Small Business Talk
The Podcast to Grow your Business Faster
How Are Your Being MAD - Making A Difference With Wendy Corner
Show Notes
Wendy Corner is the Quirky Speaker Coach, Bestselling Author, Speaker and Founder and Creator of Your Words Have Power. She works with global change makers and visionaries who are Making A Difference – speakers on a mission to get their message out to the right audiences. She and her team work with you to find the best platforms for your message, written and oral, so you can poke the bear, and achieve that radical new vision from the grass roots up and the top down!
Originally from Scotland, Wendy’s now based in Perth, Western Australia and has been a TEDx speaker coach at University of Western Australia since 2018. With a background as a Speech Pathologist for almost 30 years, Wendy works holistically using her proprietary framework to support speakers to communicate using body, mind and spirit to connect at a deep level with their audience. Wendy is Committed To MAD (Making A Difference)!
MAD - Making A Difference
Let’s talk about how we’re going to make a difference or MAD today. That acronym came about when Wendy was shortlisted for a business award last year. The Rural Business Awards, which is based in Brisbane. She was unsure about it that time. If you think about it, that’s what entrepreneurs ideally do because they’ve discovered something is missing and they’re filling a void to make a difference in the lives of their customers. Well, let’s hope that they are. So sometimes, business owners think they are a little mad.
But the other mad – the better kind of mad, definitely making a difference, which is nice. So, there are times when you can be fired in a different way as well, or straight out with some things. Indeed. So, we can be mad for giving up our day job and then going to work for an awful boss ourselves that make us work way too many hours and we can also make that difference.
So what sort of things do you think that business owners should be doing to check that they are making a difference? Well, obviously you’ve got your bottom line, which will help you give a dollar figure. But the question is how are you making a difference to your ideal customer’s client? Do you know who they are?
What Language Are You Speaking?
If you know exactly who you speaking to, you’ve got an idea of the language that they are using. And if you speak it to them, it’s like somebody is opening up your head and having a roll around inside it. You know exactly what they’re thinking. And a new customer is going to be sitting back going, saying “Aha, she gets me”.
Talking to Everybody is Talking to Nobody
When you talk to everyone, you’re not talking anybody’s language at all. You just basically talking gibberish. And the other thing with that is you may know what you’re talking about, and particularly if there’s a hint of jargon in there, then you might as well be talking to yourself because you’re not going to be reaching the people that you want to speak to.
I was speaking to a guy who is a business owner. He’s a coach too. He wants to coach in the realm of neuroplasticity and high end CEOs in that direction. And one thing he said to me is I’m not going to dumb it down.
I’m going to make sure that people come to know that the importance of the neuroplasticity and all the jargon. Yes. But if that’s where you start and people don’t speak that language, swipe, you’ve lost them. You start with where they’re at and then you can introduce them to the new vocabulary. So if you the widget, if you’ve got a widget or something special that you make, careful about how you describe it, because you might be completely outside the realm of the person that you want to ideally attract.
We talk our own words, not our customers words. And that can make such a difference. So quite often they come with what they think they need or they want. And then when you actually get to work with them, it’s quite a different story about what it is that they actually are needing and we’ll solve their problem.
Sometimes I even don’t know what their problem is to begin with. So if you can articulate that in a way that they can understand, as you say, you get me, I know that you are the person for me.
Reaching Your Audience
Knowing who you’re speaking to is important but it is also important to know and where they hang out. Using your audience words can be so powerful. But how else can we make a difference to our customers? Well, the thing is, do they know about you? Because, yes, you can talk to the language, but unless you are getting yourself out in front of them in this day and age, we’ve got so many different opportunities, so many different platforms we can go to. And again, that comes back to where your customer hangs out, where your client hangs out all day.
Where does your ideal client hang out? Facebook group. So you not going all to Facebook because it’s taking up your time means that you’re not getting in front of the right people. Oh, well, that’s the kind of a discipline thing for you, isn’t it? To make sure that you’re not focused on using it for work and not getting all these lovely cat pictures?
The point is, wherever your ideal client hangs out, that’s where you need to be of whether it’s a platform that you enjoy or not. Back to the wish and principle. What’s in it for me? Absolutely. And the flipside of that is not going to somewhere where you like to go and that your customers and the podcast listeners will know.
So you need to think about where the customers are, not necessarily where you want to play.
Putting Yourself Out There
People buy from you not because of your products but they buy the person behind the brand. It’s the classic example of if you think of Apple, you think of Steve Jobs, right? So it is about the person behind it. It is about their skill level and quite often it’s about their confidence. Are you putting yourself out there confidently? If you say that you’re a coach and you’re standing back and you’re being very quiet and won’t talk to anybody. Are you really attracting outgoing people? Of course, people will want to know more about you.
Probably not. So think about how you’re portraying. But we do all want authenticity and we definitely do want to know the person behind the brand. Actually, even if you are an introverted coach and you’re wanting to speak to introverts, you still got to let them know. So even if it’s not a rah rah thing and that wouldn’t do you, you wouldn’t be doing you, that would be a lack of authenticity and people would pick up on the fact that you’re not comfortable with that, and that’s fine.
But still, even the introverted people need to know about you so you can be on a quieter level and still be authentic and still get your message over there on video. It is what support needs and it’s practice. Yeah, it’s absolutely practice. And the more you do it, the better you get at it. And it’s consistency.
Make That Choice
On the previous episodes of SBT, I have explained all that, about 7 Tips to Overcoming Video Phobia. You have to make that mindset shift and just do it. So if you had the cure for some horrible disease and you were keeping it to yourself and not letting everybody know, wouldn’t that be something really bad? I’m not saying that whatever you do is equivalent to a cure, but you do a great work, you do great stuff and your people needs to know it. So don’t get mad, make a difference.
Get Your Message Clear
If you get your message specific, you will definitely attract people further out. But if you’re not specific, you won’t attract anybody. Your version meets your actual twist on it. That’s really important and it’s being able to articulate how your version is different to other people’s. And that again goes back to knowing who your customers and your clients is and being able to encourage them because you’re speaking to their particular problem.
So, you’re making a difference to that one person. And I’m sure your listeners are familiar with the fact that if you speak to one person, you speak to lots of people around them. But that clarity of speaking to the one person means that you are incredibly attractive because of the clarity. Are the images important? Yes. Six inches was an inch wide, mile deep or the equivalent in metric.
Links
Making A Difference With Wendy Corner
Speak to yourself. Your internal words has much power as the external ones do. Tell yourself you can do it and crack on!
Listen to the full episode of Small Business Talk episode 204.
You can also find the video versions of the Small Business Talk Episodes on YouTube.