I read something recently that I keep turning over.
It was in a book, right at the start, where the author mentioned an interview she’d given. She’d been asked what advice she would offer to anyone hoping to write a book of their own. Her answer was simple. Write the book that you would want to read. And write it truthfully, the only way that you could.
And I thought, well, that’s exactly it for a business too, isn’t it.
So much of what I do with creative business owners comes back to that one idea. The businesses that really work, the ones that feel lighter to run and bring in the right people, are almost always built the same way. You make the thing you would love to exist. The thing only you would make, in the way only you would make it. And you do it truthfully, without bending yourself to look and sound like everyone else in your field.
It sounds obvious when you put it like that. But it’s surprisingly hard to do, because somewhere along the way, most of us quietly stop sounding like ourselves. We get busy. We take on board everyone else’s advice. We start describing our work in the language we think we’re supposed to use, the same words the rest of the industry uses. And slowly, our own voice gets a little lost underneath it all.
Which brings me to something I think about a great deal. The centre of your business. By which I mean three fairly simple things. Who you are in your work, with all your particular strengths and your experience. What your one thing is, underneath the long list of everything you could offer. And who it’s really for. Not everyone, but the particular people your work is truly right for.
When those three are clear, and truly yours, almost everything else gets easier. And when they’re blurry, you feel it everywhere. In marketing that never quite sounds consistent. In decisions that take far too long. In that low hum of second-guessing whether you’re even pointed in the right direction.
There’s a quick way to test where yours stands, and you can do it today, on your own. Take each of those three things, and try to say it out loud, in a single plain sentence. The way you would to a friend who asked what you do over coffee.
Then hold each sentence up to two questions.
The first is about clarity. Would it be completely clear to someone who has never met you, or seen your work? No insider language, nothing they’d need to be in your world to follow. Would a stranger actually understand it?
The second is about whether it’s you. Does it sound like you, and only you? Or, if you’re honest, could almost anyone in your field have said exactly the same thing? Try swapping your name out, and see whether it would still fit a dozen other people doing something similar.
Clear enough for a stranger to understand. And distinct enough that it could only be you. That’s the whole test.
What most people find, when they do it honestly, is that their sentences fall down on one side or the other. Either they’re a little fuzzy, and a stranger wouldn’t quite follow. Or they’re perfectly clear, but generic, and they sound like everyone else. Every photographer captures your special day. Every designer brings your vision to life. Clear, yes. But it could be anyone. And seeing that is the useful part, because now you have one specific sentence to work on. The one that’s either not clear enough yet, or not yet truly yours.
I’ll tell you what changes when you get it right, because it’s more practical than it might sound.
So much of the exhaustion around marketing comes from not really knowing why you’re doing it. You post because you feel you should. You write the email because it’s been a while. And every time you sit down to it, you’re starting from a blank page. But when your centre is clear, and it sounds like you, every single thing you share has a reason behind it. You know who you’re talking to, and the one thing you want them to understand, so a photo isn’t just a nice photo, it’s there because it shows the work you want to be known for, to the people you most want to reach.
And it gets quicker, too. Only last week, one of the women I work with shared that she’d written an Instagram post, an email to her subscribers, and reworked versions for two other platforms, all in under an hour, simply because she finally knew exactly what she wanted to say, and who it was for. That’s what clarity does. It makes marketing so much lighter, because it finally sounds like you, and you always know why you’re sharing what you’re sharing.
I keep coming back to that author’s advice, for exactly that reason. Write the book you would want to read. Build the business only you would make. Because the clearer and the more honest it becomes, the more it sounds like you. And the more it sounds like you, the easier all of it gets.
Comments +