You already know that your brand is so much more than your colors and logo. But have you done the work to ensure that your brand message is based on strategy and messaging? Your brand consists of your design, content, marketing, social media, and more. It all needs to work together with a strategy that incorporates every piece.
This week on the podcast, I’m chatting with Shaunda Head about voice, which is a big part of what you’re saying, how you’re saying it, and how people find and consume your content.
It can be really difficult to share your own ideas, especially if what you’re saying isn’t what everyone else is saying. But that’s precisely the point.
Shaunda talks about unlearning what you might have learned in school or corporate structures and how to speak up even when you might be afraid to so people know who you are and what you’re about.
Mentioned in This Episode Podcast
- Follow Shaunda on Instagram
- Ask Your Audience
- Schedule a call with me
- Connect with me on LinkedIn
- Follow me on Instagram
About Shaunda Head
Shaunda Head is an Atlanta-based brand strategist who helps online experts who have a hard time communicating with their audience, use their own unique voice to master their message and attract perfect-fit clients. She creates and implements strategies in marketing, brand building and copy to help her clients SHOW UP and drive higher connection with their true, dream clients. In addition to building strategies, Shaunda also teaches various workshops on aligning your branding and marketing in a way that benefits your full brand system.
Shaunda has over 20 years of experience, including brand design, marketing, communications and business development for global companies like the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), UPS and E! Entertainment Television. She has also been featured on Essence.com, TIME.com, Sirius XM, Create & Cultivate, and Motherly. She now coaches and consults for experts who are moving from a traditional to an online business model, with past clients consisting of coaches, doctors, lawyers, stylists, therapists, non-profit founders, real estate agents, and more. You can find out more about Shaunda and her work at www.heyshaundahead.com.
Transcript
Abby Herman 0:08
Hey there, and welcome to episode 241 of The Content Experiment Podcast, a podcast for service driven business owners who know that content is important. But there is so much more to marketing and business growth. Here we talk about showing up for your audience in a way that they want to hear and in a way that’s sustainable for you. This might mean publishing a weekly podcast or blog. But it also means paying attention to your email list, leveraging other people’s audiences, building relationships, and getting over the limiting mindsets that often hit when we’re reaching for the next level in our business.
Abby Herman 0:42
I’m Abby Herman, content strategist and podcast manager for business owners who want to make their marketing feel easier and more streamlined, so they can get back to serving their clients and making those sales, I will show you how or I’ll do it for you while you do business in a way that works for you. I can help by supporting you through building a content and marketing strategy, taking care of the podcast management for you, or giving you the tools and resources to take this on yourself. As a business owner, you create the content to share your message with people on social media, your podcast, your blog, when you’re speaking, you name it. And it’s really important for you to stand out, there is so much content out there already. And you can’t just repeat what others are saying, you need to do it in your way in your own voice.
Abby Herman 1:33
Now, today’s podcast guest I found on Instagram, she happened to land in my feed. And so of course I did some stalking. And the way that she shared her content was very matter of fact, and purposeful. And I loved that. The result also a quite a bit of humor in there too, which really resonated with me. And that is exactly what she does for clients. She helps them find their voice so that they can deliver their own brand messaging more effectively. And since I’ve been talking these last few weeks about doing things a bit differently, I naturally needed to invite her to the show. And luckily she said yes. Now before I introduced Shaunda Head, I want to let you know that at the end of our interview, at the end of our conversation, I asked her about using artificial intelligence to create content. This is such a hot topic, and I wanted to get her take on it. I’ve been doing some testing myself and I plan to have a guest on in a few weeks to talk specifically about this. But since we’re talking about creating content here, especially content in your own voice, I just had to ask about it. You might be surprised at her answer.
Abby Herman 2:43
And I also want to add a little disclaimer here that we recorded the episode on April 10 of 2023. So of course with how quickly AI is changing and evolving, it might be outdated rather quickly, but I’m trying to push this episode through so that it isn’t irrelevant by the time you listen. Now here is a bit about Shaunda. Shaunda Head is an Atlanta based brand strategist who helps online experts who have a hard time communicating with their audience use their own unique voice to master their message and attract Perfect Fit clients. She creates an implement strategy and marketing brand building and copy to help her clients show up and drive higher connection with their true dream clients. In addition to building strategies, Shaunda also teaches various aligning your branding and marketing in a way that benefits your full Brand System. Shaunda has over 20 years of experience including brand design, marketing, communications and business development for global companies like the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, ups and E Entertainment Television. She has also been featured on essence.com time.com Sirius XM create and cultivate and motherly. She now coaches and consults for experts who are moving from a traditional to an online business model with past clients consisting of coaches, doctors, lawyers, stylist, therapists, nonprofit founders, real estate agents, and more. You can find out more about Shaunda and her work at hay ShaundaHead.com And listen to our conversation.
Abby Herman 4:23
Hi, Shaunda, thank you so much for being here today.
Shaunda Head 4:26
Hey, thank you for having me. Abby,
Abby Herman 4:29
I am super excited to chat. I found you on Instagram, and have really enjoyed your content and just, you know, like your no nonsense way of delivering your own message and encouraging other people to do the same. So I was super impressed with that.
Shaunda Head 4:48
Oh, thank you so much.
Abby Herman 4:49
Yeah, awesome. before we get into our interview, can you share with listeners what you do and who you do it for?
Shaunda Head 4:57
Yeah, sure. So I’m Shaunda Head. I’m a brand strategist currently in Atlanta, Georgia, and I help experts to learn how to deliver and communicate their message more effectively to their audiences. A lot of times, a lot of my clients are coming from traditional backgrounds, very structured, very, you know, corporate. And so jumping into this online game was a whole different beast. And so we kind of had to do some reworking and some retooling and some unlearning. And so that’s kind of work that I do, I’m just go dig kind of heavily into their background and experiences, their expertise and kind of teach them and show them how to flesh that out so that an online audience can kind of get that information really succinctly and quickly, right, because we only have seconds while we’re trying to stop that scroll. So yeah,
Abby Herman 5:52
yeah. Well, and I think that some of that work is also really important. Like as you start to get into this whole online space, and, you know, shifting in your business. I know, I’ve been here full time for 10 years. And I came from education, which is a totally different world.
Speaker 2 6:12
In Yeah, I’m sorry, I have a few clients who are from education. So you said that that sparks something like, Oh, I know exactly what that what that was about. Yeah.
Abby Herman 6:23
Yes. And I feel like I have, you know, reinvented, well, not completely reinvented, but definitely shifted in my business multiple times since then. Because I had no idea like, you know, that this online business world was even a thing when I when I started in it. So yeah, I love what a great resource and support that you provide to people. That’s great. Can you share a little bit about like, how you work with clients in doing that, and helping them with their messaging? And one of my favorite questions to ask is, how does the way that you work with clients to help you to live the lifestyle that you want?
Speaker 2 6:59
Well, that’s a great question, because it’s definitely shifted, right? When I’ve, when I’ve, because there’s some times in your life where you actually need to, to shift the way that you work, because your personal life or what have you might be be going through some some evolving as well. So I love that question. So actually started out as strictly like a service provider, I have a background in graphic communications, I was a graphic designer, web designer, all of that. And then I started working in marketing. And so when I left, like the workforce, I went heavily into being a designer and writing all the things for for my clients. And so recently, I would say probably over the past few years, I’ve evolved to kind of go directly more into the strategy work one, because I noticed that it wasn’t happening, people don’t really understand or get the gist of how much strategy is necessary until they’re fully immersed in it. And then like, I didn’t know, it was all of this, I thought I could just tell you, I love the color purple, and we’ll make my logo and we’ll do XYZ. So what my work looks like now is, if if I’m doing one on one work, I start off, always, always with strategy work building out strategy, I call them blueprints for people that they can take and use on their own or if they have a team. And then kind of the next step from that is, according to our strategy, we also do some implementation and some execution. So I do have private one on one clients where they are strictly strategy clients, basically on retainer, and then I also have clients where we do their full like marketing funnels, and things like that, because we start and we go heavily into the messaging, if they’re looking for people to execute, we do that but we do that in a way that I like to call we focus on your entire brand system because what I do know just from my background and and the kind of work that I’ve done in the past, everything has to be consistent your brand message everything has to be consistent throughout your entire brand system. But a lot of times we do this work in silos, so say I’m gonna work on my marketing or I’m gonna work on my design, I’m gonna work on my content, right? I’m gonna work on my social media, but then they don’t all like coalesce and come together and now we’re still sitting around looking like why isn’t anything working? It does have to be consistent. So I do have clients where we’ve moved into the execution like realm for them. And I love that because it’s kind of like you get your hands all up in everything. But it takes you know, it works in and we love it. And I love that I get to help people really feel like they’re getting their point across. A lot of times people walk in the door to work with me and they feel like I have so much to say or the exact opposite. I don’t know what to say at all, but I have This expertise, and I want to do this work. And that’s just like my favorite type of client favorite.
Abby Herman 10:06
Yes, I love that you have shifted that way. I’ve, I’ve done a similar shift where I will I used to just do implementation. But I shifted to doing the strategy piece, because you’re right, like, there’s so much involved in making sure that all of the pieces work together, and you can’t promote a program, you know, on one level, and create like, you know, nurturing content on another, and then have a funnel doing something else, and nothing talks to each other nothing looks or feels or reads the same way. Yes. And so having it all work together is so much more effective. So I love that. Yeah. So let’s talk about messaging and finding your voice. Because that’s something that you talk about a lot on, you know, stalked or social media. And you talk about that a lot. What does that mean, to find your voice?
Shaunda Head 11:09
Oh, and I landed on that just because of my past experience. But also, in working with clients, we will start working on their content, we’ll start working on their marketing, we’ll build out the strategy. And then it will dawn on me like, oh, wait, they’re literally just trying to just kind of pare it what they’ve seen other people do, who are, you know, admittedly, really successful. But we’re all on different playing fields here. And so I started leaning into the finding of voice because when we are creating messaging, my entire thing, over all the work that I do is that we need to be looking at like your differentiating factors, right, we need to be contrasting you, instead of comparing you because now now you got to compete. Now, you actually have to go up against Walmart, who wants to do that? Right? We are solopreneurs around here. So and again, with a lot of clients coming from traditional backgrounds, where, and nothing wrong with this at all. But when you’re on a team, you have to be a good team player, you need to be able to take direction and kind of fall in line as to what the leader is telling you that that we need to kind of get across in our teamwork and in our work. And so when you then step into becoming an entrepreneur and working for yourself, everything now comes from you. So what is it that you have to say, and I found that people aren’t always really aligned with what that even is? Because they haven’t had to be. So I started doing, I kind of pulled together a process for finding your voice that helps people to unlearn what they’ve had to learn in corporate structures, so that they can kind of uncover and see what it is, or who it is that they actually are. It’s really more about finding more of yourself. And so we talk about it through the messaging, but it’s about finding what you have to say, if you were to ignore everyone else. And if you knew that this thing would work, and that you would have all the money and all the clients, what would you be saying if you were not afraid, right, and we start there, and we really start to see things show up that weren’t even their thoughts weren’t even their voice, this is just what we’ve taken on which we have to, in order to exist in society and to do you know, great work, right and be hired and, and be promoted. So that’s a lot of the work in the finding your voice. And then the third piece of it is now we have to unfold all of this, right? So we’ve done some unlearning. We’ve uncovered who you truly are. Now, let’s figure out how do we piece this together in your content and your marketing and your branding so that when people come across you, they immediately know who you are and what you’re about. And that, by the way, does not mean that they immediately you know want to be a part of your world, what we want people to do is to be able to come in and immediately know whether you’re for them or not. Right? Because if you’re not for them, totally, totally fine. Everybody has somebody, right? There’s this saying where, you know, we all have people who are attached to us, but they cannot go out and do their work until we step out and do our work first. And so that’s really kind of what the work is. It’s kind of piecing together all of these little things that make you you once we’ve taken off everything, all the gunk and everything. That wasn’t you because that’s not really going to serve you in entrepreneurship.
Abby Herman 14:39
Yeah. So I’m kind of gonna put you on the spot here for a second because I would love to hear it and example like, what does that mean to you know, express yourself and you said if you were not afraid to share something or two, so I think that there’s a fine line because a lot of people look at it vulnerability as finding their voice. And so they’re going to share some really deep personal things on social media because because, you know, at some level, as sharing us as humans, who we are as people and our belief systems and our values, that’s really important. At the same time, how personal is too personal, like, you know, how vulnerable is too vulnerable? Because, you know, I think that there’s a filter, maybe, and maybe I’m wrong, but I feel like there’s a filter that needs to be put in place, especially in in business and what you’re sharing so. So what exactly does that look like?
Speaker 2 15:38
Yeah, and you know, what, I don’t think of it in terms of like, vulnerability or transparency shares, right? I do. I have a free workshop that I run called a story vision method workshop, where I kind of run you through how to get started in creating constant with stories. And so there’s this thing where people think we’re, okay, well, if I’m going to be so transparent, or if I’m going to be telling all these stories, then I actually don’t have like, a trauma bond story, right? I actually didn’t live out of my car, I actually didn’t grow up on the streets, or this hasn’t happened to me or that so no one’s going to care about my story. And I’m like, That is not true. You don’t have to have like a Tyler Perry moment, right? But what you do have to have is just true to you little anecdotes, it can be something as simple as where did you grow up? Because what’s going to happen is, people are going to come across your content and say, Oh, she’s from Detroit. I’m from Detroit. Wait a minute, let me see what she’s talking about, right? Or it’s going to be other things like your childhood, or maybe why you first got into business, or what your favorite teacher taught you really inane type stuff that really just flies over people’s head, like when we’re talking about telling our story, we don’t kind of write all this stuff down. But that’s really the stuff that makes people stop and resonate with us. Because they see themselves they see their mom, their dad, their sister, their cousin, their brother. So it’s less to me about being extremely personal, and more to me about telling the truth. Right. And so what that looks like, and like I said, That’s just something that I go through in my free workshop. But I, I kind of went there, because when I talked to people about uncovering who they really are, when they’re coming from these corporate structures, it’s not about us, it’s about the team. It’s about the company. So now I just want you to sit and look at yourself, right? It’s less about these really, really transparent moments and more about who do you want to show up to be and a lot of times our first instinct is not to show up as ourselves is to show up as the person who has to code switch, right? The person who has to be uber professional, where I’m like, No, I want you to use whatever language you use, I want you to use the language that you use that your clients also use, right, because when we’re scrolling on the weekends, we’re not looking for more stuff that reminds us of work we’re looking for, to kind of chill and relax and for stuff that’s familiar. And that’s really how you kind of SEEP, or how someone seeps into your ecosystem is through that way instead of the way that we’re taught, which is really, really kind of rigid and, and professional instruction.
Abby Herman 18:23
Yeah, I love that. Yes. Great, great perspective. So one of the things that you’re talking about, too, is, you know, when developing your messaging and putting yourself out there is the importance of not relying on other people’s viewpoints as you are crafting what you’re putting out there for the world. And we talked about this a little bit before I hit record, because one of the things that I talk about is to you not, not necessarily not necessarily to use other people’s viewpoints, but to look at other people’s content, and think about how can I say this differently? How can I like, what about this, you know, triggers me and wants me to publish something totally opposite of what this person is saying respectfully, of course, and not not necessarily calling them out. But just you know, like using that as kind of a guide to help you develop content. Of course, there’s a lot of other ways as well, I recommend serving your audience and all of that. But I would love to know, what does that mean to you like not relying on other people’s viewpoints? How do you suggest that people kind of approach their own content development?
Speaker 2 19:33
Yeah, it’s so it’s actually really, I’m not saying too much different from what you’re saying. I’m just saying a different way, right? Because my thing is, when people start to create content, their first kind of thought is, let me just say what they’re saying, right? Whereas I’m like, No, you sure you can look at it, but now I want you to say what they’re not saying, right? That you really feel I want to to differentiate yourself, and we do have to kind of look and see where people are standing like, what’s their like ground zero, so that we can choose another pathway. But what I find is that when we’re left to our own devices, will start scrolling and repeating and parroting. And that’s what we don’t want to do. So I always want to kind of start off with saying, Look, we want you to say something different. So we do have to take a look and see what they’re saying. Because we want to say something different. So I’m of the line where like you said, How can I make this different? Right? That’s me, just like all day, though. So I’m like, Yeah, sure. Look them up. What what are they not saying that you’re feeling? Because there’s a lane there for you. And but at the end of the day, for me, I’m just like, every message is not for everybody. So there are some things that people do need to hear, but they might need to hear from you instead of from somewhere, someone else. So I always just want people to trust themselves more. So if you trust yourself more, you can step into the process and kind of not lose yourself. So that’s that’s kind of where I’m coming from with that. But I’m definitely I’m all for, especially when you’re first starting out with content, and you haven’t created it before, or you haven’t created any successfully before. I’m all for, like seeing what else is out there. But it’s solely for the benefit of now you need to tweak that. Right? Like that’s, that’s not yours, but that there’s a structure there that you can see. So now, how do you lay this structure on top of yours on top of what you’re doing? Because this my theory is always like, if you want to stand out, you have to be doing something different. Yeah. Has to be doing something different. Yeah.
Abby Herman 21:46
What do you say to the people who think because I hear this from clients, and I’m sure that you do too. But everybody’s like everything. I want to say everything that I do everything that I share, somebody’s already done it and said it and shared it.
Speaker 2 22:02
Yeah, I do. You know what, buddy? Even my top tier clients are still every day in Slack with the sending me another link from someone. Like, what about looking at their what they’re doing? Like, okay, cool, but no. And so here’s the thing. And this is where, when I talk about how I always start with strategy, I go so hard in the beginning on them, right? And so they’re given all these links and stuff. And I’m like, I don’t want to see it, I don’t want to see it, right? I want to really talk about you so much that you get tired of yourself, because I can guarantee you, you’ve not done that. Right, you have not done that yet. So by the time we kind of finished that work, and we now go into creating the copy, and and fleshing out the funnels and everything like that. Now, the mindset, there’s a bit of a shift there. So I hear less of that. Now, I’ll say from clients, but it’s still more so uh, what is, let’s see what they’re doing. And I could just do it that way. And I’m like, they have 100,000 people on their email list, and you have 1000. So what they’re doing, they’re going to be doing something and it may work for them. And it’s going, it looks kind of like bland and vanilla, and it works for them. Because they have enough people where the data works for you. You have to go all in on being whomever you are so that people can see you. I’ve talked about building your brand platform, it’s like a politician, you need to have something you can stand on. So people can see you above everything else, right. So I know they get tired of talking about themselves with me. But what I do get a lot of back is like, it’s almost like I didn’t even know, I could even do this right? And not not in the sense of like physically doing something but more so like, oh, it can actually work if I actually take my ideas. And so I just noticed if we stay on them, which that’s my job, because I know they’re gonna kind of veer off the path sometimes. But I found that like, if I stay on them about this and the things that do come out, even if they’re similar to someone else, they are so uniquely them that it’s almost like there’s there’s no comparison, if someone ends up with you. It’s because you are exactly what they were looking for at that time. So yeah.
Abby Herman 24:27
I love that. and I don’t know what the statistic is. But it’s something like people have to see something what like seven times or 12 times or something for the for it to actually like land and remember. So you might be saying the same thing in 2012 different social media posts or 12 different podcasts and you say at 12 different ways. And it takes that for people to actually notice or remember or whatever.
Speaker 2 24:56
Yeah, I was having this discussion last week. EEG with the client, because I hear seven times a lot, but I one time I even heard someone say they have to hear 21 times like 20 times, but somewhere between seven and 21 time to hear, right? Well, what if you’re that seventh time? What if you’re the time where it clicks because it’s coming out of you and not Oprah or not Beyonce, right? Not Glennon, Doyle, but it’s coming out of you. And then it clicks. And you never know. So that’s why I’m like You always speak your truth. Because people, a lot of times try to draw it out before they say it, or draw it out. Before they do it. They want to see the path before they step. I’m like, Just tell the truth. Put it out there, you never know what’s going to be the thing. And with that, so when we do get down into creating content, I’m always saying you need to do two things you need to say something they’ve never heard before. So you need to determine what, you know, what are the teachings or the learnings of the knowledge or the expertise that you have that you want to share that you’re not seeing anyone else say? But then the second thing is you need to say something that they’ve actually heard before, because you want that piece of their brain to have that validation where, oh, well, she doesn’t know what she’s talking about. Because I so and so has said that as well. So it’s like a two fold kind of two, two sides of the coin, way to look at it, you want to do both.
Abby Herman 26:20
Interesting, I’ve never actually heard that before. That’s a look at you being different. I’ve never heard that. And, and it makes so much sense.
Speaker 2 26:29
It’s just when because like as a as a marketer, we really study, like marketing and sales psychology, right? So we know the reasons why, like, we know how you need to structure the marketing argument, we know the things that that will kind of attract the logical buyer will attract the emotional buyer. And so there’s this thing where if people hear something or see something that’s familiar to them, then they’re going to lean in. And so you do want that. And then along with what you were saying, as far as you know, they have to hear or see it at least seven times, you want to be the last time he wants to be the time where it sticks. So you do want to say something that they’ve heard that’s familiar. And then you want to flip something on the on the head, so that they’re like, I need to follow this girl, because I haven’t heard that before. But I liked that. Let me see what more of that there is. So you want to do both things in your content.
Abby Herman 27:24
Yeah, that’s great. So one of the something else I pulled from one of your Instagram posts is how important it is to get out of your head and say what you want to say. And so this kind of goes back to what we were talking about before, where like you’ve, you’ve got to like talk about, like, be personal. But you know, talk about the things that you need to talk about to establish, like some curiosity so that people follow you and reach out to you. But I think that something that I’ve seen a lot of is just that hesitation to do it. And I felt it too. Like I’ve tried to get a little more vulnerable in some of the things I’ve posted on LinkedIn. And, you know, I share, you know, some personal things on my emails and things like that. But I think it’s easier said than done to get out of your head, and to say what you want to say, what is your trick for them? What does that look like when you’re working with clients around that?
Speaker 2 28:20
100% is easier said than done. It is like a fear fist around here. And then it starts over every day. Every day. It’s like I did it yesterday, you wake up the next day, you got to do it again, you’re like, Oh, my goodness. But um, it really just looks like kind of me being a support system, me being there, particularly with my one on one clients, being there for them to pick my brain and to figure out a way that they can get the message across. So when I say you know, you say what you want to say, I’m really thinking that piece is a bit more more broad, because I’m really talking about the message that they want to get out there. And so it’s really about how can we make you more comfortable with what needs to come out of you, right? Because there’s some stuff that might be polarizing things like that, we can definitely sit down and work through how we can how we can get this out of you. So it’s like less of feeling like you’re like standing naked on the stage somewhere. But so there’s that support there. But it’s also like me kind of coaching you through it and pushing some days, right? Because what I know is that someone needs to hear if you feel so passionately about it. Someone else needs to hear it. And so this doesn’t mean every little thing that comes through your head needs to come out. But you know what I mean? Oh, but again, so there’s that strategy to it. There’s intentionality to everything. And it’s like the more we go over things, the more we can kind of narrow down and pull out what’s not going away, and it’s not going away. And if you are so passionate about it, you cry when you talk, which it does happen. We cannot hold that in, right? And we don’t want to be looking up a year later. And you’re still like, well, I, I can’t get you know, any clients or I can’t get any new contracts or whatever, because you’re still saying the same thing you were saying, when you probably stepped into the game, you know, a few years ago, is now it’s time to try something different. So let’s look at that I have this process that I call secure the vision where it’s kind of like a brain dump of everything that’s in your head, all the expertise that you’ve learned over the years. And we kind of call like, what’s the red thread here? What what is? What is it that you’re that like I said that you’re so passionate about that it’s not going away. And now let’s attack it from every angle. Let’s find all the hooks, let’s find everything that can get you there. And sometimes you can say it straight out. And sometimes you don’t. But everything kind of goes back to this one main message. But it’s all just about intentionality. And we draw everything out. I love to, to do a screen share. Let me get up here with my iPads. Let me let me draw this out. Let me get on, on on I’m about to say Google Sheets, but now Google Sheets, but um, Google Bond was a sloth. Yeah, yeah, like, let’s draw it out, right? Because I’m visual. And we record everything. Because we always want to go back to what have we been saying this entire time, I have one client I’ve been working with since 2020. She’s a retainer client now. And she’s like you were saying these things. In 2020. I was saying I wanted to say this. And I said, I know it i i told you to say you didn’t see it. And then now you’re ready. Now you’re ready. And now it’s coming out of her. And it’s just like, it’s so it’s just really, really good. What I love about the work is seeing people kind of step into themselves or stepping into just what they’re truly truly, truly passionate about. Because a lot of times, it’s not a lot of things you’re that passionate about. Right? So I just love to see people light up when they’re doing their work. I love that.
Abby Herman 32:17
I was working with a client recently, and they’ve been recording some videos. So the the CEO and her lead coach, and the coach is very nervous about recording videos. He does not want to do them. But he has been doing them once a month. And so they were recording together like they were I was suggestible maybe if you know if somebody is like interviewing you. And she asked him a question about like, I’m watching the video, so I can edit it. Uh huh. She asked him a question about, about, like, his expertise. And you could just, you could just see, like, his whole face lit up, his eyes lit up. And he just nailed it. And this is like, 20 minutes of working up to that and like a five minute answer four minute answer. And just he just lit up because he was able to get the messaging exactly the right because it was something that he was super passionate about, and that he really wanted their clients to understand. And so yeah, I think finding that passion is just so valuable. And, and maybe it takes a while to do maybe it takes you know, somebody’s doing things in a different way. Oh my gosh, look at that, we’re talking about being different things of the different ways so that you can voice your, you know, voice, your message and your passion and all of that. So,
Shaunda Head 33:44
absolutely. And we don’t always have or we don’t always think that we have that kind of time. But even like you said, he hit that mark, 20 minutes in, right, and now we got the gold, right. And it’s just like, it’s if you just leave that door open, it’s gonna come out. I love that I love to see it.
Abby Herman 34:03
It was pretty cool. So something that you would talk about that I think would really help with maybe allowing people or giving them permission, I guess are sparking some of that passion to getting out of their head and sharing what they want to say you have. I don’t know if you call it a framework or what but the five emotions to create in your content. And I would love for you to share what those are. Because I think if you know, here’s the emotion that I want my watchers, listeners, readers, followers, whatever to to have as a result of this, I think it might be easier to craft that content.
Speaker 2 34:44
Absolutely. And so this is something that I talk about in the story vision method workshop. And it is a framework I call it the story vision method where I kind of walk you through in a really kind of straightforward, simplistic way of How you can take your stories, and how you can think about your stories and how you can think about the emotions that you want to bring about in your audience. And then how you can lead them to your call to action to do that, because that used to be a really popular question I get all the time. Okay, I’m down for telling my stories and everything, but how, what does that have to do with getting them to buy and so what it’s like, Well, what we know in psychology is there are certain stories that actually help people to convert better, right, and there are certain emotions that you can elicit, that will now help the emotional buyer to move on to the next step. So in this workshop, I take you through those emotions. And then I take you through those stories as well that kind of help you to convert, and then I give you like, a little sentence framework to help you connect the dots and, and all of that. So some of those emotions would be curiosity. One big one, right. But I think a lot of times it goes kind of over our head, because we think of it in terms of even like, if you’re doing an email sequence, and like, oh, the subject line needs to be curious. Right? And then we stop there. So it’s kind of like, what are the stories that you can tell, that will bring up more curiosity? In your audience? What are stories you can tell that will motivate them? Right? motivate them to do something like actually literally get out of their chair and take the next step? What are what are the stories that will inspire them, right, inspire and motivate very similar, but to me, inspiration happens before the motivation. So really something that is inspiring is something that they want to now continue to pay attention to you because you inspire them. If you motivate them, if motivation is the emotion, then they’ve been inspired. And now they must stand up and act. So that’s how I view that. Also, what kind of stories can you tell, that will make them feel like they’re more really like in need, so like in either in need of your services, or in need of some more type of education around what it is the content that you put out? And then the last one is, like how can you make them feel more relatable to you? And this goes back to, like we were discussing earlier, small things like, what hometown are you from? Right? What was your family like growing up like your favorite kind of ice cream, really, really tiny stuff? A lot of times I had someone respond to my email one day. And she mentioned like, oh, it’s the nuances of the things that you say, in your emails. And then I’m like, Oh, I really liked her. It’s the tiniest things. And I said, that’s exactly what it is. It’s the nuances so so making them feel like more relatable to you is actually more of a nuanced thing. Those are kind of the really tiny, I think, stories. And so I take you through kind of what stories will fit those emotions in my workshop, and I give you like a Trello board where you can now answer the prompts to tell your story. And it’s like color coded by the emotions, all that kind of stuff. So, so So yeah, if anyone is interested in what that kind of looks like, you can check out our free workshop. But But yeah, there are certain stories you can tell, to help convert. People just naturally, it’s kind of like you want to work with psychology, you want to work with the flow, you don’t want to be going against it. So once you can figure out what you want to say. And once you can figure out the type of audience that’s gonna resonate with what you want to say, You’re good now all you have to do is just stand in front of them and say something?
Abby Herman 38:44
Yes. Okay, so I have a question for you around creating emotion in your content, speaking, messaging, all of that, as it relates to this. Sir, I would say sarcastically, maybe wonderful new technology, artificial intelligence, chat, GPT, all of that. As we’re recording this in mid April, I’m just starting to get into it. I’ve been I bought a training. I’ve been testing it out on my own content a little bit. Because I’m not sure like, especially the emotion piece, like how all that fits together. So I’m curious. And by the end, you know, I do want to say in all fairness, by the time this episode comes out, there is a chance that whatever you say, is going to be a pretty good chance. But I’m just curious, like, what that looks like, you know, in general with your clients and how they’re using AI or are they and how they’re creating this emotional connection piece with their content.
Speaker 2 39:48
Yeah, well, I do have to say when it first just kind of when everything came out, I was a bit skeptical just because I’m just with with our background as a marketer and writing code IP in all of this, it’s like, well, no one can replace. But what I found was I have a quite a few clients clients actually who are, who use chat GBT, they use jasper.ai. I have some who will use like magic, right and Canva, which is probably like the easiest one to transition into. And what I’ve found is, and this just, this may just be me. But I have a quite a bit of clients who have at least expressed to me like neuro divergence tea, and things of that nature, and just even across the board, just where everything is like in their head, and they have a hard time getting it out. And so those are the clients who will come to me and say, Hey, I’ve been wanting to use I wanted to start using chat, GBT, I found this thing called Jasper I really am and kind of into it. And so I’m like, Well, let me take a look. Okay. And I was not pressing them to say, don’t use this until we’ve done, I was just trying to see, let me see how this unfolds. And the way that it’s unfolded is, they almost always come back to me and say, Okay, your Work comes first. Because I don’t even know what to put into prompt. And even if I did, I don’t know if that’s going to line up with the brand message that I’ve created. And it definitely won’t have my voice. And then they know how I am about voice. So what happens is, when we’ve put together in their blueprint, kind of the way they’re going with everything, and I talked to them about their current, I call it the content cipher, which is basically just like, what the content that you cycle through, through everything, we have these main pillars and all that kind of stuff. So as long as you’re like in your framework, as long as you’re using the pillars from your cipher, like have that it, let’s see what happens. And so then they’ll kind of take that work that we’ve done, drop it into the prompts, get all these other prompts back, I have clients that will send my retainer clients who have access to me Monday through Friday, they’ll send me in Slack like this thing they wrote in chat GBT. And they’re like, Okay, now we need to do our magic. And now we need to put my voice in there. And I’m like, Yes. And now also, I can see here where it’s not really lined up, right for, for, for marketing purposes, for the marketing argument, right? They need to see this first and this and this. But what I found is, it allows them to feel more comfortable in the execution role of it, specifically, the clients that I had that don’t have, like larger teams, so they have an assistant, but they may not have like, like they’re doing their own content, things like that. They feel like, they’re not the holdup, after we’ve done our work, right, and so it makes them to feel more comfortable. And then if they’re one on one client with me, they bring that back to me, it’s kind of like it’s sandwiched in between our work, it started off with me, they go do their part, I have one client who done an ebook, which I put out an ebook we had to go through, do some editing, things like that. But if you can see them kind of light up a little bit. It’s like, okay, this is not as hard as it had to be is I have my strategy. I know my intentions. And I know Shonda is gonna come back and fix whatever it might be off here. And so it’s really sandwiched in between our work. So then I come back at the end, my team helps like copy edited, things like that, and make sure it’s set up, especially if it’s like a sales page or something, I’m very strict about that it has to be set up in a very specific way. But I find that it makes them a bit more confident in their part. And because they are a part of this work as well. I’m really just here to support and to push, and to put my eyes on things, right. But it really helps them to kind of pull their weight, especially if they have a harder time doing so. And I can say the first people to approach me with that are my clients who who are neurodivergent. And they express to me, I really want to find a way to work this in because this is where I stopped here. Like I can’t really move forward. Very real right here. So I need this, this might help me and it’s really been I have to say it’s been helping them a ton. And it has not impacted my business. I know there are some I know there’s this whole thing going around where it’s going to take the place of you know, and I’m sure there are going to be some jobs that are going to take the place but what I found is that the voice work still needed. The strategy work is still needed at anywhere, all that kind of stuff. So it hasn’t really bothered us over here in in our little corner and it really has been helpful to some of my clients really helpful.
Abby Herman 44:47
Yeah, I have noticed the same and just some of the testing, you know, the very minimal testing that I’ve done with it so far and I can see where it will help To cut the time that it takes people to create content. And like I mean, you mentioned going back and editing, which I think is very necessary. There were there was one thing that I put in there and it came out with, I had to rewrite some social media posts and for me or reword them, and there were a couple of them in there that one of my head to actually look up the word in that, like, I had to Google a word because I had no idea what it was like, much, but I can you know how people can staring at a blank screen doesn’t help anybody, it’s not going to get your work done. Having a strategy, having a plan is really important. And then if you’re able to use AI to help you start to generate content, or at least generate ideas, and then, you know, tweak it so that it’s in your voice, I think that will be a really powerful tool. And I say that in, you know, April 10 2020. Right? Yeah. And this might change as I get deeper into it and do more testing with it. But you know, and your clients experiences might change, too, just because of how quickly it’s evolving.
Speaker 2 46:09
Absolutely, absolutely. It’s very quick. It’s happening. Like, that’s why I say you kind of just gotta go with it. Yeah. You know, just go with the flow. Yeah. Can’t fight it.
Abby Herman 46:20
You can’t. And I think that the people who do try to fight it will, you know, find themselves, you know, in a space where they’re wondering what in the world happened to my business?
Shaunda Head 46:32
Quickly, too. Yeah,
Abby Herman 46:34
I agree. And, Shonda, this has been so great. You’ve mentioned the you’ve mentioned your, your free training a couple of times, and I want to make sure that people who are not someplace where they can, you know, access shownotes right away that they can find out where that is, where can people find your trading? And I’ll be sure to include it in the show notes for folks as well.
Speaker 2 46:55
Sure. So it’s the story vision method workshop. And you can find it at Brandmagicacademy.com/free-workshop.
Abby Herman 47:06
Awesome. And where is your favorite place to hang out online so people can follow you to get more?
Speaker 2 47:12
Oh, right now my favorite place is Instagram. And I am @HeyShaundaHead. That’s that’s where I hang at least nowadays, at least in April of 23. So we’ll see. Right? That’s where you that’s where you could find me.
Abby Herman 47:28
Awesome. Thank you so much for being here. I really appreciate your time.
Shaunda Head 47:34
Thank you so much, Abby, this was lovely. Thank you.
Abby Herman 47:38
I love what Shonda said about using AI in creating content. We actually had a side conversation after I stopped recording and our general consensus was that we have to be able to embrace new technology. If we want to stay in business. Be sure to keep listening to future episodes episodes. For more on that. And if you found value and what you learned here today, be sure to share it on social media. Take a screenshot of the episode on your phone and share it over on Instagram stories. You can tag me @thecontentexperiment and Shonda @HeyShaundaHead its Hey, h e YSHAUND A H e ad or head over to LinkedIn and connect with me there. Be sure to tell me that you found me on the podcast when you’re sent to the connection invite. The more you share this podcast with others the more we can get it into the hands and earbuds of more business owners just like you who need to hear the message that they are not alone. Until next time, take care.
