The Power of Personal Stories for Small Business Owners

Imagine you're at the grocery store.

You're picking out some oranges, looking at cucumbers across the way, and a stranger comes up and pitches a $4,000 website build.

How likely are you to pull out your wallet? Probably not at all.

They have zero credibility with you.

I'm Katie McManus, business strategist and money mindset coach, and I want to help you avoid being the online version of that off-putting stranger.

In this episode of The Weeniecast, "Build Trust with Ideal Clients & Create 'Superfans,'" I'll guide you through the process of turning total strangers into devoted superfans.

You'll discover why sharing weird and seemingly mundane details about yourself is critical in building trust and memorability with your ideal clients.

You'll walk away from this episode understanding how to create a connection with your audience that goes beyond business.

No more blending in with the crowd and being 'just another expert' in your industry.

You'll feel empowered to be authentically you online, making your business not just memorable, but magnetic to your tribe.

Timestamped summary

00:00 The grocery store.

05:14 Create holes in the canvas.

09:17 Former clients aligned.

12:17 ADHD minds & diverse interests.

20:07 Being overly generic hinders hiring and memorability.

21:21 Prefer human connections; embrace your authentic self.

Your next steps after listening

Want to come and experience a free monthly group session with me one Friday soon?

https://weeniecast.com/brave-biz-labs

Realizing it's time to work with me? Book your free initial strategy call with me - weeniecast.com/strategycall

Get more support in your ADHD entrepreneur life by joining my hyperfocus community! - https://weeniecast.com/hyperfocus

Wanna get this content earlier, and totally unbleeped? Subscribe to the Apple Podcasts premium version of this show - https://weeniecast.com/winners

Want to just buy me a coffee in return for some helpful insight? Thank you! Here's where you can do that - https://www.buymeacoffee.com/katiethecoach

Honorable mentions

The West Wing

David Fryman

30 Rock

Taylor Swift

WWE

Mentioned in this episode:

We'd love it if you'd give us a review

Review us

Join the hyperfocus community

Join other Weeniecast listeners just like you who have found their safe space as a business owner with ADHD!

Hyperfocus community

Here's how you can take people from stranger danger to super fan

by simply sharing weird factoids about yourself and building trust.

Hi, I'm Katie McManus, business strategist and money mindset coach. And

welcome to the Weeniecast. I want you to

imagine that you're at the grocery store, you're picking out some oranges, you have your

eyes on some cucumbers across the way, and a random stranger

comes up to you and tells you that

they can build a website for you for

$4,000. Would you give them

$4,000? Probably not. You'd probably get a little

skeeved out. You'd probably think, oh, a stranger danger. This is what my parents always

warned me about. Next they're going to tell me they have a van full of

puppies and candy, which honestly, like, if someone came up to me and they're

like, I have a van full of puppies, would you like to come see? I'd

be like, I love puppies. Yes, absolutely. And

then that's how I would disappear.

You're not hugging. Hiring strangers for big jobs. So why are

you expecting your clients to do the same? It

feels counterintuitive. But when you start a business and you're promoting it online,

yes, you need to post about your work. Yes, you need to talk about your

ideal clients and the results that you get them and share

testimonials. But you also have to share about

yourself because otherwise you get lost

in the noise of all the other people who do what you do.

How many executive coaches are there out there? How many consultants,

how many lawyers, how many email marketers? They all do what

you do. So the fact that that's all you're talking about,

you're never going to stick out to your ideal clients, you're

never going to be memorable. And that's really the crux of it. Ooh, I just

got to use the word crux. That's an exciting day. I love it when I,

like, throw in a vocabulary word that I know but I don't usually get to

use. This is gonna be, this is like an auspicious sign for

today, especially since I only got like 5 hours of sleep last night.

I'm using impressive vocabulary words, at least impressive to me. You're probably like,

that's not an impressive word, Katie. I don't know why I'm so excited about this.

I'm gonna move on. The crooks of it is that

as small businesses, we do not have a marketing problem.

Okay? We're not sitting around a boardroom wondering how we're

gonna spend our $17 million on our commercial for the

Super bowl. Okay, well, maybe you are. I know I'm not. And I

know all of my clients are not having that problem. We have a

memorability problem. We simply need to be

remembered by the right people at the right time when they're

ready to invest in the thing that we help with. I have a client

who's a litigation attorney. He's not relevant to everyone at all the time. Thank

God. If everyone were getting sued and suing other people all the

time, I mean, it would be great for him, but miserable for the rest of

us. Right? So his social media content has to be memorable.

It has to stick out. He has to seem like a friend. He has to

seem trustworthy so that when you do get sued

or when you think, hmm, today feels like a

litigious day for me, I really want to go and sue someone.

And not just sue someone. I'm gonna sue the pants off of them. You're gonna

think, oh, I should call David Frymande, right?

Versus, oh, there's legal issues.

Who do I know? Who's a lawyer? And then you go and ask a bunch

of people, do you know a lawyer who handles this? That's the magic of

being memorable. That's the magic of sharing a little bit about yourself. Not a ton.

You don't have to be super vulnerable online, but you have to share enough so

that people feel like they kind of know you.

Let's talk through the client journey so that you can really understand

how sharing a little bit about yourself can take people from absolute

stranger to super fan. So I want you to imagine, if you want to draw

this, long as I describe it, go for it

on a line. There are five points. The point all the way to

the left is stranger. These are people who have no idea

who you are. They've probably never seen your content. If they have seen

your content, it didn't catch their attention, and they have no

reason to see your face or your name and think, oh, my God, I know

that person. The whole world starts off this way.

I mean, honestly, you come out of the birth canal, you don't even know your

mom. You've never seen her face. You don't know her name.

You don't know your dad's name. Everyone is a stranger to you when you're

born. Throughout our lives, we tend to close that gap.

Not a lot. There are a lot of humans in the world, right?

But we tend to make friends. We tend to get to know people.

Your goal with starting a business and promoting

yourself is to turn as many of those strangers into people

who know you. Our goal is to share content

that is interesting enough to those strangers that they think,

oh, I want to see more of this. I'm going to follow this

person. So they go from stranger to follower. And

it could be something funny you shared about your life. It could be something helpful

that you shared about the thing that you do. It could be a

testimonial. It could be anything. I always like to have my clients

just imagine that they're standing on stage and

there's an audience of thousands of people in front of them, but no one can

see my client because there's a canvas in front of

them blocking them from the audience. Their job

is as the performer, as the person on stage is to

jab their finger through that canvas as many times and create as many

holes so that the audience can see them. And one

hole is gonna be, I don't know anything about sports. Another hole can

be, I love dogs. Another hole can be, I've

watched West Wing 47 times. Plus, I've lost count.

This is me on stage. This is all my stuff. Another one can be, I

talk about hot dogs all the time and weenies, but I don't actually like hot

dogs. Another hole can be I help people start businesses. Another

hole could be, I have adhd, and I work with people with adhd.

Another hole could be, I love cheese. It literally doesn't have to be

anything that is super interesting or

exciting. It just has to be stuff that people can read

and think, oh, I like cheese too. Cool. Oh,

I also am not that interested in sports. Huh? Oh,

she's telling people not to be a weenie. I think I'm kind of being a

weenie. Maybe I should follow her. She'll get me to stop being a weenie. It

doesn't have to be anything groundbreaking. And I think this is, like, where we

get really, really flipped out when it comes to

creating content for social media, is we think that we have to go skydiving every

single week. We have to have big, elaborate trips. We have

to be impressive. No, you don't. Literally, if you go

and share how you take your coffee, like, think of the

reaction people have to how people take their coffee. When

I see someone putting a bunch of sugar in their coffee, my teeth starts to

hurt. Okay. The amount of sugar just makes me want to recoil.

Even though I'm not even drinking their coffee. It's their coffee, right? My

sister, like, I'm gonna share something that's gonna make you think she's a

sociopath. I promise. She's not. She's a very nice person. But she drinks her

coffee black with three ice cubes. Cause she doesn't want to wait for it to

cool down. So she drinks black, kind of watered down

coffee. Like, people have a reaction to that. Right.

But, like, when you know something like that about someone, it makes you feel like

you know them. It makes you, like, that's something that you would know about

a friend that you went to coffee with. Right. So as

we're creating content and we're sharing it online and we're sharing parts of ourselves,

like, I want you to think about. You're poking all these holes in this canvas.

You're letting people see and have more details so they can add it

to their little folio of who you are. And eventually,

that person who has gone from stranger to follower, we'll jump

to the third point on our line of our client journey, and

that is friend. Now, the funny thing about this friend

point is it doesn't necessarily have to be an actual friendship. They can feel like

they're your friend and you still won.

You're not responsible for becoming friends with tens of thousands to people online. That's

not what I'm saying. That would be totally overwhelming, and your birthday parties

would be very expensive. We don't want that for you. Although I do love a

good birthday party. I'm starting a nonprofit called the Gay Birthday Club, and

it is a organization where we're going to call anyone in

LGBTQ community who wants a phone call. They have to sign up for it. It's

not like we're just going to randomly call everyone, but we're going to have volunteers

calling folks on their birthdays, singing happy birthday to them.

And this is specifically for folks who have stopped

getting a phone call from loved ones, from family members because

of who they are. And I'm a big believer that everyone

deserves, like, really bad, cringey singing on their birthday, whether

they want it or not, as a show of love. And just to know

that there are people in the world who are happy that they're there.

And so I'm really excited about that. But, like, speaking of

birthdays and there's more to come on this, I will be sharing more. I'm

super excited about it. I also am so excited because I actually have some

clients, some former clients, who are going to be on the board and getting involved,

and I just want to share this a. Because it was relevant because I mentioned

birthdays, but also b to point to this is the beauty of

being who you are online. This is the beauty of

showing up exactly who you are and building trust with people because you

literally attract the clients who are not just willing to pay

you money for the thing that you do, but who become friends,

who become super aligned to what you do, who want to

get involved in anything that you're up to. It makes your life

that much richer. It also makes the like your

power to have impact in the world that much greater.

So anyway, back to the client journey and building trust to his

people. So we have people who've moved from

stranger, absolute stranger, don't know who you are. If they tripped and fell over you,

they still wouldn't know who you are. At some point, they tripped and fell over

you. They saw your content. They thought, this content's kind of good. I'd like to

see more of this content. They became a follower. Oh. After becoming a follower

and seeing more of your content because it got pushed to their

newsfeed, they felt like, oh my God, this person just told a

story and I'm going to tell the story, but now I don't really know how

to refer to this person because they feel like a friend to me. At some

point, these people who are your friends online

are going to go to one of two places. Either they are your

ideal client and they have the problem that you solve.

At some point they're going to see a piece of content that you share

that is going to hit them in the gut and they're going to think,

okay, I can't do this anymore. I can't keep struggling with this

on my own. Here's someone who I know and trust, who I

like, who solves this problem. It could be

a legal problem. It could be you don't like doing your taxes on your own.

It could be, I want to start a business. It could be, I want to

get in shape. Whatever I need to just book a call with them. I trust

them. I know them. I feel comfortable with them. Right. That

basis of trust is there and they're willing to have that conversation about

giving you money to have your services, or they're

not your client at all, but they feel so connected to you that they

actually jump over the fourth point, which is client, and go to the fifth

point, which is Superfan.

And superfans are people who know you, trust you, like you understand

exactly what you do. They show up to your webinars, even if

they're not your ideal clients. They comment on your content even if the

content's not relevant. Them, because they want to promote your

work, because they believe in what you do. They believe in the help

that you offer. And these become some of

your best referrers. Squirrel. Which that word

referrers reminds me of that one episode of 30 Rock where

Jenna Maroney is in that movie the rural juror, and no one can pronounce

it. The rural juror. Yeah, that was a great show. Anyway, back

to the point, squirrel. Either way, you're either getting a client or you're getting people

who want to refer to you, which is incredible. And the

beauty of this, for those of us with ADHD is we tend to

have a lot of weird interests, and we tend to change interests a lot.

So we always have something new and novel, generally, to talk about.

And I know there's, like, this fear because we get made

fun of for it. We have weird interests, and, of course, like, our friends make

fun of us for this because we're constantly jumping from one thing to the

other, and it seems, like, really scattered to them, especially if they

don't have ADHD, because people who aren't

neurodiverse tend to just kind of have a couple interests, and we tend to

overthink this with our marketing because we're like, okay, well, I have to have content

pillars, and I have to share very specific things about my life, and it has

to be part of my quote unquote brand. And no, it

doesn't. It doesn't have to be this, like, perfectly formulated

brand image. It has to be you.

One of the best compliments you will ever get on

a sales call with someone that you've never spoken to before who has discovered

you through social media is they'll show up to the call, they'll

talk to you for a few minutes and say, oh, my God, you are

exactly how you show up online. You are the exact

person whose content I've been reading. You

sound the way you write, you sound the way you summarize stuff

on Instagram. Instagram or TikTok or wherever you're showing up. And

it's that click of it wasn't an act.

That nail in the coffin of, this is the person that I'm going to trust

with my money and with my future. But here's the thing.

Trust is two ways. Ooh, what am I going to say next? Well, you'll have

to keep listening to find out. But first, squirrel, squirrel, squirrel,

squirrel.

This is really scary. To go and be ourselves, our genuine selves

on social media. We have to trust

that we're going to find the right people out there. We have to

trust that there are going to be people who are going to resonate with us.

We have to trust them enough to accept us as we

are. Often people shy away from this. There are a few ways

people shield themselves from having to trust their audience.

One is they become the teacher. They spend a ton of time

giving away their knowledge for free and shoving

infographics at people and creating all of these slides

on canva and carousels and all that jazz, and

they just shove knowledge in people's faces. And sure, yeah,

that proves that you know some stuff, but there are a lot of people who

know stuff. Doesn't necessarily mean that I trust them enough with my money. And also,

if you're teaching me how to do the thing on my own, why do I

need to hire you? You've just given me everything I need to be powerful on

my own. Right. Even if it's just the surface knowledge,

which normally it is, it's not actually gonna help anyone, but it gives them enough

confidence to think that they can go and do it on their own, and then

they just get themselves into trouble. A recent client was creating kind

of a Persona on LinkedIn, in particular, a Persona of someone who is, like,

way grouchier than he actually is. Wonder who I'm talking about,

Neil. Hmm, I wonder. And of course, I just want to

name. I don't divulge information from my client sessions. Neil has

volunteered for this to be featured on this podcast. I do

honor confidentiality with my clients, unless they don't want me to.

And of course, like, you know, we see, we see actors doing this, we see

personalities doing this. We see a lot of public figures doing

this, right? And of course they are. There's. There's

protection in that. But as small business owners, we don't

necessarily have to do. They go to the same lengths to protect our privacy as

Taylor Swift does. We, we're also not in an industry

where we have to, like, put on, like, a particular Persona, like the

WWE. You know, a lot of those wrestler guys, like,

they're not going around being the villain or being Mister

America or whatever. I don't really watch wrestling, if you can tell.

As business owners, we get to just be human beings. We do not need to

have a Persona. One of the things about starting a business is learning, you know,

you have to learn how to sell your services. And it feels so icky, right?

Because we've all been in those buying situations where we're working with a

salesperson who we do not trust, they have not given

us any reason to trust them. They're using every

single pushy, manipulative tactic in the book,

and we just feel super grossed out by

them. Right. And oftentimes we don't buy from

them. We. We peace out sometimes. Like, we're in a situation where we can't.

We can't peace out. Like they have something that we genuinely need and we just

have to deal with it. But I can personally think back to

several purchases I made and investments I made in the beginning

of my business with people who I had red

flags from the very beginning that I didn't trust them and I

overlooked them and I regretted it, like, literally

had this whole arc in my head and

then went off on that one little tangent and I lost it. Those of

us with ADHD, one of the most magical

situations we can set up for ourself is where we're surrounded by people

who get us, people who get our weird sense of humor, who have

some similar interests, who have the same values.

We launch ourselves into, like,

the stratosphere of our best selves, of our favorite

selves. We become so creative. We have

clients where we're not worried if we're good enough for them. We

can take chances that oftentimes work out when

you focus on building trust with your audience,

showing them enough of yourself that

they can think, oh, man, I really want to hang out with this person. And

actually, I want to do more than just hang out with this person. I want

to invest in working with this person. You're not just getting business.

You are attracting your tribe. You're attracting

the group of people who will not just

make you feel good about who you are, but will become that

rising tide that lifts all boats. This is one of the reasons

why, you know, when I have clients who come to me and they're like, I'm

a witch and also I want to do corporate coaching, so I know I need

to drop the witchy stuff completely, forget it, hide

it, like, not bring it up at all. And I just need to go, like,

really hard with the corporate stuff, I'm like, no,

absolutely not. Absolutely not. Because here's the thing about

people. People can sense when you're hiding something. People

can sense when you're not showing up the way you actually

are, when you're putting on a front. They may not be able

to know exactly what it is you're hiding or, like, where the disconnect

is, but, you know, when you're talking to someone when they're being

fake, you know that feeling? There's like, this, like, creepy,

crawly feeling under your skin? You're just like, I gotta get away from this person.

It's not real. You think you're helping your business by hiding the thing

that you think makes you weird and not hireable.

By hiding it, you're making yourself actually weirder and

less comfortable to be around and less trustworthy. And not only

that, you're not giving the people who actually love the witchy

side of you. You're not giving them access to you. They're

out there thinking all these corporate executive coaches like, eh, they just

don't feel like the right fit for me, for who I am, versus if

you trust them enough to come out of the

broom closet or whatever it is that you call that and be yourself and

let them be themselves with you, you'd be able to

do some really incredible work together. And again, we don't have

a marketing problem. We have a memorability problem.

If you're an overworked, really stressed out,

overwhelmed HR rep who has to find an executive

coach to do some kind of lunch and learn workshop,

you're gonna go through the stack of resumes that are all the same

generic leadership development, executive coach

language around synergy and all the other buzzwords. Are

you gonna think, oh, my God, that funny person on

LinkedIn or on Instagram who talks

about clearing energy and all this stuff like that would be really

interesting to bring into the office? That would be entertaining, at least. And I know

there are a few people who'd really connect with it. The ways you've had to

dilute yourself to be able to fit into, like, a corporate

environment and be acceptable, and that's made you have an

easier time matriculating into school and workplaces and social

events, that's not gonna serve you in running a business. You

blanding yourself out blends your brand out

as well. It makes you harder to remember. And if you're harder to

remember, you're harder to hire. And there are enough

robots on social media right now sharing

generic information about whatever it is that you do

right. I don't want to be friends with a robot. I don't want to become

the client of a robot. I don't want to refer other people to robots.

I want to be friends with a person, and I want to work with people

I like, and I want to refer to people I like. And I don't

care how weird your interests are. There are people out

there who will like you for it. So go and be

your glorious, weird, interesting

hopping all over the place ADHD self. It will get you

clients and it will build the trust that you need for those

clients to stick around and actually become your tribe.

Honestly, like, if someone came up to me and they're like, I have a van

full of puppies, would you like to come see her? I'd be like, I love

puppies. Yes, absolutely. And then that's

how I would disappear. So if I ever disappear from

the world, just know that that's probably what happened. That or I saw a bobcat

and I was like, kitty, kitty, kitty, come here, be my friend. And then it

mauled me to death. Something I need to work on is to increase that

fear of wild animals. I just don't have it.

Squirrel, squirrel, squirrel, squirrel.