It’s okay in your marketing to talk about your people’s problems.
But make sure when you talk to your audience about their problems that you are talking about the right problems.
Not the ones that “wake them up at 3 in the morning” or that you think are the ones they’ll respond to the most. Or that will move them to make the biggest investment in your services.
Talk about the problems they might have that you are amazing and unmatched at solving.
Talk about the problems you can’t wait to get your fingers into, the problems that addressing makes your heart sing.
Tell the story through your own distinctive lens about what it means to be human, and what you know about how we move towards a better life. In that very particular and specific way you’ve been gifted to perceive and understand.
Find your words and metaphors and expressions and rhythms that make the story of that change, that new path, come alive. Your living Book of Language.
It’s not the goal to be interesting, but when you do this, you’ll write and speak about more interesting problems. Not the ones that everyone else is promising to solve. You won’t sound like everyone else. You’ll tell a better story.
And when you tell a better story, people listen. Your words land differently. They land with power and wisdom, in the solar plexus of your people. Not in their brains.
How do you name those problems, the ones worth talking about?
Look in your True Spirit. In the description of what you want other humans to feel and experience as a result of your presence and efforts.
The challenges that keep them from feeling and experiencing what you want them to feel and experience. (And truth be told, those feelings and experiences are actually the heart of your story, not the problems themselves).
Look in your True Wisdom. In the nuances of what life has taught you is the path for people to move towards what they desire and you desire for them.
If you don’t know your True Spirit and True Wisdom, take time to figure it out. Get help figuring it out. When you recognize what is here to come through you, when you name it, when you can describe it, everything changes about how you show up in the world.
Everything you say and do has more power and zing and life and intensity.
Only in the deep dive to the core of your Transcendent Message, and in the struggle to articulate it as cleanly and clearly as you possibly can, do you find the fire that your people will warm to.
Growing a business (or advocating for justice, or making art, or leading a team) isn’t easy work. It requires that you show up with the full force and power of your being. Unquestionably present. Able to open your mouth in a moment and speak to the heart of what matters. Able to sit down and put words on paper that come alive. That tell a specific story. A story that people aren’t used to hearing.
Every human, and I mean every human, including you, has a stunning voice. Something to say. And a language all their own to say it.
Finding that voice and developing your language is a kind of hard work. But it’s worth it.
Expressing yourself fully, clearly, as you move through the world can be your greatest source of joy and your greatest path to power.
Accept nothing less for yourself.