Find Your Voice And Escape The Sea Of Sameness

Marketing messaging is a common revenue roadblock for many businesses that is hampering their marketing efforts and growth. Our special guest today, Aleya Harris, is a messaging strategy expert. She has some great stuff to share with us today to help you get out of the sea of sameness and differentiate your business from the competition.

Join?Tim Fitzpatrick ?and?Aleya Harris ?for this week’s episode of The Rialto Marketing Podcast!

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Find Your Voice And Escape The Sea Of Sameness

Tim Fitzpatrick: Marketing messaging is a common revenue roadblock for so many businesses that is hampering their marketing efforts and their growth. Our special guest today is a messaging strategy expert. She has some great stuff she is going to share with us today to help us get out of what she calls the sea of sameness and differentiate your business from the competition. Hi, I am Tim Fitzpatrick with Rialto Marketing, where we believe you've got to remove your revenue roadblocks if you want to accelerate revenue growth. I want to thank you so much for taking the time to tune in. I am really excited to have Aleya Harris

from Flourish Marketing with me today. Aleya, thanks for joining me.

Aleya Harris: Tim, thank you for having me. It's been wonderful getting to know you already. I'm excited for this conversation.

Tim Fitzpatrick: Yeah, me too. I know we both like StoryBrand. You're certainly much more involved in story brand than I am, but I love what StoryBrand has done, and I can't wait for you to share what you've learned today. Before we do that, I want to ask you some rapid fire questions. I know you've got a young baby at home, but you got some sleep last night, so I'm sure you're ready to rock.

Aleya Harris: I am alert. I'm ruled by sleep and a dream. Let's do this thing.

Tim Fitzpatrick

Okay, I love it. When you're not working, how do you like to spend your time?

Aleya Harris: Well, that actually goes back to what we were just talking about. Right now, it's with my baby because she is three and a half months old. So there is not a little bit like, Oh, let me just sit down and work on my hobbies. It is working and being with her, which you know what? She's super cute. I mean, if you're out there and you want to check her out, of course, I'm a marketer, so She has her own Instagram. It's @RubyCoralHarris. She's adorable. But that's my free time right now.

Tim Fitzpatrick: What's your hidden talent?

Aleya Harris: My hidden talent, which I think people, they get when they first talk to me, but then when they really dive in, they go, Oh, it's a thing, is helping people feel great about themselves and connecting with their spark that they might feel like was dim, and they might feel like they couldn't unearth it. They might feel like they couldn't reach it. And I don't know, I've been really blessed with getting on a conversation with people and just being like, Well, let's talk about that. And for most other people, it's very obvious to me where their energy is blocked or the lies they've been telling themselves. And it's like, oh, well, just do blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. They're like, I never thought about that. So I think that is one of my hidden talent.

Tim Fitzpatrick: What's the best piece of advice you've ever been given?

Aleya Harris: This was when I was in culinary school and I was in marketing, then I was a chef, and then back to food marketing, and then now marketing, marketing. So when I was in culinary school, I had a grumpy chef instructor who in my mind, because I recall this story a lot, she has the face of grumpy cat. She told me, you will have to work for $10 an hour for 10 years before you're ever able to make anything of yourself. And I said, Hello, we must have never met. My name is Aleya Harris and that doesn't work for me. So it was the moment in culinary school where I really decided to double down and decide how I could make this more epic than I originally planned. Not just, well, maybe I'll go work in a restaurant, or maybe. In culinary school, I decided to start a private chef company. And then I ended up being a private chef and doing food prep for celebrities and traveling over the world. I got an agent. I did start that private chef company, and I was like, Never have I once worked for $10 an hour.

Tim Fitzpatrick: So that roadblock was put in front of you and you just beared right through it.

Aleya Harris: Yes. With a little bit of sass, a lot of it is sass.

Tim Fitzpatrick: So what I'm hearing you say is sometimes you really need to be careful about where you take advice from and whether you believe what people actually tell you.

Aleya Harris: Yes. And sometimes the advice you get the advice and you're like, am I going to do that? Or am I going to do the exact opposite of that? Because you are crazy pants.

Tim Fitzpatrick: That's a great story. What's one thing about you that surprises people? I'm thinking that that you went to culinary school, but I don't know.

Aleya Harris: I get the depending on who you talk to. I think that the thing that surprises most people is that I'm actually pretty much an introvert. They're like, what? You're so loud and the hair is so big. How do you possibly You're talking to an introvert. If you go back to the definition of where do you get your energy? I do love being on stage. I travel around and I speak. I've spoken on a couple, maybe 150 podcast. I'm talking all the time. But my true sense of peace comes from being at home meditating, hanging out with my husband and now my baby, or even just being by myself and regrouping, which a lot of people still don't think believe me even when I tell them.

Tim Fitzpatrick: There's a lot of people that answer that question that way because it's surprising, right? You see people who are speaking or on podcast or whatever, and you go, Oh, they must be totally extroverted.

Aleya Harris: Yeah, Mark's a loud introvert like me. I love it. See, loud introverts that unite, Mark.

Tim Fitzpatrick: Yeah, exactly. Well, you I think you really touched on it. It's where we get our energy from. It's not that you can't go out and do those things. It's just that those things don't recharge your batteries.

Aleya Harris: Right. I need to come back, regroup, start again.

Tim Fitzpatrick: What does success mean to you?

Aleya Harris: It's interesting because somebody actually asked me this recently. One of my friends, we were on box or talking back and forth, and we were talking about success and legacy. And she asked me, Well, has the concept of success and legacy changed now that you have a baby? Now my daughter's name is Ruby. Is Ruby your idea of success? If Ruby is successful, you are successful. And I would love to say that I bought into the traditional paradigm that that is true, but that is actually not true for me. Yes, do I want Ruby to be successful beyond belief? Absolutely. But my idea of success hasn't changed since I became a mom. It's leaving a legacy behind of people who are more in touch with themselves and more in love with themselves in life than they were before. One of those people will be my daughter. My daughter will learn how to do those skills for herself and other people. But that is what success looks like. And coming with that is the money because I like food and fancy cars. And coming with that is the fame, etc. But my idea is I have this concept of a legend's concert. Have you ever watched the BET awards or the VH1 awards or the MTV awards? And at the end, they honor someone like Chaka Khan or Madonna or Cher or whatever. And then all the newer artists are up on the stage singing their songs and there's a different feeling in the room. Beyonce's legend concert will be very different from Lady Gaga's legend concert. It'll feel different. There's a different emotion in the room. And I always like to think of what in my legend concert... Hypothetical because I have not made any songs. But a legend concert. What would the feeling be in the room? What would people be singing about me from the stage in their speeches as I go up to get my lifetime achievement award? And I want it to be that there's no one in the room that remained untouched in their heart by me. Everyone felt like they somehow came into themselves in a more beautiful and unique way because they had me in their life. That's what I want.

Tim Fitzpatrick: Where's your happy place?

Aleya Harris: Right now, my bed, because, again, she's three and a half months old. So if it's not in my bed, then it actually would be strolling her around I really like our stroller. We have a Nune stroller. And when we got it, I was like, This thing handles like...

Tim Fitzpatrick: It handles like a dream..

Aleya Harris: So going on a walk, watching her explore the outside, notice leaves and things for the first time. That's also my happy place.

Tim Fitzpatrick: What qualities do you value in the people you spend time with?

Aleya Harris: Honesty and integrity. Not just honest, you're not going to lie to me, but people that are willing to be honest with themselves in love and people who have a consistent way of being. I don't think integrity is one of those things that you have with that lion poster on the cliche wall. Integrity. But I think of integrity in a true sense of the word. And if you think of does a bridge have integrity, it means is it strong, able to withstand outside forces? Is each part of the bridge strong? There are no weak points in it. I think of someone's character in that way. Not that everyone is super strong, but they are at least trying to have a consistent flow line with how they operate within themselves and how they interact with the world. They are operating in integrity and showing up in a way that consistently demonstrates their true values.

Tim Fitzpatrick: I agree with you. I love honesty and integrity. The definition of integrity that always stuck with me was doing the right thing when nobody's watching. It's super simple. It obviously takes an extreme amount of strength to be able to do that because you're like, there's nobody here.

Aleya Harris: I can get away with it.

Tim Fitzpatrick: Yeah, I can get away with it. But deep down, you got answer to yourself, right? Absolutely. Awesome. Before we dig into messaging, tell us a little bit more about what you're doing at Flourish Marketing.

Aleya Harris: Absolutely. At Flourish Marketing, we transform leaders into legends through radically authentic copywriting and messaging strategy. We use our three part framework called the Flourishing Empire framework to help our empire builders get real, get clear, and get connected. The first part, get real, is all about diving into your radically authentic self. We use energy alignment techniques, meditations, exercises to help you excavate what is no longer worth working for you and replenish it with what does serve you and the highest good. Then we take that newly formed budding story of yours and we clarify it in our second step using the StoryBrand framework. We put it through the story brand framework, which you can find in a book written by Donald Miller called Building a StoryBrand. And we use it a little bit differently. We use the framework as is, but it's not cookie cutter. Because we did the first part, your story in that framework doesn't just sound like every other therapist or landscape architects or roofing companies. It be unique, yet still powerful and highly converting because it follows a framework that works. Then the third step of getting connected, we write the copy using your unique story on the StoryBrand framework that helps you reach your ideal clients and stand out from the Sea of Sameness.

How to Stand Out from the Competition

Tim Fitzpatrick: I love it. So let's dig into it. One of the biggest struggles for a lot of businesses is standing out from the competition. Honestly, most markets at this point are extremely crowded and very competitive. What's the best way for us to stand out?

Aleya Harris: Well, I'm biased, but I think that the best way for you to stand out is to actually stand in your power, to stand in your uniqueness and to become vulnerable and okay with being authentic. We all went through a pandemic. I don't know if you remember. But during that time, a lot shifted individually and corporately. It was a visceral change for people on many levels. And during that time, a lot of people realized they just had themselves in their belly button to keep them company. And they started wondering what actually they wanted, what they needed, who they connected with, what lit them up, did they like their job, did they not like their job. And now, fast forward just a little bit from the start of the pandemic, and we have the great resignation happening, quiet quitting happening because people were like, I don't like this. I have discovered more of who I am or what I want, or at least I'm a little bit more committed to the journey of figuring it out. If you then come out of the gate with messaging that sounds like you haven't figured it out, like you are still trying to beat the old drum of what you think sounds good and shiny and flashy on the surface and there's nothing beneath it, you will fall like a pang on deaf ears. To be the most effective, people are looking for what is real. They're tired of being lied to to be very blunt about it. And they're looking for something that they can connect with, something that they can feel, something that matches the newly refined version of themselves. If you have not done that work yourself as a company, as an executive team, as a business leader, then unfortunately, you will be able to be snuffed out and sniffed out. Your inauthenticity will stink up the room. In order to stand out, you need to find out, Well, why am I unique? And how does that uniqueness serve other people? If you think about it in the StoryBrand framework, there's a place where you show up as the guide, the one who has empathy because they understand understand what people have been going through, and they have authority because they've helped other people rise above their challenges in the past. In the StoryBrand framework is built off of the hero's journey framework, which was codified by Joseph Campbell in a book called A Hero with a Thousand Faces. It's a dense read. I'm just going to let you know if you're going to read the book. The story brand framework can save yourself some time. But in the book, he talks about all stories across geography and time. Have a mentor, have a guide. And it's that meeting of the mentor moment that catalyzes change. But you have your story and then you have their story. And in that meeting of the mentor moment is when they intersect. And in the middle here, don't you like my diagram?

Tim Fitzpatrick: Yes, I love it.

Aleya Harris: In the middle here, you have our story. You have this meeting of the mentor moment, which creates a new story to be formed. When you're writing your copy and you're trying to understand how to stand out, it's not just about being crazy and zany and cookie. It's about I am crazy and zany and cookie, but for someone else, I'm a perfect match. So let me write my story in a way that that person can find me as their mentor to guide them through a set of problems. It goes back to the thought of your ideal customer and having an ideal customer because you cannot serve everybody. If their story doesn't match your story, and if you have a meeting of the mentor moment and you pass like ships in the night, then they are not your client. If they don't have a problem that you solve wall still standing in your power and your radical authenticity, they are not your client. So once you discover who you are and how you want to approach the world and the conversation and show up, then you begin attracting the people who need you to be exactly who you are. They need you to stand in that power because that's what they've been missing all along. It's very different from if you're a landscape architect, I plant pretty flowers and will make sure your lawn looks great. That's great. But if you're someone who is super competitive and yes, you're a landscape artist, but it has to be perfect and you're always trying to one up the next person. You're like, Oh, that's such a bad quality of mine. Is it? Or could you then take that quality in your skill and transform that into messaging that is not I plant pretty flowers and you have great lawns. And instead it is, I will help you have the best house on the block. You've been trying to beat the Joneses next door for years, and they just will not give you the name of their landscaper. But if you want to have the best house on the block, you want your yard to showcase the status that you've attained. You've worked hard. You are a professional in your career. Your house should reflect that on the outside and the inside. I'm the person for you. Very different messaging than I plant pretty flowers.

Tim Fitzpatrick: I'm envisioning a landscape artist, if you will, rather than a landscaper.

Aleya Harris: Exactly.

Tim Fitzpatrick: I love that. You dropped a few bombs here. One of them I want to pull out because I think it's easy for people to miss. You touched on?understanding who your ideal clients are . You can't serve everyone. I think that's a common road that people go down where they're trying to target broadly. When they do, it's nearly impossible to create a message that's going to resonate with everybody. It's too generic. And so they read it and it doesn't hit. But when you go deeper, that's when you can get much more specific and specificity is what grabs people.

Aleya Harris: Absolutely. What's happening in that circumstance is that you're making a fear based decision when you try to market towards everyone because you're saying, I don't want to leave any money on the table. Oh, my gosh. I'm so scared of ostracizing someone and someone won't pick me because I've gotten too specific. No fear based decision is a lucrative decision. You will not make money trying to target everyone. You need to pick a lane. And stay in your lane. This goes back to what I was talking about, excavation and replenishment, fear and resentment and any type of negativity. Those are all things that need to be excavated, removed from yourself in order for you to accelerate your revenue. Ask Tim. You need to take a good, hard look at yourself and say, Well, what is holding me back? And what would I like to have in its place instead? You need to be honest and say, Am I living in fear? And not judge it. It's probably well earned fear. You have been through some stuff, and because of that, you have a healthy fear. And that healthy fear then turned into an unhealthy fear. And you need to probably ditch it. But it's not about like, Oh, I shouldn't fear. Everyone has fears that they need to overcome. And we've earned all of our stripes. Now it's about saying, do I want to hold my fear as a badge of honor? Do I want to actually make some money? Which one tickles your fancy? And if it's the last one, you want to make some money, which is my choice always. I think that it probably behooves you to take a good look at what really you are scared of. Are you scared that you won't hit everybody because you really don't know how to market your business? So you're just like, Well, let me shotgun it. It's got to hit somebody because I don't really know what I'm doing. Are you scared that you need to hit everybody because you don't feel like there are enough of your ideal client? That could be one because you really don't know your products and services and you're like, I don't know if this is really going to hit who I need it to. Or it could just be a total story and a fallacy that you've made up in your head, which, again, there's no judgment. We all do it. But why are you so scared? I remember when I wanted to... I work in verticals, so I niched down originally to the wedding, catering and events industry. The next vertical I'm working with, primarily externally going after is the med spa industry. And to help dissuade my fears, I do research on the vertical first. How large is the vertical? How much does the average business pull in? Can they afford me? Where are they located? Do they have the problem that I solved? Do I like them? Am I going to like hanging out at conferences with these people? Btw, wedding caner and events people, best food, best parties. It's awesome. And the medspa people, I'm like, oh, these people get the technical aspect and they really tend to be quite competitive because they have quite a few of them. I love that about them. So I know that that's a fear. I share those same fears, so I proactively go after what can I do to make it so I feel more comfortable marketing towards a smaller industry of people? And you know what's the funniest part? I spent all this time like, I'm in a niche down here. I'm going to do this messaging for this vertical. I'm going to create this lead magnet. I'm going to pull these people in, just the wedding catering events industry. And then who comes to me? My last client that I just got phone with was a roofer. The one was before that was a therapist. I've had artists come in. If they resonate with your message, they will resonate with your message. But you need to start going in one direction, then your people will find you.

Tim Fitzpatrick: I had a conversation with somebody a couple of weeks ago in preparation for a podcast episode. One of the things he said was when we focused, life just got easier. You don't have to niche forever. You're niching for now. Sometimes you nich and you go into the wedding and catering industry and you're like, Oh, my God. This is horrible. No, I'm going down a different path. And that's totally okay. But when you niche for now, it gives you that focus, which gives you clarity, which makes it it's so much easier to know where you need to go to get in front of the right people.

Aleya Harris: Yes. And it also builds up your role as a guide or as a mentor. You can dive deeply into the conversation with people because you are that industry's expert in whatever. You are that industry's expert accountant. You are that industry's expert marketer or expert fractional CFO or whatever it is. And you can speak their language. And then when you move, like I say, I work in verticals. When I move from in the vertical, I hold on to the other ones. I don't let the vertical go. But then I can become that next industry's expert by all doing things and working with people I like. If I don't want to work with people I like, I go back to working in corporate and get a cubicle and die.

How to Best Define The Problem You Solve

Tim Fitzpatrick: Yeah. So let's dig into the problem. Okay. The problem to me, the problem is the hook that brings them in.

Aleya Harris: Absolutely.

Tim Fitzpatrick: How can our listeners, our audience, best define the problem that they actually solve?

Aleya Harris: There's the problem that you like to solve and then the problem that you're being asked to solve. And the ideal is that they are the same thing. So if you think about what gives you jollies, the clients that you love working with, and if that's not who's filling out your inquiry form, then you have a messaging issue. The problem is there are three levels of problem, going back to building a StoryBrand. The external, the internal, and the philosophical problem. The external problem is what people see in front of their faces. So for example, let's go back to our landscaped artiste. The problem that his ideal client has in front of their face is one, their yard is subpar, it's probably not trashy. We're not talking about they have their RV parked across their lawn in a broken down car. That's not who we're talking about. We're still talking about people who have some type of ability to have clean lawn, but it's just not... People aren't slowing down their cars as they drive by. That's what they want. So their problem is that their lawn is just meh, and they don't know how to make it magical. So how does that make them feel? That is their internal problem. They're shopping to solve their external problem, but they buy to solve their internal problem. So their internal problem is they're embarrassed because it could be better. They're frustrated because they've gone through five landscape architects and all they can get is really nice grass. They're overwhelmed by this trying to get what they want and managing it in their busy schedule because they have a lot of things to do. And they just cannot seem to crack this nut. They have the nice suit, the nice car. The house is beautiful. This dang lawn.

Tim Fitzpatrick: Not right.

Aleya Harris: Not right. Physothopically, it's a battle of good and evil always. And the thought is what they deserve or how it should or should not be. And they deserve a lawn that matches the prestige that they have in all other areas of their life. When you think of a problem in those three ways, that is a complete hook, as you were talking about, Tim, that when you can hit them, as I like to say, in their head, their heart and their gut, that is when you've captured their attention fully, when you get them understanding what their problem is and you're able to articulate it back to them because most likely they haven't really been able to articulate it to themselves. And then you can say, this is how this makes you feel, right? That sucks, man. I would not want to be this frustrated over a lawn. It should be a problem that is solved relatively easily if you can get the right person in there. You have been able to say to them, I understand you, I get you. And then the next step is for you to tell them how you can solve their problem better than anybody else.

Tim Fitzpatrick: Let me ask you this, because I think some people may be thinking, Well, gosh, I solve multiple problems. When you look at the variety of problems that you might solve, how do you really hone in on the one problem? Do you dig a little bit deeper to find the root problem of all the larger problems? Help me out here.

Aleya Harris: That depends on why you have multiple problems. So you could have multiple problems because you have two very distinct ideal clients. So let's say that you are a nonprofit organization and you have the donors as a client, and then you have the people that you're actually giving money to when you're serving. So then there are two distinct problems and you speak to each one and you're very clear on who you're talking to. You might even on your splash page on your website, say, do you need services or do you need... Are you wanting to donate? And you have them self select and then you dive more deeply into that problem. You still have the overarching problem that you saw, which most likely ties into who you are serving your mission, if you will. If in another case, you really have one ideal client and you're like, oh, but they come to me for all of these other issues, then yes, you're absolutely right. Tim, you dive into what is the deep underlying problem. If you're like, I don't know, go back to your inquiry forms, send out a survey that straight up asks your client, what is the problem that I saw, your previous clients, what is the problem that I solved for you? How did you feel after I solved that problem for you? What does life look like now that I have solved this problem for you? You don't have to be a mind reader. A lot of the times people feel like all of a sudden when they're entrepreneurs, somehow spirit drops onto them this knowledge of everything that they need. No, go and ask. Go ask your clients. Go and do a poll on LinkedIn. Send out an email. Pick up the phone and call some people so that you can understand what is the one that they solve the most. Now you say, Okay, Aleya, though, but I still have... They gave me two distinct, clear problems. I don't know how to connect the two of them. Which one makes the most money? That's what I always go back down to. If you solve the big problem, can you make more money? Do you feel comfortable? Do you have the infrastructure to solve that problem really well, then go for that one. Or are you doing a volume play where this other problem might be smaller, you might have to charge less for it, but you're like, but I can sell this thing like hot cakes. I can sell 500 of these a month. That solves a smaller problem. But they should still be linked because otherwise you have two separate companies if the problem is that diverse, you still want to link them together somehow. But for example, we help you get radically authentic in your marketing and messaging strategy. Our entry level at the time that I'm talking to you right now is 7,500. For the majority of our clients, that's great. For a lot of the folks in the wedding, catering and event industry, especially my newbies, that's not so great.

Tim Fitzpatrick: They're like, What?

Aleya Harris: What? I want to get radically authentic. I want this big messaging strategy. I see that you change people's lives, hearts and businesses, but I can't afford that. I'm like, Oh, but I love them and I still want to work with them and I want to build them up so then in a year or two, they can afford that larger service. They just need to know what they're doing wrong. So then now I'm launching an audit, 500 hours, I will go through all your stuff and tell you exactly what's wrong and what your next steps are. So it's still related to my framework. What I'm going to tell them is wrong is based on the three stages that we've gone over. I'm going to move forward in that same direction. But I'm like, if you can't go for this big shebang and you just really need to know where you're messing up, you're going to try to DIY it. Go with God, my friend. Here's exactly what you need to do.

How to Revise Your Products or Services to Stand Out

Tim Fitzpatrick: This leads me into my next question about, once we've identified how we're going to stand out and what that problem is, how do we... Sometimes we're going to have to revise, realign our products or services around all these things. How do we do that?

Aleya Harris: It's very interesting because going back to the client, the roofing company, not the landscape architect, but I was working with a roofing company and I got, you got to give me some roofing knowledge. So I had a baseline and I, I don't know if you noticed, but I am not a roofer. Not my damn. But he was like, Well, this is what they all do. And this is what frustrates me about what all the other roofing companies do. They don't show up. They're not transparent. They're trying to just sell you and sales you. And it's just horrible. I hate it. And I said, Hate is a strong emotion. Let's work with that. Let's work with what you really don't like and how you want to be the opposite. And what we unearthed was it was really going to be about customer service in his process that he was really selling. Peace of mind, we show up, not only do our inspections mean our boots are actually on the roof, a lot of roofing companies apparently try to assess your roof from the ground, which I'm like, that's bonkers to me. How are you going to do that?

Tim Fitzpatrick: I've got binoculars and I'm standing here.

Aleya Harris: I'm like, Okay, well, I'm glad that I don't need a new roof right now because I don't do that. We get on the ground, we get in the attic. We have this ten point inspection that we're putting together that is proprietary for just us. And I said, That's how you redo your service. It's not about, oh, do I need to change shingle vendors? Or I need to have a new logo. His logo is actually adorable. So I was like, we got to keep the logo no matter what we do. But it's about how you're delivering this and what you're pulling out. It involves you then making sure that you stand in integrity with the messaging you're coming out with. If you're going to be the ones who show up and are more thorough than everyone else, what does that look like for your end to end process? How are your forms built? How are your automations created? How do you ensure that you will be on time with your calendar blocking system? So sometimes it's how do you operationalize the products and services that you already have and you're not actually needing to adjust them very much. In a situation like this, the way that I tend to advise clients that I've worked with over multiple years is in the beginning, you lean into that service development and that service delivery model, and then you start charging more for it because you are providing peace of mind that no one else can provide and no one else is doing in the market. So then it not only becomes you get the better client and so you get the clients you want to serve, but then you also start making more money from it. When you're thinking about like, okay, well, I don't think that it's how I deliver my services, but I think it's my actual services that need adjusting. Go back and get real simple. Usually, if you've been in business for a while, you have the bells and the whistles and the add ons and the this and everything's custom. It's exhausting, isn't it? Aren't you tired?

Tim Fitzpatrick: Yeah, I'm tired thinking about it.

Aleya Harris: Tired thinking about it. Go back. What is the one problem that you solved? And what is the best way to solve that problem? Now, I did this and it involved me taking my... I had a strategy session service. When I very first started, I had some feelings of unworthiness. So the strategy session was $600, something like that. And it was a different service than what I offer now. But at the core, it was the same. I was still using my over a decade of marketing experience to help people do their business. I was a steal of a deal. And then as I refined the service and I got more in touch with who I was, that service is $7,500. And it's really, truly game changing for most of my clients because they can see a vision that they haven't been able to see before and they see a way out of that sea of sameness. And I realized that that is what I'm providing. And the fact that they will make hundreds of thousands of dollars because of that direction is really what I am pricing. But the service needed to change and the pricing needed to change once I realized the problem that I was truly solving, which means that you might need to get comfortable with changing your audience, outpricing your current clientele, moving forward in a different direction. Now, I don't recommend you do that overnight. You always build your audience up first before you jump ship because otherwise you end up with nobody to buy your thing, even though is great. But your service needs to match that problem. And as opposed, like, we totally did this. I offered like, I think it was 12 separate entry point services. It was exhausting. I hated it. Now we offer one entry point and then a retainer as the externally communicated service. Now, if someone comes in and they have something really fun, yeah, we do total custom stuff, but it has to be fun and lucrative for us to do that. Going from 12 to two has made us be able to focus more, has made us stronger, has made our messaging stronger, has made the deliverable better. But we only did that once we realized that the problem that we solved was actually a much bigger problem than we thought we were solving. So getting more simple and more basic around, Hey, this is the one problem I solved. And then thinking about the book, The One Thing by Gary Keller, one of my favorite books and one of my favorite thoughts is what is the one thing that I can do today, right now that will make everything else easier or unnecessary? What is the one product or service that if your client does nothing else to solve their problem that will make everything else in their life easier or unnecessary? That's the product or service that you come out with.

Tim Fitzpatrick: That's the one that you lead with.

Aleya Harris: Yeah, that's the one you lead with. And you can have other ones or not. One of my business coaches, she has her own business, but then she also is a part of... She's married into a family business and they produce a hook. Yes, a hook, like a hook that you put on your wall. It's a safety hook. This hook has supported generations of family. They all work in it. Multimillion dollar business, one hook. Why? Because it solves a problem really, really well. And schools want it. Churches want it. Hospitals want it. It's a safety hook. I don't know. I guess if it's eyeliner for the kiddos are not going to jam their eye in it, something like that. So however the hook is, I actually don't even know what the hook looks like. It's on their website. I could go look, but I was just so astounded by the story. And she said, Yeah, why work harder than you have to? Our one hook, as opposed to being like, Oh, I need to have 50 million products. She goes, Now we work in this vertical, and then we can use that one hook in the next vertical, and then rinse and repeat. You don't need to use your products and services to show off your intelligence, which is what a lot of people end up doing. They're like, oh, but I am so smart. I could offer these five million things so everybody knows how good I am and how smart I am and how accomplished I am that I can do these five million things. Or you could just talk about other cool stuff on podcast and sell one thing and stop working 14 hours a day and start building something that's sustainable.

Tim Fitzpatrick: This reminds me, one of my favorite quotes is simplicity is the ultimate sophistication. It's so easy to overcomplicate things. It's far more difficult to really boil things down to their simplest form. But gosh, if we can get there, everything becomes much, much easier.

Aleya Harris: Absolutely. It's almost like, I think it's in a Mark Twain quote where he wrote a long letter and he said, I'm sorry that this letter is so long. If I had more time, it would have made it shorter.

Tim Fitzpatrick: Yeah. Exactly.

Aleya Harris: It's much more difficult to shorten, to tighten, to make things concise, to make things really great. Doing shotgun products, I'm going to throw this product out. I'm going to throw this product out there. I'm going to throw this product out there. Means that you are scared to take time to sit back and take a look at yourself and your products and refine them. That takes time. That takes attention. It takes you ignoring the next shiny, bright object so that you can focus. If you really believe in your product, if you really believe in your service, you will allow it to shine for you in a way that you can't do if you're always jumping on to the next thing, the next thing.

In Conlusion: Find Your Voice And Escape The Sea Of Sameness

Tim Fitzpatrick: Aleya, this has been awesome. Any last minute thoughts you want to leave us with today?

Aleya Harris: No matter how large your business is, if it's just you and you use the Royal Wee on your website, or if that Wee really means multiple people, you cannot afford to compartmentalize. You need to look at yourself and your business in a larger context. Who are you in relationship to yourself? Who are you in relationship to the world? How do you become so radically authentic that you don't feel the need to change and shift who you are now? You present yourself in every conversation and in every piece of collateral you put out there. But instead, you are shining so brightly that your people can't help but find you. That takes vulnerability, that takes a lot of courage. But it also is the route, especially now, to building a sustainable foundation for a business that people, when you are gone will talk about your legacy and the legacy that you've created, the story that you're creating now is the story that people will tell after you retire and after you pass on. So what story are you writing? And is it a story that you like? Or is it time to turn the page and write a new one?

Tim Fitzpatrick: I love it. Aleya, thank you so much. Where can people learn more about you if they want to reach out?

Aleya Harris: You can go to our website, which is so lovingly scrolling across the bottom, flourishmarketing.co. You can also download lots of our free stuff at flourishmarketing.co/Freebies. And on there, we have a guide that takes you through our three part framework. We have a couple of quizzes. We have my favorite freebie, which is a 20 plus page guide on how to recalibrate and excavate some of that stuff you got rattled around in there. It has video resources and exercises and all kinds of good stuff. Freebies are always my jam. That's where I recommend you hang out.

Tim Fitzpatrick: Awesome. We will make sure for those that are listening, we'll make sure that all that stuff gets in the show notes. Go over to flourishmarketing.co. Aalaya, thank you so much. I appreciate the time. We could probably continue to chat for quite a while about this, but we have other things we have to do today, right? You have a baby to feed.

Aleya Harris: I do. I can hear her in the background. I've heard her. She's like, I'm giving you five more minutes.

Tim Fitzpatrick: Yeah, she's saying, Tim, shut up.

Aleya Harris: Run me the bottle. Where's the bottle?

Tim Fitzpatrick: That's all right. Well, Aleya, thank you so much. For those of you watching, listening. Thank you so much. I appreciate you. We've talked a little bit about target market today and ideal clients. We've talked about messaging. These are two of the nine revenue roadblocks we help people remove so they can accelerate growth. If you want to find out which roadblocks are in your way, you can do that over at?revenueroadblockscorecard.com . You can also always connect with us over at rialtomarketing.com as well. Thank you so much. Until next time, take care.

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