84 | When Your Message Is About You, Your Audience Won't Grow

Here's the thing: nobody tells you when you're building your brand. Your message, yes, it comes from you. It comes from your story, from your experience, it comes from your conviction. But the second you publish your message, it is not for you anymore.

So, yes, your message comes from you, but it is not for you. And if you are building for you, you will end up having a brand that doesn't connect, that doesn't get reach, that doesn't get engagement. So let's see what to do instead. Hello my love.

Welcome to Brand Confidence for Creatives. Are you feeling stuck in a cycle of overthinking, trying to build your brand? I'm Eugenia, but you can call me E. I'm a marketing and brand coach and I spent years stuck in the cycle of researching, hesitating, and hiding until I got clear on my voice and my message.

In this podcast, I'll guide you through the strategies you need to get clear on what you want to say, build a personal brand, and create consistent magnetic marketing. If you ever thought, I know I have something to say, I just don't know how to say it, you are in the right place. So grab your coffee and let's dive in. I used to be the friend who would rush to give an advice.

I mean, friend, daughter, sister, wife, like you would come to me with a problem, and within five minutes, we would have a whole plan on how you were gonna solve it. And I was actually pretty proud of this. I have a friend that she would say that she would never come to me with problems because if she came to me with a problem, that meant that we were gonna find a solution. And I was like, I know, yes, girl, I got you.

And yes, I am very proud of my problem-solving skills. But sometimes people just need to tell you something because they want to be heard, and I didn't know that before, but it turns out that people sometimes don't need advice, they don't need you to solve their problem because they're not ready for it. They know they have a problem, but they're not ready to change yet. So when they come to you, and in my case, when they came to me, they just wanted to be heard, they want it to be understood.

And rushing to give them advice, I've realized after a lot of self-reflecting, was a way for me to avoid being uncomfortable. I wanted to just get through it, let's remove the tension, let's fix it, instead of saying, okay, let's sit with this. This is very uncomfortable, I don't like this, and we're gonna sit here. And thinking about it, as I was preparing for this episode, we do the same with our content so many times.

We don't want to be uncomfortable, we don't want to have to like really sit and process our ideas, so we just rush to delivering them. And there's this side of business that says, build for the person you once wear. And I completely agree. Uh, working or helping people that are two steps behind you, yes, absolutely.

But also there's this other side of you are helping people that are in a position that you once wear, but they are not you, they are them, and that is an interesting balance and an interesting place to be in. And just as it works with friendship, we just need to make space for the uncomfortable if we want to build a brand that people resonate with. So, your message, the foundation of your content really it is born from you. It is born from your experience.

You are the person that gives life to your brand, to your message. I completely agree there. But if your message through your content then never makes the trip from this is what I believe to this is what my client needs to hear, if it's going to stay stock in your head, your content is going to become a journal entry. It's going to become a place where you process your emotion.

It's not going to be a conversation and ultimately it's not going to lead to sales. And the reason is that yes, your message comes from you, but it is not for you. It is for your audience, it is for your clients, it is for your community. You do need a moment of connection.

You need to talk about your story, you need to create those moments of building something where we see each other in each other's stories. But your content should transform your story also in service of a larger point. That doesn't mean that you're going to be one of those creepy LinkedIn people who turn like, oh, my baby was born this weekend, and that reminds me of giving birth to my startup. Like, no, we don't want to go there.

But what pieces of your story are naturally, right? Naturally and ethically leading into a bigger picture. And the reason is that people, clients, audiences, we are all online because we're trying to connect and we're trying to solve problems from a specific problem that's a tangible problem, from the problem of boredom. Like if you are stuck in line waiting for your prescription to be filled at CVS, you're gonna go on your phone because you are trying to solve the problem of boredom.

So your best fit client, the person that's going to be amazing in your community, is someone who has a specific, they have an urgent problem. They don't have like this one day, nice to have. Like they have something that's relevant to them, something that they are willing to make an effort to go out of their way to really solve them with all the uncomfortable things that come with solving that problem and working with someone and spending money or giving someone their attention.

Everyone, every single person, we are going to try to either avoid fear or reach success. That's it. Those are the core motivators, and there's sub-motivators under each one, but we are all trying to either avoid pain or maximize success, maximize happiness. So you need to understand where they are and meet them there.

For example, if you are a nutrition coach and I love using nutrition as an example because I feel like there's such a gap right now in the industry where everyone's talking about healing your relationship with food, and people are like, but I I want to lose weight. Uh, that's what I want. I want to lose weight. I I would love to heal my relationship with food, but like ultimately I want to lose weight.

If you keep talking, not only from you, but only for you, you're gonna say, oh no, no, no. It's all about relationship with food. Weight is toxic. Avoid the scale, avoid measuring, like you are not meeting your people where they're at and where they are a place where they're like, I just want to lose weight.

And I get it, it is hard. It is hard to think in terms of what I know that I know and what my person needs to hear. And it is hard because we are building a personal brand. A personal brand is based on our interests.

So it is hard to shape our content. We're just coming from our interests, from our criteria, and shape it into someone else's desire. It is a translation process, and that translation process can be a little uncomfortable. So it can be tempting to just speak to all things we find interesting, things we're learning, things we're experiencing, and they're wonderful, but they need a bridge to what your person needs, to their desires, to their fears.

Then there needs to be a connection. So if you are wondering if you're there or not, if if you think you are, maybe you are, but I'm gonna give you three signs that are definitely present whenever you are creating for you and not only from you. Number one, and this is present a lot, and this is low engagement. If your content is getting seen by people, but no one is engaging with it, either sharing, saving, liking, commenting, nothing, then there's a problem of resonance.

Your content is not speaking to your audience. Number two, if your ideas are not challenged, if you have an idea and just as it came out of you, it goes straight into the microphone or newsletter or your Instagram or your LinkedIn. If there's no friction in the process of translating your idea to make sure that it lands with people, you might be speaking for you. Because we have ideas, but there needs to be a translation process where we make sure that that idea is in service of the person you're speaking to.

It's not only you speaking from point B, knowing everything you already know, and hoping that person in point A makes all the connections. It doesn't work that way. And the third sign is that you cannot commit long-term to an idea. You cannot commit long term to a topic.

You experience something and you have a thought and you make a piece of content and then you move on because you released it. And I've seen it a couple of times when I've seen people that I know what happened in their businesses. Maybe they had an issue with a client or with a with a vendor, whatever happened, and then they make a piece of content, and it's kind of like they're processing whatever happened with you know, with this specific situation, and they give lessons and whatnot, but they never talk about that topic again.

They never mention it again. If they do, make they talk about it again, like within three months, but they don't sit with a topic long enough to explore it from different angles and to really develop their perspective. And that to me is a telltale sign that they are creating for them and not for the people that really need them. And there's there's a need sometimes to just create something for us, to you know, talk about our lessons or process something that is important to us, but that needs to be a special and very purposeful type of content.

That cannot be the foundation of our content strategy because then people stop feeling, hey, this is for me, this is speaking to my desires, to my fears, to my problems, and they feel like they are there to support you, to support your vision, to support your ideas. And remember what I said: people go on social media, on podcasts, they go to Sobstack, wherever they go, they are trying to solve a problem from the problem of boredom, from the problem of a tangible problem as it relates to their business, as it as it relates to their families, or to connect, right?

They like they want to solve the problem of lack of connection, and they are trying to connect with their friends, with their families. Whatever it is, we all have a reason to be there. So when your reason to be on the platform becomes, oh, come listen to my ideas, help validate my ideas, help me process all my issues, and you affirm me that shifts, that creates an imbalance. You are the leader of your community, you are the leader of your audience as a personal brand.

That is a role you've taken, and it's important that you sit with a topic long enough to evaluate it from different angles, that you challenge your ideas as you take them from this is what I think to this is what my person needs to hear, and that you pay attention to how people are responding and adjust your content accordingly to what they need to hear, not only what you need to say. I believe that your ideas are extremely important. I believe they deserve to be heard, they they deserve to be celebrated, and it is only a matter of you massaging them, translating them in a way that's relevant to the people you are trying to reach.

Implement these changes, let me know how it goes. Until next time, un beso. I hope you enjoyed today's episode. If you loved it, don't keep it to yourself.

Send it to a friend who's also trying to grow their brand without losing themselves in the process. And if you want to make my day, drop a quick review on Apple Podcasts. Seriously, it means the world to me. And I know that this show is helping you show up with confidence and clarity.

See you back here soon for the next episode. Un beso.