Full Transcript

Jen Liddy
Good morning. One of the things that we hear a lot as marketers that we hear as complaints from people is, I don't know how to sound like me. I don't know what my voice is. I don't know what that even means. I don't know. How do that sound like everybody else or sound like a robot? People don't want to. The way that I say this is, you don't want to be vanilla. You want to be Maple bacon or pistachio Claudi always left when I talk about that today, it's Friday.

So I have Claudia back, which is my favorite marketing expert. And we are talking about voice. Clay, will you introduce yourself and tell us about your expertise before we get too far?

Claudia Schalkx
Thank you. My expertise is marketing, and what I do is I see why your marketing is not performing. And I come in with my laser. I am fix everything and you're up and running with a thank you. You do that's a very short version.

Jen Liddy
But that's all we need. That's what we need is a short version. So let's talk about voice. What do you see as the problem of people's voice when it comes to marketing? What's the challenge?

Claudia Schalkx
Well, I think the first thing is that voice is one of those container words that can mean anything to anybody like the city and that kind of stuff. So that's the first misconception. Then the second thing is that when entrepreneurs stood their branding, many of them limit to the graphical expressions of the branding, which is the logo, the colors, the style of the visual style. But there is a step previous to it, which there are no branding. When you talk about what your ratios are, what is your tone of voice?

Claudia Schalkx
What is the word you are going to use? How do you want to express yourself? And that is, in many cases, it's a step that if you don't do a full branding for your for your company, for yourself, you tend to obviate that. And that reflects the when you're writing or you're creating things that some days you are humorous. In other days, you are more academic, and then you are like, okay, what am I today? Am I vanilla? Am I mean, chocolate chip America? What am I?

Jen Liddy
Do you think the idea of Maple bacon ice cream is disgusting? I know you do. But here in America, there is Maple bacon ice cream.

Claudia Schalkx
I know that in America, bacon is everything.

Jen Liddy
Americans love their bacon.

Claudia Schalkx
Well, there is ground with. So, you know, essentially, your voice starts to take shape in your branding exercise. And it's not an isolated thing, you know, because voice, what is voice voices the personality with which you step into the market. So how does that personality look? And you have to be sure what it is because then when you write or when you create videos or whatever content you're going to create, it needs to reflect your personality. And that's when, for instance, your content pillars, which is I know it's one of the things you hammer your people with, and it's very good.

That's where you can start to see how your voice is, because one thing is what is your personality, and the other thing is the implementation of that personality. For instance, I helped a group of Latin American entrepreneurs in the astronomic industry to do their branding, and they wanted to disrupt the space. And what they wanted to do was they wanted to bring forward for all the entrepreneurs, the kind of information that you hear only when you are in in a business club or in the sea rooms that oh, yeah, yeah, yeah.

That privileged information. But they wanted to bring it with a tone of voice that was irreverent and at the same time straightforward. So we found some examples. But then when they brought new writers to the team, it was very difficult for these new people to understand how to translate that voice. And then they became kind of like the content everybody does.

Jen Liddy
So it's tricky when you say they brought people on. Does that mean they brought on, like, a copywriter or even an assistant to try to create the content for them?

Claudia Schalkx
They had writers to grade to write blogs for them because one of their plan was to create content weekly twice a week. So either manage your company and find clients where you create content at that scale. Yes, on your own, starting. So when they brought new people on board, it was very difficult to explain how to convey that because they didn't have enough material to show the people. So they had this stress in their head. But immediately they brought new people without having lift the brand themselves.

Jen Liddy
So this is an interesting point that I would love to explore a little bit, because until you find your voice, you, if you're personal brands, like most of the people that you and I work with, are personal brands, service-based entrepreneurs, etc. It's really hard to hire somebody to write your stuff for you if you don't even know your own voice. And I don't think enough people spend time really deciding on their voice. They either want to sound like everybody else or maybe they want to sound like their mentor.

That's another thing I see. So they just sound like a cookie cutter version of somebody else. And I think it's scary for people to want to infuse their personality into their content, because what if people don't like it, then that means they don't like me.

Claudia Schalkx
Yes. I think it's finding your voices a process because you start with what is what you want to bring to the market as a result of your market research and the holes you see in the market and how you want to make yourself different from the market. But you need to find the point where that is also in Communion with who you are, you can have a light and a light tone if you are somebody who is serious and somebody who doesn't know how to do the joke, you know what you have or you have the sarcastic sense of few more that you can only interpret if you're hearing the voice in the real life.

So you need to be very careful what part of your personality are you bringing? And if you can hold it so that I can try out, you put things out and you see how they work. And I think you set the base of your voice and as you move on and you create new content and you see how it works, you find unit. It's a work in progress, but you need to have a base.

Jen Liddy
So it's kind of like you have to be experimenting and be willing to put it out there and see what lands with people.

Claudia Schalkx
The experimenting. But you need a framework because you would be experimenting in all directions. So I need to have the basis. So what is my personality? My personality is didactic I want to teach? For instance, I want to make Mark on all marketing for people. So one of the things that I do in all of my content, that I solve a problem, I clarify a concert on Ravo marketing. So when I create something I need to check, is it doing that travel marketing, then I need to see.

Okay, am I talking to my people? Am I being clear and I'm being playing without being too basic or to too lame and terms that you become too simple? And that is what makes your voice. So you said the basis in your branding, and as you move on with this framework, then you fine tune it. It's not something that you decide. Oh, I am this and it will happen.

Jen Liddy
Very rare, but don't have to really tune in to who your personality is and how you speak to maybe how you speak to your clients, how you speak in your real life. If I tried to be. Oh, my gosh. I'm trying to think of how to describe my voice, which is a straightforward voice, but I do like some levity, and I like to tell stories, but I'm not like I would not say my voice is pushy or loud. That's not the way I wanted to be, but there are plenty of marketers who like their whole thing is like, this is the one way to do it.

Claudia Schalkx
This is the right way to do it the way I they don't have a clear understanding what their voice is. The ideal voice is. Then again, where you find this Communion between your personality and what works in your market, that is your voice. So, for instance, if you're a lawyer and you have sense of humor, I am not sure how that is going to work out in that industry.

Jen Liddy
Unless you really knew that you wanted to work, that the people who wanted to work with you were looking for something that a traditional lawyer.

Claudia Schalkx
Yes.

Jen Liddy
They really matches up with your buyers persona, right. Always comes back to buyers person. What a surprise.

Claudia Schalkx
Surprise.

Jen Liddy
So who is it that you want to attract? Actually, I was just writing a sales page. And one of the things I had to write was, who isn't this program for? I was writing about my membership site, and I said, if you don't like cursing, this isn't the program for you because I like the curse. And I want in my voice repel the people that I'm not going to resonate with. So I think that's an important part of voice that maybe we don't spend enough time really unraveling.

Claudia Schalkx
Yes. But at the same time, you know, the person is a very interesting example of what you're using, because and this is very American. Okay. You have the F word. Okay. And you can't say the F word. But then you have a book. That is, I don't give an F word about anything. And in one page, she has it like, seven times. So he really overdue it. And then you're like, this is really necessary. You know, we agreed I can do with some person, but don't overdo it.

Claudia Schalkx
And that's the point where you need to be clear what your personality is. You don't need seven out of ten words. Seven F words. I mean, there needs to be some violence.

Jen Liddy
I want to talk about this because I'm somebody who likes to curse, as we all know. And I use the F word. But there was a woman I was following, and I even bought one of her programs, and she again, it was like her cursing was so over the top, and it was like a constant wave of it that even for me, I was like, oh, I'm not your person. And there's another person I follow who's kind of ranty their voice is very they're angry all the time about everything.

And I just decided that voice wasn't a voice, like, I really wanted to be in conversation with anymore. It was just to either too negative or two ranty or too much for me. So what I like about that is they didn't have to change their voice to please me. I just decided like, that's just not a voice. I want to be around anymore. And so I really am glad we're having this conversation, because when you step into your voice, you are definitely going to repel some people because we want that we want to get rid of some of the people in our audience who aren't our people.

Claudia Schalkx
Definitely. And, you know, you want your people to become also your ambassadors. You know, the liking doesn't need to be that needs to be around 80%. So there are things like, okay, I can stand this, but her content is her good or she's really good with communicating it that I don't care about that. 20%. But then again, there is an interpretation how disrupted you want to be and how are you? Then again, you're going to translate that sense of disruption, is it? How is that you are going to disrupt?

Are you going to disrupt by using maybe necessarily curse words? You know, I use the occasional shit and crap. Those are human in the promotion. You and I use it. It's maybe not lady like, but it's human.

Jen Liddy
But you were just saying, Go ahead.

Claudia Schalkx
When you overdo it, then you are out of your voice.

Jen Liddy
Well, I realized as we're talking the whole point of your voices to differentiate yourself. And Margaret, everybody I talked to says my market is saturated. Everybody from photographers to marketers like everybody says my market is saturated. So how do we differentiate ourselves? And one of the ways that we do that is by stepping into our voice. But I think a lazy way that we get into differentiating ourselves is by saying I will offer a lot of how to content, because how to content is a way to differentiate myself and show people that I know what I'm talking about.

But the how to content is actually harmful because it makes your audience feel like, oh, I can do this myself. It's harmful. And I've talked about that before. But this is interesting. If you can differentiate yourself with your voice and your personality and you don't have to be somebody else, then making content and marketing will be so much easier for you. You don't have to always do the heavy lifting with the how content.

Claudia Schalkx
No. But you know, then again, if you do have content, you need to bounce it with your content pillars, which is something your followers know very well. I am most positive that if you about how content against any content pillars, it will fall through the cracks because you say, okay, am I helping my people use? Can they do it by themselves? Yes. What happens if they do it and by themselves they won't get in trouble.

Jen Liddy
They say they are in trouble.

Claudia Schalkx
Am I really helping him know the occasional how to it's perfect. But if that becomes the sake of your content, I guess so.

Jen Liddy
Can we just talk for a few moments about how to develop our voice? I was a College Professor. I used to teach writing, and I was an English Professor. And voice was something that my students didn't really know how to do. And again, this is more academic setting than a marketing setting. So it's a little bit different. But I would put up to kind of and it was a silly thing I did. I put up two diaries from a dog and a cat, and the dog was like, he came home.

He said me breakfast. He took me for a walk. He came home again, right. Like that was the dog's diary. And there the cat was like I had to be moved from my favorite chair. I was so annoyed I had to wake him up in the middle of the night because I was hungry. It was just like a totally different point. And this is a good question that Liz actually shares with us. We'll address that in a second is but the voice is a little bit of going inside of, like who you are and really exploring who you want to be, who you don't want to be in your and Liz's question is, but who cares about me?

Who cares about my voice as the marketer. And I just would love for Claudia to lose things. Her audience is always thinking, I just want the result. But I know that before your audience can have results, they need to like, you trust you get to know you a little bit and believe you, that they can have that result that you're promising them. So the voice is important because if they don't like you and they're not resonating with your voice, they're not going to come along with you to get any kind of results, not anything about that cloud yet not only that.

Claudia Schalkx
But your voice helps you to be coherent and to be consistent. And I think you have to have a marketing is coherence and consistency because marketing is a long term game. So is essential, because if you that's, for instance, the feeling you have when you write a blog or you do a video and you are like there is something causing friction. But I don't know what it is. It's your voice voice, probably that you are not being very convincing or you don't come across as solid as you are.

It's because your voice is not clear. So yes, voice is one of those things. When you are clear about your voice, marketing becomes easy. What I do when I do branding with my clients, we do an exercise about values, so I let them tell stories and from their stories, I pull out words that they keep saying no, and then we make a list and we group those values in categories. So, for instance, communication, transparency, ethics, whatever. We take those values and put them together with their personality traits.

For instance, they say, okay, I am outgoing, I am funny, I am thoughtful and that it's already the characteristics of your personality. And the voice is how you bring that personality out. So, for instance, if you are funny and you are light, you most probably will use light colors. You will use a vocabulary that is lighter and you might speak faster and you have whatever bit music, you know. But if you are somebody who is more POS, who is more poise, etc. Etc. You will have very elegant elements of design.

You will speak slowly. You will carefully choose your words. Voice is not only one thing, it's the combination of several things. But if you go to your values and you go to your personality traits and you put that together, you have a good base for your voice.

Jen Liddy
Another great exercise for somebody to do today or whenever they're watching. This is to think about what are my values, what's important to me and with my personality. And then Where's the Nexus?

Claudia Schalkx
And the third thing you do after you have those to this is, how do I cover this in my work? So how do Frankness transparency, which is one of your values? How do you compete? Well, I made a mistake the other day was an offer, and I guarantee the transparency. And I said and I extended the bonus. Whatever. Yes, that's how I guarantee my transparency. Or I write terms and conditions that are in layman terms so that everybody can understand them without needing a lawyer. How do I clarity?

Well, then again, my vocabulary is clear. So when you have the two lists, your values and your personality traits, then you ask yourself, how do I manifest this in my work in my daily work?

Jen Liddy
And there you have a Michelle says she just started a list of her values on a post it note. And so I'm curious, what are your values, Claudia? It's easy for somebody to say them back to you, especially somebody who knows you fairly well. And Claudia knows me and my work. And so when she says transparency is one of my values, it's so wonderful to hear that said back to me. I also know that that's one of her values. She's also incredibly straightforward. She can see a problem, and she's not going to dance around the problem.

She's going to share the problem with you. And I think that's just one of the things that makes her so wonderful to work with. So I'm curious, what are your values in terms of your business? I would like to give an example of a value that I have, which is to make it easy to work with me. And if I'm not the right person for you, I want to make sure you get the right person. So, for example, on a sales call for somebody, I always start out by saying, this is how it's going to go today.

This is the transparency. And if I'm not the right person after listening to you and I can't help you, I'm going to help you find somebody who can. And I truly mean that. And another example of this is in my emails. I was just launching a workshop I'm doing today, and I know that my email list was getting a lot of emails for me. So I actually started it at the bottom. And then the next email, I moved it to the top. And it said, if you don't want to hear about this workshop anymore during this round, just click here and you can be opted out.

We'll still be friends like that's my voice will still be friends. You're still gonna B in my community. But you'll only see me on Sunday mornings where we can have coffee together. And then I'm was like, you know what? I want to make this even easier for people. So I put it right at the top. So the first thing you see, you don't want to hear about this, go ahead and click out. And that's how my personality of being straightforward and my values are being transparent kind of merged together to help me create that particular piece of content in my voice.

Claudia Schalkx
Well, for instance, in my case, one of the things I believe is in the uniqueness of everybody. And I also believe that you should find a marketing style that suits you. So I also take that into my work. I have my programs and inside my programs, I have some flexibility to customize it to what you really need, because I also believe you shouldn't be paying for more than you're buying, which is, for instance, in those online cookie cutter things, you're paying for a lot of things that you're not buying.

So with me, you pay for what you're getting, you get much more of what you pay for, which is another value of mine, you know. So, yes. Then again, one of the things I have in my personality, I'm very straightforward, and I'm being also very Dutch. Sometimes I'm brutally direct. Sometimes the thing is, you know where you're standing with me and you know, if you want to know the answer to something, you will get it from me, not routed. Sometimes you will. But at the end, you will know what are your options and usually and I see it in my content.

I bring forward things that not everybody is talking about. And then I see very little reception, and I'm like, okay, people is not ready for this. But I believe people should know about this. So I keep in.

Jen Liddy
And eventually, this is with our reach in our audience and the ripple that it has, it's the saying it over and over again that makes it more normalized. And then I find this is really interesting when I'm doing that, when I'm sharing something that's not very popular, I do feel like sometimes I'm the only one standing out. I'm opening the window and yelling out the window for all the effectiveness it is. But then I start to see other people in the industry are talking about the same thing.

Once you start to say with your voice and you start noticing that other people are saying, you just kind of have to be okay with being that one loan Ranger out there doing your weird bang until you start to step into your voice and say it in a way that people can hear it from you.

Claudia Schalkx
And the other side of that coin is that if you stray away from your voice and your values and your personality. These things happen as well, because I've been talking about marketing style and doing marketing in your style for about five of the ten years. My business exist if not longer. And I did some small steps and I didn't see any reaction in the market, etc. Etc. And I was like, okay, I will stop pushing it. And now everybody is talking about marketing style, and I am your woman.

And of course, my inner critic begins to say, your woman, you stray away from your values and your convictions and your voice, and you didn't push something you were strongly believing. So that's the other thing you know, when you're not working with in alignment with your values and your voice, it's because you stop doing the things you truly believe in, so true.

Jen Liddy
And then you look around and you're like, okay, I'm doing this one size fits all thing that a guru taught me or I'm doing this thing that really doesn't feel good to me. I hate webinars. I don't want to do a webinar. I will do training. I will let you walk away with some real stuff all day long. But I don't want to do a webinar. And I'm in a group of people who are like, but I followed along with the exact steps and it didn't work for me.

But maybe it's not supposed to work for you, find something different. And when we can step when we can honor our own voices and our own values, we have to stay the course with it. If it doesn't feel good to us and we're doing it anyway, it's going to feel like shit.

Claudia Schalkx
Yes. And why would take work? Why would you like to do exactly what somebody else is doing? I mean, if you want to replicate the success formula, you have to do it in your way. You have to take what works for you. The thing with there are online things that are very good. Not all of them are very bad, but some of these online programs really don't show you the puzzle where you are, where in the roadmap you are, you know. So you buy a product. Let me give you an example that somebody says, if you want to create a community, go to Facebook and create a community, then you will have people that truly follow you, and then you can sell directly to them.

Right? Okay. So you get this community saying you buy this idea to keep it simple. But nobody tells you how hard it is to create a community, what you have to do to clear the community, what you need before you start buying that thing and that you might need Facebook, ads, etc. Etc. So you buy this product and you are there and aware of everything around it. And that's the problem with many of those things that they don't give you the context. You don't know what you have behind, and you don't know what you're looking ahead.

Jen Liddy
And that's so true. It's like you need to be met where you are. And as a marketer in a content creator, you need to meet your audience where they are. And you need to understand that. Yeah. So one of the things just to wrap up, I just want people to understand that finding your voice is important because first of all, it makes content and marketing much easier for you to create because you don't feel like you're putting on a suit that doesn't fit every time you want to create something.

It also lets your audience know you to go back to Liz's question. Like, why do people care about me? Because they have to like you? You're a personal brand. They have to trust you. And like you, it's just a human fact, part of our way of interacting as humans. And if you haven't done that work yet, then that is where you might want to spend some time. What are your values? And if you don't know your values, my God, just get on the phone with your best friend or get on the phone with a colleague or get on the phone with an old client.

Claudia Schalkx
If you don't know your values, do this. Find three stories where you felt. Well, tell the stories to somebody, record them on an ever note. Whatever. Listen to those stories and listen to the words you're say. Those are your values. Your values will come in.

Jen Liddy
And I think that a mistaken. I could talk about this all day, but I think a mistake that people make is what does my audience want my values to be? And that's a mistake because this is one place where we have to start with ourselves. Who are we? Because we can't keep putting on the suit that doesn't fit us or ice on your values.

Claudia Schalkx
I mean, I mean, if people want you to be now, you can't compromise on your value. So that whole question with my audience wants my values to be. It's the wrong question.

Jen Liddy
I agree. Yeah. I want to tell you that the work that Claudia does, it actually pulls this all out of your head. And she said, and I will say a million times, she's very incisive and laser focus. So if you're struggling with this, actually, and I have been through it with her, that's why I'm talking about this. The work that she does pulls it out of your head and helps you find your voice, the questions that she asked, the clarity that she creates. And she and I also actually have a program that we're just getting started where you work half time with her and half time with me.

And you're going to wind up with a whole marketing system and the content to accompany it. We haven't really announced it yet, but we're just starting to talk about it. We finally have our sales page done. So it's coming soon. But I want you to understand that if you bought programs before and they haven't worked for you, it's not your fault. Maybe the program didn't meet you where you are. Maybe you need to just have some conversations about where exactly you are and what exactly you want your marketing to look like and what you want your business to look like.

So I'm going to talk loud as information in the comments but join us again on Friday because we love talking about marketing. What marketing questions do you have? What do you struggle with? We want to unpack it for you because we both very strongly believe in transparency and talking you through the struggles and meeting you where you are.

Claudia Schalkx
And may I add very rarely, you will find two people, two disciplines that work so well as marketing and content in one place. So take your chance and shoot us with your questions. Yes.

Jen Liddy
We want to hear your questions, please share them.

Claudia Schalkx
Happy to answer your questions.

Jen Liddy
And we would love to hear if you're listening to this on the replay or you go and you figure out your voice and your values and you want to come back. Go ahead and put them in the comments and tag us because we'd really love to know. Do you know your value and how does your voice match up with that? Thank you.

Claudia Schalkx
Bye bye.