In the field of business coaching, conventional wisdom dictates that success depends on choosing a target market niche and working exclusively with clients who fit the criteria so you can become known as a specialist.  

But what if a potential client wants to hire you, not for your expertise but for the qualities and skills you possess, not your niche? 

Jen Liddy knew she was looking for a collaborator who could match her intellectual pace, acting not as a coach, but as a creative catalyst, unlocking the potential she knew she had, but wasn’t able to access through a course or group program, or on her own.   

She hired me for my creativity, intuition, insight, and no-nonsense directness, gifts I attribute to my ADHD, even though she doesn’t have ADHD herself, as most of my other clients do.   

This engagement is an excellent example of what’s possible when we trust ourselves to know what we need and where we can find it, instead of buying into somebody’s “proven process” or “step-by-step system.”   

Who is Jen Liddy? 

Jen is known for her innovative approach to content strategy and marketing, helping fellow business professionals articulate their expertise and master their messaging through strategies tailored to introverts and those seeking quieter, but deeply impactful, influence.

Connect with Jen Liddy:

• Website
• Linked In
• Podcast

As mentioned by Jen during our conversation:

Justin Blackman Pretty Fly Copywriting 

What about you?

This might be the perfect time to partner with a business coach who is also a licensed therapist, serial entrepreneur and collaborative thought partner to reinvent your business. The combination is uniquely powerful in going from stuck to unstoppable.  

I work with a limited number of 1:1 clients at a time, so I can customize our partnership to exactly what you need, no more, no less.   

Am I the right person, for the right reason, at the right time?  There’s only one way to find out.  Schedule a free consultation by clicking here. 

Maybe you’ll be my next Client Success Story! 

H: I start with a getting started questionnaire so we set expectations and decide on what outcomes we're going for from the start. And here's what you said, I want to decide, streamline, and take action. I want a clear description of who I work with so I can build my messaging and SEO content around that. I want to be known as the go to person in my field and position myself as an expert and specialist with confidence and clarity. It was an interesting challenge for me to work with you for a couple of reasons.

First of all, we already know each other. We met probably several years ago now and had worked together previously and through a marketing program that you co facilitated, and I was one of the people in that group. But also, you don't have ADHD, and most of my clients do. So I was kind of fascinated when your name popped up on my consultation calendar because I thought, first of all, I was delighted. I would love to work with you. But then I thought, she doesn't even have ADHD so before we jump into exactly what we created and what that felt like.

G: Yeah. The ADHD completely came out of the equation for me because I knew that whether I had ADHD or not, you still could help me. What I was looking for was a thought partner to help me think more creatively. And in my experience with you, you always did a really good job of like mirroring back or taking an idea and expanding on it. And I know you're personally an idea machine. And I never really think of that as my strength, especially when it comes to myself. I wanted to be mentored and partnered with somebody, but I didn't necessarily want to be coached. I didn't want the I mean, I'm 50 friggin 3 years old.

I didn't want somebody to ask me, why do you think you're doing that and what do you think is underneath? Like, I've already done all of that work. I have a therapist. I have healers. I do energy work. Like, I, wanted somebody who is really just gonna laser focus on my business. I had done a lot of over the past the previous, like 18 months, I had done a lot of healing work around other areas of my life, like the like, some family stuff came up, some personal health stuff came up.

So I just wanted somebody who and this is the part of your messaging that I was looking for is the no BS part. So I knew that you could help me whether I had ADHD or not. And it just was like, I did not wanna be led around by the nose trying to figure shit out. I wanted a cortisone shot to fix what was going on in my business. And I didn't wanna put it on somebody else, but I would definitely wanted a partner to get through that with me.

H: This is really hard to find because we're all being told in terms of marketing that you're either a coach or you're a consultant or you're a strategist. And you kind of are expected to choose a lane, I am all of those things. And it's like what the client needs at that given time and how to sort of help them untangle their knots and give them options. But I've had some of the same experiences that you've had, Jen, in that when you hire many coaches, they ask you a lot of questions and that's the standard in coaching. You're supposed to ask really good questions that sort of get the wisdom out of the client, their own inner wisdom. But sometimes that doesn't really help because we all have biases and blind spots that we can't recognize.

You know, the expression, you can't read the label from inside the jar. So coaching can be the exact right methodology at different times in our journey. At other times, it's more like consulting where I'm literally giving you advice. Sometimes I'm a strategic thought partner, and sometimes I'm like a sounding board while you verbally process things. And then my pattern recognition brain says, well, it sounds like this this this this. And then you're like, yes, and then we go through another round in the Voxer. I think that was one of the things that you really made such good use of during our work together is the Voxer coaching.

Because sometimes you just needed to download something and then hear how it landed on my ears so you could continue iterating it. Not everybody takes advantage of that. I think you took exceptional advantage of it because it really served you. And I love doing that anyway, because I'm a quick thinker. I can get right to the point and I think that was one of the things you were looking for the most, not to be told what to do.

G: Right, not to go it was another thing.

H: Somebody's proven system.

G: I wanted, I have and so I hope that people listening don't think I am pooh poohing coaching. Coaching is vital. And I have been coached a lot, but just where I am and what I knew I needed in my business, like, I'm really highly self aware at this point, I knew that something needed to change, but I just really needed that partnership. And so being able to verbally process over Voxer. And the other thing that was always very cool was you were very generous in your well, in your thoughtful responses, but always like, here's a resource that might help you. And so it just helped me move along so much faster than just waiting for our next time when we were gonna see each other face to face.

H: I think most people who are action takers and are at that point where they're like, I have worked way too freaking hard to be feeling this stuck. I just need to get in momentum and start moving forward. I think that's one of the things that was so fun about working with you, Jen, is that once you got clarity, you were like, ba bam, out the gate with it. And, you know, I think what a lot of people don't realize is when you're working with someone every week, that action happens between the calls.

During the coaching calls, we're figuring some things out. We're examining things. We're processing things, we're making decisions. But then in between, you were just taking a fuck ton of action every single week. And then when the action was like, okay. I'm not I don't feel like I have a 100% clarity on this. I don't know if I need to go left or right.

Then you'd shoot out a Voxer message. We'd go back and forth on it, and you'd be like, okay, now I got it and then you'd take more action. And I think being able to see people benefit from the thought partnership and implement so consistently and I think it's the deliverables too. Like, when people say a great coaching outcome is I have more clarity, that's not a great outcome in my book. That's like, okay, good for you. Yeah.

G: Yeah, and the clarity kept coming in ways. So a lot of people to understand that clarity isn't a straight shot. It was very zigzaggy for me. It started, right I'm thinking back to the beginning conversations that we had. And a lot of those beginning conversations were like, I'm hearing you say you don't want this anymore, and you don't wanna work with this type of entrepreneur anymore, and you don't want to feel like this anymore. And so a lot of it was the clarity of, like, almost like permission giving to me for me to let go of that stuff. So let me give some, clarity here for a listener who is like, well, what the hell is she doing?

So I, at that point, I had been working in the content marketing lane of the online business world for a long time. And I was I had had a membership. I had had one to one clients, I had a, you know, a small group program, I had done all of the things and none of them felt right. And it also I just I had an email list that was it is very, very engaged and reads myself, but they don't buy. And I knew that I would that people love what I have to say and they read my stuff and they like it. But for some reason, they weren't compelled to buy anything or work with me. And it just felt like this struggle so I really wanted help in knowing, okay, if these are not the right people on my list, I don't wanna attract more of them because I have a business and I wanna make money.

Who is it and what does my messaging have to be? So I really went back to this very foundational question of who do I wanna work with, and now who I had been attracting and the lead magnet that I had out there was attracting more newbie entrepreneurs who just really aren't ready to spend money on content because they really believe if they just cobble something together, they can make it work for them. So one of our first conversations was, I'm hearing you say you don't wanna work with new entrepreneurs anymore. You want them to be in business 3 to 5 years, and we just establish that. And it was like, yes, that's it and then we could start reverse engineering from there when I knew, okay, who it was.

But this zigzaggy journey then was like, okay, well, what lane of content because I'm not making a hard left into something else. I'm still gonna be talking about copy and content. I mean, I played around do I want to be a copywriter? Is that how I want to position myself? Do I want to work with wellness professionals? Do I wanna work with academics? Because the people that I was describing, you and I just kept playing around with who is that person. And at one point, I had gotten this really a new client came to me and she had written a book. She didn't know how to use it, she didn't know how to market it. And I was like, oh, it's authors, that's who I wanna work with. And it made all the sense in the world on paper. I'm a book nerd. I'm a word nerd. This is like right up my alley. I can help you move forward.

H: That's right. You're a former teacher.

G: I mean, did I took the entire month of November speaking of taking action, and I did target market research with these people I spoke to 40 different people, experts already in the field, people who are authors, people who are thinking about, like, being an author. And I got to the end of it, and I was like, no, that's not I don't wanna go in and learn publishing. It's like a whole new realm. I don't want like, I already have a lot of knowledge. I don't wanna do something where I have to start over again. So I had and honestly, I didn't spend one minute feeling bad about having those 40 conversations because all they did was, again, create incredible clarity. Like, it's a that's a no like, that's just a no now for me. It's not, so anything more I need to waste my time on right?

H: And that's exceptional about you, Jen. I just wanna pump the brakes for a second. I think that's really exceptional about you. And I think it's evidence of all the personal growth work that you've done. And this is not how a newbie business owner thinks and to be clear, this current iteration of your business is the current iteration of this business. You have been a serial entrepreneur. You've had several businesses and what we were going for this time was, I'm in my fifties. I wanna spend more time outside of work. I don't want it to consume my life. I have a teenage son who's gonna be grown and flown soon enough. I wanna have more time for him. I wanna have more time for my marriage.

We're gonna be empty nesters in a minute and I don't want to keep building something that I end up wanting well, that's either gonna suck the life out of you, and then you're going to have to burn out to save yourself. And newbies, just hear you say I had 40 I remember this so well. We had these conversations, we spent a couple of coaching calls getting this clarity. I thought, okay she's got her light bulb moment. She's off to the races. You went at it like a beaver building a dam. I was like, I couldn't believe how many people you interviewed and then you're like, you know what, it's not authors.

Now if you weren't so experienced, if you weren't so committed to the entrepreneurial lifestyle and to finally crafting and honing the business that you wouldn't wanna run away from, it didn't feel like a loss. It didn't feel like a fail. It didn't feel like, oh, for fuck's sake, here we go again. You were like, I am crystal clear based on evidence, based on data. You did hardcore market research, and then you gave yourself permission to say, pass.

Shit was changing online shit is still changing online people, business is different now. And I'm like, if I know if I know everything about online business and what has been done, and I know how disenchanted people are as audiences and clients. And we're gonna have to shift that I am for sure, not going to learn how to do it with authors and publishing on top of it. So it was really more of an energetic decision that you're right. I don't think like if I had been less mature in my business, I would have trusted myself. And that is a thing you and I talked about all the time was trusting myself, like, trusting myself and this other I'm gonna go back to this this sunk cost thing. Because I've been I've been so just give people a background, I used to be a high school teacher, then I was a college professor, and then I left academia to open a brick and mortar fitness studio with 2 business partners.

I don't think that's a popular thing that people talk about, but I don't want a 7 figure lifestyle. I don't want a big company that's churning out things, that's not my dream. So I did trust myself to be okay with all of that stuff. And I also had to you and I had many talks about the sunk cost fallacy of, like, just because you've put a lot of time into it doesn't mean you should keep doing it. So it was all of this I would say a lot of our coaching was around letting go of shit and decluttering shit and redefining what it would look like in the future. And that was I couldn't do that by myself. I really needed a thought partner with that.

H: I don't honestly know that anyone can do it by themselves. Because as women of a certain age, we have been culturally conditioned for decades to follow the leader, stay with the herd, seek safety by doing what everyone is doing, seek permission. I have been using this expression lately, seek permission like life is one big game of mother, may I? And if you feel like doing something that other people aren't doing, it usually causes a lot of doubts and uncertainty. And women are not conditioned to trust themselves and to do what feels good and right and necessary to them. So it what ends up happening is that we expend a tremendous amount of time, energy, effort. We build something that is solidly in our zone of excellence.

Meaning, we have the skills. We've put in the time. We are known for it. We're good at it. It gives us some level of financial and emotional reward, but it's not ideally suited to us. And to be able to un unpack that and literally start casting it off like you're downsizing. And then what is a right sized business? Do you want to work with a team of people? Do you wanna manage people? Do you wanna have a big ad spend? Do you want to be on the hamster wheel of scaling and scaling and I mean, sooner or later, it's gonna go bust. All of these types of schemes do but, like, is that gonna give you the lifestyle that you want? Because your life shouldn't be all business, it should your business should be a piece of your life.

It should support your life, but it shouldn't take over your life unfortunately, the way online business is being taught and most of us are just swallowing without even seeing what it tastes like, that's where we end up. I just cannot believe the number of women that are talking about being burned out right now. And I think it's sort of the inevitable result of not trusting ourselves and indulging in the sunk cost fallacy. I've spent $20,000, I've spent 5 years. I've got all these people on my list, and now I don't want to serve that group of people anymore. You have permission to do what's right for you.

G: And a little bit of confidence. It took confidence for me toget to the end of 40 different kinds of conversations that people gave me their time. And I took my time and I asked a lot of questions and to get to the end of that and be like, that was really good, but it's not it. And to not get frustrated with myself at that moment.

H: Yep or guilty that you wasted people's time or wasted your time. Or I had a moment of doubt there because it seemed like you were so what I like to say, focused fired up and flame retardant. You were I am here to win it and I thought, wow, this is going really well. She's really excited. She's getting all the market research. She's got her offers lined up. And I do wanna talk about how you came to the point where you decided on your offers and your price points and all that. But and then it was like, and I'm not gonna do that. And I was like, oh, now I I had a moment where I thought, now I get it. Now what?

But it was such it was such a turning point because that moment of doubt. Well, I was not doubting you, Jen. Oh, I was doubting that I was meeting your needs because we were we were halfway through, and you'd spent all this time and energy doing something that hadn't really moved you towards the goals that we talked about. I think I had those moment of uh oh now what are we gonna do?

G: I think that as coaches and consultants and service providers, we often doubt ourselves, especially if our clients aren't, like, getting the end result. And I have a client who she's a retainer client of mine, and she really loves to take her time. And she's pivoted a few times and she's a retainer client. So sometimes I'm like, God, I'm just not meeting her needs, she must think I'm just not doing it. And every time we get on a call, she's like, I'm so grateful for you, I love having all of this space to figure it out.

I love how you pull shit out of my head and make me see my entire messaging differently. And so, I think that I would guarantee well, I first of all, never doubted you. And I knew it was my process. I was grateful to have you along for the ride with me. And I never would have blamed you of at the end, I didn't get results. And I want to talk about that, because it's interesting. But I think I do think back to other programs I've been in and coaches I've worked with, and I've always achieved some goal, it may not have been, you know, the end like there it was, it's never tied up in a bow at the end of any program.

You're because you're always iterating on what you learned or taken away, and then you're implementing it. And sometimes I've left programs and I've been like, why didn't I do that program that just doesn't even seem like, why the fuck did I choose to work with that person? Or why the fuck did I choose to do that? But at the end, and I will tell you for some of those problems, for some of those programs, it's been like a year later, and I'm like, oh, that's why I had to do it or oh, because I don't want to do it that way anymore. I think I we take something from every experience that we have. And if anybody out there is thinking like it's your coached job to tie it all up in a bow for you, then you're, like, you have the wrong expectation about working with somebody.

H: I really appreciate you saying that because I think people who take themselves seriously, who take their work seriously, who are goal you're very goal oriented. And it's like, okay, I want something measurable. It's one of the reasons why it's one of the reasons why I decided to stop being a therapist and become a coach because so much of the progress, so much of the results with therapy are intangible. And what's often true is that I would witness people growing, changing, and then they would either say, I don't know, I don't really feel like anything's happening here.

Or they would more likely attribute it to some movie they saw or some you know, I'm just like, I'm like, you bitch, I have literally walked you and stuff myself. But it is an interesting thing to think about because setting expectations and continuing to check-in as we go along, it's a good way to not let things get completely lost and off the rails, but you're a 100% right. It is a personal commitment to our own development and success that we really can't outsource to someone else.

G: I struggle with that because the work that I do is kind of like yours. It's iterative. It can be slow. Finding somebody's, like, exact right message, who they wanna work with, how they like, that's the work I do. And some people can get there fast and some people want to meander. And so to speak to your question about offers, well, I knew that the offers I never wanted to do at this point in my life, like, I don't want a membership. So all the things that people tell you to do to scale, I'm just not interested in right now. Just where I am in my life and energy, and my needs. I don't want a membership. I've already done that. I don't want a mastermind. I love teaching a workshop, but I just want to be in and out.

And I realized, I love a one off session with somebody do you have, you know, because I find it very hard these days, to be able to get somebody's brain on something because everybody's either scaling or has a group program or it's some evergreen thing or they're not even showing up for it or they have somebody else showing up for it. Like, I usually just need an hour of someone else's brain and experience and attention. And I really loved doing these one off sessions that I was, practicing with. And I can get a lot of success for somebody, I mean, we can get pretty far in an hour. And again, that was trusting myself, right? Like, we come on cold, I don't know what we're gonna talk about. But I have so much experience and a natural talent, that we can get you pretty far. So I was like, okay, that's an offer that I want to have, the one off strategy session.

H: And you were clear about that the whole time. Like, it and we and we should talk about, before we get too much further, who you decided you weren't gonna work with authors anymore, who you decided you were gonna work with. But one thing you were clear from the beginning and I tested you in a lot of different ways because I know that it's just not something that other coaches, consultants, or strategists are really encouraging people to do is one off sessions. In fact, I think there's a lot of people who think, well, that's not a that's not a leveraged offer. But you didn't want to build your whole business around this. We created an offer suite but you wanted to retain that as one way to work with you.

That was not just good for people who either wanted to kick the tires and not make a big investment of money and time, or who really just had a very specific thing that could be knocked out of the park in an hour. But you also wanted to do it because you enjoy doing that kind of work. Not exclusively, but like, it looks like a swap mission you know? You get in, you see what needs to be done. You do it, and then you get out of there and there's no follow up, it’s clean.

G: There's no deliverable, there's no home work. I don’t know if a consultant feels the same way but when I have a retainer client, I'm carrying them with me all the time, just like you are right? Like you're, you were checking in with me, you're thinking about me, you see a resource, you think, oh, generally could use that and I do the same. All of us do those things for our clients when we're on a retainer with them. And it's invisible work, but it really is still energetic work. And it doesn't work in the labor, very hard for a client to understand that and understand the value of that. But that's what I do with a retainer client.

So I've got the one off sessions, and then I've got the retainer clients that work with me 3, 6, 9 months or whatever, a year sometimes. But then there's these people who just want their messaging or their content strategy or they want something done, and we are gonna do it in a 30 day sprint. And that is compressed time and a deliverable, a very clear deliverable with, you know, lots of, moving parts. And you want that in 30 days, you're gonna have to show up for that. And I'm gonna have to show up for that, but it's a more expensive thing. So it would be like, that's my premium offer. I mean, long range monthly retainer actually becomes the middle offer. But the premium offer is this 30 day sprint. And when I've been talking to people about it, they're just like, if you can do that, that's amazing, I want in on that.

H: Yeah. Because we talked about, in rightsizing your business, how many clients could you energetically serve? At what price point for these quick in and outs, for the retainer, which means you're having an ongoing relationship with them. And like you said, I love how you described it that you're, like, carrying them with you all the time. Because it's kind of like being a parent in a way. They're even if you're not in front of your kid, you're always thinking about them. But then the VIP offer was either going to be a day rate or some sort of a quick thing. But the sprint, you're focused a lot on them and on the deliverables, and it's a premium offer because it's a compressed timeline. These are for people who wanna get it done, get it done right. It can't be done in a day.

G: I can probably do 1 or 2 a month, I haven't quite nailed down all the systems. If I when I get this this is at the very beginning stages. So when I get the systems down, I may be able to do more. The other thing is the right person for this offer has to be at a they have to be mature in their business, be able to afford it for sure. But more importantly, like, this is not a person who's just, like, trying to figure out what they want to do. This is a person who's, like, been in it for a while, doesn't know how to talk about their business, doesn't know how to talk about their expertise and so I know exactly who it's for and I know what the messaging has to be.

So I'm just building that right now. And that was just born out of some people who were saying to me, like, I love what you're doing, I need it like yesterday. And then when I was taught when I would talk about like a done in a day situation, they love the idea of a done in the day. But because it's the kind of work they're not naturally good at or exhausts them, they knew that it would be just so depleting for them. So I thought maybe a 30 day sprint is a way to go for somebody like that. So I'm just in the middle of building it, but that's eventually what my offers came out to be.

But when you and I had finished, I knew that I had the retainers and the one off sessions, and I just felt fucking unapologetic about it. And it was like, I don't care if everybody on the planet thinks I'm supposed to scale, or I'm supposed to do a digital shop because I have 71 trainings living on my computer that I'm supposed to turn into something else. Like, this is where I am and this is what I wanna do. And it felt really talk about trusting myself and rightsizing my business, for me, that's where I was.

H: I'm definitely going to use this as the one minute snippet that everybody's gonna get on video. I'm gonna post that every because truly, it's like so many things that you learned during the process. I mean, you came trusting me and you learned. You really did know what you wanted, you just didn't really realize it. And it was like, I almost thought about it. I don't know if I ever shared this with you. You know how I am with my analogies. Well, that's the only way I can get anything to stick in my brain, you know. But I almost thought about it like we were, removing all the excess of all the things that you had done, all the things that you felt obligated to do, all the things that you had paid to learn, all the things that people had hired you for, all the things that you saw everyone else doing, like pulling all the tissues out of a big gift bag.

And then what was at the bottom was the actual gift, which was your right sized business energetically, your right sized offers, your right sized price point, your right sized number of clients for each of those offers that you could really picture. And I think another way you trusted yourself was this dynamic of for example, a lot of people say find out, like, voice of customer research, find out what your ideal client wants and then make that. Yeah, but you know what, not necessarily. If you do only that, you're gonna end up doing things that you don't actually really want. But because they want them and they're paying you, you can get really heavy with resentment and obligation.But if you only create the things that you wanna create without testing whether anyone wants them, you're gonna be spending a lot of time being broke.

So I think you were doing the market research that was necessary and letting things go if they didn't work, but you were also listening to the people that you were attracting. And, like, okay, these people are already attracted to me. These people already wanna work, what are they asking me for? And what would it be like to create an offer that would attract more people like them who wanted more offers like this? So I saw that as being you really were able to utilize your current clients to help craft these offers. I think a lot of times we're just we're doing that in isolation. We're coming up with stuff and then it's like, how come nobody wants my shit? It's like, because you didn't test it.

G: And that's just like a little more subtle addendum, that sometimes they don't know what they're looking for, and they haven't put the fine point on it yet. So by the time you and I had wrapped up our work, we got a lot done. I felt more confident, I knew what I wanted. I felt like all of the things that we've talked about. But the one thing I didn't have was the who my person is. And I kept trying to put that person into a demographic, right? Like it's wellness professionals, it's authors, it's academics, that's where we got like professionals.

So you know, this funny thing happened that I January 2nd, I had to have this droopy eyelid surgery to, it was plastic surgery. My eyelids had fallen so far that 50% of my vision was gone, so I had this surgery. It got scheduled for January 2nd. So I can't look at a screen for 3 weeks, And I can't do any work Diann and I have just done 4 months of link wringing the shit out of my business and what do I want and I can't learn anymore. I can't talk to any more people. And so I had to sit. And I actually decluttered the hell out of my house because I was physically fine, but I could not look at a screen. And I just sat and let my brain work and relax and work and relax, and I didn't force anything. And I started to see patterns, and this other piece of it was I have had plastic surgery. I look like Frankenstein's monster right now.

H: It was pretty scary. I could validate it.

G: It was wearing blue locker glass, so I looked like Bono. I had, like, orange glasses on, but I wasn't going to be visible, and I wasn't going to be in the spotlight. And I started to think about this idea of the spotlight and all the people I had talked to, you and I kept talking about these professionals who are subject matter experts. And when I talked to these people, they did not want to be called experts. They have many letters after their name. They have years of experience. They have shit they've created books and courses, but they don't see themselves as experts. So I started thinking about these people, and I'm like, these people are so smart, and they wanna make an impact and yet, they don't wanna be in the spotlight. They don't like that marketing is about them.

So I started to think about this, and my brain just finally like, it all gelled. Everything finally came together, but I had to trust that it would and all the work that we had done and I knew that it would come together, and it did. And one day it popped into my head, and I'm calling it quiet influence and it's the power of audience centric marketing. Because when we can put our audience before us, there's like, well, there's 2 types of people I've been talking about. There are the here I am people, and those people are awesome. And we need them and they walk into a room and they're like, look, here I am how awesome I am. We're like, thank God you're here because you're so awesome, right?

But then there's all the other people who are like, there you are, look at you, there you are. And I started to think about these people and how that shows up in our relationships in real life, and how it shows up in marketing online. And from there, it all just developed into this idea of audience centric marketing, quiet impact, quiet influence. And I had a 40 minute drive at the tail end of this recovery. And, like, the whole this whole signature talk just downloaded. So I had my AirPods in, and I just hit record on my phone, and I just started talking and it, like, it just flowed.

H: You almost had an experience of being an introvert to guide you. You know what? What jumps out at me from this, Jen, is that and I've had those downloads where you've been, you know, ideating, iterating and ideating and iterating and like, and it's all kind of oh, God. It gets frustrating at some point. But then all of a sudden, you just get this like download. And I've had that come to me like an entire program, an entire body of work, an entire marketing strategy, a signature framework, a talk, a book like, I've had that. And I've also walked away from that, but I'm not gonna do it. Because I know it will happen again because my brain has the ability to do that. But what's striking about what you just shared is that you needed to get quiet and not allow any of that or input. By not being able to look at a screen, you literally close the door to your mind. No more incoming information. No more interviews.

G: No more courses, nothing.

H: And it reminds me of the feedback that I have gotten that if you want to create, weigh the foot down and do it. You put yourself in a creative space by literally closing your eyes.

G: It was like divine intervention because I was supposed to have the surgery much earlier in the year, and it just, like, they couldn't schedule me in. If I had had that surgery when I was supposed to, it would have been right in the middle of me doing those 40 interviews for the authors and the books. It was just like this, you and I were wrapping up. It was January, I had all of January, like, to just go quiet. And I've heard other people talk about this, these downloads, and it really has never happened for me so powerfully. But these people that I've heard do it, like, they get into deep meditation or they take a retreat or they I have never been able to quiet my brain enough to do that.

H: You just had to be barely blind.

G: And I think if you're exactly where other thing just like everything came together, like I said, like a puzzle because I realized all of these introverts, this is how they feel all the time. And there's a lot of marketing out there for introverts. But I'm an extrovert and I feel the same damn way. And I'm not particularly private, but I feel the same damn way in my marketing. Like, I don't want to be jazz handsy or center stage or make it about me. And I think a lot of people like me, the there you are type of people, they have been told that they have to learn to love the spotlight in order to even try. And so if you can't do that, then I mean, your self talk is then why will I bother forget it.

H: The language you're using is so perfect. As you were sharing it, I'm just like, yes, yes, yes. I mean, it just it it's so I could see the through line of every all the tissue that had to be pulled out of the bag. And it's like so it could be revealed to you and also, I think a really important thing you did was that you were looking at, like, what group of people? Is it, you know, health care professionals? Is it licensed professionals? Is it therapists? Is it this group? Is it authors? Is it content creators? Is it course creators? We went through all of that, all of that. But it's not how a person earns their living or what their credentials are. It's how they feel about their expertise, their body of work, and how they share it with others, like the psychographics right?

G: I just wanna add this one little it feels like a throwaway, but it's important. I thought about what would it be like to work with authors every single day? What would it be like to work with therapists every single day? I'm like, I think it would be boring for me, but I could work with a therapist and an author and a healer and a coach and a lawyer right? Like, I could work with all of these different people, and it's going to be a little bit different and very customized and customize the kind of work I wanna do and so it that finally felt like the right fit. So I almost like I was like, oh, I have to get really narrow in my who. But actually, I had to go up just a little bit and get clear on, like, what is the through line that they all are feeling or experiencing or want and that's where it finally landed for me.

H: So when I go back to what you said you wanted, you wanted to have 2 to 3 profitable offers. You wanted to streamline your marketing strategy and make a decision about what you were gonna continue doing and what you were gonna let go of and how you were going to what you were gonna call yourself. Were you gonna call yourself a copy coach? Were you gonna call yourself whatever? You clearly accomplished all of those things. But there's one thing we haven't talked about yet in this conversation. What did you decide to do with the podcast?

G: And I decided to keep the name, so the name of the podcast is Content Creation Made Easy. And even though I'm now calling myself a brand message and content strategist because I wanna work at a higher level, like, with people rather than down at the copywriting piece. Content creation made easy is still it's very searchable. And I had to kind of wrap my head around what I wanted the podcast to do for me and my marketing strategy. So, I have pretty much broken up with Instagram and Facebook. I'm dabbling a little bit on LinkedIn, but like, I don't really enjoy the socials. And the podcast is one of the ways I wanna market myself.

My email list is how I mostly communicate with people. But being on other people's podcasts is my favorite marketing way to do because I love these one to one conversations. And if I have a podcast, I'm much more likely to be on other people's podcasts because I can invite them on to mine? And so I really see the podcast as not just a way to get information out, which I really love, and have deep one to one conversations. But it also gives me a platform that makes me a little bit more yeah, it's like a little bit more of a value based, and I have something to offer.

H: So what is your next thing because what you've accomplished in just a very short few months is, I'm sure, inspiring to many people listening and I know you're not done. It was such a delight to work with you every single step of the way. And I'm wondering, what is the very next thing you are going to be offering, creating, or exploring in your business?

G: There’s this piece of the puzzle for people that's very hard to do on their own, which is to master the voice that they need. Like, I can give them tactical stuff, but I really there's a guy that I really have been following for a long time named Justin Blackman, and he is a voice expert. And he has a framework, and the work he has, and I probably followed him for 2 years thinking, no, I don't really need help with teaching people voice. But if I can shortcut helping an expert find his or her voice or their voice, and we can get them sounding like themselves because I think what happens for subject matter experts is they get online and they see other people's cutesy or quippy or snappy or sassy, and they're like, that doesn't fucking sound like me. I don't know how to talk to sound like myself, or they are overly professional or overly academic or whatever. That is my next thing that I'm diving into because I can put that directly into I can make an offer around just that.

H: That sounds perfectly suited to your premium offer, Jen. Like, positioning that as your 30 day sprint because clearly, you're not gonna knock that out in a one off. And if you did it on a retainer level, it would draw the process out too long. I think 30 days sounds like that.

G: I think so too, and I'm excited about it. And I'm just wrapping up some of the found so you know how it is when you come up with an idea, there's a 1,000,000 steps. You're like, just, oh, here's boom. Here's my idea, no. You have to, like, make an opt in and make the transcripts. So blah blah blah. Like, I'm in the midst of that right now, but it's almost done. So my foundations for this new audience are so close to being done. And now I can think, okay, what is that 30 day sprint offer gonna look like and that program will help me design it.

H: Well, I'll tell you what, you do not need me as an accountability partner, but I do believe that incentivizing things tends to make them happen quicker. So I'll tell you what, make a public declaration and a promise, I will share it with my people. It's also selfish because I feel like that's kind of like the, you know, cherry on top is a unique a unique offer that is the culmination of rightsizing your business, clarifying your ideal client, and putting it in a package that feels really good to you to sell and deliver. So I'm all in that.

G: Thanks Diann. You were so sure patient with me at times when I just was so sick of myself, and I was sick of the iterating and sick of the journey with myself, but you were always patient with me. And I would recommend working with Diann, if the things that I'm saying and the type of personality that you know, I'm presenting with resonate with you, and you're that person who just wants a partner, Diann could not be better. She is 5 star. I highly recommend 5 out of 5, Like, 6 out of 5, actually.