Why Nobody Thinks of You When It’s Time to Buy

  Sam Vander Wielen: You’ve been building your business for a while now you’re showing up, you’re creating content, and you’re putting offers out. And what you want more than anything is for people to think of you when they have the exact problem that you solve, but instead, you’re spinning your wheels, jumping to new offers, new platforms, new strategies, because nobody ever told you that trying to be everything everywhere is exactly why nobody thinks of you for anything. Put more bluntly, the problem isn’t your audience size or your content or your offer. It’s that nobody knows what to associate your name with, and that is a very fixable problem.

Today, I wanna tell you why that’s actually the thing that’s keeping you invisible and what it takes to become the McFlurry of your industry.

Yes, the McFlurry from McDonald’s. Stayed with me. I always land the plane.

Before we get into today’s episode, I just wanna welcome you back to On Your Terms®, or welcome if you’re new here. On Your Terms®, is a podcast for online business owners who want to be as present in their lives as profitable in their businesses.

One of the ways that you can be really profitable in your business is if you become really known for something, like if your name is synonymous with whatever it is that you do or what you sell. And at the same time, that’s also a really good way to be more present in your life and be able to be offline, spend more time with your kids doing hobbies that you love, like whatever it is that you wanna do other than work. My hope. When you’re really profitable. When you’re really profitable, because when you’re so well known for what you do, a lot of the selling sort of does it for itself. I also wanna remind you really quickly before we get.

I also wanna remind you really quickly before we get into the meat or the McFlurry of today’s episode that I have started this new submission question feature where you can click a link down in the show notes and send me a video, a voice note, or even a text message. And tell me something that you want me to talk about here on, On Your Terms®.

If you have a question, if it’s just something you want me to dive deeper into, something you’ve always wondered and want me to talk more about, go ahead and click that link in the show notes and let me know, and hopefully you’ll be featured on a future episode.

All right, so let’s hop in.

Everything we’re talking about today started the summer after my dad died, so this was summer of 2022. My dad passed away in the beginning of May of 2022. And I, you know, was obviously pretty depressed, obviously very deep in in the grief and the loss of just having lost my dad and I made this bucket list for my summer, and turns out, looking back on it, I’m like, wow, this was really a, I call it my depression bucket list, because it was all just really funny.

It was all. I wanna go get a McFlurry at McDonald’s. I’m gonna get a Frosty at Wendy’s. I’m gonna get a milkshake at Chick-fil-A and I’m pretty sure there were a couple of others that were like, get a donut at the farmer’s market. Like everything was just really sad, but also sounds also very fun, but not so fun for my blood sugar.

So I was texting my friend Michelle about it the other day because I drove by this McDonald’s where I had this kind of funny, when I went to go get the, the McFlurry that was on my bucket list that summer, I had a funny interaction with the people who worked there, but when I was texting her about it. I said to her, poor Burger King, they never even made the list.

And like how all of these places were on the list for all of these delicious desserts that are very like, you know, household names. I guess like everybody thinks like Wendy’s Frosty, right? Like who didn’t used to dip fries into a Wendy’s frosty in high school? I don’t know everyone should.

And then I thought about it and I was like, yeah, because Burger King’s not known for anything dessert wise, right? Like I actually had to think for a moment, even food wise, I was like, oh, right. I guess they have the whopper. I should disclaimer this by saying I don’t eat red meat. I haven’t eaten red meat in a little over 16 years and I don’t eat pork or ham either, so like I’m not exactly your like ideal customer when it comes to fast food.

So I wasn’t sure if I was just missing something and giving Burger King a hard time. So I go on their website and on their website, I scroll to the menu, go to desserts, and boom. Nope, I was not wrong. They are not known for any desserts. In fact, I was really surprised just even from like marketing perspective.

They only have three desserts listed, one of which is a chocolate chip cookie. Okay. It’s just like how boring second was well, although let me go back and say chocolate chip cookies are my ultimate favorite thing in the world. I just was like, we’re talking about frosties and McFlurries and you have a chocolate chip cookie? It’s not happening.

So. They have a chocolate chip cookie. Then this was the real kicker. They have an apple pie, right? Like one of those little like shaped of your hand apple pie. And I’m like, isn’t that what McDonald’s is known for? Like, do you guys remember you used to get those apple pies in the little boxes when you were little in McDonald’s or maybe in my Easy Bake oven?

I’m not sure. Maybe the McDonald’s version of my Easy Bake oven. And so they have that. That’s the second one. And then the third one was a Hershey’s Chocolate Pie. And I was like, wait, so they’re actually promoting the trademark of another company.

So I looked it up to confirm, Burger King and, and Hershey’s are not owned by the same company. Hershey’s is owned by Hershey’s, like Milton Hershey Company located in Hershey, Pennsylvania, outside of Philly. And, uh, it has nothing to do with Burger King. So I was like, okay. They literally have these three banal desserts and, and one of them is actually a trademark for somebody else, right?

But then you go to McDonald’s website. Well, McDonald’s has the McFlurry. They’re very famous for the McFlurry, and now they have like a million different varieties of the McFlurry, and they’re all trademarked. I mean, the word McFlurry itself is trademarked, but then all the variations of it are too, including also the apple pie thing.

And then who also can forget the Shamrock shake, right? Every March they come out with a fluorescent colored shamrock shake, right? And that’s become a thing too. So they have not one, but they have multiple desserts that they’re known for, right? Obviously Wendy’s has a frosty. I went on confirmed. Yes, that’s a trademark too.

I think when we were younger there was always just like vanilla and chocolate and I kind of liked it that way. But now they have really expanded. I believe they even currently have a Girl Scout cookie frosty, which did seem like something worth venturing into. But anyway, I digress, I hope. I hope you’re not hungry listening to this episode or I hope you go and stop at one of these and get something.

It sounds really fun.

Point being, and I told you I’m gonna land this plane, but the point being, you have to be known for something to be thought of. Come purchase time, right? If you have a hankering for a sweet treat, or it’s a really hot day and you’re out driving around and you’re like, I wanna stop and get some something sweet, something cold, whatever.

You’re not like. Yeah. What is Burger King sell? I don’t even know what they sell. And then you pull up and you see a chocolate chip cookie , Apple Pie and a Hershey’s thing. No, you’re gonna pull right outta there and you’re gonna go over and get a McFlurry, right? So you have to be known for something in order to be thought of when it comes time for people to buy.

Otherwise, when someone goes to make their depression era bucket list, you’re not even gonna be on it, which is exactly what happened with Burger King.

Now the point is, none of us, I don’t think anyone listening here owns a fast food joint or even wants to, and most of us, ironically, would probably never step foot in one, me included. But anyway, outside of my, uh, depression era bucket list. But the it, the point is, is that like, it’s really interesting when you have an online business and we have this conversation, it’s all of a sudden like, well, how do I though get thought of?

When someone’s thinking about purchasing health coaching services or money coaching services, or looking for a dietician, or they wanna buy an online course in, you know, insert your niche here, right? It’s a, it is a lot harder, right? We can, I think, all agree that we’re talking about three of the most major global fast food brands here in the world, right?

And they’ve dominated this market. For a long time, and they have so much brand loyalty and trust and name recognition and all of these things, right? They’ve spent decades building this up, but they’re not competing with hundreds of thousands, honestly, if not millions, maybe, that we are all quote unquote competing with.

Try in in that, in the sense that we’re trying to rise above the noise of all of these people online. It’s a very difficult market that we’re in. We’re in a very unique position.

So I wanna talk first about why it’s so hard for you to stand out and maybe talk a little bit openly and honestly about some of the ways we’re making this harder for ourselves, right?

And like, this is not just an industry problem, but this is due to our own behavior and our own participation in this industry’s way of running that is making it really hard for people to find us. So I’m hoping that by talking about those things, we can then shift into talking about, okay, then how do I stand out?

How do I become known for the thing? How do I become known for the McFlurry when somebody’s out driving around looking for a sweet treat on a hot day? Right? That’s really what we’re trying to figure out here online Business owner edition.

So the first reason I think that this is so hard for us online is thanks to our good old friend, shiny object syndrome, right? Sometimes people call this like shiny squirrel syndrome because it’s just like you see something and you go run after it. I think that our industry itself is built on this like backbone of chasing after whatever’s working right now, and there’s a lot of hubbub around it.

And then it’s very, very easy for you. The person who’s consuming this content or you know is trusting someone. Maybe you’re working with a business coach or just some, you’re following somebody online who you love a lot. And then you see them saying, you know, one week all chips in on Substack. Like this is the place.

If you’re not there, you’re dead. And then the next week it’s like, oh, if you’re not on Snapchat or whatever, and it’s just shifting and it’s really hard for you not to follow along with that. In an industry that is sort of built on making people like just run around and chase after the next thing.

This goes for whether the thing that’s changing is like the platform du jour, right? Like whether it’s Instagram or TikTok, or Substack or YouTube or something, all the way down to like the format that we use for those platforms or just format for our content itself. Our offers and how our offers are structured.

I mean, the offers that were like quote unquote cool to have back in 2016 when I started are barely visible now, right? And I see like everybody just like scurries over here and then the scurries over there and they all start offering the same thing the same way. And then of course, our style of content, right?

Like you see it probably happen the fastest on social media platforms. You see one specific style of content working really well on a platform, and then it feels like everybody starts doing it that way. And it’s like I just like picture this little, like scurry of penguins, like over to one side.

And it’s like by the time the last penguin catches up, the original penguins are like off running to the left. And I just picture us all, like we, we, we like running from side to side. That’s basically what it’s like to be online, chronically online, right? And so. It’s very hard to become known for one thing if you’re constantly changing platforms, changing content styles changing offers changing your format, right?

The more those things change, the more difficult it is for people to just have enough time with you and have enough consistency and familiarity with you to really understand what you do.

The next is pressure to add more offers. So people feel, for whatever reason, that they need to sell a lot of different things in order to have a successful business. You know, I get that from the outside. It makes sense that you’re like, okay, if I wanna make a hundred thousand dollars per year in my online business.

Just having one product seems like very difficult to make a hundred thousand dollars. So if I make five products, it like lowers the pressure on any one kind of product that I sell in order for me to hit that goal, right? Like Target. The reason that Target makes so much money is because they have so many things within the store, right?

And they’ve kind of mastered the art of like going in for a blanket and leaving with $200 worth of stuff you didn’t want or really need, but. All that aside, it really, uh, it, it makes sense to me that you would think like, okay, the more I sell, the more I will make, or the easier it will be to meet my revenue goals.

But I don’t think what people realize is that this actually dilutes what you’re known for instead of strengthening what you’re known for. So when you really dilute your offers and your, um, like all the different products that you’re selling and all of that. They’re all gonna come with different marketing messaging.

Obviously they’re all gonna be, they’re all going to need to be for a little bit different of a person, of a customer. And so then that’s going to change the way you talk about them and how you talk in general and what kind of content you create. And then going back to the first thing we talk about, it’s gonna change maybe the platform you create content on.

It’s gonna change the style of the content that you create for that platform, because you’re gonna create different styles of content for different offers. Can you see how all of this just starts to like crack and fisure and spread you very, very thin and making it very difficult for you to be known for one thing?

I’m gonna talk about this one a lot more at the end when we talk about how to actually become known for your thing, how to become the McFlurry of your industry, because I feel like this point. Probably more than any of the others has been my secret sauce in, and it’s been probably also the most tempting to want to break over the years as things did start to develop or go better, and so I’ll talk about that a little bit later in the episode.

The third reason this is so hard to do online is that we have so much keeping up with the online Joneses, as I call it. So somebody in your space launches something new, and suddenly now you are questioning your entire business model at 11:00 PM on a Tuesday, right? Like you thought everything was fine, you were happy with how things were going, but now you see what they’re doing and you question whether everything you have is wrong.

It’s really easy in online business to drift away from your values and your desires. ’cause for one, you’re constantly being shown what everybody else’s are. Right? And there’s a lot of manipulative marketing tactics that are going on that are pushing you to question whether what you really want is going to be successful, or whether it’s even what you really want or whatever for their own personal gain.

It’s really easy to drift to somebody else’s path. I mean, in life in general, it’s like, I just think a, a real muscle that we all have to constantly, constantly strengthen and flex and like come back to, but it’s very easy online to drift into doing what everybody else is doing because I understand it hasn’t been that long for me that like I can still remember and understand, what it feels like when you’re starting out and you so desperately, like want this thing to be successful.

You want to be making more money, you wanna have freedom, maybe you want to leave your nine to five, but you need to hit like a certain level. And it makes sense to me that when you’re looking at other people online, who you perceive to be those things that you’re just like, well, if I just do that, then that will be my path, and that will make it easier.

So you might not necessarily follow what you’re feeling called to follow because you just feel so, I don’t mean desperate in a bad, in a bad way, but like you’re desperate to, to make it, right? And you, you want this thing to work so badly.

I see this a lot with people who feel pressured to offer. One-to-one coaching, for example, but don’t want to like, they feel like they have to start out that way. I was just in a meeting the other day where someone was talking about this, and she’s not necessarily like into a one-to-one coaching, but she feels like she has to do it in order to create a business that actually sells to digital product.

And my contribution to the conversation was just like, why can’t we just sell the digital product? Like, why we, why do we have to do the coaching if that’s not what you want to do? Right? And like, where are these stories coming from?

On the flip side, I also see this a lot with coaches that feel pressure to create a digital product or a course or a membership, something that’s not a time for money trade, uh, business or a product because they feel so guilty and hear from everybody all the time about how coaching is so bad because it’s time for money.

But they love coaching. And I’m like, okay then love coaching. And if you’re really good at it and that’s what you wanna do, let’s just sell that out And, you know, charge a premium, be at the top of your space and that’s what you do. Maybe you make money elsewhere through like affiliate income or speaking gigs or paid trainings, right?

There are other ways to make money. You don’t have to create a digital product, you don’t have to coach. You get to decide what you wanna do. But I think thanks to this like keeping up with the online Joneses thing, we often end up trying to do what everybody else is doing, even if it doesn’t fit with what we want.

The fourth reason it’s so hard to become known for something online is that there are so many gurus selling you the change that they need you to make in order to make money off of you. There is an entire industry built around convincing you that you need to pivot, that you need to rebrand, that you need to add an offer, change your niche, pick up a new, uh, platform, or go viral in some way thanks to some trend that they’re telling you about.

And listen to me, they profit from your instability. Let me tell you how this plays out for me. I will sometimes be on social media and then I’ll see a video from somebody being like, let’s just pretend like this video is like everybody has to be on Pinterest. This is where all the hot stuff is happening. If you’re not there, your whole business is going down.

I mentally then start going down this rabbit hole of like, oh my God, do we need to be on Pinterest more? Should I start doing Pinterest stuff? I thought that was so 2011, but okay, I’ll like start trying to do that, and then I pause and I, I step back for a moment and I look at what this person is doing, right?

I’ll go maybe to their profile and it says that they sell a Pinterest course for $97, let’s say. Right? It doesn’t mean that they’re bad or that they’re wrong, or what they’re doing is wrong or that their course sucks, right? Maybe their course is amazing. Maybe Pinterest is great. Maybe Pinterest would even help me, right?

It’s just stepping back to do some critical thinking for a moment and clocking that they have a vested interest in helping convince me that Pinterest is the solution to all of my problems, right? That is a classic marketing thing. That’s what you do, right? It’s like looking for people’s problems, pitching your thing as the solution.

And so I do think that this is where in instead of like us getting mad about the industry, this is actually where I would advocate for a lot of self-responsibility just to be like. Okay. But yeah, you’re a Pinterest person, so like of course you’re saying that, and that’s okay. That doesn’t mean you’re wrong or that you’re bad, but that’s why you’re saying it, right?

You have a vested interest in getting me to do this thing and to buy your course because of it. And in those moments, it’s truthfully about stepping back and realizing like it’s not Pinterest. Pinterest is not the answer to the problem. Just like insert whatever app du jour is of that moment, right? It’s never the thing that’s going to resolve it.

You have to step back more globally and think of your marketing problem. It could be that you’re not known for something, right? Like you’re not, because when you’re not known for something, it’s ’cause you’re not being consistent enough. Your messaging isn’t clear enough, you don’t have tight enough messaging, you’re not speaking to or like your customer.

Those are some reasons why you wouldn’t be standing out online, right? Going and running over to Pinterest wouldn’t solve that for you. Right? Because if you still don’t know any of those things and you go over to Pinterest and you still act the way you’re acting now on the other app, you’re just carrying over the bad habits, right?

It’s sort of, if you have like a really messy car and then you go and you go to the dealership and you buy like a new car, but you just transfer all the mess from your one car to your other car, it’s like now your new car’s just gonna be a mess. It’s, it’s really the same logic here. And so that, that’s why this is such a deeper issue, and that’s the problem I have with the marketing messaging of like, oh, if you learn how to start a podcast, it’ll solve all your, like you’ll have customers instantly. It’ll solve all your problems. No won’t. Because if you don’t know how to talk to your customers, if you don’t know where to find them, you don’t know what their problems are, and you haven’t created the solution that they actually want, then your customers aren’t coming. Regardless of whether you’re on YouTube, a podcast, Instagram, TikTok, clubhouse, wherever we are, right? It doesn’t matter.

The industry itself is sort of propped up on like us all running around kind of using that, uh, penguins analogy I used earlier. It’s, it is really like propped up on us all switching platforms, joining this new thing, feeling like a tool is the solution to all our problems.

I think we’re seeing this a lot with AI right now, right? Where it’s a lot of, it’s like so many people are like, oh, if I could just get AI to do all these things, then my business is going to be resolved and I personally don’t feel like AI is going to be able to resolve your marketing problems, right? If you are not able to tell it all the things that I’m saying that you need to know, uh, instinctually about all of your customers and your products, AI’s not gonna be able to do anything for you, right? If you are able to feed AI your, your language learning model, like a really specific brief about who your customers are and what they need and all their language, then maybe we could work with AI to do that, but I wouldn’t expect them to generate it out of thin air for you.

Last but not least, the reason that you might not be known for something online already, and why this is so hard is that you’re doubting yourself even when you are not selling something, the self-doubt starts to creep in.

Like you’re posting content and you’re wondering, am I too boring? Is this too niche? Like, should I branch out? Should I start speaking to a wider audience? Am I too focused on what I like to do or what works for me?

More than anything, what I see happen is that people just get tired of repeating themselves, and if I could just like have one sentence in marketing about like what works and then piece out and, and leave you guys with that one sentence for the rest of my life.

It would be about the value of repeating yourself. I know it’s tiring. I know it’s boring. I know. You feel like everyone’s heard it. They haven’t. They have a lot of stuff going on. They’re not listening to you. That’s the truth of it, right? None of us are. And so they’re not seeing the bulk of your content, I’m sure.

Right? Even if you have said it, they probably were watching with the sound off. They didn’t hear it. And so it’s just the truth of it. And I think that when people ask me about selling, like so much of the Ultimate Bundle®, for example, they’re like. So I don’t understand. You just like, that’s it. That’s what you sell.

And it’s like, yeah. I don’t think people totally respect the grind of like how many times I’ve had to talk about this thing, how many days I’ve had where I didn’t want to, and I was bored of it and I thought, for God’s sake, there can’t be anybody left who doesn’t understand what this thing is. And I’m like, no.

Every time I mention it, people are like, wait, what’s this thing? I’ll never forget, I was very humbled years ago. I sent out a survey. I mean, I’m humbled like all the time, but at, at this one particular, in instance. I sent out a survey to my email list, uh, about my podcast On Your Terms®, which you’re listening to right now.

And if you don’t know the name, it’s On Your Terms®. And so I sent out a survey to my list and I wanted to, I think I was just like looking for some feedback about topics and like, how, when do you want episodes to be posted? Whatever. So I had this idea that it would be interesting to poll my email list. People who have at that time were hearing from me twice a week every single week in their inbox.

Do you know I have a podcast and if so, what is the name? Right? So those were two of the questions on the survey. It was embarrassing slash humbling to read these responses. , So many people said, I didn’t even know you had a podcast.

And I wanted to scream, I wanted to scream into a gigantic megaphone that like went out to all online business like, are you kidding me? I have been emailing you about this every single week for the whatever, right? Then when it came to the question about asking them the name, okay, some people nailed the name.

Other people pulled names out that I was like, what are you talking about? This is not the name. It’s so funny. It was so funny, so humbling, right? I get emails from people every single day. I’ve sold over now $9 million worth of product for just the Ultimate Bundle® alone. I get emails from people who are in it using the wrong name, right?

Saying like, thank you so much for the ultimate legal bundle, like all this stuff. They’ve paid a lot of money to be in this thing and they don’t know the name. So I’m bringing this to you as an example because if this is what’s happening to me with a, with a large audience, with doing something for a long period of time, repeating myself all the time till the cows come home, imagine what might be happening if you have a relatively new thing, right?

Or even five years down the line. People still don’t know the name. They still don’t know what you’re talking about. They probably still don’t even know who you are, right? So, repeating, repeating, repeating is so valuable.

For the person who’s listening, who sometimes struggles to stay on topic in their, like online channels, you know, whether it’s on Instagram or elsewhere, um, because you’re bored, right? And you’re, you’re just feeling like, I just like cannot create another thing that’s about this topic or whatever. Here’s what I want to tell you.

I would invite you to think more about the content you create for your business as business. It’s work, right? And so you have to figure out how many pieces of content do I need to create for this thing, right? Just as if you were creating it. Like if you worked for someone’s business and you were their social media manager, how many pieces of content would you recommend if it, is it three things per week that goes on this thing, or one podcast episode a week, or whatever it is, right?

You have to decide, kind of treat it like it’s a business and , I mean, I also recommend like batch creating so that you’re not burning yourself out on like a daily basis and all of that.

The second thing though, that I think is even more impactful, is that at times when I’ve been the most bored in my business, or I was tired of repeating myself, it was an invitation for me to tap into my creative outlets outside of my business, um, and to do something that filled up my cup that had nothing to do with work.

I think that’s what my mistake was in those, in those times was like I was looking for my business or looking for being on social media to be fun, and I was like, well. It’s not fun. It’s work, right? It is what it is. It’s just work. I talk about this on the podcast all the time, and I don’t know why this is like a seen as like a negative take in the online business industry and like, I still love what I do and I love, especially like the, like the parts that I get to do, like I love like the podcast and writing and doing all these creative things. Like I love what I get to do. I’m not always in love with it in every single moment and every single day and every scenario.

It’s very similar to marriage, I think, in that way and that like it’s something that sometimes feels like work and you have to work towards and put energy towards. Sometimes it just feels like a job. And those are typically times that I then have to turn and be like, maybe this is a sign I’m not having fun in my real life, right?

Because then I’m looking to the wrong thing to provide me with this enjoyment, and it’s not really its responsibility to be honest.

Another option that you have too, uh, that I think is really helpful. And this is pretty much what I’m doing with my substack. I started a substack called Beyond Business, where I’m writing about things beyond business. But I’ll, I’ll leave a link in the show notes for you. But I think giving yourself a creative outlet within my business that I try not to focus on the results for.

So like if you’re somebody who likes talking about your topic area, like I like talking about business, I like talking about marketing, like writing a funny piece about like breaking down the dessert strategies of, of fast food brands would be something that would be like fun for me. It does nothing for my business unless I turn it back into like some sort of lesson or whatever.

But that’s not, not everything has to do that. And I know, I feel like in the past I’ve been the queen of being like every single thing has to have this like call to action that goes back. It’s true in the sense of like keeping the, making sure that you kind of have your homework done within your business, right?

Like keep making sure that the bulk of your stuff is done, that you need to drive enough traffic to your business to be profitable and to be successful within your business, whatever that means for you. Beyond that though, I think there’s so much room to to like start a creative outlet that, well, first of all could have nothing to do with business at all.

Like you could start a YouTube channel about your gardening habit when you’re a money coach. You know, like you can do that. It’s okay. You can just do it for fun and you don’t have to start paying attention to any statistics or anything. But I think like my substack is probably an example of something that I’m trying to do and, and always having to come back to this, right. And like re navigate myself, reorient myself, but that I’m trying to do where it’s like, it’s kind of about what I do. It’s kind of like a behind the scenes peak of what it’s like to run a business like this. But I’m not doing it for any sort of gain or of any sort right?

I’m doing it truthfully and transparently to become a better writer. It’s, it’s really an outlet for me. For one. I love writing and, uh, writing feels like the most expressive to me. And then two, just to get better at it because I feel like I need repetition. And so it’s just kind of a fun way for me to practice doing that. So all an invitation for you to think about if you’re, one of the things you’re struggling with is like doubting yourself, feeling bored, feeling like you’re repeating yourself.

Okay, so let’s talk about the three things that I think you need to do to become known for something. What being known for something actually requires.

The first is to stay focused. Don’t add on a lot of new offers or chase a lot of shiny things. So you have to build your offer intentionally and with the customer in mind first, and then you have to stick to that offer and actually keep selling it, especially if you’ve created something that people start to buy.

That is a sign that people want it, they need it. This thing is working. And I often feel like it’s like when people hit that moment, that’s when they like pull back and they stop and they divert to something new. When in reality if they had just kept going, this would become their ultimate bundle. Like that’s their version, right?

But it’s just too tempting to be like, oh, I’m gonna go out and start this other thing. So now we know better, we’re gonna stay focused. We’re not gonna add on new offers or chase those shiny things.

I can’t tell you how many times I’ve said no to selling so many different things that I have been asked to sell, and I just don’t want to, um, including legal services, by the way, like when I started my business and I only sold legal templates and the Ultimate Bundle® just like I do now. I wasn’t making a lot of money, but so many people were asking me, could you just register a trademark for me? Like, I’ll pay you $2,500. And I was like, dang, that’s like, that’s good money, and that would be really easy for me to do. Um, but it does require a lot of like maintenance on the backend for a long period of time.

But that’s neither here nor there. But it’s just like, it was so tempting. It’s so tempting in particular when you’re not where you wanna be yet. Right? Like it’s really easy for somebody like me now to just be like, I’m not selling that stuff. I don’t wanna do it. But when I wasn’t making enough and needed to make more.

It was really hard to keep saying no. I feel like a natural question that you might be thinking is like, how did, how did you know though? Like how do you know which things to turn down and like how did you know to keep your head down? I think that’s kinda what I was saying was like if you’re, like, I had started to make sales, it obviously wasn’t enough sales quite yet, but I had, I had started to make sales and I started to see that what I was doing was working like, oh, when I talk about this product in a certain way, I see that it gets a response from someone. Like I hear from them, they email me, they DM me. When I have a conversation with them, I’m really getting it. Like I’m getting what their problem is. My product is solving their problem, and so like, I’m gonna keep going.

Like that’s, I think I had to tap into like that confidence of like, this thing that I’m doing is working. Of course, it’s not working enough yet, but it will and it’s definitely not gonna work enough if I quit on it now. And so I saw like all of these other things as diversions of my time, my energy, my attention, money.

I was gonna have to invest money and all that was gonna do was crack me, like split me into a million little pieces and just make it impossible for me to carry out something that I was like, I think this could really be a thing if I stick with it.

I think I made a ton more in the long term and maintained my life and my flexibility, which to me is like the most valuable thing. That is my currency is life flexibility, day flexibility. I, I think I was so scarred and burned by being a corporate lawyer that I just never ever wanna go back to doing that? I’m like so haunted, but I still have nightmares about where somebody comes and tells me I have to be a lawyer again. And it, it literally, like even saying that makes me so sick and I, that is so valuable to me that that’s kind of my North star.

Like, so you have to figure out what your North Star is and like what’s the value in what you’re doing, what’s valuable to you, what’s guiding you in this whole process and does this thing that you’re feeling like, um, I don’t know, tempted to go after, does it pull you away from that North Star vision?

Right? So for example, like if my North Star is this freedom and flexibility and that I wanna have a life outside my business, well, starting to take on a bunch of legal services is like a super fast way to kill that because it makes me tied to clients, which I’m not currently at all. And with trademarks in particular, you have tons and tons of filing requirements.

Not only upfront, but at the five, six year mark and then the nine 10 year mark. So you have to calendar things in the future. You have to send letters to people five years down the line, 10 years down the line, like this is an investment in in the future. And I was just like, no, that is not, that is not what I wanna do. As tempting as that $2,500, sounds now does like spread it over that time and map it onto your values, that does not seem so worth it.

The second thing that you need to do to become known for something is to work on clear messaging so that your audience knows who you are, what you do, and how they can pay you money for it more than anything.

Okay. So I’ll give you a bad example of, of how I see this in real life first and at first I tried to go on Instagram and I found a couple of actual bad examples, and then I was like, I don’t have the heart to call. Like, I’m never gonna read somebody’s bio aloud and like on a podcast or anywhere else and be like, here’s, here’s Michelle’s bio.

It’s, listen how horrible this is. It’s not, not in my, not in my constitution. So, um, instead I thought what I would do is like, break down what a bad general structure looks like or some of the most common mistakes that I see.

So first of all, if I could, I would pay everybody a good chunk of change to put your first name in your profile. I cannot tell you how many times people send me a message on Instagram and whenever people message me or leave a nice comment, I always go over to send them a message back and I look to their profile first to see what their name is. Like if, if it’s not obvious from their handle, I can’t tell you how many times I go to that person’s profile and there’s no name.

I understand the need and the want for privacy and like it, you know, in this day and age, like I, I get it. But if you’re trying to build an online business, you cannot do so without any sort of personality. So I need to know at least whatever first name you want me to call you, I need to know that. And then another common mistake I see is people credential stuffing their bios.

So I saw this actually systematically in the ones that I would have used as a bad example for you to, to point out that you would go on their profile and it’d be like, I am A, B, C, D, EFG certified. And I’m like what the heck is that? Who cares? Like, I don’t know what that is. And like, I don’t, I I am, if I’m my, your ideal customer, I don’t know what your like A, B, C, D certification is like, I don’t.

And then the people have like 47 letters after their name showing how credentialed they are. It’s like, I don’t know what any of these things mean, you know? And so it doesn’t help me. That doesn’t help me in the end.

You’ll notice I do not have Esquire or jd or whatever else I have after I have none of that on my profile, right? Because that doesn’t mean anything to anybody else. It has nothing to do. With, I get that you want to like, um, I don’t know, like solidify yourself as being an expert. And I get, I especially get it in this industry where there’s so many people parading around probably in your niche, who don’t have anything close to what you have, and yet they’re talking about the stuff that you talk about.

And I know. Trust me. I know how frustrating that is. However, we have to put our marketing hats back on to your ideal client. They don’t care. They don’t know what a, B, C, D certified is. They don’t, they don’t care.

I also see people doing this a lot where they’ll make some sort of cutesy statement in their bio, usually after the A, B, CD certified thing or having a lot of letters after the name that says something like healing people’s hormones to feel energized. And I’m like, what? First of all. Know, with the healing ’cause we can’t say healing ’cause that is a blatant, blatant scope of practice violation. So don’t, don’t take that out. No healing. Second of all, who are you healing? And for what and how? Like what does energize mean? Like, I don’t know. I just don’t even know what that means. It’s like very, it’s very broad, right? So when I go to your profile, I’m just like, you’re healing hormone. So like, does that mean.

You’re like healing somebody who has like a hormone problem or like a disease or like somebody who’s had a hysterectomy. Like I, I don’t know, like what does that mean? Right? And so I probably wouldn’t be looking for somebody who’s like healing my hormones. ’cause first of all, from a marketing perspective, that also means that I have to be aware that the hormones, my hormones are my problem.

So I have no idea when, in fact, I’m probably just tired all the time. I’m bloated, I gained weight, you know, I’m irritable. All of these things. That’s how I feel. I’m not going around clocking like, oh, I gotta heal my hormones. That’s the expert’s position on it.

My friend Clay Hebert is like the expert on this. And, uh, I’m gonna mastermind with him and I’ll, we’ll, we’ll drop a link to him down below. But he has this, uh, he has this like statement, this I help statement that goes something like, I help verb their noun. So for me, he says, I keep creators out of jail. That’s what he always says to me. And he also has this whole, you have to, you have to follow Clay.

You have to like read his stuff. He’s very, very good at this, but he talks a lot about how one of the things that we all like get wrong about this and why it’s not so clear like who we are and what we do and who we help is we get so fussed on like packing that all into like this big fat statement that’s like super specific.

So like when he told me by the way that mine should be, I help keep creators out of jail, I was like, that’s ridiculous because like creators don’t go to jail for what I do. Like that’s not what I do. And he’s like, it’s a great conversation starter. And it’s a joke to just like open the door of like, I help legally protect them, right?

Because like that sounds a little boring, but like when you say to somebody at a party like, I help keep creators out of jail, it’s like, what does that mean? Like, tell me more about you, what you do. Well, actually people do, they have all these online businesses and they don’t understand, you know, what the rules are. So I help teach them what’s legally okay and not okay online. Like, oh, okay. Like we can have more of a conversation about it back and forth. So. It’s really starting with that verb, uh, which I understand that that’s why this person was going with healing, but that was, that’s just a no no word in our industry. But yeah, I think when you break it out that way, you can talk more about like how you actually help people and with what.

I wanted to give a shout out to actually like a relatively new follower on Instagram who I saw, I saw her Instagram handle, like she, she came through as in follower and I saw the handle and wondered what she did and clicked over. And so she’s @sowooly on uh, Instagram, and so I was like, Ooh, what does she do?

And I clicked over, and this is what her description is. It’s so good. Knitting designer, blogger and YouTuber learn how to knit quickly. Step-by-step knitting patterns for beginners. And I was like, so wooly!. I love you. And it was this is perfect.

This is what I’m talking about guys. So she’s saying learn how to knit quickly, right? So there she verb her nouns. She’s showing you right there, like, you’re gonna learn how to knit and you’re gonna do it fast, right? So like, that’s perfect. She’s literally just telling you what she does. And then when she says knitting patterns for beginners, it has a a little arrow for call to action that’s telling me how to pay her.

I wanted to kiss her through the screen because it is, people make it so difficult to understand, like, I don’t get what you do. Like what are you selling? What are you doing? Right? She sells me knitting patterns for beginners. If I knew anything about knitting, which I don’t, but I wish I did, I would understand that that’s something that you need in order to knit something. You need a pattern. And so there, boom. She’s instantly the solution to my problem.

The third way to become known for something online is that you have to create the product that your audience already wants but can’t find, and you have to use their words to pull them in. This is the part that takes the most time and often the part that people just want to skip. They just wanna skip to the selling part, to the marketing part, and frankly just to the making money part.

But what they don’t realize is that all of this has to come first. I always recommend, and I talk about this at nauseum in my book. If you haven’t read my book, When I Start My Business, I’ll Be Happy, this is a huge chunk at the beginning. Part of the book is talking about doing market research, talking to clients, learning how to do voice of customer research, a really painstakingly detailed process that I do every single quarter in my own business, right?

Still to this day, for almost 10 years, I’ve done voice of customer research, even if you don’t have clients yet, you can still do voice of customer research. I teach you how in my book, sometimes this can come after having worked with so many clients or after having been in your career like you’re nine to five, right?

So if you’re listening and you’re like, I haven’t started my online business yet, or I’m new, but you have worked a job in this field, you might have an inkling as to what’s missing already. So when I left the law and then I saw, I saw like the online business industry kind of sprouting up at that time or blooming at that time.

I knew right away based on what I did for a living, that I was like, oh, none of these people have legal protection and they don’t really have options. Because I know that if I were a new beginner online business owner, I wouldn’t be able to afford the me of one year ago working at a Fancy pants law firm.

Because the Fancy Pants law firm was charging so much for my time and me sitting there in my little fancy pants law firm wouldn’t have understood what you did, right? And so I instantly saw the gap in the market. I saw what was missing because of my work experience. So it doesn’t always have to be that you have to like start your online business and work with a million people in order to understand what product.

I kind of saw my product right away from using my work experience. More than anything. I think that the most successful products come from a whole in the market, whether that means that the product doesn’t exist at all, and it’s something that people are looking for, or there’s a product or a series of products that are out there and available to people already, but it’s not that great, right?

There’s some problem with it, and everybody just talks about all the time and complains about it all the time. This would be my dream to create a printer that actually works and that people like, and that people don’t wanna throw into the highway. And this is how I feel. It’s like one of those things, it’s just a huge hole in the market.

Like if anybody out there listening is skilled in making, I don’t know what skill you need to have to make a printer, but maybe you’re an engineer or something. Like, for God’s sake, make a printer that works, that people are happy with that. Like prints more than three times before jamming. You would be a ca billionaire.

Right? So that’s the kind of thing I’m talking about. It’s like you’ll hear people talk like all the time about how like, I don’t know, this thing exists and we all just get complacent. Then somebody comes in and creates a new version of it that’s not like, uh, Scrub Daddy. I think that’s probably another good example where like, I mean, sponges had been around for how long?

I don’t know. Here comes Scrub Daddy talking about how it’s, you know, it’s flexible. It can go in the dishwasher. It doesn’t scratch, like it doesn’t get mold. There’s all these reasons why it’s so much better, and they just came in and filled a hole of a features hole essentially in a market that was already very well saturated.

The goal here is not to be everything to everyone, which I understand can feel a little counterintuitive maybe from where you’re sitting right now, where you feel like in order for your business to be successful, you’ve gotta branch out, be more like, basically like widen your arms in order to invite more people in.

But I am making the argument here today that by doing that, you’re really diluting. Who you are and what you become known for online. The goal here is really to become the McFlurry of your industry. Probably more my preference, the frosty of the industry. Um, and that the thing, you know, the person or the thing or the product that people think of automatically when they have that specific problem.

You know, some, some people will say to me like, oh yeah, whenever I think about legal stuff, like, I just think you’re, you’re the go-to person. You’re the person I’ve thought of. Right? And in their mind, or in this little corner of that part of the world, like that’s what I’ve worked hard to become associated with.

There are other people who do what I do, who are that person to their little corners of the internet, right? And the world still goes round and round. To me that is truly just like what builds a business that lasts is when you become known for something. You, uh, your name is kind of synonymous with your product or your area, your focus.

I guess what I will have to keep you tuned to is that like. I don’t know what the 2.0 version of this is. I don’t know what it is. Like when you become known for something and you’re synonymous with something and then you’re kind of like me and you’re like, well, what if I wanna become known for something else now?

Like, how do I, how do I evolve from here? So I’ll keep you posted. I guess I’m doing it in real time, um, while still maintaining, being known for the thing that I sell. So, it’s a really funny, I don’t know. I feel like I’m in like a funny place. Obviously, if you wanna hear anymore about that, always let me know or my, my dms are open.

With that, I’d love to hear from you and whether or not you like this episode, whether this was helpful to you in any other way. I really, really want this to be a two-way street where I hear from you after you listen, um, or read or whatever it is that you do. So you can reply to my email, send me a DM on Instagram at Sam Vander Wielen, whatever you’d like.

And if this topic is one that you realize you need to dive deeper on. You wanna learn how to build a product that’s geared towards customers who already need it. You wanna learn my voice of customer research strategies. You wanna learn how to speak more like your customers. You can attract more of them.

Definitely pick up a copy of my book When I Start My Business, I’ll Be Happy anywhere books are sold. I really appreciate you listening, and with that I’ll chat with you next week.

Thanks so much for listening to the On Your Terms® podcast. Make sure to follow on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, or wherever you like to listen to podcasts. You can also check out all of our podcast episodes, show notes, links, and more at samvanderwielen.com/podcast. You can learn more about legally protecting your business and take my free legal workshop, Five Steps To Legally Protect and Grow Your Online Business at Samvanderwielen.com and to stay connected and follow along, follow me on Instagram at samvanderwielen and send me a DM to say hi.