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Why People Aren’t Falling All Over You {Yet}

by Abby Kerr

in Uncategorized

About this column

You are a smart creative entrepreneur. Your message glows within you, a warm, lustrous orb of inspiration. You are passionate, focused, and you want to help people. You’d do anything for your right people.

So why aren’t your right people falling all over you yet?

 

Crowd of engaged fans. Photo by Ali Brohi courtesy of Flickr Creative Commons

I know you know that you don’t need everyone to love you and want to work with you. I know you’ve heard about 1,000 true fans. I know you understand about red velvet ropes.

You’re been trying to signal like crazy that hey, my people like this! My people don’t like that! I get my right people.

And yet — you’ve been working with a lot of your almost right people and your wrong people who think they’re your right people. {Brand editor’s note: I totally need to write posts on those two groups!}

What’s that about?

One of my strangely powerful talents is getting inside the spirit-brain of other people’s right people. {This is nothing woo-woo. This is just how I describe it. Spirit-brain feels like what it is.} Here, I’m going to divulge what I know about why your right people are holding back.

Here are the 5 most common reasons why your right people aren’t falling all over you yet even though you’re trying to rock your brand messaging:

1.      Your guiding message isn’t coming through clearly enough.

You have a lot to say. And your right people want to hear it. But it’s important to winnow down your material and deliver the most consistently on-message stuff, 95% of the time.

To you it may feel like being a broken record. You know this material. You live with it and bathe in it.

But to your right people, your message is an epiphany. They don’t take what you know for granted.

The lesson here? Stop talking around your guiding message and start going straight for the jugular every time.

2.      They’re not convinced you know your guiding message.

You haven’t fully arrived in your point of view yet — and that’s a perfectly acceptable place to be for a while — and your right people can feel that. They’re rooting for you, though.

If you’re lucky, you’ll find two or three ‘right people peers’ who can give you perspective on how you’re coming across. They can see the potential for your fully-fledged amazingness and they will urge you to move toward it.

Don’t have trusted ‘right people peers’ like that? I can be one for you. I have a dazzling new thing coming off the pipeline in a minute and this is exactly what I can do for you. Hang in ’til the end of this post.

3.      They’re not sure how to give you money.

You do sell stuff but you’re not making it obvious enough. I know it’s because you have some anxiety around selling or because you figure if they’re your right people, they’ll knock down doors to work with you. But if they have to go in search of your goods and services when on your website, they’re concluding that you don’t do this often enough. Sell stuff, that is.

If you’re making your offerings hard to find, then they’re sensing there’s something about your offerings that isn’t quite so — lustrous.

The solution here? Don’t just let your offerings languish on a sales page. Put badges advertising your offerings in your sidebar — prominently. Work mentions of how people can do biz with you into every five blog posts or so, with text links to your service pages. {See?} Occasionally Tweet about your services with — you guessed it — a link to your services page. Make the Tweets conversational and contextual, not overtly sales-y.

Yep, this is all not only okay to do, it’s optimal.

4.      They’re not quite sure you’re talking to them.

That’s because you’re talking to your almost right people. You generally have the right idea about who your right people are, but you’re like a person who needs contact lenses but has been walking around with not-quite-20/20-vision for a while and you’re used to it.

You’re defaulting to the easiest people to talk to, but you know what, talking to your right people in the voice that makes them jump to attention is challenging. As it should be.

Your right people are calling you to be your best self. They hold back until you’re pretty damn close to that best self. Taking this best-self stance is a new feeling: it’s an upward gaze — at yourself. It’s bigger than lolling on the couch with a bag of potato chips. {Though, hey, there’s a time for that, too — just not in your brand messaging!}

Your almost right people are a tempting, siren song-singing crew. They hang around, they Tweet with you, they like you lots. But you know, you KNOW, that they’re not the ideal fit for what you have to offer. They’re your right-this-moment, but they’re not your imminent future.

How to make the jump from talking to your totally right people instead of your almost right people? Put those contact lenses in and take a closer look your ideal client avatar. Now look closer. Cloooooserrrrr. See, there’s a lot of stuff you wanted in your right people that you weren’t acknowledging. Now you can. And you can be really obvious about acknowledging those nuances in your brand messaging.

5.      You’re giving them too many options.

People love options, right? Well, yes, if your right people are options-oriented people. And even those types of people don’t want too many options. It’s always a dance between corralling them in too much and letting them too far out to pasture {so to speak}.

Know this: you are not on this earth to fulfill every need, wish, and hankering your right people have. Though you are multitalented and can do a lot, you only should offer through your business that which stirs you up and illuminates your best stuff. Have a good, honest think about what that is. There might be a part of your business you need to quit.

Options are wonderful, but remember: they’re the options you want to set, not the options people wish you offered. When you’re standing in your most powerful brand platform, your right people will be more than satisfied and they’ll happily get the other stuff they need . . . elsewhere.

This past year, I’ve seen my right people up close and personal and I’m now offering them exactly what they need to see from me.

What are you doing to help your Right People see YOU more clearly?

 

{ 13 comments… read them below or add one }

Jess Webb March 23, 2011 at 1:22 pm

Wow, this is AWESOME, Abby! Definitely something I need to take another look at, as I’ve been talking to a lot of my ALMOST Right People – what a powerful distinction that is!

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Abby Kerr March 23, 2011 at 2:05 pm

Hey, Jess. It’s been a powerful distinction for me, too. Those almost right people are LOUD, aren’t they?

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Melissa Dinwiddie March 24, 2011 at 2:15 am

Hell yeah. The almost right people can drown out the Right People, which does make it hard to really draw out your best self!

Thanks for a great call to action to really listen and pay attention!

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Abby Kerr March 24, 2011 at 2:32 am

Sweet, Melissa. Ain’t this the truth: The almost right people can drown out the Right People, which does make it hard to really draw out your best self!

Every time I find myself getting fuzzy on my next move, if I turn my attention back to that right person in my head, the next move seems so obvious.

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Amy E. Willard March 23, 2011 at 2:53 pm

Hi, Abby.

Congratulations on the new direction for your business. I can definitely feel a huge energy shift for you — so exciting!

So much of this post resonated with me. Number 5, in particular, really spoke to me. I appreciate your giving us permission to limit the options that we offer, and really stick with the ones that make our hearts sing and our spirits soar. I know that, at times, I’ve felt compelled to be “all things” to my right people, and I do start to feel a drain in my energy level and enthusiasm.

I also find that for me, it really comes back to trust. Trusting that the offerings that I do provide are enough. And that they will be enough for my right people. Remembering that, in so many cases, less is actually more, especially when people are already so overwhelmed and bombarbed by options on a daily basis.

~Amy

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Abby Kerr March 23, 2011 at 4:33 pm

You’ve got it, Amy. It comes back to one of the principles of nichification: there are a million ways to explore/develop/market even the tiniest idea. So glad point 5 resonated for you!

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Corrina Gordon-Barnes March 23, 2011 at 5:48 pm

Abby, I love this: “Your right people are calling you to be your best self. They hold back until you’re pretty damn close to that best self.” Great to reframe any ‘lacking’ in our business (clients/income) as a call to step more powerfully into our biggest purpose and REALLY align.

With gratitude,
Corrina

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Abby Kerr March 23, 2011 at 6:15 pm

Corrina — What a gorgeous profile shot of you! Glad you enjoyed this post. The best thing about having right people is that when we ARE stepping are, BOY do they act! :)

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Do Mi Stauber March 23, 2011 at 5:55 pm

This is wonderful!!!

I’d love to hear more about the other two kinds.

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Abby Kerr March 23, 2011 at 6:22 pm

Hello! Posts on your almost right people and wrong people who think they’re your right people will be coming up soon. Stay tuned!
Thanks for commenting. And can I just say that I love your profile photo? So joyous and un-self-conscious.

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Nikki Jackson March 23, 2011 at 7:25 pm

Perfectly written, alluring, and delicious. Thanks for this, Abby!

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Abby Kerr March 23, 2011 at 8:11 pm

Thank you, Nikki. I love the word ‘alluring.’

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