You need two things to be heard instead of ignored: point-of-view and message. These two combined is how you are heard. It’s what you are known by. It has everything to do with whether or not you grab attention or are ignored.
Many times people think that “message” means something really BIG, like world peace, or ending hunger, or Gay rights for marriage. Now it can mean that, and certainly point-of-view is really important as an entrepreneur. You do want to take a stand for something, particularly a stand for your clients. All of the marketing archetypes can assist you in taking a stand. (You can read about Marketing Archetypes on my blog here: http://livingmetaphysics.com/metaphysics/what-is-your-marketing-archetype/.)
Message in a marketing sense is different from point-of-view. Your outreach message—particularly as a service-oriented professional—needs mostly to be about the people you serve, and how their lives will change when they work with you. It’s not actually about you.
Your point-of-view (POV) is the way you express yourself, it includes your perspective on the world, and on reality for that matter. POV expresses your opinion. It shapes your tone, and what I call “The Flavor of You.” It helps differentiate you, and make you stand out. So that if someone read a post on Facebook or an article you wrote, and it didn’t have your name on it, they would still know that it was written by you.
Your message should focus on your people, what they are struggling with, how you can help them, and your vision for them as they evolve through the work you do together. It shouldn’t be about your training or your modalities. The language you use should be language that the people you most want to work with will understand easily.
You need to speak to their daily experience in a way that is clear, concise and compelling. It’s important for you to remember that your people have not had your training, and so probably do not understand the particular terms or even ways of thinking that are common within your professional field. Instead they are thinking about what’s troubling them, what they are struggling with, and longing for things to be different. This is where you need to meet them—in their everyday lives.
Your professional training as a healing arts practitioner, coach or teacher did not provide you with an understanding of how to do this. I’ve spoken to hundreds of people who, when asked “what you do?” say “I’m a life coach,” “I’m a body worker,” “I’m a spiritual teacher,” “I’m a nutritionist,” “I’m an energy worker.” These statements have neither a POV nor a message. They present your modality or the type of tool that you use, but they say nothing about you or your people.
Let me use myself as an example: my POV is conversational, intellectual, spiritual, historical, metaphysical, practical and expansive—all at the same time. I easily move between these perspectives and ways of seeing/speaking because that’s just who I am. It differentiates me from other business coaches, and also from other healing arts folks and spiritual teachers. Makes me distinctive.
My message is that you and your contribution—your sacred contribution—are critically important to the shift that’s happening on the planet right now. You deserve to make a lucrative income doing your transformational work, and you want to have a bigger reach so that you can make the impact you came here to make.
And I am here to help you get the marketing tools, sales skills, and organizational know-how to be able to do that. As an entrepreneur in the healing arts and coaching fields, you did not get the business training you need to be successful. And if you are right-brained, creative and intuitive, you will thrive with an approach that appreciates your specific gifts and challenges that go along with that. You can stop being frustrated trying to do this on your own, and instead soar once you get the guidance and information you need, given to you in a way that you can absorb and utilize.
Now what would it be for you? What’s your POV? And what’s your message? It’s time to step out from behind your training and your modality—and shine as who you are, with all of your life experience, your gifts, talents and skills—and the Flavor of You. What do you do for your people, and how will their lives be different as a result of working with you?