking about StoryBrand and using the website, myStoryBrand.com. And if you were not with us last week, that’s okay, you’re not behind. What I want you to do is make sure that you go back and listen to the episode.
Last week we jumped in and started using the StoryBrand framework. As most of you know, I am a StoryBrand Certified Guide, and what I wanted to spend a few weeks together doing was talking through your messaging, but really making sure that you’ve got the right mindset in place.
And so today, today’s episode is kind of a precursor to digging into your messaging a little bit more because I want to talk about mindset as an entrepreneur, especially when it pertains to marketing and messaging. That’s where we’re going to focus today.
Mindset Before Messaging
I told you that we’re going to talk about mindset, and here’s why.
When we look at messaging and marketing for our business, it is something that is deeply personal because when you are talking about your offer, when you are creating your website, when you are writing your client emails, when you are posting on social media, when you are emailing your list from week to week, you’re building your lead magnets, your freebies, your list builders, all of these things are deeply personal because they come from your heart and soul. You are putting a piece of yourself out into the world every time you talk publicly about your business. And as an entrepreneur, that is a risk, right? Because whenever we put ourselves out there, it means that someone could come back and say, well, we don’t like you. We think this is stupid. This isn’t great. I don’t like this. This is missing this important key piece. And so it’s important as entrepreneurs that we develop a mindset, especially around marketing messaging that is flexible. We talk a lot.
You know, when I, when I think about children especially, I think about having a growth mindset, having this idea that where we’re at today isn’t necessarily where we’re at tomorrow, and we can grow and change, right? And by the time we hit adulthood, a lot of us stop thinking about having that growth mindset. And we’re kind of stuck in our ways, whether we have the growth mindset or not. We’re kind of, we feel a little bit stuck sometimes.
Today is our opportunity to not just embrace a growth mindset, but to also learn to and start embracing the flexibility of messaging and marketing and knowing that when you make changes, it’s okay. When you pivot, it’s okay. When things flop, it’s okay. So let’s talk a little bit first about the conversations you have with yourself. And I am reading a book right now. It’s called The Conversation Transformation. I love this book so far.
My husband started reading it first, and then I kind of started picking it up. I stole it, and our kiddo is reading it now as well. And in this conversation transformation book, the authors are talking about how the way we communicate the behaviors we exhibit in our conversations can actually derail the conversations. It’s not about the person involved in the conversation, it’s not even about the topics of the conversation. It’s often the behaviors that we exhibit. And one of my favorite things that they talk about is the concept of a yes. But do you know what I’m talking about? Yes, I think that would be a good idea, but I’m not so sure that it’s right for right now. Yes…But and neurologically what happens is that our brain, sure, we say the whole sentence and we hear the yes, but what our brain actually remembers and encodes is the but part of the statement, that negative part of the statement, the refusal to do something or to listen or to make a change. The negative part of the statement, that’s what our brain remembers when we use a Yes…But, and so right now when we start thinking about writing our messaging and marketing for our business, it’s important to think about the conversations we’re having with ourselves.
And this is where it comes into mindset. This is where mindset really comes into play, is that a lot of times we speak very negatively to ourselves about what’s happening with our marketing and our messaging and our business in general. What I want to encourage you to do today is to start paying attention to the conversations you’re having in your head, especially when you start to hear negative speaking coming out. Particularly, I want to give you just the one to focus on out of that conversation transformation book. And that’s the yes. But I want you to start noticing when you do that to yourself, you think, yeah, I could be successful, but, and just there you did it. And for some of you, you might be saying, I don’t do that. Yes, but, so let me ask if you have a stealth, but this is what the authors call it. I love it. It made my kid giggle, right? Stealth but.
What we mean here is that we’re not saying yes, but we’re doing it in a stealthy way. It’s the, I understand where you’re coming from, however, same thing. I see your point. Nevertheless, you could say that only then or maybe sure. And yet, sure, that could work. And yet, you know, it just doesn’t. It hasn’t, it won’t.
These “stealth buts”, they come in as a yes…but statement, but we’re using other words because somewhere along the line, either we or someone else have told ourselves, don’t do that. It sabotages the conversation. So we’ve gotten creative in how we do it this week.
I want you to kind of think about and pay attention to your internal dialogue, especially when it focuses on your business. Because so many times we can be really negative and really hard on ourselves. We are often our worst critics. Pay attention to the yes buts. All right?
Why do we do this? Because when you are working on messaging, messaging and marketing, you want to build, you want to have a little bit of a protective bubble around yourself. Mine’s purple because purple’s my favorite color. But you want to have a little bit of a protective bubble so that you can protect your confidence and actually build your confidence as you are testing things. And even if things aren’t working, you can still build your confidence that you can eventually get there. Because honestly, messaging and marketing is not a one and done thing.
It is something that you are going to come back to and tweak and adjust every single day that you are a business owner. Never once will you have messaging that you just leave alone. It’s just done, and you never touch it again. Now, you might go more than one day, but you understand what I’m saying here, is that the reason I’m not jumping right into messaging today in our episode, even though we’ve talked about the StoryBrand framework a little bit already, and why we’re taking a step back to talk about mindset, is that if you are not properly prepared for the flops, for the pivots, for the stuff that doesn’t land, or the stuff that oddly lands, you’re not sure why, because there’s no explanation for why that post, that email did something good for you.
You, you have to be prepared for it. If you’re not prepared for it, you won’t be able to take that feedback you’re getting and use it in a constructive way. It’s why we are having this conversation. I have seen business owners work on their messaging and they say, okay, and a lot of times I’ll work with clients, we create a playbook together, and I say, you know, this is a first step. I’ve put a lot of time and effort into it. You’ve put a lot of time and effort into it. These are the words that seem like they would be a good fit for your business, but let’s test them.
This is where you have to really think like a scientist. You think about the scientific method and we have to go through and test things and adjust. You have your hypothesis, you think about how to test it, you put it in, you test it with your participants, you run the results, you look at the data, you make adjustments to your hypothesis, you make adjustments and test again, right?
Messaging and marketing is a science experiment at its core, truly and completely. So if you don’t have that mindset of knowing that what you first come up with is not going to be what you end up with, then it’s going to feel a little bit defeating and you are going to start finding yourself saying, yes, I had the messaging playbook, but it didn’t work.
Yes, I created all of this brand identity and awareness, but it didn’t do anything for me. Yes, I know exactly what my clients want, but even when I offer it, it doesn’t help or it doesn’t work, or they don’t buy. I want you to protect yourself from that. Because if you allow that thinking to take hold when you’re working on your messaging and marketing, it will stop you in your tracks. You have to be willing to let things be tested and to know that the first time may not be right. It may be completely off. No matter how much work and effort you put in, it still may not land. And that’s kind of normal.
What most people don’t tell you, what most marketers don’t tell you, is that we can try our best. We can use all of the data you give us. We can look at the industry, we can look at what’s going on in the world. We can account for all of that. But there’s still that magic mix of you and your voice and the words that are resonating on that day, at that moment with that person in that exact moment to find something that works.
Before we’re jumping in, because we’re going to jump in next week, we are going to talk about wants and needs of your clients in a lot of depth. I wanted to just spend time today with this. Okay? So let’s focus this week on building confidence. And in doing that, we are going to be aware of the internal dialogue that’s happening, the yes…buts that are happening, because those are the things that can derail our momentum and can actually cause us to wonder if we’re still headed down the right path or not, or if we should just give up. And you know what I’m talking about? We were, my husband and I were kind of floating around the pool this weekend while our kid jumped in and splashed around, and I said I’m not sure when I should just call it quits on that specific idea or when I should keep going. And he looked at me and said, Ooh, that’s not the best mindset there. And he was right, because what I was doing is creating that, yes. But yes, it’s a really good idea, but it’s not working right now. So why would it ever work? Right? And you know, I tell you that because every single entrepreneur goes through those moments, especially when you’re putting your heart and soul into the words you’re putting out there and they don’t land, right? It just feels hard. And I want you to know first, you’re not alone. Second, it is kind of part of that learning process. When a toddler first starts walking a baby first starts walking, it’s pretty, pretty intense. They fall down, they fall on their bum, they get back up, they tottle, they fall and hit their arm, and they cry it. It’s hard.
Messaging is very much the same way. It’s like taking a baby or a toddler and saying, learn this new skill and do it right, right now. It’s just not realistic. Okay? So when we talk about messaging as we start next week, here are the things I want you to remember. The first one is to protect your confidence with a bubble. Truly know that messaging takes time. It’s a testing process. The second thing I want you to keep aware of is to know that if something flops, if it doesn’t land, here’s the beauty. If something flopped, you know what it means. You actually put something out there, which is more than most entrepreneurs can say. So you are ahead of the game.
And the third thing I want you to remember is that you should never be afraid to pivot. It doesn’t mean that try something one little teeny tiny time and say, oh, that didn’t work, and you kind of jump ship and go in a whole different direction. What I mean is don’t be afraid to try something. And if you find that after a few iterations it’s not working, it’s okay to pivot. And that is perfectly normal. It’s a sign of growth, it’s a sign of maturity in your business that you’re willing to take what’s happening and actually make adjustments along the way. So there you have it.
Action Item
Now you know that I always like to give you an action item for the week. Here is your action item. I want you to pay attention to the internal dialogue that’s happening in your brain right now.
Go back to what we just talked about with the yes, but in terms of our conversation, transformation that I was telling you about by Dr. Benjamin, Amy Eger, and Anita Simon. So make sure that you take a look at your internal dialogue, pay attention to it. Notice when you have the yes buts happening that are potentially derailing your motivation and your momentum inside your business, especially with your marketing and messaging. And I also want you to notice and be on particular lookout for the stealth butts, the stuff that’s flying under the radar, but is truly a yes…but. When I had this conversation with my child, we were talking about the stealth butts. I already told you he giggled a little bit. I mean, it’s kind of funny, but he said,to me, I don’t know that I really do this. And then the next sentence out of his mouth was a yes…but in stealth mode. I said there it is, right there and he just stopped and he realized what he said. And it was one of those aha moments of, oh my gosh, it’s happening. It is actually impacting how I’m communicating. So be on the lookout for the very blatant yes buts that you’re having with yourself, or even as you’re talking with your family and friends about your business or with other colleagues when you are masterminding or just simply chatting about your business.
Notice those yes…buts, and also notice the ones that are going a little bit under the radar. Maybe you’ve swapped out the word yes and, but for something that is a little stealth here, notice those and see if you can start transforming that, that message and one that is designed for growth and designed for protecting our confidence and recognizing that this is a process. This is a testing process. It is not beautiful overnight. Even when you have all of the right pieces in place, you are going to have to test and adjust. Please know that’s normal.
Conclusion
There you have it!
We talked a little bit about making sure we have a growth mindset going into this next little bit of our podcast series with messaging and marketing, making sure that you’re paying attention to the internal dialogue with the yes, but making sure that you recognize that flops are part of the process.
And in fact, it’s a sign that you’re actually doing something. So it’s okay if you have something that flops doesn’t land. Maybe you get no engagement on something at all. Try again. Sometimes it’s just the day of the week. It could be as simple as that. It could be the time of the day you sent an email or a promotion.
It could be the fact that something else big happened, right when you hit send on a post and the other thing filled everyone’s feeds. So be, be kind of aware of that, that flops are normal. Flops are a sign that you’re doing something. So celebrate that a little bit and know that when you find yourself needing to pivot with your messaging, with your marketing, with your approach, even with your business offers, that is also normal. It’s a part of growth and development as a business owner. All right, so this week is a special week.
Once again, I have a second episode for you with a guest on Thursday. It’s going to be coming out. We are talking all about abundance, and I think it just goes really well with our conversation this week about mindset, because as we head into messaging and marketing, I want you to think about the abundance that can come into your business as a result of you putting your offer out there. But also a few other things that you’re going to hear our guest talking about. You aren’t not going to want to miss this. So check it out.
Make sure that you are subscribed on your favorite podcast provider to the Entrepreneur Mindset Podcast so that you get those new episodes right on your phone screen every single week. And if today was helpful, I would love for you to leave a review for me, send me an email if you want. Send me a dm. You can find me on Facebook and Instagram at Entrepreneurs in Flow, and send me a dm. Let me know what resonated, what you’re noticing with your internal dialogue as you do that action item for this week.
I’ll see you back here, like I said on Thursday, for another episode of The Entrepreneur Mindset Podcast, where we always focus on mentoring, on community, and implementation so that we can remove that overwhelm of building a successful and profitable business and add in that much needed dose of momentum.
Until next time, have a healthy, safe, and happy week.
Show Resources:
StoryBrand Messaging Framework: https://mystorybrand.com/
DM me on Facebook or Instagram:
