Title: Buck Brand Tele-party: I Love My Work But I Hate To Market Myself

Date: December 30, 2002

Dave: Let's get started. Once again, my name is Dave Buck. I welcome all of you. Many of you I know and have been in programs with in the past. I welcome you back. Some of you, I'm just meeting for the first time and I want to welcome you as well. This is a program called a Buck Brand Teleparty and this is going to be a party. We're going to have a good time. We're going to laugh and have fun and talk about interesting things.

 

 The title of this particular party, or the subject is "I love my work but I hate to market myself". This is a very interesting theme for a party and I want to let you know that you all have played a part in a very exciting experiment. You didn't know you were part of an experiment but you were. I'm going to tell you all about the experiment in just a few moments. Hopefully, that will get you intrigued like, "Hold on. Wait a minute. What's this whole experiment thing? What is he talking about?" I'll get to that in just a moment.

 

 I want to also remind you that this call is being recorded so you can share or not based on your desire to be recorded for posterity. I will be sharing the Real Audio recording from this class on my website so you'll be on my website forever if you participate.

 

  Introduction to Dave

 For those of you who don't know me, I am a professional coach and a consultant. I've been coaching professionally since January of 1997. The focus of my coaching work over the last 4 years is something that I call Personal Branding. Basically, the essence of Personal Branding is declaring who you are and how you want to be known in the marketplace, and attracting the kinds of people that you want to serve, to you and your business through having a well known brand. That's basically the essence of Personal Branding and really what I like to call creating relentless demand for your services. That's really the goal of having a well-known personal brand. The other thing about Personal Branding, the way that I really like to talk about it is called "Flaunt your quirks for fun and profit". We will be talking a little bit about flaunting your quirks too as we go along here. That's kind of a little introduction for those of you who have not met me or having been in programs with me. That's a little bit about me and what I'm all about.

 

Outline for the call

 Let me just give you a little outline for what we are going to do today. I am going to share with you a little bit about this experiment that I just mentioned a few moment ago. We're going to talk about marketing. What is marketing? And then we're going to work through what I call the "Talk about what you do model". It's a new model that I've just developed and we're going to work through the different levels of the model and the intended result is you'll have a new capacity, a new facility for talking about what you do in a compelling way. And the reason that's important is because my sense of working with people over the last 4 years, specifically around creating branding, which is a marketing function, is that where most solo professionals get stuck in marketing themselves is in the very essential element of being able to talk about what you do. Somehow we think that since we are the business, most of us in this call are independent professionals or solo professionals or in small companies where we are the business. The work that we do is what the business is all about, whether it's coaching, training, consulting, massage therapy, real estate, there's a whole host of solo professional type businesses that you might be in. But, we think that since we are the business, it should be easy and natural for us to just talk about ourselves and what we do but, in fact, it is not. It's actually one of the hardest things to do, to be able effectively talk about who you are and what you do. That's what this conversation is really all about.

 

  What brought you to "I Hate to Market Myself" today?

 The first thing that I want to get into with all of you is just to ask you, what was it that had you register for this class today? What was the thing where you thought, "Yeah. I want to do that. I want to check this out." Anyone have a thought on that they could share?

Virginia: I don't hate to market myself but I don't have skills in that area so I checked in because I'd like to get some ideas about how to do it with finesse and pizzazz.

Dave: Ooh! Finesse and pizzazz. I like that. Anybody who wants to do anything with pizzazz is OK in my book. That's great. I love it. Perfect. Thank you, Virginia. Who else?

Draku: You know, I'm a regular with mostly all your calls and I've just come because I always get good information regardless of what the class is.

Dave: (laugh) That's a good point, Draku. So, what Virginia was talking about is something about the content. So, something about the content of the class is what attracted her. I want to hear from a few more of you. And then, what Draku is talking about is another possibility which is you may just know me and you may think, "Oh, I've done things with Dave before and whenever Dave does something, I usually find it valuable so I'm just going to go for it." And that's an important thing because at that point, my brand, or how I'm known to you and to others is what attracted you to the program. So, there's 2 ways that we've uncovered so far. One is the content and another one is the "who I am and what I do". There may be some of you who just wanted to join in because, "Oh, if Dave's doing it, that's great. I want to check it out." Thank you, Draku. Who else?

Rosemary: I ditto that.

Dave: You ditto that?

Rosemary: Yes.

Dave: So, are you all of the above?

Rosemary: Yes. The content. I like the idea of it being a mindset for professionals, reverse selling, because I'm not one to sell. I like to market myself but I'm not out there selling who I am. And also, I've attended so many of your teleclasses, Dave, and I like your style.

Dave: Cool. Thank you.

Rosemary: Your welcome.

Dave: Great. Thank you, Rosemary. Anyone else?

Molly: I'm going to ditto all of that.

Dave: Wow! This is the Ditto call.

Rosemary: This is another Rosemary and I'm going to ditto what the other Rosemary said.

Dave: Thank you, Rosemary. Molly, go ahead. Continue.

Molly: I was just going to say, I was just in your last class and I've been on several of your teleconference. To be in a room with you, just your energy and just who you are and just your ease of presentation is just wonderful. So I celebrate that with you.

Dave: Wow! Thank you. That's awesome.

Rosemary: Is it good for you, Dave?

Dave: Yeah, it's especially working for me. Thank you.

 

 This is great. The first point that I think is very clear from this and it was kind of lucky for me that you all were sharing that, but the thing I think we can all learn from that part of the conversation is not so much about me per se, but that when you get clear about who you are and what you're doing and you get out there in the marketplace, people will eventually be attracted to you even more than your content. So, it's who you are that will attract people to the work you're doing. That's an important thing to realize.

 

The Experiment – What's in a name?

 Now, the next thing that I want to share with you is a little bit about this experiment. The experiment goes like this: A couple of weeks or a month ago, maybe more like 2 months ago, I listed a class on teleclass.com and it was a class about branding. It was some kind of "come to this class and you can learn about how to create a brand.". I've been helping people create brands for several years and a lot of people know that about me. I listed the class and about 25 people signed up. That's perfect and it was a lot of fun and I led the class. It was very valuable and it worked out very well. Now, this time, I listed the class and instead of saying it was about branding, the class was called "I love my work but I hate to market myself". How many people do you think signed up for this class? Well, there's no way you could know. It's a rhetorical question but I'll tell you. About 200! So, the first 30 got in and the next 170 got a little email that said "Sorry, the class is full but if you want to listen to the Real Audio, click here." It was about 100%, I don't even know what the numbers are, from 25 to 200. It's a significant increase in the numbers of people. Like 8-fold of the numbers of people that were interested. And, the description of the class was very similar. The thing that was different was the title. And the title this time, spoke to a very specific situation that probably many of you were either intrigued by or could relate to. I did this on purpose. I listed a similar class, like I said, 2 months ago with the similar class description but a different title just to see what would happen. It was an experiment. And the experiment showed that when you talk about what you do in a way that connects with a very specific situation where someone might find themselves, it tends to be a lot more attractive.

 

 So, what we're going to do is we're going to work through a model where you can, knowing about what you do and talking about it in terms of who you are and what you do. That will get you one level of success. But there's another level of success where you can take that as the foundation, but when you talk about it, you talk about it in terms of the situation that the other person is in. So, rather than talking about yourself, you're talking about them and that's the model that we're going to work through. Any questions about that so far?

Participants: Brilliant! Woo hoo!

Marketing is about Experimenting

Dave: It's really an amazing thing. The other thing, a couple of little side notes that you can take away from the experiment. Number one is, part of marketing is test marketing. So, when you're trying to figure out how to talk about what you do, you should plan to try many variations to see which one really works. That's one thing.

 

 The other thing is to find a venue for some way where you can test market your ideas. So, in this example, I used the teleclass listing service called teleclass.com which, probably most of you are familiar with, if not all of you. I used that listing service as a test marketing place. So, I list a class there and I see what happens and then I tweak the title. I change the description a little bit and then I list it again and I see what happens the next time. So that marketing for me, is always about test marketing. It's always about trying different things, seeing what happens and kind of keeping track. If I did it this way, 25 people signed up. And then I changed it around a little bit and I tried it this way, and 200 people wanted to sign up. So, OK, that gives me some important information.

 

 One of the places we get stuck in marketing is we try something and we don't get the results we were wanting or expecting, and then we just come to the conclusion, well, may be we just don't know how to market, rather than knowing that marketing is always a process of trial and error and to plan for that up front.

Participant: I had a question about the listing at teleclass.com. Was the response for your other listing as large as this one also?

Dave: Well, that's what I was saying. When I listed the class that was just basically about branding…

Participant: No, I mean like after this call, you have another call coming up and I was wondering if that one also had a larger response.

Dave: Yeah. That's a good question. That one also had a larger response. That one was about 50. So, the class that's coming up that I'm doing at 8:00, I did a similar thing. I created the title that was based on the client situation, that one being called "Solo professional working for a lunatic". And that one also had a great response. It filled up immediately. So, that's sort of giving me a little bit of an insight as to what's happening here.

 

What marketing is

 So, that's just a little thing that I wanted to go through with you. The next thing I want I want to talk about, the last thing I want to talk about before we get into the model is just I want to get some of your thoughts about what is marketing. Because you hear this all the time. I hear it all the time from folks when they say, "Oh, I love what I do but I hate to market myself. I don't like to market. I don't know how to market." So, I just want to get a sense from all of you, when you think about marketing, what do you think marketing is? What's your perspective on marketing?

Virginia: Dreadful

Dave: OK. Dreadful. Good.

Rosemary: Spending a lot of money and getting no results.

Dave: Spending money and getting no results. Very good.

Molly: Let the people know that you're out there and that you offer a service they want.

Dave: Yeah. It's a very commonly talked about thing called "Getting out there", "Getting the word out". But what is the word that you're going to get out? That's the question.

Molly: That you have their solution.

Dave: Well, yeah. That would be a good word to get out. Yeah, that kind of thing. So, what marketing is about truly is about making connections with strangers. Because once someone knows you really well, you're not marketing anymore. Once they know you, it's sales and sales is different than marketing. Marketing is about getting the word out to strangers so that folks in the marketplace can get a sense of who you are and what you have to offer. That's marketing, building trust, making connections with people, attracting people to who you are and what you do. That's the marketing piece and that's distinct from sales, which is when someone contacts you and says, "Hey, I heard about you. I read an article about you. I saw your teleclass. I saw speak." There's a whole host of ways to do this marketing thing, which we'll talk about a little bit but one they contact you by phone or by email or however you do it, and they say, "I heard about you. I'm interested in your service. Can we talk about it or what do we do next?" then you're into a sales conversation and that's a whole different thing. Right now today, we're just talking about the marketing piece. But if you do the marketing part very effectively, the sales part becomes very easy. That's the key thing because if you have established yourself, built trust, established your credibility, if you have really connected with the person so that they have a real sense of who you are, what you have to offer, it really connects to them and what they need right now, if you're connecting at that level, then selling them whatever your service or product is becomes a very easy process. But, the challenge of getting your marketing message into the world and having it be effective, that's where most of us run into trouble.

 

 Is there anyone that thinks or that has this idea that going to networking events is marketing?

Participant: Sure.

Virginia: Oh yes.

Rosemary: That's all it is basically, letting people know who you are and what you have to offer and helping them get a sense of trust in you and all the things you just said.

Dave: Yeah. And that's a good point. The thing I want to stress is that that's only one way of marketing and there are lots of ways of marketing. Because I think what happens, most people in small businesses think that the only way to market is to go to lots of networking events and talk to people about what you do. And that can be effective but it also can be very difficult. It can be very troubling because if you go to a bunch of networking events and you talk to some people and you have this common experience where you're sitting next to someone and you're telling them all about what you do. Then their eyes starts to glaze over and they start looking at their watch and then you're thinking, "Man, I've blown it.". It's that experience that has most people think that they don't like to or don't know how to market.

 

 So what we're going to do now is we're going to work through a model that will help you, number one, be a lot more effective when you're in these very personal marketing situations like a networking event, but also have you be more effective in any kind of marketing that you might do, whether it's running an ad in a paper or writing an article or listing a teleclass or doing a workshop somewhere or giving a talk somewhere. These are all forms of marketing. Fundamentally, marketing…there's 2 things you can do to market. You can talk or you can write. That's pretty much it. It's the only 2 marketing devices in the history of business, talking and writing. Either way, you need the words. So, what we're going to work on now is coming up with the words.

 

  Going through the model

 What we want to do is work through this model called the "Talk about what you do" model. In this part, I'm going to do most of the talking. So, I just want to put you on notice. Usually, I try to make these conversations very interactive and I will be looking for your participation but a lot of this, I'll be walking through the model and explaining different pieces of it. So, I may be doing a lot more talking than I would normally do in a program like this.

 

 Here we go. If you are looking at the model, we're going to walk through it step by step. For those of you who are not looking at the model, it looks like this, if you have a piece of paper, you have 3 columns. The first column is what I call the level. The second column is called the problem, and the third column is called the solution. So, you've got the level, the problem and the solution across the top.

 

The Client Situation

 In the first column, we'll have the different levels that we're going to be talking about. And the first level is called "The Client Situation". The Client Situation is in using real language, using street language, the way you would describe the situation where the person can find themselves. This is what I call the emotional hook and I have 2 examples on the model.

 

 The first example is the one that was the title of this class called, "I love my work but I hate to market myself". That's a situation. It's a real situation and many of you can relate to that situation. You go, "Yeah. I'm in that situation." So, immediately, there's a hook because you can feel it.

 

 The other example that I have on here is something I worked on with one of my other clients and it's called "Single working mom sharing custody with a jerk".

Participant: That's from Heidi.

Dave: That's a Heidi Costas, exactly. And that is a very specific situation. That's a situation where a woman could find themselves and the power of the client situation is 2 things. Number one, it creates, like I said, an emotional hook with the person. It's immediately self selecting. If you're in that situation, you know it immediately. There's no mystery. OK? And, if you know that you're not in that situation, if the is specific and clear enough, you can probably immediately call to mind someone who is in that situation. So it brings you to the point of thinking of a person who's in that situation. You might think, "Oh, that's not me but my cousin. Oh my goodness. You should see what she's dealing with." So, immediately, it creates an emotional hook because you can feel it either for yourself or someone that you care about. Does that make sense so far?

 

 Part of what we're going to work on is we're going to go through the whole model and then we're going to come back around and play with a few examples and see what kind of a situation you might be able to craft.

 

The False Comfort of Cliché's

 Now, the key point about this is to be on the lookout for something that I call the "False comfort of clichés". The false comfort of clichés. A cliché is when you say something and you think it's profound and you think that everyone knows that it's profound but the problem is no one really knows what it means. It's been said too many times. It might have been original and innovative 15 or 20 years ago but once it shows up on a Hallmark card, it's done. And the reason, it's not that it's a bad thing to say. For example, I just went onto the Coachville.com referral site and just looked at a couple of coaches referral things just to get some great examples of clichés because it's full of them. How about this one? People who want to address their fear and move out of the box. what does that mean? It doesn't make you think, "Oh, my cousin wants to move out of the box." It's like, what box? But the thing is, the person who wrote that really felt like they were saying something amazing, like people are going to really want to sign up for that, addressing their fears and moving out of the box stuff.  So that's why I call it the "false comfort of cliché" because you think you're saying something but you're really not.

 

 And the thing about, like I said, it's not a bad thing to say something that will be on a Hallmark card, but the key point is that let's say your service is something that you want to charge like $300 a month for. They can get the Hallmark card for $2.50. You can get the Hallmark card for $2.50. So it's not likely they're going to go from $2.50 to $300 a month for the same sounding thing.

 

 How about this one? "People who want to live their best life because the time is now." I mean, what is that? "Oh, I want my best life. Yeah. Sign me up for that." You don't even know what your best life is. You're not going to sign up for it. "People who want to stretch into different possibilities." It's like these are the kinds of the things that people say but they don't mean anything.

 

 The game here is to work through this model but to use language that would never be on a Hallmark card. That's kind of the benchmark. Not that I have anything against Hallmark but that's the thing, to be on the lookout for clichés as we go through this process.

 

 So, getting back. The client situation is the situation where the people find themselves, like what their situation is in life, or you can say the scenario that they're facing, or the issue. Alright?

 

  The Surface Issue

 Now, the next part of the model underneath the client situation is what I call "the surface issue". The surface issue is the name of the problem. This is what people talk about with their friends, with their colleagues if they were really having a heart to heart talk with their friend at a bar. This is something that they would literally say. So, the example that I have on the model is something like, "I really need more clients to stay in business but I feel so uncomfortable about marketing myself." That's a real problem. Somebody would say that to their friend if they were just really talking about their business. So, the hint here is to use street language, to name the problem. And that's what I call the surface issue. The surface issue is what someone talking to a friend would talk about when they really talk about what's going on with them. And the power of the surface issue is that you want to use language that people would not be afraid to admit this. It's not too deep. It's not too personal.

 

 I was on a call the other day and I was talking about this and someone said, "Oh, I work with people who are ashamed to admit that they can't relate with other people." And I said, "Well, that might be true but there's not too many people who are going to sign up for that." You know what I mean? It's like in order to sign up for the class with that title, that means you have to be right up front about saying, "I'm ashamed to admit I don't know how to relate to other people." Not many people are going to be willing to admit that.

 

 So the idea of the surface is something that is in common language. People talk about it, like the single working mom sharing custody with a jerk, people would say to their friend, "My ex is a jerk. I can't believe what he's doing now." It's language that people would readily use and talk about.

 

  Just Under The Surface

 Now, the next level down the model, we're still in the problem column, is what I call "just under the surface" and this is where you reveal an insight into the problem, not too deep, not too profound, just something a little bit insightful. If we go back to our example, the example problem on the surface that I talked about is "I need more clients to stay in business but I feel so uncomfortable about marketing." That's the problem. That's what somebody would say.

 

 Now, just under the surface is an insight into the problem which you, as the service provider would have because you talk with people who have this kind of problem all the time and you get to understand what's going on with people like this. What's the situation they're dealing with and so in this case, the example is "Marketing is about connecting with people, which you will enjoy when you can talk about what you do in a compelling way." So, the insight is you say you are uncomfortable marketing but it may not be that you don't know how to market, it may not be that you hate to market. It might just be that you don't know how to talk about what you do. And if you did, suddenly your marketing problem would disappear. So, that's an insight. An insight is where someone goes, "Oh! That's an interesting thought. I hadn't quite thought of it that way before. That might be right." It's an insight. It just gets the person to think a little bit but not too deep. It's not…we're going to get to this next, what I call the source of the problem. It doesn't get to the real source of the problem. It just kind of piques their interest a little bit. It's a little bit of an insight.

 

 Any questions about that? Like I said, we'll walk through an example in just a moment.

 

The Source of the Problem –
never talk about this while marketing

 Now, this is where the model really takes shape. After just under the surface, the next level down in the model, this is the bottom part of the model now, is called "the source" and this is the real issue, the real issue at hand. Typically, if you're into coaching, if you're into consulting, if you work with people, if you enjoy working with people in a deep and meaningful way, this is typically the area where you like to work. So, for an example, when I talk with people about marketing and I've been doing this for a number of years, what I have found is the real issue is that there is an amazingly strong cultural drive to be normal and to fit in. And most people have a deeply thwarted self-expression. Now, that's pretty deep. That's pretty profound. The trick is when someone hires me to do work with them on solving their marketing problems and figuring out a way to talk about what they do, I know that the real source of the issue is deeply thwarted self expression. But, when I'm marketing, I never talk about that. Because, remember marketing is the way you attract strangers and if you try to talk too deeply with a stranger, they just think you're weird. It just scares them off. They think, "I don't even know you and you're talking about deeply thwarted self expression. Are you crazy? You've completely lost it."

 

 So, like I said, the problem that most professionals have, professionals like I said in a field like coaching or consulting, is that we know and we love to work at the source of problems. That's what we do. The problem lies when we try to market and we try to talk in a marketing way about these deep source issues. It doesn't work because people think we're crazy just like we've just been talking about. Like, are you nuts?

 

  Overview AND Solutions

So, the important part of this model is to understand the different levels of the problem. So, you have the surface issue, which is the way people talk to each other. You have a revealing insight that's not too deep, that kind of piques their interest a little bit. That's where you're going to market. You're going to market at the surface and just under the surface. You keep the source of the problem to yourself until they hire you. After they hire you, then that's where you go. But, by that time, you've built up the rapport. You've built up the trust. They've already paid the money. Now you go to the source of the problem because you know that in order to really solve the problem, you have to get to the source.

 

 I just want to quickly go over the third column which is the solution column. What you have is, at the source level, you know the real source of the issue. You probably know the real source of the issues that you tend to work with people on. It's something deep. It's something profound. You could talk about it if you really got into it with someone. You could go there and you could say, "You know what it really is? It's this.", like I just said. It's really that most people in marketing have deeply thwarted self expression. And then, as the service provider, you would know the steps to really fix that problem, the source problem, the ways to get in there, to work on that. So, the idea is you never talk about the source of the problem while marketing. Once they hire you, then you go deep. But only after they hire you.

 

  The Band-aid

 So, what we want to talk about when you're marketing yourself, when you're talking about what you do in a marketing way, when you're talking with strangers, you've got to stay at the surface. And that's what I call "the band aid", just on the surface. You just want to help them with the little cut they have on their arm. So you want to come up with a band aid, a band aid solution which is what people buy. People buy band aids. They know the issues that they have. We're very focused in our culture on immediate gratification so we typically look for quick fix solutions to our problems.

 

 So, as a marketer, you need to offer something that sounds like a quick fix. You've got to sound like you've got the right band aid for their problem. Only at the marketing level. Once they hire you and you're working, then, of course, you're going to go deep. But at the surface, you want to come up with a band aid. Like an example, around this problem that we've playing around with, I need more clients to stay in business. And then the insight is it's really that you just don't know how to talk about what you do. The band aid is a program something like "Articulate what you do in 3 easy steps." That's a program or the program that I do a lot of times is what I call my "Brand Positioning" program which is where you figure out your brand positioning, which is how you talk about what you do in the marketplace. So, it's a band aid type of a solution which is what people buy. Now, I know that once they buy my band aid solution, I'm going to get in there and go deep with them. I just don't tell them that until after they pay.

 

 The other point about this is, as the service provider, when I'm talking about these surface issues, I know what the real source of the issue is, or at least I have a good idea of the real source of the problem. So, knowing that gives me tremendous confidence in talking about my band aid solutions. Because I know the band aid isn't really going to work but I also know what is going to work and I know I can get them there once we start working together. But, I also know that the only thing they're going to buy out of the box is the band aid because you need a lot more trust and rapport to go deep to the source of problems.

 

  So… What does this mean to you?

 So, before we go any further, let me just check in with you all and just give me a sense of what you're seeing from looking at this model in terms of what you've done, maybe where you've gone wrong, where you've struggled with marketing. Maybe an insight about what you see you can do now. Just anything that's coming to your mind from looking at this model and talking about it.

Virginia: Two things I see immediately. The first is I'm me focused, not client solution focused and secondly, I'm cliché oriented, not street talk fresh and all that jazz.

Dave: And all that jazz! (laugh) Exactly. Virginia, would you mind, and if you do, it's OK, but can you think of one of the kinds of clichés you often say when you talk about what you do?

Virginia: I help people get from where they are to where they want to be.

Dave: Oh boy! That's one of my favorite clichés.

Virginia: Boring!

Dave: (laugh)

Virginia: Says nothing. It certainly doesn't sell any sizzle and it doesn't let the client know you've got their issue and you've got THE solution, even if it is a band aid.

Dave: Yes. Exactly. Very good. Just seeing that, now that you see that and you understand it, you will be, my guess is, you will now be on the quest for the words that speak to the issue the way people talk about it and once you're on that quest, you have become a marketer.

Virginia: Alright!

Dave: Because that's what marketing is. Marketing is about making connections and in order to make connections, you've got to talk to people where they are in words they use. Because no one's going to go to a bar and talk to their friend and go, "Man I really want to get from where I am to where I want to be." They're just not going to say that. I mean it sounds funny but I know, when I first started coaching, I used that exact phrase. "I'll get you from where you are to where you want to be." I used to say that all the time and I didn't get any clients.

Virginia: I wonder why.

Dave: Yeah. That's great, Virginia. Thank you for sharing that. That's so cool. Who else has an insight? Anything you've seen about how you've been marketing so far, maybe an insight about what you might do differently now. What do you see?

Molly: I like the use of street language instead of doing professional, flowery, all this foo foo stuff.

Dave: Yeah.

Molly: Just being where they are, meet them where they are.

Dave: Right! Excellent. Molly, do you have any kind of an idea about the kind of thing that people really talk about and say to each other that you would like to work with? What's something that someone would say where you go, "Yeah. That's what I do."

Molly: Oh yeah, well they're talking about they just don't have enough time to get everything done. They don't have time to spend with their family.

Dave: That's a popular one.

Molly: Yeah, instead of pulling all this crazy stuff like "We'll manage your time so da, da…" and go on, and on and on.

Dave: Now, what you want to do there, because not having enough time, so many people say it that it's almost become a cliché itself. So, what you want to do there is you want to get a little bit more into the reality of it. Like, you would want to talk to someone who would say that they don't have enough time and then you would say, "Oh, perfect. You don't have enough time to do what?" And then if they say, "Well, you know, I'm working all the time. I don't have enough time to see my kids." Then you would say, "OK" and then you would come up with the surface issue which is "I don't have enough time to spend with my children. I didn't realize my son could play the trumpet." and he's been playing for 3 years. You know? And even if someone doesn't have that exact situation, if you say something that's real, they'll relate to it.

Virginia: An emotional hook.

Dave: An emotional hook. Exactly. That's the key thing. It's like the single working mom sharing custody with a jerk. That thing just grabs your heart. And she could say, "I work with newly divorced moms who are trying to spend better quality time." Or she could say all kinds of things but the "sharing custody with a jerk" that just nails it. And the way we figured that out was, I just asked her. I said, "You talk to these women. What are they saying?" And she said, "They think their ex husband is a jerk." I said, "OK, then that's it. That's your brand right there. That's your client situation." So you want to get to what they people say and get into it. Look for the phrases of what's really going on and that's going to be your surface issue because people really only talk at the surface. They don't go deep. They don't get into…once someone hires her to work with the sharing custody with a jerk, then she gets into all kinds of stuff about boundaries, about accepting what's so and some deep metaphysical stuff. But, she doesn't say, "I help newly divorced moms set better boundaries with their husbands or their ex husbands." because no one's going to sign up for that.

Virginia: That sounds academic and like wallpaper paste.

Dave: Right. And even though that is literally what they need to do, they don't know that yet. So, even though you know, that's why I say, you've got to know what the source of the problem is but you never talk about it. Because the source of the issue is too deep and typically it can often have technical aspects to it that people just can't relate to. So, you've got to give it to them in their words.

 

 The Surface Issue – recap

 Now, let's talk about this idea of the surface issue. I just want to be clear about some of these distinctions. The client situation is kind of the phrase that encapsulates the thing. "I love my work but I hate to market myself." It's from the perspective of the client. That's the first step. It's like that's their situation. Then the surface issue is more clearly stating the problem. What's the problem? I need more clients to keep my business going but I'm really uncomfortable about marketing. That sort of gets a little bit deeper but it's still on the surface. And then the just under the surface is a little insight, something that you've seen, something that you've noticed that could be possibly a different way of thinking about it. But, like I said, not too deep that it scares them. It just gets them to think a little. And that can take a little bit of practice to kind of understand a way of saying something that is just under the surface that gives them a little insight, a different way of looking at it, a little sense of a new idea, a new possibility.

 

  The Power of Focus

 What this points to is the power of focus. The power of focus. Because in order to get to these kinds of nuances about what people are talking about and then some just under the surface inside, and then even the real source of the problem, you need to dwell in these issues for a little bit of time. It can help you to be in many conversations with different people that have similar surface problems until you begin to see the just under the surface insights. And you begin to see and realize the real source, that when you get to that, the problem begins to get solved. So, that's the power of focus, the power of working within one, or at the most a few of these different kinds of client situations so that you really can build up your understanding of it, the nuances, the intricacies.

 

 And then the last piece, of course, is finding the language. But finding the language is not so hard if you just talk to people and listen to what they say and use their words.

 

 We just have a few minutes left. I just want to get a sense of where, if you found this valuable, what you think you might want to do with it, just give me a little sense of where you are in the conversation, what you've seen for yourself.

Do I use these words in marketing materials or conversation?

Deborah: I have a question. We've got all these little examples. Are these something we would use in marketing materials or in a conversation?

Dave: Both.

Deborah: So, if I were in a conversation using these examples, somebody says, "What do you do?", You say, "Well, I work with people that love their work but hate to market themselves."

Dave: Yes.

Deborah: And then when do you throw in the insight?

Dave: Yeah, that's a good question. The first thing is, you have slight differences in the way you use your words depending on if you're writing or you're speaking. So, a lot of times things are easier in writing because you can kind of structure it. You can say, "Here's a typical situation of someone I would work with" and then you would talk about the problem a little bit more to accentuate it. And then you would say, "Well, one of the things I've realized in working with clients in your situation is…" and then you would put your insight in there. And then you would say, "and because of that, I've crafted this program and my coaching working with be the 'articulate what you do in 3 easy steps.' This is what we'll do together." Then you go to your band aid solution.

 

 So you start off, if you're writing, you would write, client situation, surface issue, give a little more detail, reveal your just under the surface insight and then describe your program that speaks to the surface issue and the insight. That's how you would write it.

Deborah: And if you were talking, just speaking to someone?

Dave: Yeah. If you're speaking to someone, then you kind of have to flow with it a little bit more. So, you would say, "I work with people who love their work but hate to market themselves." and then you would see what the other person says.

Deborah: The other person says, "Oh boy, that's me."

Dave: Yeah. Then you would say, "Wow!" Then you would get really excited. You would say, "Well, tell me about it?" So then the next thing you want to do is go to them and have them talk a little bit more about their experience. Because if you're talking with someone, you want to get them to talk. When you talk about the client situation, the whole point is to spark them to say the "that's me" or "that's my friend" or "that's my sister" or something. And then you would say, "Well, tell me about it. Tell me what you know about it." or "Tell me about what's going on with you." and then in the conversation, depending on what they say and how it flows, you would then begin to share something about the surface problem, the way you see it and then you would weave in something about your insight and what you've noticed and that kind of thing. You would weave it into the conversation. But the key point is to get them talking. Does that make any sense at all?

Deborah: Yeah. Because that was the thing that I was getting a little confused about. Because I thought this model was trying to say all of this stuff and I thought, "Oh boy". Now it makes sense. I can understand the difference between writing and carrying on a conversation.

Dave: Yes. That's the key point. Thank you for bringing that up though. It's an important distinction.

Bob: I like the eliminating the clichés. That was a good insight on lack of communication. And I like the solution suggestion, how you move from one area to the other. I think that was very smooth and very good.

Dave: Cool.

Bob: And it would lead them along naturally.

Dave: Yeah. It leads them naturally. Exactly. That's the idea. It leads them naturally and the important thing for you as the marketer is to avoid talking about the source of the problem. Because if you go there in a marketing conversation, you've gone too far.

Bob: That's what I do.

Dave: That's a pitfall you fall into?

Bob: Yes. That's why I think this model of yours is excellent. The way that you have it diagramed is something to really look at and just kind of see the pattern to follow, which I get a lot of the areas mixed up when I'm talking with people at times.

Dave: Yeah. Very good. And the key point when you're looking at the model in your marketing, never go below the red line. You see the red line there? never go under that red line in your marketing materials.

Bob: Yeah, I think sometimes people would be too eager to be helpful. That's what I'd being doing, where I get too much into the source area.

Dave: Very good.

 

 Alright, folks. Well, the hour has flown by. Hopefully you have enjoyed it as much as I have. I will definitely send you the transcript of this conversation and the Real Audio and the last thing is, the program that I have coming up in January, the Brand Positioning program, is the band aid but now you know my trick so, you know that if you want to get into this and really get into it deeply in working through this model, in that program, that's what we're going do.

Bob: I want the solution now.

Dave: Yeah, right. (laugh) That's the way I like to hear you talk.