Hi {{first_name}},
Did you know "decluttering" and "organizing" aren't the same thing?
A professional home organizer taught me this yesterday during a messaging workshop I was leading. I'd never thought about it before, but once she explained the difference, it clicked: people think they're organizing when they're actually just organizing their clutter.
This is the "curse of knowledge" in action. When you're an expert, it's nearly impossible to remember what it was like not to know what you know. Which makes it really hard to see things from your customers' perspective.
Here's another example: One of my clients runs a creative strategy agency. They constantly get leads for website designs, brand refreshes, and campaigns — but they're fighting with every other creative agency for that business and getting commoditized. Why? Because while they do brilliant strategic work, they struggle to explain what "strategy" means to potential clients who've never experienced it. The results speak for themselves, but prospects "don't get it" until after the engagement.
This pattern showed up everywhere in yesterday's workshop. Here are the three themes that kept surfacing:
1) We make huge assumptions about what our audience already knows.
When you're an expert, your knowledge feels like basic common sense. It's not. The fix? Get an outside perspective. Ask someone unfamiliar with your work if they understand what you're saying. I promise you'll have at least one major "wait, really?" moment.
2) Leave nothing to interpretation.
Several ambiguous words came up: "strategy," "growth," "transition," "impact." Transition from what? Impact how? In one case, we were defining a target audience as "professionals transitioning to a new phase in your career" — which means something completely different depending on YOUR career trajectory. We workshopped it to "women leaving corporate to start a solo business." Much more concrete.
3) Your audience decides how to describe your work — not you.
One participant is an alternative medicine practitioner who believes "broken societal systems" manifest as physical symptoms. But her clients are primarily middle-aged men turned off by "new age" language. We landed on "overwhelming expectations" as a better description of their experience — even though that's not how she conceptualizes her work academically.
Here's what I'm NOT saying: You need to "explain it like I'm five" or "dumb it down."
Your audience isn't stupid. They just have a different context, perspective, and level of understanding than you do. When you start from their point of view instead of yours, you'll create messaging that resonates more strongly and converts more business.
Katie
P.S. If you're struggling to explain what you do in a way that actually lands with prospects, consider working with more for a messaging sprint to help you get out of your own head and into your buyers' perspective. Grab 30 minutes here or just reply to this email.