In this episode of Marketing Personalities, Brit Kolo delivers her signature talk – the one she gives on stage – for her new podcast listeners and even for the seasoned listeners who need the reminder of how powerful #marketingthatfeelsgood really is and how to tap into your own best marketing strategy based on your personality type.
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For the People in the Back! Episode Summary:
Welcome to this episode of the Marketing Personalities Podcast. I’m Brit Kolo, the founder of MarketingPersonalities.com and your host. And today, I’m going to do something I’ve never done before here on the podcast. I’m going to deliver my signature talk.
Why in the world would I do that? Signature talks are to be delivered from a stage, in front of a live audience. Why would I record it here for the podcast?
Well, I’ll tell you why.
Because I was reviewing my podcast stats this week and found that our podcast downloads per episode increased overall by 22% last year and just in the last 90 days, I’ve seen an 88% increase.
So that means we have a bunch of new listeners around here. And when I saw those numbers, I thought, well what the heck are they listening to? What are they consuming from this podcast that’s helping their business?
The answer to that question so far has been our most popular episodes in the past few months – the 2020 Conference Guide, the Holiday Gift Guide, the 2020 Planning Guide, and most recently, our most popular episode ever, Your Best Work Schedule based on your personality type.
Those were all great episodes, right? Yeah, they definitely were.
But then I thought, if I had all these new listeners in a room right now though… what would I want to communicate to them? What would my message be?
And the obvious, immediate answer was… my signature talk.
Of course it’d be my signature talk. That talk that took me a month to write and another month to memorize and countless practice runs to get it juuuust right.
Not just because of the time and energy put into it. But because of what it communicates.
My signature talk is literally the foundation of my entire company. It tees up absolutely everything, 100% of why Marketing Personalities exists, what it stands for, and how it serves its people.
And I’ve seen it happen over and over again – audience members that hear my signature talk consistently walk away with two key things: a new perspective on how to approach marketing their business and permission to do it in a way that feels good.
And those two things are the exact two things I’d love for you, as a new listener or even as a long-time listener who needs a clear reminder, to have too.
A new perspective on marketing and permission to do it your way.
So here we go. If you’re not really sure what Marketing Personalities is about yet or if you kind of know but you’ve lost sight of your own feel-good marketing strategy somewhere along the way, for the people in the back, this one’s for you.
Alright now stick with me here as we get into this.
Let me guide you for a second. I’d like you to think back to your very last meal. What did you eat last?
At this point you’re like, wait wait I thought we were talking about marketing. What is happening?!
I told you to stick with me. Just go with it.
Okay, seriously, think back to the very last time you ate. Maybe you’re eating right now. Maybe it was this morning’s breakfast, this afternoon’s lunch, last night’s dinner. Picture it in your mind now.
And now picture yourself preparing that meal. Maybe you threw it together really quickly, or you slaved over it. Maybe it was made for you, you ordered in, went out to eat. Picture yourself preparing to eat that meal.
Got it in your head?
Now, I bet I can tell you what was going through your mind while you were preparing for that meal. No, I’m not a mind-reader, but oftentimes it seems like I am.
Tell me if this is true or not – you were preparing for that meal – let’s say it was lunch in this example – and whether you made your lunch yourself or not, you had to first choose what you wanted to eat, right? And as you were deciding what you’d eat, your mind sounded something like this…
Like, hmm I probably should have a salad.
Or at least I should have something light. Nothing too heavy.
Pepsi or water? Ehh should probably go with water.
Extra cheese and croutons? Shouldn’t but eh why not?
Why don’t I like vegetables like I love cheese? Ugh.
Should I grab another cup of coffee for the afternoon? Could use one but ehhh probably shouldn’t – it’s after 1pm. If anything, it should be green tea…
Any of that ring a bell? Yup.
Did you pick up on the pattern there?
All the shoulds. Making alllllll of these seemingly small, but still persistent decisions from what you SHOULD do. Not what you want to do, but what you think or feel you SHOULD do.
And hey, I get it. I’m a recovering SHOULD-er myself.
Among being an ENFJ, a founder, a speaker, a podcast host, the thing that’s most important for you to know is I’m a recovering SHOULD-er.
I should get A’s.
I should go to college.
I should get a good job.
I should go in early.
I should stay late.
I should care about this company.
I should do more.
I should try harder.
I should be better.
I should be farther along.
And ya know where all these SHOULDs got me?
In an okay job with an okay salary hating my life.
True story.
Yes, I’m one of those Millenials that had things pretty much figured out, living the life she thought she SHOULD live, and being totally unsatisfied.
Some of you are sitting there thinking, whoa this chick knows my life.
Some of you are sitting there judging the fact that I’m a Millenial. No, I’m not a mindreader, but ehh maybe I am.
But every single one of you in this room knows what it’s like to make decisions from SHOULD. You just did it at lunch.
And for me, a few years ago, I realized SHOULDs were ruining everything. I was living the life I thought I SHOULD live, doing things I thought I SHOULD do, and hated all of it.
So I quit my job, started my own marketing consulting practice, and vowed to not let SHOULDs run my life anymore.
And about 2 seconds later, I started hearing this kind of stuff come from my clients. They’d come to me, looking for marketing strategy help and advice, I’d ask them what they thought the problem with their marketing was and I’d get variations of this:
I should be posting to social media at least 3x a day.
I should run Facebook ads to attract new leads and then retarget them, right?
I should be booking speaking gigs – I mean, I’ll probably puke the moment I get on stage, but I see all these industry leaders and they have to speak so I should too.
And how about content? I should work harder on my site’s SEO, shouldn’t I?
Without a doubt, I should be booking more sales calls – kind of why I hired you.
And now, Amy’s telling me I should do a webinar.
And Frank’s telling me I should do a 3-part video series.
And holy smokes there are so many emails that should get written I don’t even know where to start.
Any of that sound familiar?
Are you should-ing all over your marketing strategy too?
Yeah, I mean I get it. Remember, recovering SHOULD-er right here. And that’s why I think I noticed all the shoulds coming from my clients. I mean they were just so inundated with the shoulds when it came to marketing and that’s partly why they wanted to work with me, hoping I could reduce the pressure and help them get some of those shoulds done and off their own plate.
But, being the recovering SHOULD-er that I was, I knew this SHOULD problem went way deeper and hiring me wasn’t going to fix this for these clients.
I mean, not to get all Brene Brown on you…
But I’m gonna get all Brene Brown on you.
The woman has a Netflix documentary. She knows some stuff.
And listen, Brene would tell us the word SHOULD can only lead us to SHAME.
Right? Think about it. When should comes up in a sentence it’s ONLY there to make you do something to avoid the shame of not doing it.
Are you tracking with me right now?
And now Brene says, “Should corrodes that very part of us that believes we are capable of change.”
And in my own words – SHOULD KEEPS US SMALL.
It keeps us thinking we’re not enough so we should just do it the way this person has told us.
And I mean, for a normal person, this might not really matter.
But you’re entrepreneurs and small business owners and salespeople and students geared for growth. Geared for change. Geared for making things better, right?
And what’s cutting all those aspirations off at the knees?
The word should. Especially when it comes to marketing.
Which is then compounded by this.
One quick Google search of “marketing ideas” and you’ll find stuff like this. 32 places to promote your business for free! 50 ways to marketing your online business!
The top recommendation on Google gives you 17 free marketing ideas and if that’s not enough, oh no worries, because there are 693 BILLION other results to comb through.
Oy.
And then there’s this phenomenon happening, just compounding the shoulds even more.
The guru on the mountain top.
We’re the little baby business owner so we start looking for people to learn from and five years later we’re still struggling to make a full-time living or scale our business model because we keep trying to use Frank’s and Marie’s and Gary’s templates in our own businesses and they just don’t work for us.
And finally, the nail in the coffin of all the shoulds on your shoulders.
What you EXPECT to happen when you put your new marketing and sales strategy into play compared to what really happens.
Those expectations, those projections constantly tell us we should be doing better and should be going farther and should be doing more.
The SHOULD-ing has to stop.
Because it’s not working.
I mean really, is it working?
Is it really working as you’d hoped it would to market your business in all the ways you think or feel like you should?
Are you super happy with the results you’re getting from your marketing strategy?
Orrrr could they use some work?
Yeah, see all the shoulds don’t actually work.
So I’m here to show you what WILL work for you.
And it’s rooted in this belief that flies in the face of all the marketing shoulds out there.
When I feel good, my audience feels good.
This is what I’m here to instill in you today.
Well, first of all, let go of the shoulds. But when you stop operating out of SHOULDs, what do you fill that space with?
What then?
How do you develop a marketing strategy when you don’t have the google results and the guru’s templates and the crazy high expectations to show you the way?
You start with you.
You start with what feels good for you.
You start with marketing that feels good for you to implement.
Because when I feel good, my audience feels good.
Take a picture of this slide, everybody, because this is the main takeaway.
Don’t worry, we’ll get into the how in a second.
But if you don’t internalize this truth, take it away, chew on it, realize how valid it is, you’ll miss the whole dang point.
When I feel good, my audience feels good.
When you show up feeling good, your audience feels good about you.
When you show up feeling good, natural, in your strengths, your audience leans in, they like you, they trust you, they want what you’re offering.
Now on the flip side, when you show up because you feel like you should and you feel fake and salesy about how you’re trying to market and sell your stuff, guess what? Your audience feels the fake and salesy and uncomfortable vibe too. They lean out, they don’t really like you, and they definitely don’t trust you.
So if you’ve ever done something compleeeetely out of your comfort zone to market your product or service and you felt super fake about it but someone told you should so you did and the whole thing totally flopped… well, I rest my case.
But when you build a marketing strategy based on what feels good to you, your audience – your best clients and customers – can’t help but be attracted to that.
Now, I’m going to show you how to identify what marketing is going to feel good to you in a second, but first, I gotta talk to Gary.
Because Gary’s sitting in the audience (NOT REALLY, DON’T LOOK AROUND I’m talking about hypothetical Gary), someone like Gary is sitting in the audience thinking…
Uhh this sounds nice but I don’t need this to feel good. I need it to work.
Uh huh. I hear you.
And it will. Basic laws of energy and your own human experience will tell you that when you show up feeling good, those around you feel good too.
When you show up feeling crappy, fake, salesy, like you don’t want to be there, those around don’t want to be there either.
So developing a strategy based on what’s going to allow you to feel good WILL WORK.
And to Marie, who’s like, okay cool cool this sounds nice but what about my ideal client avatar? I’ve always been taught that my marketing strategy needs to be based on what my ideal client avatar wants to see from me. Go where they are, tell them what they want to hear.
Such a good question here.
Here’s the deal – asking who your ideal client is is not a bad question to ask. It’s just a bad FIRST question to ask. Because if you build your marketing strategy solely on what you ideal client thinks you SHOULD do, you could still build a strategy that you hate to implement. You hate it, you show up feeling icky and smarmy and uncomfortable and we’re back at square one – with a marketing strategy that still doesn’t work because that ideal client of yours doesn’t like the energy you’re bringing to the table, can’t trust you, and won’t buy.
Anddd finally to Frank who is part of a marketing team and isn’t just a one-man-show, does this whole marketing-that-feels-good thing apply to a marketing team?
The short answer is, heck yes! Knowing your marketing team members’ marketing personality types is so key to developing a great strategy for your team to implement.
But for the sake of this presentation, I recommend just focusing on YOU. Focus on the marketing that feels good for YOU and then we can talk later about how we might apply this framework to your entire team to create way better results.
Okay, phew. Gary, Marie, Frank, you guys are tough. But smart. And I’m so glad we could work through all that.
Now, are you ready? Are you ready to find out what your best marketing strategy is based on your personality type?
Heck yes you are.
Okay, so let’s go through this. I’m going to show you four super simple steps you’ll take to find out what your best marketing strategy is and how to have it work for you.
First step – you really do have to internalize this truth. When I feel good, my audience feels good.
At some point, you’re going to have to let go of all those shoulds and all those marketing rules you’ve picked up over the years and you’ll have to remember and embody the fact that regardless of what seems to work for other people, what will work for you is what feels good to you!
Okay, you can do that.
Second step – know thyself. You’ll need to identify what feels good and natural to you in everyday life. There are plenty of ways to do that, but what I recommend is to take a psychology-backed personality assessment that delivers you thorough results and intel about yourself.
My favorite one to point people to is at 16personalities.com. That’s where you’ll find out what your “four letters” are, or rather, preferences to your personality.
Like I said earlier – I’m an ENFJ.
At this point, you probably know your type too.
If you don’t know yours yet, that’s totally fine. I would put on your to-do list for when you get home or get back to work on Monday would be to take that assessment at 16personalities.com.
I don’t own that or have any affiliation with that assessment or website. It’s just simply my favorite to recommend because of its validity and how thorough their result explanations are.
Now, one side note on finding out what your personality type is – this is not a perfect science. We’re humans with a LOT of fluctuation built into us. There are over 7 billion of us on the planet and only 16 personality types this particular assessment categorizes us in.
So, don’t be too afraid of being “put in a box” or something like that. Look at it as an opportunity to have a mirror held up in front of you so you can see interesting things about yourself that you kind of knew, but didn’t know how to articulate until now.
Also, if it’s been a while since taking a personality assessment, I highly recommend taking it again, now, in this current stage of your life.
It’s not uncommon for someone to find that when they took the assessment years ago, after being hired for a new job and the HR department requesting they take it, their results were different from when they get when they take it now. There are plenty of reasons of how that could’ve happened that I won’t get into now, but the point is – take the assessment again. It’s free. And be nothing but totally honest as you answer the questions so you know you’ve gotten an accurate result.
Okay, now step 3 is where the rubber meets the road. Once you know your personality type, which tells you about your preferences – what you do that feels good to you – you can develop a marketing strategy based on that.
Of course, I’ve built the framework that shows you exactly what your best marketing strategy includes based on what your personality type is and I’ll show you where you can find that information for free in a second.
But even before that, you can start imagining what marketing tactics feel fun and interesting and good to you and which ones make your stomach turn a little bit because they’re just simply not comfortable for you.
Do you have anything coming up for you right now? Anything that you know you want to keep doing or start doing in your marketing because it just sounds so fun to you? Write that sh*t dowwwwn.
And on the flip side, is there anything that’s coming to mind that you just really don’t enjoy doing or you hear someone talk about it and you’re just like, ughh but do I haaaave to?? Write that down too. It’s so important to notice the contrast even before you tap into the framework I’ve created for you.
Now, let’s look at some real-life examples of how personality type really can tell us so much about a person’s best marketing strategy – one that feels genuinely good for them to implement.
This podcast is full of real-life examples.
Like episode #135 where we get to hear from Racheal Cook – an INFJ who resists the pressure to do high-pressure launches and instead, opens the doors to her programs calmly and relies on her regular long-form content to do the heavy lifting in her marketing strategy.
And how about episode #126 where we get to hear from Dennis Schiraldi – an ESTP who is best at networking, developing personal relationships, and hosting big events like digital marketing conferences.
I could go on and on with the real-life entrepreneurs who are using their Marketing Personality Types in their businesses and marketing strategies every day and finding success doing it.
But the point is simple and consistent – we all market our businesses differently because ew’re all different personality types. The key is to tap into your own and leverage it.
Now, I promised four action steps and we’ve only talked about 3 so far.
1 – Internalize “When I feel good, my audience feels good.” You’re going to be whispering that in your sleep tonight, I’m telling you.
2 – Know thyself. Find out what your personality type and preferences are.
3 – Apply that knowledge to your marketing strategy, identifying what marketing tactics definitely feel good and which ones, eh, really don’t.
And finally, number four:
Let go of the shoulds.
Let go of the shoulds!!
So all those things that you just know don’t feel good for you? Those are the sneaky little things that crawl into the back of your brain and say, “Hey you should be thinking about me. You can’t be successful without me so you really shoulddddd.”
Those little guys need to go.
You have to stop should-ing all over your marketing strategy for your best marketing strategy – the one that actually feels good to implement – to really work.
Okay? Deal? Deal.
Now, as promised, you can always and forever find out what your best marketing strategy includes for free at marketingpersonalities.com. This is definitely not a sales pitch because it’s there for free for you to tap into, okay?
What you’ll find there is a page where you’ll click on your own personality type, learn more about yourself and the factors I take into account when crafting your best marketing strategy recommendations.
And then ta-da you’ll find out what your best, most feel-good marketing strategy includes. Okay? Cool.
And one more thing:
Just one more thing. When you go to that website and find your best marketing strategy, you’re then going to receive an email from me so you can keep your results safe and sound in your inbox. When you get that email, all I ask is for you to HIT REPLY and tell me what SHOULD you’re letting go of now that you’ve realized what your feel-good zero-shoulds marketing strategy actually involves.
Okay? Hit reply, tell me what SHOULD you’re letting go of. And that way, I know you’ve fully embraced…
When I feel good, my audience feels good.
That’s all for now, listeners, new and long-time followers. My hope is that this just introduced so many of you to what Marketing Personalities is all about and how its framework can and will help you develop a marketing strategy that feels good and WORKS for you and your business. And for the rest of you, I hope this gave you great encouragement and reason to get back to marketing that feels good if you had strayed from the path for whatever reason.
My one request now that we’ve gone through this together is that you’d share this episode with at least one person who could really use some encouragement and direction with their marketing strategy right now. Would you copy the link to this episode and send it over to them now? Or even share it to your social media for your followers to take action on?
I’m on a mission to get 50,000 entrepreneurs connected with their best marketing strategy this year and you sharing this episode is a massive help toward that goal.
Thanks for listening, as always, and I’ll catch you back here next week with a real-life case study of an INTJ Marketing Personality Type leveraging her personality in her marketing and finding great success with it. Stay tuned!
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