00:00

Welcome to Make More Money Without Selling Your Soul. The podcast for bold entrepreneurs ready to simplify scale and reclaim their time. I’m Polly Lavarello, Evergreen scaling strategist and cushy business pioneer. Join me and my occasional guests as we explore the themes of wealth, selling and well-being, because building a business that works for you changes everything. Let’s dive in.

00:37

Hello and welcome back if you’ve ever felt too much for traditional branding advice or like your multi passionate brain doesn’t fit in a neat little niche, this episode is for you. I’m saying this is so much excitement because I know so many people feel that way. I’m chatting with Rebecca from block and rose the messaging genius, helping founders lead with their thinking, not just their offers. We’re diving into niche myths, brand voice and how to build Magnetic Messaging that actually feels like you. This episode is absolute gold. Please pay attention. Get out a notebook to write notes you’re going to want to hold on to all of this goodness now, let’s get into it.

01:25

Welcome Rebecca to the show. I am so excited to have you here. I feel like we’re going to have the juiciest conversation based on what we’ve already shared. But for anyone who is new to you and hearing you for the first time, please introduce yourself. Thank you. Amazing to be here. I am, Rebecca and I help multifaceted female founders become known for or lead with how they think versus what they deliver, and essentially position themselves to be known for the one thing that only they could be known for, even as a multi hyphenate and without having to niche in a nutshell. You know what I feel like? I can’t hear that without asking you the question, what led you to this specific area of you know? Because I know that. How long have you been in online business now? 

02:11

Do  you know what? I think we started around the site in time, about five years, five, six years, I think. And there’s been an evolution there. Do you want to share that evolution? Yeah, of course. So I mean, my background has always been in marketing, and always the softer side of brand marketing. And my last proper job, my last employed job, I was managing director of a word of mouth marketing industry agency, and we worked with the bigs, you know, the P’s and G’s, the L’Oreal’s, to get 1000s of people talking about what are essentially really boring products, and I was made redundant while I was pregnant. To be fair, they didn’t know, and so I kind of dicked around for a little while deciding what I wanted to do. Almost became a milliner at one point, did lots of interning, didn’t work, and sort of then spent a lot of time reflecting and cherry picking on the parts of my career that I’d really enjoyed. And what I loved was the storytelling piece. What I loved was the building connections and the complexity. A lot of the brands would work to were really complex, so really kind of diving in and pulling out those those things. But essentially it was the brand strategy piece. And my angle was brand strategy, but weaving word of mouth into the DNA from the beginning and looking back now, it made logical sense, but it was purely imposter syndrome. I felt like I had to label myself as a brand strategist, or something that people would recognize to be deemed as credible. And it didn’t work, because whenever I was speaking to industry people, they were like, Yeah, you do brand strategy, but just for what, like kitchen table mums. And then whenever I spoke to my very credible clients who weren’t necessarily from that world, they didn’t understand what it was anyway, yeah. But yet I maintained, and slowly, kind of behind the scenes, and in the work that I was doing with clients, it became much more fluid, I guess, and layered. And slowly I was leaving behind those the more I guess, mainstream, sort of messaging frameworks where you have your vision and your mission, lots of statements, all these statements that you It felt very much like a box spinning exercise, and not what the very brilliant, very intelligent, very multifaceted women that I was working with needed. It wasn’t helpful to them. We were shoehorning everything that they were into these kind of statements. And I realized that really kind of my beef with this, in a lot of ways, was that it felt very static. It kind of rose a moment in time, and it left very little room for them to evolve their thinking, or take their thinking beyond what we’d worked on in that period. And you know what it’s like in the world of online business, like we move fast? Yeah.

05:00

I love this conversation, because I totally agree what you mean about shoehorning and the staticness of it, but I also feel like there’s a kind of connection to the whole one and done kind of mentality so many of us can have. And these are all exercises that I return to regularly because of the evolution piece, because because your answer will just never be the same, and that’s also okay. But anyway, I love what you’re sharing here. I’m loving because, yeah, I’m also finding it really fascinating, because you and I have similar history in that we both worked in agencies, and we both worked with, you know, massive, you know, international companies, and so, yeah, seeing that transition from what would be normal in a corporate environment versus the human approach to being a brand, and the human approach to what we can bring that is so different. To L’Oreal, for example, I just think is fascinating. So please share. Please keep on going, because I’m finding this whole thing amazing, and I love that that’s you’ve made me remember one of my favorite campaigns that we ever did, and it was for an incontinence brand, and we were tasked with creating Word of Mouth campaign around incontinence. And at first we were like, and it’s become my most favorite campaign ever. But the reason why we battled with the client because they were like, well, this is the message that we know sells on packaging. And I’m like, great. Have you ever heard a human being say that to someone else? Yeah, no, of course not. Like, if you want people to talk about this, they’re going to need these women are going to need to feel like they’re not alone, yeah. And there was nothing data led that backed this up. It was purely a sense of No, this is the right thing to do, and that’s the essence that I really took into the work that I’ve done now. It’s like, okay, this is how it’s supposed to be done, and this is what perhaps the data is telling you, or this is what online business looks like.

06:57

 This is what a brand strategy looks like. But actually, that’s not really serving you, perhaps that’s not serving the way you work, or the way you need to create content, or the way your brain operates. And in lots of ways, the process just really iterated. And now I’ve sort of done away with all of those, those statements and those should, don’t get me wrong, I think there’s a place for them in brand creation, for sure, you know, when failing the basics and the foundations, that stuff is still very relevant. My clients aren’t there. My clients are 567, years in. They’re established. They found success. They found their voices. In many ways, kind of ticked the boxes. Now they’re evolving how they now they’re evolving how they see their role in the industry, I think, and rather than being seen as the doers, the deliverables, yeah, I know you’re so right at that stage. It’s not about that brand statements or vision statements or anything. It’s, it’s, I imagine that that stage, this is where you come in, because we’re so close to ourselves to that stage, and we’re so in it, it’s very hard to know what you represent within your industry without someone from the outside reflecting that back to you absolutely, absolutely and often, by this point, you’ve amassed so much experience, you’ve amassed so much knowledge expertise, perhaps You’ve trained in in lots of different modalities, and you bring all of this into your work, and all of this informs your perspectives and your beliefs and how and why you operate the way you do. But distilling that into any kind of sensical comms or message can feel really chaotic and too much. And so what a lot of my clients end up doing is kind of pigeonholing or minimizing what they do, or the brilliance that they bring, because it’s just too hard to message it. I’m really curious to know what your take is on this, because I also work with quite a few people in the wellbeing space, and they are particularly prolific for just, you know, being forever students, just learning new modalities, new things. And every time they do it, it’s a bit like dating someone new. You’re all excited. You want to tell everyone about them.

09:11

And, you know, there’s that sense, like it’s all different now it’s all going to be better, and this one thing is going to change everything. And then within the next six months, they’re already bored of that boyfriend, and they’ve found a new, new love, and it’s all valid. And like you say, it all creates another kind of layer of who they are and how they support people. And I think when people buy into that particular person, they kind of almost they’re not really paying attention to the modality. They’re just paying attention to who it is, who they’re going towards, and what they stand for, and what they represent, and ultimately the problem that they solve for them, I guess, you know, particularly in this day and age where people are incredibly discerning about where they invest their money. So I find it really interesting, because in my head, I’ve always seen it as somebody finds you, because you can clearly explain the problem that you solve for them in whatever regard that is. You know, doesn’t have to be massively pain point driven. It’s just.

10:00

And you represent something to them that they are craving, that you know, something that they want to get towards. But then those extra layers of all the different, let’s say modalities, is kind of at the next layer in terms of, that’s the why they choose you piece, but not necessarily. I think one of the things I find really interesting, and I’m really curious to know your take on this about personal brands, is sometimes I feel like they want people to know everything about them right from the get go, and that that is why they’ll choose them. And I think sometimes introducing that sense of the kind of phases of awareness and how, how someone finds you in the first place and pays attention to you, to the next part where they then, I guess, the nurture phase, where they’re actually then connecting with you, to then the final part where they choose to buy like they’re all kind of separate. And I think sometimes people try and make it all the one and same thing. What’s your thought on that? Yeah, no, I agree. And I think you do. There has to be a pyramid. There has to be you have to prioritize those messages, because ultimately, we are here to run a business, and we need to sell the way I look at it. And again, sort of beef that I had with the sort of more traditional or mainstream sort of messaging frameworks was that it felt very hierarchical. You say this first, and then you say this and you say this. And again, so many of my clients, they were like, but there are occasions when it doesn’t make sense to say that first, but this is what the framework says I should do, and how, how does that work? So when we create these, these concepts, these, I call them sort of stackable positioning ecosystems, they’re, they’re more like a wheel, and right in the center of that wheel you have a core positioning concept, which is this one method, platform, identity, that or idea that only you are really known for, and that encapsulates, kind of everything you are. And then round the edge of that, you have a sort of a stake in the ground message, which is sort of what you believe to be wrong with your industry, what your better way is, and then how and why it works, and then around that, then you have layers of different sort of narratives or perspectives, or I call them sort of thought leading opinions. And these are thought leading opinions that you might have about your clients and sort of the challenges they face. It might be thought leading opinions that you have about your industry. It might be thought leading opinions that you just have about like the world, the universe, culture, society, and they all kind of sit around there, and woven into that is, is the sales messaging and the offer messaging. Because separately to this, this piece we do focus on, and we do obviously work on the sales and the different offer messaging, and that’s where it can be. Where it can be a bit more specific to each of the different areas that they that they work in. But the the idea is, and I think it’s worth saying that when my clients come to me that they are stepping into that thought leadership role. You know, they are on podcasts, they are speaking on panels, they’re writing longer form, they’re perhaps they’re shifting away from social media and moving to sub moving to substack, you know, they need a messaging and a positioning framework that is giving them meat. Yeah, that makes sense, because there is that challenge. Isn’t there where, I think, for the more established business owners, we can increasingly just work from our intuition, because we have worked with people long enough we know what kind of content works. We know what kind of email gets results. We know what we need to do to sell. And so the danger of that sometimes is, if you are embarking on something new like sub stack, is if you don’t have something like your wheel, it’s very easy. And I say this totally having done the same thing, I impulsively set up a sub stack the other day just called accidentally, all DHD really focused around neurodivergency and my journey as a mid lifer, and how all of these things are like crashing into one another at the moment, and there’s been no structure behind it whatsoever. And my last post I put up, I was like, Why did I even do that? That was just a waste of my energy and theirs. And so I was listening to you thinking, Yeah, I need to, I need to think about that wheel. But I know that from the people I support in my world, that often when I give an example like you just gave, one of the things that really helps it land for them is context. So would you be happy to give an example of that wheel in action, like either in your own brand or perhaps in a client?

14:18

So okay, let me have a thing. Okay. So my client, Abigail, she was She’s wonderful. She’s a menopause menstruation movement expert, and she had success, but she had a membership, but she was also largely giving sort of ad hoc well, doing ad hoc wellness events in corporates, and speaking here and speaking there. So she went from that to leading. She calls them awe inspired, transpersonal experiences, but residencies at some of the world’s most luxurious hotels. We’re talking about the Ritz in the Maldives. She’s there for a week or a month, and she’s now going around the world. And this is now her business. And so our job was to take her from where she was to that and in her.

15:00

Own words, her expertise had become her thirst for knowledge had become the bane of her career, because with every new thing that she learned, she felt like her offering got smaller and smaller and smaller, because the wealth that she brought was getting bigger, but she wasn’t able to message it. And so through this process, and she had a million different modalities, animatronics, kinesiology, martial arts, yoga. She works with Luna, like the moon, so many different things, very qualified. And so through this process, through this process I call identity alchemy, this process of distillation, we identify. We brought everything under the positioning concept of the path to intelligent movement. And so that then housed everything that she did. And within that, she had these three pillars, which was emotional intelligence, elemental intelligence and physical intelligence. And that sat there and then around this she had and her stake in the ground was essentially that the luxury industry is unwell, and so that was her big kind of stake in the ground thing. And when you pulled that out, then into perspectives. And the perspective or the opinion, the thought leading opinion around how the luxury and just wellness in general had become unwell was that it had become so commoditized, it was so trend led, that rather than being a place of solace or nurture, it was becoming something empty, and when she then transitioned this into sales messaging, for example, that she then took to her LinkedIn or that she put in her pitch decks, when she was reaching out to clients, it was she spoke about the intersection of how the luxury industry is having to completely reclaim what heritage means, because it doesn’t work in the sense of what is luxury heritage now, and actually it is wellness and a version of it. But actually the wellness that they were chasing was this unwell wellness, which was very empty, and so I’m probably not doing her justice as well, but we were able to, kind of, no, I mean, this sounds amazing. I’m a very visual person as well, and I love the whole sense of it, kind of working it in, you know, in a circle with the kind of core positioning. And then what did you say? It was movement to the core? What was the core positioning? Again? Because so her core positioning was the path to intelligent movement. Path to intelligent movement. That’s what it was. I love that. So yeah, when you talk about multifaceted the idea of kind of finding a kind of connection to all of those pieces, and having a headline is so potent, and the way, exactly it really is, and the way that the wheel works is, and the way that I kind of coach clients to use the wheel once it’s established, is that you’ve got this kind of wheel, and you imagine it sort of moves around, and you can sort of moves around, and you can sort of click things into places. Do you remember those color wheels where you could, sort of Yes, yeah. But there could be a report that’s released over here that’s related to her industry, yeah, or something even similar. And she can use that report to launch a piece of content, a piece of thought leadership, and all it has to do is then ladder back through the layers. So it will ladder back through one of her thought leading opinions. It will ladder back through a stake in the ground, and stake in the ground, and it will let her back into and reinforce her positioning. Concept. Okay, I’m obsessed with this. Rebecca, I am obsessed. I absolutely. And you know, one of the reasons why I’m obsessed is it marries beautifully with my concept of everyday sales, because in my head, I’m already thinking, and what a beautiful way to also match up. You know, when you talked about the three pillars of the work that she does, and I was like, and that would be how you thought about your offers, and how you’d, you know, probably break down your curriculum, and how you’d Express when someone’s investing in working with you, like, these are the three pillars I take you through. And it’s, it’s just gorgeous. I just love it. Very multi dimensional model for multi dimensional people and and it works in lots of ways that you know, my client, bet Rebecca. She is, was a branding and lifestyle photographer. She’s now a self acclaimed multi, multi dimensional artist and activist. And before she was kind of doing all the things she was doing drone photography. She was doing still, she was doing video, she was speaking, she was writing. And on the side, she had this fascination with wild edges, with Iceland and Scotland and cold water diving and the night sky, and an activism side around like rewilding to nature and protecting the ocean, but it was all so scattered. And through the work that we’ve done, she’s got her positioning concept, which is rewilding our connection to nature. But depending on who it is she’s speaking to, she doesn’t necessarily lead with that. Sometimes she’s a nature storyteller, sometimes she’s a visual storyteller for nature and she’s, we’ve worked out because she has such varied client bases. You know, sometimes she’s pitching to government agencies on an environmental issue, sometimes she’s diving in off the coast of Iceland for a charity. Sometimes she’s photographing nature reserves. Sometimes she’s photographing individuals. You know, it’s o varied sometimes. 

20:10

She’s speaking at NASA, yeah, she’s invite. She’s collaborating with the National Trust on an exhibition. You know, there’s, she doesn’t do one thing. And there was no way that we were going to be able to position her as one thing. But now, because we’ve got this really multi dimensional system for her, she’s like, well, when I’m over there, this is what I’m leading with, and that’s, that’s the first message, and the rest comes second. Over here, I can absolutely lead with my witchiness, because that’s my audience, and the rest comes second. And so it just means that there’s this fluidity and this spaciousness that enables them to evolve, but knowing that they’ve got this anchor that’s keeping them strategic. I mean, I love everything you’re sharing here, because I also think it must be that the majority of online business owners and self employed people are multifaceted, because I think that’s often the very same thing that repels us from being close to anything corporate, because we’ve got too many gifts to give, and we don’t think inside boxes. We think we stand on top of those boxes. So I think it’s so relevant, but we do live in a space where people are often encouraged to be palatable and to meet the needs of what they think their ideal client wants, rather than recognizing that. Actually, I know I was actually showing my own clients recently that in the last few people who’ve chosen to work with me have said things like, Oh, I saw you love sauntering on the beach. I love doing that too. Every time I see your content down there, or, or, you know, you have tea time on the beach with your kids. That’s something I love doing, too. Or, you have additional needs children. I have additional needs kids too. So I know, you know what that cycle you’ve been on benefits at one point as a single parent, I’m also a single parent who’s been on benefits. So I know you’ll understand, and it’s never the core. You know, no one comes to me and goes, Oh, I mean, yes, they want everyday sales, but the reason why they’ve chosen me is something in my life or in my values or in something about the way I live that they connect to and therefore feel that heightened sense of trust, and I guess, connection, which you want to have with whoever it is that you’re choosing to work with or Learn from. And so the idea that we sterilize our personality to make ourselves palatable and try and ignore those many things, I love that you’re shedding a light on the fact that actually, no it’s when we find a way of shining a light on those things that actually would make it easier, not just for us to enjoy showing up, but also to make it easier for people to find us. But as you’ve I think what you’ve mentioned here is core to what you said. Because I think some people might say that message and go, woo hoo. I’m just gonna go share X, Y, Z, and confuse everyone on social media. And what you’ve shared that is key to making this work is like you say when you see it through the lens of the circle, like taking it through those layers that always bring you back to the core, so that people aren’t seeing, I don’t know about you, but I certainly feel like I see some people online who shares. I mean, let’s talk about where it can go wrong. I think this is a kind of valuable conversation, because we just talked about how we get make it go right. Like, you know, one of the things I’ve seen is, you know, the person who’s like repositioning themselves every other week, you know, like their bio constantly changes, their offer changes by the week or by the month, and they, one day, are showing up, sharing one particular skill or tool, and the next day another, and and, yes, it’s great to be multifaceted, but for me, as someone who’s probably only dipping in and out of their content, because that’s what the algorithm does to all of us, every time I feel like I’m meeting someone new, what’s your take on that? I completely agree. I completely agree. And it’s so easy to fall into the trap, and I think this is often the other side of where clients are when they come to me, but I think a lot of people are, are mindful of not doing that. I think that, I think for every person who is doing that and getting it wrong in that respect, there’s probably five who are fearful of that, because we’ve been told how we should be messaging, but not told how to do it differently in a way that still has strategic value, that they minimize. And that’s where the word sterile, I mean, it’s such a horrible word, isn’t it? But that’s it. That’s where that sterilization kind of of the message, or the minimization of the message, can happen, because it feels like there’s only two options. It’s either, right, we just sterilize, or we show everything, but with no strategic alignment or intent. And navigating that middle ground is really hard to do on your own. I love that really one, yeah, yeah. You know, I think I attract so many ADHD, as I see a lot more the ones who haven’t yet.

24:23

But you know what? I have also seen the fallout, like you say, of where someone, you know, I think the alternative that you’re referring to is very often the cause for people wanting to burn their business down or having kind of massive, visible meltdowns on social media while trying to figure out what they’re actually here for to do, because perhaps they’ve tried to switch off so many parts of themselves that they thought were less palatable, that they’ve ended up not really liking what they do represent. I think we should talk about this because the real energetic cost of not feeling seen.

25:00

Who you are in our businesses, yes. And I think you’re right. I think so often this is the root of burnout. And actually it’s somewhere I’ve, I’ve been and I’ve I massively burn out a couple of years ago and and actually, when I reflect now, I’m like, What the hell was my business it was? It was projecting a version of me that perhaps I thought I wanted but it wasn’t. It was wrapped up in that imposter syndrome piece that I talked about at the beginning, trying to sort of be this, this one person over here, but then perhaps behind closed doors, operating differently, but not knowing how to do that. And there’s a huge, huge cost to that. And especially, I think, when we are more multifaceted and we’ve got complexity and levels of depth to our thinking that perhaps expands beyond our expertise, our expertise on paper, but we we don’t feel like we’re fully expressing who we are, which is why we started our own business. Right to have that freedom to build a business around who we are. And I think it’s, I think it’s, I think it’s something that often isn’t talked about enough. When we think about burnout, we think, are you working too hard, or you’re doing all the things, or you’re doing this? But I think there’s this other side of it that that isn’t given enough air time, and it can be just as as crippling for a lot of people. Yeah, yeah. It’s so I have so many thoughts swelling around my head listening to this, because there’s so much to it, like, so many layers to it, like there’s on the one hand, I have the question in my head as to like, where we have to be careful with what we attach our identity to in our business, because there is also parts of us we get to keep, for our family, for our loved ones, for ourselves, where we don’t. I think we have to be careful not to fall into the trap of feeling like we need to be validated from every single angle, otherwise we leave ourselves at risk of outsourcing our validation, right, and wanting our business almost to be our personality. But then on the flip side of that, where we’re kind of, you know, not taking that into consideration at all, then equally, like you say, I do believe that can be the source of burnout. And I know it sounds like you and I have been on similar journey in that I started out doing ads management because it just felt like, it just felt like the obvious saying where there be a demand. I just needed to make money. As a single parent, I you know, I needed something that there would always be a demand for, and I could charge adequately for. And it took time in the online business space to get to the stage where I had, well, the self awareness and the self trust that I did actually get to build a business that felt amazing for me, and it was done in little shuffles eventually.

27:30

And I think the kind of ads management felt so constrictive, I just had to walk away from it all together, and now it feels so much better. Oh, my goodness. But anyway, there was another layer as well, listening to you the whole one around identity. But also, I don’t know, no, I think it’s left my head, but it’s, it’s so important to that. Was it? The other thing that came to my mind was that one of the biggest challenges about doing the work we do is that it’s not something that it comes around to five o’clock, you walk out your office, you go on the commute home, you get home, you have dinner, you switch off, you watch TV. I find when I’m at my most relaxed, that’s when all my best ideas come in, and then I have to grab my notebook if I’ve banished my phone. And so it’s something that is such a huge part of who we are. And I don’t think I’ve ever met a business owner who can genuinely switch off all the time, like I’m you know, we can switch off to a certain extent, but it’s such a huge part of what we do that it has to feel good. You have to really love your clients and feel great about working with them. You have to feel like, you know, when your kids say, what’s the work you do? To like want to feel pride behind what it is and the impact and the legacy you’re leaving. And you know, when you’re in that room and people are going, what she works online, what she do like just being able to feel great about it, not feel apologetic about it. And like you say, burnout, if we have all those things and they’re not feeling great, if your brain is occupied by a job that you hate, dealing with clients who are really grinding your gears and ignoring all your boundaries and not paying you on time, you know. And when people question what work you do, you’re actually thinking, Oh, God, yeah, I should really go onto LinkedIn and get a real job. Like that is a terrible place to be. So that alignment piece, Yeah, feels so important. I think it’s right. It’s alignment. And there’s two thoughts that were through my mind then. And I think for me, I think what I meant when I was talking about, when I was saying that it sort of wasn’t me when I was talking about, I was calling myself a brand strategist, and that felt so misaligned, because actually, that wasn’t necessarily the work I was doing, whereas now I call myself a sense maker, and that suddenly I’m like, This is what I do, yeah, and it’s Still on paper, the paper, it’s a brand strategy of sorts, but calling myself a sense maker feels so much more freeing. And I think that’s related to the second point you made about like that crippling feeling when someone says, What do you do? And so many of my clients have experienced that.

30:00

Feeling of like, I don’t know, I do this, and I do this, and I do this, and sometimes I do that, and I do it for these people that actually what they’re craving is a really simple, spacious way of just talking about what they do, yeah, and to be able to wrap that into a positioning that makes them really stand out. And that’s what this process does. Because when you go back to the beginning and you talk about that, that positioning concept, positioning concept like that’s that, that’s the answer to that question, yeah, yeah. I was just thinking that actually what you’ve shared with that circle and having clarity around the thoughts that you want to share that are obviously deeply personal to you, but knowing which ones you’re leading with is so potent for creating that space between who you are as a person and your personal brand and what that personal brand represents. And essentially that is the thought leadership piece, right? That’s how we create distance between no people don’t need to know absolutely everything about me as a personal brand. I can hold back these things, and that’s not being dishonest, that’s just having boundaries. Having boundaries, healthy boundaries, but at the same time acknowledging, you know, it is those raw, vulnerable, slightly scarier kind of things that we almost don’t want to say out loud, which are the very same things that will magnetize people to us and our and our brand. Yeah, I say us and our brand, me and my brand, or you and your brand. So kind of getting clear on how to express those in a way that feels potent and powerful. So is that something you help people with as well? So you’ve got the branding kind of positioning piece. Does messaging play a strong role in terms of how you support all of these pieces too? Yes, absolutely so. But again, not necessarily following the the traditional sort of messaging framework, we wouldn’t necessarily so what we will do the process, we start by kind of gathering these beliefs, and then we organize them into a hierarchy, and then we pick out the ones that are perhaps the most potent, perhaps the most controversial, perhaps the ones that just feel truest, and we evolve those into these thought leading narratives. And from there, we look at, right, what’s what’s your real opinion? What’s the strongest opinion that connects all of these, and that becomes a sort of stake in the ground message. And then from there, we build out and we layer, and we look at, what are the micro stories, then what are the client stories? What are the experiences that you’ve got that enable you to bring those narratives, those perspectives, opinions, to life? And then, always, I love it. I love it like a little ecosystem. It’s an ecosystem. And once we’ve gone through this that, then we’re able to go back through everything and say, Okay, what are the key messages here, though? What are the themes that are coming up over and over again? So rather than starting with those, we end with them, because and they emerge, they reveal themselves. And then we look at, okay, well, this is, this is front and center on your website. Then this is the thing. And, you know, these are the headings, and this is the key message, and this is, this is what you would lead with. You would lead with over here, and this is how you might articulate that over there. And then we develop a bio, and we’ll look at the headline, we’ll look at, okay, what are we calling you? Is it the same as your positioning concept? Does your positioning concept evolve? So in Abigail’s case, her positioning concept is the path to intelligent movement. Her title is educator of intelligent movement, and that’s kind of what she does. And then she and then we look at, okay, well, what’s the, what’s the sentence that you say after that? Then that gives that the context that relates it back to the client. I love this. You know, what I feel you’ve done really beautifully and effectively is you’ve rebranded branding for personal brands.

33:20

Because it’s just, I’m just, you know, I think personal branding needed a rebrand. But, you know, it’s that. It’s recognizing that you said earlier on, you know, it could inform which PR strategy you go for, which PR pieces you jump into, like you say. It’s that, then the kind of core skeleton for the messaging that will be on your website, for how you introduce yourself on a podcast to I mean, it literally influences everything. And I think that’s something that a lot of people don’t necessarily. I think one of the challenges for you probably, I imagine earlier on with, you know, being known for branding, is that I just don’t think many people really understood what brand is, certainly in the kind of conversations I’ve had, you know, when I was back in the ad stage where, obviously, brand played a large role. When I’d ask, you know, some very established, you know, coaches, seven figure, multi, six figure coaches, sometimes eight the eight figure coach, to be fair on her, did have a brand Google Drive, the majority of them, when I’d say, can you send me your brand information to inform, you know, the messaging and the ads and everything else and the creative very often, they’d come back with some colors, a couple of things, maybe, if I was lucky, a mission statement, which would normally be several years old and they’d not looked at since. So obviously, to a certain extent, it also reminds you that you can succeed. But you know, they were kind of unconsciously building a brand without really having self awareness around it, which is a very straggly way to do things. I think it’s perfect when it’s just you, but the minute you need to grow and expand and call or perhaps take what you’re doing to a different platform or a different audience, or just use that information in a different way, then it becomes really challenging. Yeah, no, you know what? 

Actually, it’s a good example in terms of, like, for example, going back to that specific example, being an Ads manager, were the ads as good or as impactful or in alignment with the brand that didn’t exist yet? Of course not, because I didn’t have a brand to work with. I’ve seen that for web designers who say, you know, they try and take on a client and they have no clear branding. And guess what? Nine times out of 10 people will turn around and say, Oh, this isn’t me. This isn’t a reflection of me, because they never gave the web designer enough to start with, to build something in alignment with them. So the work you do is so valuable, you know, it’s so needed. Before you think about PR, before you think about your office suite, before you think about any of those things, this part needs to be dialed in, otherwise you’ll literally just be making it up as you go. It’s like going to the supermarket with no shopping list and being like, Oh no. And I’ve got, like, the ingredients for Satsuki, but nothing to go with it. Like, it’s not bad, but it could have been so much better if you actually came with a string, with a list and knew what you were looking for. Yeah. And this is exactly it. And like, when you say, I mean clients, when they come to me, their businesses are all they’re sort of running themselves. They’re taking care of themselves. They’ve got their thing going on, and so we’re not at the brand creation phase, but it is like if you are ready to for your next your next level of growth, your next level of visibility, and probably your next level of income, if it’s going to come through the way you think, which is what so many people want it to be, you have to have this piece of work done, because otherwise you can Share your thoughts, like we said, probably very potently for it, probably very poetically.

36:25

But if you’ve not done this work to anchor it into that strategy that underpins it all, then it’s not going to get you the results that you want. It might get you a lot of engagement, but it won’t necessarily translate then into the growth yeah you’re hoping for. Yeah. And I’m obsessed with this, because this also feeds beautifully into my whole philosophy around sustainable business. And like you say, we can, we can build a business off knee jerk reactions. And you know, if you’re particularly charismatic or great at creating reels or any of those things, there’s so much that we can do in our business. But I think what people either start to feel or maybe haven’t yet recognized is that the weight of your business is all on your shoulders until you find a way to kind of extract your magic into your ecosystem. Rebecca, that’s what you need. You need that there, because then that is the magic that can work for you even when you’re not working. And if you haven’t found a way to communicate that, that is the thing that’s going to keep you up at night thinking, oh god, I’ve got to go in for an operation next month. How’s my business going to run? If you’ve not found a way to extract what’s magic about you and why people are drawn to your brand and what you represent to them, it’s going to be hard. So I am every single word you’ve said. I am obsessed. If anyone else is listening right now and wants to learn more about the amazing work you do. How can they find you?

37:45

Yes. So my website is block and Rose dot com, and I have a private podcast, actually, where I really kind of walk through some of this process in a lot more detail. And that is, yeah, block and Rose forward slash private podcast. Kept it nice and simple. Love that. So yeah, we’d love it. If anyone wanted to come and find out more, then that’s probably the best, best place to go. Well, we’ll make sure all the links are in the show notes, so nice and easy to find. I’ve really, really, really enjoyed today’s conversation. Rebecca, um, thank you so much for coming on. I have as well. It’s flown by. So yeah, thank you aAre a wonderful host.

38:22

Well, that was a whole vibe, right? If your messaging has felt messy or too hard to pin down, Rebecca’s your go to links are in the show notes, and if this hit home, share it. Review it and send it to your multi faceted business besties. Your magic doesn’t need to shrink to be clear. All right, see you next time, and of course, keep it cushy