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Hello and welcome to Marketing Your Truth, the podcast for entrepreneurs who want to grow a fulfilling and impactful business with clarity, integrity, and ease, without performing, chasing trends, or losing their voice. I'm your host, Eli Natoli, and I'm really glad you're here. Let's get started. What if one of the most common pieces of personal branding advice is sending us all in the wrong direction? You've probably heard some version of this. If you want to build a strong personal brand, people need to see more of the person behind the business. And on its own, I completely understand the advice. But the problem is what we end up doing with it. When we hear show people more of who you are, or show the person behind the brand or behind the business or behind the solution, we end up translating that into talk about your hobbies, share more of your personal life, tell stories about your family, post about what you did over the weekend. And listen, there can absolutely be value in that. It can definitely make you come across more relatable or more approachable or more human. And if your ideal buyer also happens to share some of those interests or hobbies or passions, it might even create that immediate connection. But I also think that we need to ask a more important question when it comes to building a personal brand. And the question is this does knowing more about your life actually makes your ideal fit client more likely to want to work with you? Because those are two different things. They're not always the same thing. And by the way, if you sell expertise, if you're a consultant, you're a coach, advisor, attorney, realtor, strategist, or any expert whose clients are essentially choosing not just your solution, you're not just selling a product, but the person behind the solution. This distinction really matters a lot. Now I started thinking about this after I was listening to a branding expert on a podcast who was talking about an attorney he had worked with to develop her personal brand. And somewhere in that process, they discovered that she loved flying planes. So they started bringing that into her brand. Pictures of her flying one on her website. She started talking about flying on social media inside her newsletter. And so the idea was that now people weren't just simply seeing an attorney or a law practice, they were seeing the human being behind it. And I thought, okay, I get that, right? I can absolutely see the value in that, especially in legal services. I mean, think about a typical law firm website. What you're seeing is their practice areas, professional headshots. Everything has this very formal feel and look to it. And so, yes, seeing this attorney outside that traditional professional context might make her feel more approachable. And if I happen to love flying too, maybe we immediately have something in common. But the thing that I kept coming back to was this Does knowing that she flies planes tell me whether she's the attorney that I want representing me? Because there are really two different layers to the decisions that we make when we hire an expert. The first one is capability. And that is like, can this person actually do the job? That's where we look at expertise, credentials, results, testimonials, case studies. We read their content, we scan through their websites, we're on their social media scanning for evidence of that. We might even eventually go on a consultation and try to decide or reach a conclusion of is this the person that I want to be doing work with? But the thing that we need to also think about is our ideal buyers, they're very well informed. They're going to do their due diligence. They're not just looking at you, they're also looking at three or four other people. And this is where the second layer also starts to matter. The second layer that we use to make a buying decision is fit. Is this the right person for me? Do I trust their approach? Does their approach feel right for me? Do I feel like I'm in good hands, right? Is this someone that I can actually see having by my side, reaching that result or that solution or removing that problem? And of course, we're not going to sit down with a checklist and consciously answer these questions. But what we do, and more specifically, what our brain does is pick up on a bunch of signals. As we are reading or scanning their website or reading their emails, and maybe even during that consultation, we are scanning for fit. And little by little, or sometimes very quickly, we form this feeling, this opinion, or this impression about whether this is the right person for us. I experienced this myself years ago. My husband and I were trying to buy a house back in 2021. And this was in a housing market where everything was really, really crazy. Homes were disappearing almost as quickly as they were being listed. Multiple offers were being placed on a house on the same day that the house was listed. And the house that we ended up buying actually, people had left an offer before even seeing the house. That was like the normal thing that was happening back in 2021. So we started talking to several realtors, and one of them actually came to our house, sat down with us, and he started asking questions outside of like what kind of house you're looking for. He was asking us questions like, Why are you even moving? And why are you moving to this particular neighborhood? And why are you moving now? So during that conversation, I told him that I had lived in the area that I'm trying to move back to. And part of the reasons that I wanted to move back was because my parents were there and my mom at the time was battling stage four cancer, and I wanted to be closer to her. And from there, after that conversation, he started explaining how he works with clients. He talked about his approach to finding the right home. He explained that sometimes, especially in a competitive market that we were in, he would encourage his clients to include a letter with their offer explaining why they were interested in that particular house. Now, by the end of that conversation, my husband and I both knew that this is our guy. And here's what's really fascinating about this. Even though we both felt that he's very empathetic, he's trustworthy, and he really cares about his clients, of course, he never told us any of that. He never said, listen, I'm very empathetic towards my clients or I care about my clients. He didn't need to. Just having that half an hour with him was enough for us to experience those things. In fact, I remember walking away from that conversation, believing something really, really specific about him. I believe that even if we fell in love with a particular house that he thought was wrong for us, he would have kept us from putting an offer on that house, even if it meant he was going to lose that sale. Again, he never said any of that. That was the conclusion I had reached based on the conversation and the signals that he was giving us through that conversation. Right. So here's the other part of that story that I want to make sure that I don't forget to talk about. Someone else could have met that exact same realtor and thought, no, this guy's not for me. They might have found our realtor very soft and not for him. And that's exactly the point. Fit is not universal. The very thing that makes one buyer think this is exactly who I want to work with can make another buyer think this person's not for me. And that is not necessarily a problem. In fact, that's what good positioning should help happen. It should make fit easier to recognize. Which brings me back to the personal branding conversation. Because I really do believe that when it comes to fit, because that's what we're trying to do, where we're trying to build a strong personal brand. We're not trying to communicate that we're capable. We're trying to communicate that I'm your type of person. But the way that we go about it is really backward because we've started assuming that creating human connection requires revealing more of our personal lives. But here's the thing: I can know almost nothing about your private life and still feel like I know you. And I can know a tremendous amount about your personal life and still have no idea whether I want to work with you. And the reason is because the kind of personal, and I'm putting quotation around personal, that matters in a buying decision isn't necessarily how much of your life I've seen. It's whether I've seen enough of you to recognize whether there's fit. And here's the good news. Very often, the version of you is already embedded in work itself. You just haven't recognized it as something worth marketing or worth talking about. I saw this in my own business when I started my training and consultation business. I intuitively this something that most of the marketing consultants and coaches that I knew at the time weren't doing. So if someone came to me wanting help growing their business, I would map everything out for them. I would, after understanding what they're experiencing and understanding exactly what they're trying to achieve, I would tell them, okay, here's where you are, here's where you're trying to get to, and here's what I think it'll take to get you there. And here's roughly how long it's gonna take. And these are the milestones that we need to hit along the way to be able to get you there. So I didn't simply tell people trust the process and say, you know, here's my methodology. It's gonna take us three months, and I promise I'm gonna get you there. I showed them the path. I showed them an actual visual path that was specific and personalized to where they were and where they wanted to go with all the milestones, all the dates attached, all the activities, all the higher level activities that we were gonna do. Now, at the time when I was doing this, I didn't think there was something particularly interesting about what I was doing. It was simply how my brain worked. And the reason is because before starting my consultation business, I had spent years as a project manager. That experience had trained me to take something really big and complicated, and sometimes something that's very overwhelming, and turn it into something executable. So naturally, I brought that, that way of thinking and that way of approach into my own consultation and coaching business. But eventually I realized that that was one of my biggest differentiators. This was partly the reason that people wanted to work with me. And so when I realized that, I started making it more visible in the conversations that I had on my website, on my sales page, trying to explain that this is the way that I'm going to treat your future vision, your future business, or the version of the business that you want to experience. And so for someone who's, let's say, analytical, organized, outcome-driven, that mattered a lot. And also for someone who was simply exhausted by working with different coaches and not getting results and being told to trust the process, it mattered even more. My project management background was a personal thing. It was a personal thing from my background. But it was personal in a way that affected the client's experience. And that's the point that I'm trying to make here. That distinction is where I think some of the richest parts of your personal brand are hiding. It might be a previous career that changed the way you approach your work today. It might be the things that you've experienced that shaped what you value, what you believe, even your personality. It might be the problems that you face and how you went about solving them. It might also be just a natural strength that you bring into every client engagement. It might be 20 years of doing the work and developing a very strong belief about how the work should or shouldn't be done. It could be the value that you refuse to compromise on or the hills that you're willing to die on. It's about your judgment. It's about your decision-making process. On and on and on. And here is the interesting thing to pay attention to as well, which is all of these things are so normal, so natural to us that we've stopped noticing them. We don't pay attention to them. We end up chucking it up to this is how I do the work. But that may be exactly the thing that your ideal buyer needs, your ideal client needs to see, to understand that you're the right person, that the fit is there. Because your marketing might already do an excellent job proving that you are capable, showing that your experience, that you understand how to go about solving the problem. But does it also help your ideal buyers understand whether the fit is right as well? And this becomes increasingly important when your ideal buyers are doing their due diligence. They are looking at several other options who are also demonstrating that they're capable, also. Right? I mean, think about it. Nobody is going to go to the market and say, I'm really not that experienced, or I don't know what I'm doing, or I probably am not very good at this. Everyone's gonna tell their buyers some version of the same thing. They're gonna say, We're experienced, we know what we're doing, here's our results, here's our case studies, here's our testimonials. And again, when the buyer does their due diligence and see all the options that they're comparing, they're all experienced and capable of doing the job. Now the buyer is asking a different question. And the question is, which of these experts do I really want by my side to do this work or to get me to that solution? There's this idea from Seth Godin that captures part of this beautifully. His famous phrase, people like us do things like this. It's an idea about identity and belonging. And I really believe that there is another question sitting right alongside it when we're choosing an expert, right? And that question is, are you one of us? Not necessarily in the literal sense, and probably not even consciously. It's not like again, we're sitting down with a checklist of do your values or beliefs or personality match mine? It's just we can't help it. Our brain is always scanning for fit. And our brain is looking for signals to see, do we see the world in a similar way? Do we believe some of the same things? Do we value some of the same things? Do I relate to you? Do I like the way that you think? Is there something in your background or experience that makes me feel like you understand people like me? You know, as our brain is scanning for those clues or those signals, and sometimes it happens over the period of maybe several months. And this is another conversation that I have talked about on this podcast about how every part of your marketing, your messaging, and the way that you're positioning yourself is all about giving those signals. They all have to work together. So no matter which door the buyer enters your house, enters your business, or try to get to know your business, they're able to put the pieces together, not just on are you capable, but are we the right fit, right? But sometimes, and that's the beauty of it, it happens very, very quickly. And I've talked about that on this podcast too. Examples of how someone just found me several days ago and now they're on a consultation, and 15 minutes later, they're ready to go in into an engagement with me, right? I this happens to me on a regular basis in my business. And of course, a huge part of what contributes to this is for me because I've done my own due diligence, my own digging to understand myself and what I bring into my solutions and how I go about delivering the solution and make sure those are communicated in my messaging and in my marketing. And when you do that, this is where your messaging can start doing much more of the heavy lifting for you. I call this buyer alignment messaging. Buyer alignment messaging intentionally makes meaningful points of fit visible inside your marketing. You're giving the right people enough information so they can recognize that fit for themselves. And just as importantly as I said earlier, you're giving the wrong fit people enough information to also recognize that you may not be for them. And that is also extremely valuable, something that we don't talk about in marketing much at all. We always focus on how do we draw the right fit clients to us, but it's also very important to make that fit very visible so we don't spend our marketing resources and time on people who are not the right fit for us. And so the goal is when you make the fit visible, and when that person reaches your sales page, fills out an inquiry form, or gets on a sales call with your team, they can already know something beyond are you capable? Is this firm capable of doing this job? They can also arrive at that sales page or sales call, knowing that this is a person that I want behind this solution, and this is a person specifically that I want guiding me. And so again, that changes how we should approach personal part of personal branding. So I want us to go back to our attorney who flies planes. Maybe flying planes really is relevant to what she's doing and how she's practicing law. Maybe years of flying have shaped how she thinks about preparation and risk. Maybe flying has influenced the way she responds when something unexpected happens. Maybe there are lessons that she has picked up from flying that genuinely shows up in a way that she practices law. If any of those are true, now flying tells me something meaningful about the attorney who may eventually handle my case. And of course, if none of that is true, if she simply loves getting into a plane on a Sunday morning and fly, that's wonderful too. And if she wants to share it, that's fantastic. And maybe as an ideal fit client, I love flying too. And now we have something to talk about. We have something in common. But I wouldn't confuse learning another fact about her with understanding what makes her the attorney that I want representing me. And that's the opportunity that we miss when we reduce personal branding to show more of yourself, show more of the person behind the solution. You don't necessarily need to show people more of you. You need to make the parts that matter visible: your experiences, your judgment, your beliefs, your values, your way of approaching your solution, your personality that has led you to approach your solution that way, the things that have shaped your expertise and influence what someone actually experiences when they end up working with you. So before I wrap up this episode, I really love for you to sit down and try something. Imagine that your ideal client is sitting at their desk right now and they have your website open in one tab and three of your competitors open in three other tabs. Now, all of you are demonstrating expertise. All four of you come across very credible, all of you seem capable of getting the job done. And this buyer only has what you've put into the world to decide whether you're the right fit for them. Not just whether you're capable, but whether you're the right fit. Can they see your beliefs and values that shaped the way you approach solving the problem? Can they understand the judgment that goes into how you're going to guide them through the process of giving them that solution? Can they get a sense of what it would actually feel like to have you doing this work with them? Can they recognize whether you're the kind of person that is their kind of person? Because you might know what makes you different. Your existing clients probably know, most likely know what makes you different and why working with you is so amazing. But someone who has never worked with you only has what you've made visible. And in most cases, based on experience, you might be giving them far less to go on than you realize. And by the way, if you're wondering how well your current marketing and messaging is doing that, I created something that can help you. It's my free positioning and messaging audit. You can bring your website, your social media profiles, even your recent content that you've shared on social or you're inside your newsletters. And this messaging and positioning audit walks you through 20 questions across five areas that helps you look at your marketing through the eyes of someone deciding whether they want to work with you. You'll be able to see where the real depth of what you do is coming through and where your messaging may be making you look far more interchangeable than you actually are. You can get this audit for free at elinatoli.com /authority. And if you want to go deeper, if you want my help uncovering what actually makes your expertise and approach different, and turning that into a buyer alignment messaging and authority-led marketing, that's exactly what we do inside my position to be chosen workshop. You'll leave knowing what makes your approach different, what matters to the people who want to work with you, and what you can build your authority around for years to come. You can learn more about that at elinatoli.com /chosen. I will link both the audit and the workshop in the show notes. And before we wrap up, I want to leave you with one question. The next time somebody tells you that building a personal brand means showing people more of the person behind the business, don't just ask, what else can I share about myself? I want you to start thinking about what does someone need to see about me to understand what it would actually be like to working with me. Because the goal, again, isn't to make your marketing more personal just for the sake of being personal, it's to make the things that create meaningful alignment visible to them. So that when the right buyer finds you, they don't simply think, hmm, this person knows what they're doing. They also think this is exactly the person that I want by my side helping me with this problem or getting to that solution. Thank you for listening to Marketing Your Truth Podcast. If someone came to mind while you were listening to this, maybe an expert who's doing incredible work but struggling to communicate what really makes them different, do me a favor, could you share this episode with them? And if this episode resonated with you, I love it. If you take a few minutes to leave a review, tell me what you find useful about the show, or even an idea from this episode or other episodes that change the way you think about your marketing or your personal branding. I would really appreciate that.