Introduction
Welcome back to the Entrepreneur Mindset Podcast. Today I’d like to spend some time talking with you about the concept of messaging for your business. Whether you are a brand new business, as in this is day one of your entrepreneurial journey, or you are a seasoned entrepreneurial veteran, maybe you’re on day 5,000 or 10,000 of your journey. It is always important to take time to look at your message from your client’s perspective.
This is something that takes practice. Your messaging is going to evolve over time. So even if you have spent oodles and oodles of time trying to figure out your perfect message and it’s working for you, I would encourage you to take some time now and revisit what you’re doing because now is a perfect time. We’re a little over halfway through the year, and we want to make sure that as we head into the second half of 2023, that our businesses are really aligned with what we’re doing, what we’re offering. I know that many businesses have shifted their offers in order to meet the differing demands and needs of their clients, and you have to make sure that all of your messaging lines up.
And so today what we’re going to do is take a look at your messaging from a StoryBrand perspective.
The StoryBrand Framework as a Messaging Map
Many of you know that I am a StoryBrand Certified Guide, and I want to start off today by talking a little bit about why. It’s because when I got started on my entrepreneurial journey, I found it very difficult to figure out how to talk to my potential client because it went beyond just having a conversation.
You have to really get to know who your potential client is, talk to what it is they need and want, what kinds of problems they’re having so that you know how to share your solution with them in a way that’s going to resonate. And a lot of times what happens as a brand new entrepreneur is that we get really excited about what we’re offering, and we go out there and we try and just talk about it, and it falls flat. And so we all do the same thing. We go out and look for courses, we look for workshops, we look for resources, free resources, paid resources to help us figure out messaging.
And I did what everyone else does. I did all of those things, and I found that I was still feeling a little bit lost, a little bit confused as to how to best share what it was I was doing. Now, if you feel like this at all, then StoryBrand might be a really great fit for you.
StoryBrand is all about being really simple in your messaging, and that just absolutely spoke to me. I loved that you didn’t have to do jumping jacks, you didn’t have to do back flips in order to make the messaging come together in a way that felt not just transformative for your client, but also felt like you were kind of coming home to what it is your business is really about. And so whenever I talk about StoryBrand, I always talk about the simplicity of it and that a lot of times we over complicate our messaging.
But I also love that StoryBrand brings to us basically a map to follow as we create our messaging and that everything flows from that single map. Now, if you are around my age, so middle aged, then you probably grew up with paper maps in the car. Do you remember those road atlas you used to get at your local store, whether that was a Walmart, a grocery store, somewhere you picked up an atlas, right, that you could pop in the car. And when you would take those trips with your family, someone always pulled it out and you said, okay, these are the roads we need to take. The StoryBrand framework is very much like an atlas. It’s like a map that you can follow when you are talking about your business.
If you are new to StoryBrand or even if you’re familiar with it, what I’d love for you to do is go to the website, https://mystorybrand.com/. This is a free website. You gotta love free, right? You can create a free account here, and the website will walk you through the different components of a really strong StoryBrand framework, a map to your business messaging.
Today what I want to do is kind of walk you through how to use the https://mystorybrand.com/ website to get a feel for your map of messaging. And I’d like to invite you to fill out that messaging map this week, whether it’s for your business as a whole, it might be for a product or service that you’re thinking about offering or that you’d like to highlight in the coming weeks. Maybe it’s a new podcast that you’re launching and you want to get really clear on what the purpose of that podcast is, who you’re talking to, what, what you’re solving, what needs you are meeting, what wants you are meeting with your product or service. You get the idea whatever it is you are working on in your business, you can use this StoryBrand map to help you think through it.
Right now, what I’d like to do is walk you through the different components very quickly of the StoryBrand map. You’ll notice when you’re in https://mystorybrand.com/ that there are videos that walk you through what each section means. So when you look at this map, it can be overwhelming at first because what you’re going to see are the different components of your messaging.
But here’s what I want you to do. I want you to take a deep breath. I want you to think about who it is you are serving. I want you to picture them. I want you to think about what they’re going through. I want you to think about what had them reaching out to you. I want you to think about what’s going well in their lives, what they’re struggling with, what their ideal life looks like. And I just want you to sit in that for a moment and really allow it to percolate a little bit. I, for some of you who you serve might be you previously might be you a year ago, five years ago, maybe even five months ago. So maybe this is easy, and if that, if that’s the case, awesome, kind of sink into that. Don’t just rely on your own experience. I want you to think a little bit outside yourself as well. But if you do, if you are not your client, take some time to think about this. Take some time to think about how those individuals talk to you when they say, oh, I’m feeling, what are they feeling? What are they doing? What are they thinking? And as you get really clear on this, then I want you to touch on the very first box on our brand script, our messaging map. And I want you to think about what it is they want. What does your client want? So think about it this way, when they go to Google, what are they searching? If you, if they could go to Amazon and get what they wanted. I know you can’t buy services and stuff like that, but what if they could go to Amazon? What would they be searching for?
And some of you might say, but that’s not what I help them with. “They really need…”
I know.
What we have to focus on is what they want first, because that’s what they’re searching for. That’s what they’re looking for. And I want you to spend some time listing out, brainstorming what it is your clients actually want. And then I want you to take it a step further.
I want you to think about what kind of problems they’re experiencing. And there are three layers. As you look at https://mystorybrand.com/, you’ll notice that there are three layers of problems. You’ll see four there; just ignore the one that says “villain”. You don’t need to use it. I want you to focus on external, internal, and philosophical.
When you’re thinking about problems, I want you to think about what is challenging for your client. The external concept is more about what’s outwardly visible that’s going on. The internal is more about how they’re feeling, what they’re thinking and what’s causing a problem. Are they feeling anxious? Are they feeling frustrated? Are they about ready to throw in the towel because they feel like nothing’s ever going to work? Why are they even trying? They feel this internal just angst over what’s happening. And then I want you to think about the philosophical. This is always, I think this one’s so neat. This is the one that makes us go, no one should have to deal with this. It’s just plain wrong. I want you to think about the problems.
And then here’s the point where you get to start thinking about your role in their lives. Now notice we start by talking about the client. We don’t want to jump in with exactly who you are right away because they don’t care. They want to know that you understand who they are, what’s going on with them, and then they’ll be ready to listen to what it is you have to share. And so this is where there’s a big shift in your messaging and in this map that you’ll see, we start to talk about the authority that you hold to help this person. So you’ll notice when I started the podcast today, I said, most of you know this. I’m a StoryBrand Certified Guide, and today I’d like to walk you through https://mystorybrand.com/. I want to show you how to use this messaging map that’s available to you for free. And so I shared my authority with you.
I’m a certified guide. I’ve been through the training. I go through continuing training with StoryBrand to make sure that I can help my clients use StoryBrand to the fullest extent and even take that next step forward and integrate everything into their business. So I gave you a little bit of authority, and I gave you some empathy as well. I said, listen, it’s hard. It takes revisions, but you can do this. Even if you’re on day one or you’re on day 10,000, you can do this. The key here is we start to introduce ourselves as a person who can help guide them, guide the client through their journey, whatever that looks like, whether it’s with a service or a product.
And then you get to give them a plan. And this, I have to pause here for a moment. This is where people get a little bit off track because you think, oh my gosh, I have this great plan. It’s got 57 points to it, and I am going to tell my clients exactly what they are, because then they’ll know I really know what I’m talking about. That’s not what the plan is. The plan is the idea that you can, in about three steps, tell your client where you’re going to start, what the middle looks like, and what the outcome is for them. Because we want to paint the picture of 1, 2, 3, and good. It’s not that simple. They know that you know that, but we want to help them start seeing.
Think about our atlas that we open up. We want to see point A going to point B, and there’s some stuff in the middle. Maybe you have to veer off to the right to the left. Maybe a road is closed, a highway is backed up, and so you have to find a different path. But we get from point A where you are now to point B where you want to be tomorrow or at the end of the trip.
Keep this plan simple. The key is simplicity. And then you can think about how you want to call your potential client to action. And we do this in two different ways. One is a direct call to action that you’ll see on the messaging map at https://mystorybrand.com/. The direct call to action is when the client is ready to really get started, you are thinking about how they can purchase the paid service or product. So sign up now, start the course today. Get your free coaching, your free coaching discovery call. It’s going to be those kinds of things. The transitional is when you say, you know what? I know you’re not quite ready for the big next step. So let’s take this small middle step together.
It’s a transition into that paid offer. This might be a lead magnet. It might be something a little bit less than that big key main offer that you are providing. Okay, how are you hanging with me? Everything good so far? I know I’m kind of going through this quickly, but what I wanted to do is just give you a high level overview of the messaging map on my StoryBrand dot com so that when you get in there,
it makes a little bit of sense before you even watch the videos that are available to describe each section in a little bit more detail. So this brings us to our final little piece of the messaging map, which is success and failure. Now, this is another place where we can get a little off kilter. When I think about success and failure, one of the things I love to do with my clients is say, okay, we’re going to make a grid. Let’s think about success in terms of thinking, doing, and feeling. What are your clients thinking, doing, and feeling? And I like to think about it in terms of right after they finish with your product or service. So very short term, then a little bit further out, that medium term, some people it’s three months, some might be six months. And then long term, what does their life look like as a result of having used or interacted with your product or service? So long-term thinking, doing and feeling, this gives us a really rich understanding of where our clients want to be. It’s a great time to do some coffee chats and get some words from your clients about where it is they want to be so that you have a better understanding of how to refine your offer, but also who it is you’re looking to really work with.
And then we do the same thing for failure. But here’s the thing, failure is not doom and gloom. We are not talking about how to help them avoid failure. And it being this, if you don’t do my thing, if you don’t buy my service or product right now, bad things are going to happen.
No, no, no.
This is the idea that you open their eyes to the fact that you know, if you don’t do anything, if nothing changes, then nothing changes. And what might happen is short term, here’s how you’re going to still be thinking, feeling, and doing. And if we look a little bit further out and you haven’t changed anything, this is kind of what it looks like thinking, doing, and feeling. And long term, if you, if you don’t make a change, if you don’t decide to change today, then this is what it kind of looks like in the future. And so we’re not doing it to scare people. What we’re doing it is to open their eyes to the fact that if they are talking to you, they are experiencing some kind of pain, something is going on that they’re not content with, and we want them to see that if they don’t want to be in this boat anymore, then they have to do something different. So it’s just meant to raise awareness with the client. It is not a scare tactic. Again, this is not a scare tactic.
Those are the big key components of the StoryBrand messaging map that you’re going to see when you log into your brand new free account of https://mystorybrand.com/. And there’s a fun little box in the bottom right corner that says character transformation. I love this because it’s a great opportunity to brainstorm and really see what is going to resonate with your clients. When you talk about where they can be, they’re going from what to what. A lot of times when I talk about my clients, I say, you know, you want to be the Go-To Resource. You want to be the person in your business where everyone says, you know what? You need to go to that person because they are an absolute expert at this.
You want to be the Go-To Resource that everyone knows about that. Everyone says, yeah, you did a great job choosing that person. They are the, they are absolutely your “go-to”. And so I talk about my clients wanting to be the Go-To Resource, and this is the transformation. They’re going from feeling kind of hidden, feeling like they’re stumbling a little bit in their entrepreneurial journey to really being stand out as the Go-To Resource.
Now I want you to spend a little bit of time thinking about your character transformation.
But here is the key in good messaging, this is it right here. I’m going to give it away. Do not spend so much time getting this kind of draft done, this map done that you don’t test it out. The secret is to get some messaging out there, test adjust, see what you feel good about, see what your potential clients are resonating with and make adjustments.
The biggest mistake I see entrepreneurs making, especially new entrepreneurs, is spending months and months refining their messaging before testing it out. As I said at the beginning, your messaging is going to be constantly evolving. This is not a one and done thing.
This is going to be a one and revise and revise and revise kind of thing. And that’s the beauty of messaging. If something doesn’t land right, guess what? Tweak it, revise it, try something a little bit different. And this is going to be true as we go through cycles in the world. Some things are going to be more important than others, and you can adjust your messaging to be aware and show that you’re aware of what’s going on and that you have your clients back from day one. You understand them, you understand what they’re going through, what they’re experiencing, what they want help with, so that you can help them make that transformation in their life.
Okay, so there you have it.
This was a quick walkthrough of the https://mystorybrand.com/ website. When you sign into your free account, you will have an opportunity to create a brand script, a messaging map for a product, a service, a business, just about anything, a podcast, an email that you want to send. Fill out this map because one of the things I love about StoryBrand is that it gets easier the more you do it.
And because the way StoryBrand is crafted, the way the messaging map is crafted, the framework itself, simplicity, reigns supreme. Do not overthink this. You’ll notice that in the messaging map on the website, there are only so many lines and characters allowed. That’s because you need to keep it simple. If you find that you are writing and writing and writing, you probably have too much. You can use the notepad in my https://mystorybrand.com/ to kind of get all of your thoughts down and then distill it so that it fits into each of the allotted spaces on the messaging map. And I would love it when you do this, if you would send me a copy, there’s a share feature. I would love to take a look and provide a little bit of feedback, because over the coming weeks, we are going to be talking about StoryBrand specifically. We’re going to talk about how you can use StoryBrand in your business because it goes so much further than just this map that you see. I want you to really think about how messaging infuses everything that you do in your business, the decisions you make, and even how to gain clarity on what your business is offering.
A lot of times I sit down and talk with brand new entrepreneurs who don’t have offers yet, and by working through the StoryBrand messaging process, we create a playbook together. Actually, by creating a playbook, entrepreneurs gain a lot of clarity on what they want and don’t want for their business or who they want to serve and don’t want to serve, what they want to offer, what they don’t want to offer in their business. So StoryBrand is so much bigger than just the messaging map that I’m having you start with this week on https://mystorybrand.com/.
Action Item:
Your action item’s pretty simple. I want you to complete a messaging map on https://mystorybrand.com/, and share it with me.
I want you to send me that link as a DM on Instagram. Remember, I’m at Entrepreneurs in Flow on Facebook and Instagram, so reach out to either place, I don’t care, and send me that link, or you can email it to me. My email is Moira at Coaching Hive dot com. So that’s your action item.
Conclusion:
There you have it!
I want you to complete a messaging map for something in your business, the business overall, a piece of your business, a product, a service, an email that you want to send to your clients, anything. I want you to create a messaging map for it, and I’d love to provide you with some feedback. Then next week, we are going to dive into some of the different ways that you can use StoryBrand in your business, because I think when we find a tool that is as versatile as the StoryBrand framework, the StoryBrand messaging map, it is kind of like the golden ticket in, let’s see, the Golden Ticket Chocolate Factory, Charlie and the Chocolate Factory. Remember those golden tickets? You got one and you could go to the factory, right?
It’s kind of like a golden ticket to your business. You gain clarity. You can use it in every single piece of your business, which simplifies things. You don’t need 18,000 different approaches to make progress in your business, to see progress in your business, and to feel like becoming the go-to resource is a real possibility for you.
I am so thrilled that you sat with me today and listened to this. You pulled up https://mystorybrand.com/, and you worked alongside. Maybe you took some notes. I want you to take time this week to complete a messaging map on https://mystorybrand.com/. Remember, it’s free. Doesn’t cost you anything, and send me that shared link so I can view it and even provide you with a little bit of feedback. When people do this, I tend to provide a loom video, and I walk you through a few things about your messaging map that maybe a few tweaks that you can make to make it even better.
I’d also like to invite you to join me again on Thursday for a very special episode. I’m gonna keep that a secret for now. You’ll just have to check back in to hear what it’s all about. But I will let you know that my guest does not think that you have to be on the content hamster wheel to be an entrepreneur. Sounds good, right? I can’t wait to share this conversation with you. So join me again on Thursday for a very special guest episode.
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 with your completed StoryBrand Messaging Map:
