How We Dilute Our Message and My Real-Time Story

INTRO: After generating over a million dollars in sales and selling one of her businesses with a single email, your host, Kathryn Thompson, takes an unconventional approach to marketing and sales. So if you're ready to tap into a more powerful way to be seen, heard, and a sought after entrepreneur in your industry without having to spend endless hours marketing your business and chasing clients, you're in the right place. Be The Sought After Entrepreneur Podcast is here to help you ditch the cookie cutter, one size fits all approach to marketing and use your unique energy to effortlessly attract the most aligned clients. When you do this, you can spend less time marketing your business and more time doing your soul work and enjoying the richness of your life. Welcome to Be The Sought After Entrepreneur Podcast. And here's your host, Kathryn Thompson.

Kathryn Thompson: Hey, hey, super stoked that you're tuning in this week's episode. I cannot wait to dive in today's topic [00:01:00] because I want to share with you a real time story that I'm navigating in my business so that you can potentially garner some insight or inspiration or whatnot from it.

And I think it'll be really beneficial because it has to do with diluting your message and diluting what it is that you truly want to say. And even me as a messaging expert, conversion copywriter, content creator, marketer. I too equally struggle sometimes with diluting my message and not necessarily on purpose.

It's just as somebody who has 20 plus years experience in marketing, I've been trained a certain way. And that conditioning and that training, can be really difficult to unlearn because what I do and how I write and a lot of the ways is subconscious. Like it's intuitive. It's innate. I don't even think about it anymore, but I want to share with you what sort of has [00:02:00] transpired recently, um, with me and my business and something that I was getting ready to create and put out into the world that I'm really uber excited about.

And what I'm really uber excited about is, What is is that I'm recording a beautiful private podcast series. It's an experience that is going to really peel back the curtain in terms of how I've created my success, the messy, the chaotic, the triumph, all of the things that I did, but more importantly, how I did it by going against the grain in a lot of ways and not listening to what people told me would work.

And I know this is a very big sticking point for lots of people, including myself, right? In that it's easy sometimes to go, that person's guaranteeing if we do it this way, it'll work, even though it might not feel a hundred percent congruent with us. And oftentimes our intuition is sort of nudging us and, or maybe even [00:03:00] screaming really loud that this isn't the direction.

And yet sometimes we go down these paths that it isn't the right direction. direction or path for us. And for me, it's not as easy as saying to somebody just trust your gut and trust your instinct. Because like I said, I've spent 20 years trained in traditional marketing and even though I see where things are going and I see how things are changing and I see what is no longer working that used to work.

When you're trained in something from a very, you know, for a very long time, it gets ingrained in you in a lot of ways. And so, recently, like I said, I was getting ready to I'm getting ready to create this podcast. And part of that is writing like the copy around it and setting the intention for it and all those sorts of things.

And I'm uber clear on my intention. Like I said, this isn't me recording a private podcast. It's going to give you some blueprint so that you can take that blueprint and overlay it into your life and business. It's actually the polar opposite. It's [00:04:00] really designed to show you how I went against the grain and didn't necessarily listen to a lot of the things people were saying that I needed to do in order to be successful because it didn't align with me.

And yet I was able to create these massive quantum leaps in my business. And what's interesting is lots of people will say, like, I literally saw you in October of 2022. And then I saw you at the end of November in 2022. And it's like your business had literally drastically shifted. And I want to peel back the layer on my process, my creative process, my intuitive process, how these things sort of came to be for me.

And then how I practically have done things so that you could walk away after listening to that podcast and literally see for yourself how I went about doing things. It's going to be highly valuable and it's, it'll be free for now, but it will eventually be turned to a paid offer because it [00:05:00] literally is, you know, um, sort of my roadmap and a path and a showing of how and what I did so that it can provide you with some insight and inspiration of what's possible when you carve your own path.

So I want to share with you the process that I'm in at the moment. Like I said, my idea for the podcast, this private podcast literally dropped in. And oftentimes when an idea drops in, It just drops in, this is what I want to do and I feel really excited about it. It's similar to selling the invisible.

When selling the invisible dropped in, it was like it dropped in, I was excited and it was merely an idea. And to be honest with you, oftentimes the name isn't there for me. Oftentimes I just have an idea or an intention. I want to do the thing. So for the podcast, it was like, I want to record this podcast.

I want to literally give it all away. I want to be able to share the raw, the unfiltered, all of it. So that [00:06:00] people have it as this beautiful resource and this beautiful insight and an illustration of what's possible when you trust your intuition, your gut instinct. And when you trust just the idea that might not seem logical or make sense to anybody else, I wanted that to be the intention.

That was similar for the quiz, that was similar for selling The Invisible, that's been similar for Spellbound. This is, this is my process in a lot of ways and I'll share more on this private podcast. But when the ideas sort of drop in, I don't have a name. I don't have it perfectly worked out. I don't have all the steps.

I don't have all the episode names. I have none of that, right? That's part of my process is eventually I will sort of get to that. And what's interesting is, is that I had the idea drop in and sometimes one of my You know, Achilles heel, let's just call it is. I can feel like I'm rushed to get it to market or get it out there.

I feel this undue pressure that I create within myself. Nobody else is creating it. No one else is telling me that I [00:07:00] need to do it a certain way or whatever, but I just feel this pressure to get it out there. Like I get so excited about the idea that I want to get it out in like 2. 5 seconds. whether that's a manifesting generator thing or just me and who I am, but I want to get it out there.

But part of that is, is that I rush my own process. And so what I ended up doing was I sat down to write the opt in page for it. So I'll often start, like I said, with the intention. It has an idea. It's not necessarily fully formed. And then I sit down to start to like, brainstorm what episodes I would want to put in there.

What I like, Sort of the essence of each episode, so that, you know, the listener is going to walk away with some really uber, tangible, valuable insight, and I want it to be intentional, and then I sat there to write the opt in page, and it's interesting because the Episodes were so me, and the [00:08:00] episodes were so dialed in on exactly what the intention of the podcast is, but when it came time to actually write the opt in page, I think I was feeling rushed, because I had given myself a deadline.

because I had given my team a deadline of like, I'm going to have this to you by this date, and I want this page built by this date. And the problem was, as I was rushing my own timing and my own creative process. And so I wrote this opt in page. And before I sent it to my team to build, I have mentors in my world that I love as reflectors.

So most of the people that I hire to support me, um, As a mentor is actually I'm hiring them as a mirror. So I want them to reflect back to me what they see. I don't, I'm not hiring people to tell me what to do, when to do, how to do it, what to say, when to say it. I work with mentors in that fashion as a thought partner, but more so as a reflector, like a mirror, I'm going to shine back to what I'm seeing.

You tell me what you [00:09:00] think. And so I write this often page and I send it to one of my mentors. And it was funny because on our call, she said to me, you know, I love the essence of the podcast. I love what you're wanting to sort of do, but like, talk me through this, you know, this opt in page because the opt in page doesn't reflect what it is that you're wanting to share, but also it doesn't really reflect your personality.

And what ended up happening was, is that the opt in page title was basically like my proven process to six figures. Won't, won't, won't. Right. Um, and there's nothing wrong with those types of headers and whatnot, but it did not reflect what I want to share in the podcast. It didn't, it wasn't congruent with the, the whole essence of the message right of going against the grain.

I'm like, here's my proven roadmap, you know, um, which again is, is polar opposite of, of the message I'm wanting to put out, but [00:10:00] also what I want people to walk away with. I don't want people to walk away with a blueprint. Here's a paint by number sort of thing that you can just, you know, follow and then life will be grand.

That's not what it was. And so. It's interesting because like I said, you know, in real time, here I am diluting my own message. And when I started to sort of unpack it, again, it comes back to my traditional training in a lot of ways, but it comes back to the idea of getting it right. The notion of I need to get it right.

If I'm going to put in this effort, I want to get it right. I want it to work. And you might be resonating with this as I'm saying this. I've just spent a beautiful week working behind the scenes in somebody else's launch, taking sales calls and having DM conversations. And this By far is probably one of the biggest hesitations that most people have, whether that's investing in a coach or a mentor, whether that's investing time or effort into launching or creating [00:11:00] something that it's, I need to get it right.

And I, if I'm going to put in the effort, I want it to be right. And so that was the underlying sort of root cause of me diluting it. And what ended up happening was, is that I reverted back to what I know to be true in terms of traditional marketing training. Because that whole, give me the step by step proven process blueprint thing, it works.

Some people actually just want the blueprint, tell me this and I will replicate it. But if you're somebody who doesn't want to fit yourself into a box, then you're not wanting to follow somebody else's blueprint. You, you're looking for somebody that can reflect back to you and go, Um, you're following the path instead of carving your own.

And so I wanted to share this with you in real time because I want you to see one, that even somebody with messaging and copy and all of that, and somebody who's really confident in their voice, I'm confident in my voice, I'm confident [00:12:00] In what I want to say and how I want to say it. I have a vision for that.

I know who I am in a lot of ways, but I equally have my own internal struggles from time to time. I'm not perfect and I can get it wrong sometimes too, but when we have people in our corner that can reflect these things back to us who truly know us, right, like who know. on a deep level, what we're here to do and can see that for us.

It's so, so powerful and potent to have those people in your world, which is why a lot of the work I do in Spellbound is not me telling you to follow a script or a template or a framework. I am that reflector for my clients. I'm going, that doesn't sound like you, or that's not really the vision that when you first started working with me is the thing you said you wanted to do.

Now, if your vision has shifted, cool, But I just want to, you know, reflect back to you what I'm feeling and what I'm sensing and what I'm seeing when I read your content, your copy, your opt in pages, all [00:13:00] those sorts of things, right? Because the congruency of what's in our hearts, the congruency and what we're actually here to say, And, and not something that we think we should be saying, right?

The thing that's driven by the heart, not driven by the brain, the logical brain of what's right and, and all of that is, that's what I'm here to do in a lot of ways is to reflect back to people going, I feel like your head and your heart are having a bit of a battle. And that's what was happening for me.

My heart somehow got disconnected. from what ended up on a, on paper and a Google drive because my brain was overriding it. And my brain was saying, you've got to get this right. You know, you're going to record, I don't know, nine or 11 episodes. I think it's between nine and 11 right now. We might condense it a little bit, but it's between nine and 11 episodes.

If you're going to spend the time to build all this out, and I won't be doing it solo. Obviously I have a team to kind of support me with that. But, but if you're going to put in the effort to do that, You [00:14:00] better get it right. It better work. This will naturally kill the message, right, which you've seen there.

I started to dilute my message big time, but it also kills the idea because you're now putting a cap or restriction or control on on this really beautiful creative idea that was wanting to come through and is wanting to come through. I'm so excited to record it, but I knew when I sent her that, like, I wasn't feeling it.

I was like, well, you know, like my heart was like, Oh, this isn't, I don't feel good at like, you know, I don't feel good about it. But I just couldn't pinpoint it. Like, I couldn't see it for what it was. I needed somebody else to sort of reflect that back to me. But what's really important here is that it not only dilutes your message, but it very much kills the creativity of what it is that you're wanting to create.

And everything starts with just a nugget of an idea. Like I said at the [00:15:00] beginning, your process might look different, and that's something that I would really recommend sort of getting in tune with. Like, what is my actual process? How do ideas come to me? And we sort of joked after the fact, because I've now gone away and written the opt in page.

It's absolutely amazing. It gives It literally is my personality shining through and it's everything for what I stand for. And what's interesting is the title of the podcast, I'm not going to reveal it yet, literally dropped in as I was driving to the gym. So I had a meeting with my mentor. She reflected this back.

She's like, I'm not going to tell you what to write. I'm not going to tell you what to say, but what I will say to you is, I know your voice, and I know how you write, and I know how you express yourself, and this isn't it. So, you need to go back to the drawing board, like she's not going to do the work for me, go back to the drawing board.

And I, had that meeting with her and I was like, thank you for your honesty and your reflection. And I got in the car and I drove to the [00:16:00] gym and it was on the way to the gym that boom, the idea for the title dropped in and it was so much better than what I had written literally originally. Um, and this is often what happens when Spellbound came to fruition, like the idea of it, the name for that was Funnel Copy Academy.

Like, so not me, at all. Like, not me at all. And then I was like, going to bed one night, and I remember asking my intuition. I said, this isn't it. Like, we need to come up with something better here. And boom, Spellbound dropped in. The same is true for the podcast, right? I had that reflection back to me, basically saying, This isn't it.

My mentor saying that to me and then me saying to my intuition going, okay, I'm allowing you to drop in whatever you want to drop in, but please drop something in that really reflects what it is I'm trying to do here. And boom, the, the name of it dropped in and it's perfect. And then last night, no word of a [00:17:00] lie, I was laying in bed.

It was 1230 at night. I was exhausted. And I literally could not stop writing the opt in page. And I don't know if this happens to you or not, but when ideas start flooding, when I'm in sort of that in and out wake sleep cycle, right, whether it's right before I go to bed or right when I'm waking up, if I don't write it down, there's a 99 percent chance that I'm going to forget it.

And so I was like, ah, dammit, I gotta write this down because it's so good. And I literally wrote the entire opt in page. on my phone, in my notes, because I didn't want to miss. And of course I'm going to refine it and tweak it slightly, but I needed to get the insight down on paper and it's so much more me.

And so I sent it to my mentor and she was like, Oh my gosh, yes, this is it. Oh my gosh. Like, where was this? You know, but the whole point of this is, is that even when we're really in tune with who we [00:18:00] are and really in tune with our message. There are moments and times and whatnot that we can get caught up in putting ourselves back into the box, putting ourselves back into the safe spot that we know works, right?

Like, I know that that, you know, opt in page that I had written, it will convert. It will absolutely convert. But will it convert with the right people that I want in my world, right? Is it going to convert with people that just want a blueprint? that they just want the step by step, show me how to do it so I can replicate it, or would it have converted with people that want to go against the grain?

It won't speak to them, right? That original headline would not speak to them. My exactly how I created six figures in my business with my client attraction and sales system, like so boring. It said something along those lines, my proven process, right? Well, that would attract a certain style and type of buyer [00:19:00] and not probably the person that's going to thrive in my world because a big part of my world is helping people connect back to their intuition and trusting their intuition and trusting their internal knowing and following that.

They're so a lot of the work I do is not cookie cutter. It's not step by step. But if I attract a lot of step by step people into my world, they're going to be in for a shock, right? Because when they get into my world and I'm diverting back to them, trusting their intuition and reflecting back to them, how maybe what they're saying and how they're saying it isn't a true reflection of who they are.

They probably won't like that or thrive in the process because it takes a lot of deep inner trust, or it takes the desire to want to trust, right? very, very different energy than just tell me how to do it. I need to, I need you to show me exactly how to do it. So I really hope that this episode has given you some inspiration, some insight, and [00:20:00] just shown you that even Even seasoned marketers, copywriters, people who are experts in their own right have days or moments where they're conforming back to maybe what they used to know out of comfort or they somehow get lost up in this, in the stream of things because people told them that it was going to work and they guaranteed them if you just follow these steps at will or we want to get it right, if we're going to put the effort in, quote unquote.

that we've got to get it right. And the thing that I'm often inviting myself to untangle is creating from a place of pure joy and excitement regardless of the outcome. And that is how I created the quiz. That is how I created selling the invisible. That is how I create and show up in Spellbound. I do it for the love and joy of it.

regardless of the outcome. [00:21:00] And for whatever reason, I was attached to some outcome. And it was probably, you know, I mean, I could probably equate it to just where, you know, June's been a really busy month. May was a busy month in a lot of ways. And so I was probably feeling the time pressure, and I was probably a little bit tired.

And so it was like, well, I'm going to put in the effort, I want this to work and yada, yada, all the things, right. So it's also getting really curious about where are you at? And you know, And where are you making these decisions from in a lot of ways? Because as soon as sort of the dust dissipated and I'm getting ready to kind of go on holiday and all of that beautiful stuff, then it was like, Oh, wait a minute.

I've created space and opened myself up for ideas to drop and space to happen. And again, not necessarily rushing something to market or rushing something out into the world and allowing the idea to sort of fully form and not rushing that process. That's another big sort of lesson there. So with that, I hope [00:22:00] this episode has given you some encouragement that we all sort of go through this and that trusting your intuition and trusting your knowing, because I knew it didn't feel right.

Like I was like, Oh, this isn't it. It just doesn't feel right. getting curious about that, and then finding people in your world that you can have as a reflector that will honestly give you insight and feedback from a place of love and compassion, not from a place of this isn't going to work or that sucks or whatever, but literally going that ain't you and you got to go back to the drawing board and let's, let's see what else comes through.

That stuff is being some of my most, um, invaluable, you know, mentorship insight that I have with mentors is that when they can truly reflect back to me where I might not be hitting the mark with who I am and, and my authenticity and all of that. And so with that, I hope this episode has been insightful for you and that you can start to sort of navigate and inquire within [00:23:00] yourself and contemplate within yourself where you might be allowing your brain or your ego.

or your conditioning and all that sort of thing to sort of run the show and get curious about it, right? Get really curious about it. And, uh, with that, I hope you have a fab day and I'd love to hear from you over on at Creatively Owned. If you'd like, drop me a message. I'm there. Cheers. Thanks for listening.

We'll see you right back here next time. You can also find us on social media at Creatively Owned and online at creativelyowned. com. Until next time, keep showing up as your authentic self.