#161 Simplifying Your Expertise So People Care
// Starting today and continuing over the next few weeks, we’ll be diving deeper into how to communicate more simply so your message doesn’t get lost.
In this episode, Rosanne and I discuss how her son’s passion for fish is a perfect example of the importance of speaking to your potential customers in a way that will resonate with them, why we as experts need to realize that we’ll always care more about the subject matter than our clients and customers, why we need to know our target audience very well before we communicate with them, the value of shifting your marketing mindset from thinking about how you can get someone to purchase your offering to wanting to share something that can really help others, the questions you can ask yourself to see if you’re in need of a marketing or communication shift, how my free course can help you get clarity of these types of communication topics, and more.
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Transcript
Hey! It’s Andrea, and welcome to the Voice of Influence podcast. Today and over the next couple of weeks, we’re going to take a little bit closer focus on how to communicate more simply so that your message doesn’t get lost. And we’re going to start with a little anecdote.
Andrea: Rosanne, you have this really great story about your son. Would you start with that?
Rosanne Moore: Yes. My middle son absolutely loves fish, all things to do with fish. And he has a great memory. And so, he reads books about fish, and he will walk into a room starting a conversation, “Mom, did you know that there are these many kinds of Mollies, and that their mating habits are like this, and that their markings are like this, and that it’s really important that they have to have such and such,” or whatever. He’s like, “Did you know this about such and such kind of fish?” And I’m like, “I didn’t even know there was a fish called that.” But he gets very discouraged sometimes because he knows all this stuff about fish, and he can’t find anybody who’s as interested and passionate about it as he is.
And so, we’ve had conversations about that where he’s like, “Mom, it’s just nobody loves fish like I do.” So I have tried to have conversations about that with him. How can he connect with other people without overwhelming them his love of fish? How can he communicate effectively?
Andrea: Right, right, because it’s not just about connection in general. Now, you said he wanted to sell fish or something?
Rosanne Moore: At one point, yes. He’s bred angelfish, he has bred mollies, and he wanted to sell them. And he was making these videos where he was giving all this technical information about them. And I said to him, “Sweetheart, if you want to sell them, what you need to do is make a video that tells your buyer why it’s a fun pet, why it’s an easy pet, and why it’s an inexpensive pet,” because then that’s for the buyer. Like, that’s going to matter to them. They don’t necessarily care about all the different possible markings that could be on this particular kind of fish.
Andrea: Right, right. This is what’s interesting to me about this story because I think that a lot of people who have expertise are learners. If you were to have them take the StrengthsFinder, for example… I know you and I… I’m pretty sure you had it on your top five too, but learner is one of the strengths. And I’m sure that people who have expertise who want to dive deep into their subject matter and who know it inside and out, they’re the kind of people that like to learn.
And so, when you’re somebody who likes to learn a lot, you assume that other people are going to want to know the information that you have because they’re a learner too, basically. And so, what I find fascinating about this is how do people with expertise then… like, you have expertise for a reason. So, you have some sort of message or some sort of mission that you’re trying to accomplish with that expertise. So, in a sense, you have to be able to sell your idea. You have to be able to get people on board with it in order to actually get that out into the world in a meaningful way.
Rosanne Moore: Right, right. My son wants to be a [marine] biologist one day, so I’m sure all this passion will be important when he writes, like, papers trying to get grants to study various things from the environment or whatever. But right now, the world doesn’t care.
Andrea: Well, it’s the same thing with… my husband is a physical therapist. He knows so much about the body. He’s so fascinated by all of our parts and how we’re made and how amazing they are, and he has this fascination with it. But I think he has figured out over the years that the patients that come to him, they just want to be able to stand up without hurting. They’re not thinking about all the little parts and whether or not you care about them. They’re thinking about, “Help me to stand because I have to be able to walk in order to work or I have to be able to…” whatever.
Rosanne Moore: Or “I just don’t want to hurt.”
Andrea: Or yeah, “This pain is debilitating, and it’s bad enough that I need to do something about it. Help me.” So, our expertise, your expertise, listener – when I say that I’m referring to the listener or somebody was watching on YouTube – your expertise is so valuable and so important, but you’re going to always care more about the subject matter than everybody else. You just are. So, how are you going to be able to get over that hump so that they actually are able to benefit from your expertise?
Rosanne Moore: And you have to be able to communicate in a way that gives them a reason to care about some things, you know. That they may not need all the detail, but you have to be able to present the case for why it matters enough that they’ll pay attention and join you in whatever your mission is.
Andrea: Right. Why does it matter to them?
Rosanne Moore: Right.
Andrea: So, when I was… gosh, I would say about seven years ago, I was at the point where I was so incredibly frustrated with feeling… and I’ve talked about this before, but it feels like it’s just so relevant. It felt like all of this expertise maybe – or even ideas and thoughts and connections that I was making inside my head – they all felt really important, but they were coming up against sort of my head. It was like they were stuck. They were stuck in my head. And I had a really hard time trying to figure out, “How are they going to get out so that it actually makes a difference? Because whenever I start to talk about it…” it’s this situation. I have all these other things that I want to share. I’m like, “How do I actually like narrow it down and choose what I’m gonna actually talk about,” especially if I’m going to give a talk or if I’m gonna write something. I have to decide what I’m going to talk about.
Rosanne Moore: Right.
Andrea: So, the things that were frustrating to me and when I was, you know, your son and trying to figure this out, it felt like it was having to face some really difficult things in order to get over that.
Rosanne Moore: What were the things that you had to move through?
Andrea: I think number one, there was this realization that not everybody cared and that if I start to talk, I might be written off. I might not be considered to be an expert in this, and people might not like what I have to say. And I had to face that, that sort of like, “Is saying it worth the pain of rejection or worth the pain of whatever else I might face because of other people?” So there was that. And then at the same time, there was also this very practical problem I had of just choosing what I was going to talk about, making decisions about, “What do I care about? What is the main focus that I want to take on this?” And that’s something that in my interview with Wes Gay next week, that’s something that he talks about, that need to choose a controlling idea. And that is really hard. I think you know, Roseanne, how hard it was for me.
Rosanne Moore: Yeah, we talked a lot about that, didn’t we? Like, when you were writing your book.
Andrea: Right. And I think for some people, especially if you’re a creative person, you’re going to have so many creative… or yeah, I would say creative probably is a good way to put it. A lot of times, there’s so many different ideas and so many different things that are going on inside of your head that it is hard to turn it into practical reality.
Rosanne Moore: Right. Sure.
Andrea: And so, yeah, taking time to think about it and decide is hard, but it’s, like, really important.
Rosanne Moore: And I think too, it’s really easy when you’re an expert in something… It’s very obvious to you why this is important – whatever that area of expertise is – and why the layers and the details and all of that are very important. We have a family joke… My mom is, like, a bottom-line person. That’s just how she thinks. She’s like, “Give me the bottom line, and let me go.” My dad is the one who’s very nuanced, and he’s all the details. And so whenever you ask him a question, he starts like forty miles back behind whatever the bottom line is going to be. And Mom is just like, “Just give me the bottom line.” He’s like, “But it matters. All these little details matter.”
Andrea: Right, but they don’t always matter to everybody else.
Rosanne Moore: Yeah, to his audience.
Andrea: Right. And they might matter for your expertise, but it’s more about how you show up to it and how you show up to offering it more than it is about actually sharing everything.
Rosanne Moore: So, I guess part of what we’re saying is if the details matter, we have to know who our audience is to be able to present to them why details matter to them. Why it’s not just something we’re fascinated with, but why does it matter to them? How do I connect them to the importance of this detail that I know about?
Andrea: Right. I mean, it’s truly about influence. It’s about, you know, selling your idea. And as much as people like me and you hate… or I should say, hated the word marketing or the idea of selling something – because there’s so much baggage that comes with that concept – really, it got to a point for me where I thought, “If I don’t figure out how to actually communicate to people the way that they need to hear it, it’s just gonna be stuck inside of me forever, and it’s not gonna go anywhere. It’s going to go wasted.” And that became the driving force then to say, “Okay, I don’t like the idea of selling an idea. But if I don’t do that, if I don’t get good at influence, then this is all gonna stay with me, and it’s not gonna get to where I really want it to go, and that would be a loss.”
Rosanne Moore: Right? And I think that’s the big shift. When you go from thinking about marketing from, like, pressuring or manipulating somebody to achieve an end goal that satisfies you, and you stop thinking about it that way, and instead you shift into, “I have something that other people would benefit from, and so I need to find a really clear way to communicate why this is beneficial.” And the whole mindset shifts at that point, and I think the integrity of how you do it shifts too because it’s about the other person. It’s other-centered, which is a big part of what we talk about all the time with influence. We want to make sure that it’s ethical, the way that we influence is ethical and other-centered.
Andrea: Yeah, and our motivation does matter. I think it makes sense that you would be frustrated if you have expertise and people aren’t taking it. It makes sense that that would be a personal pain of yours, but then at the same time, if they don’t take it, what is the loss to them? They might need what you have to offer. And if that’s the case, you don’t want to force it on them so that they are better off. But we want to offer in such a way that they have the choice, at least. They can make a clear-minded decision about whether or not they’re going to do what you recommend.
Rosanne Moore: Right for sure.
Andrea: So, when it comes to what we want to, you know, really drive home today, the main thing is that you have to be a person of influence if you want your ideas to make a difference in the world. You have to understand influence. You have to understand what it means to communicate in a way that is going to give people very clear options so that they know and can make a clear-minded decision on what they’re going to do.
Rosanne Moore: And part of that is being able to make things actionable. One of the things we do with people a lot is we help them figure out what their message is. You do that all the time, helping clients work to figure out what their anthem is, what their core values are, what their message is. But then how to act on that, how to share it in a way that’s really actionable so it’s just they’re not caught in their head, but it’s actually useful.
Andrea: Mhm, absolutely. So, we’ll talk about this more again in the next couple of weeks. It’s a great conversation with Wes next week. I hope you tune in for that. It is good, isn’t it, Rosanne?
Rosanne Moore: It really is. I enjoyed listening.
Andrea: Yeah, he’s fun. He is a marketer, and he is a marketing consultant. And so, he is really good at helping people find the right words for whatever. And so, the point is, is that we’ll have more on the details of how to do that. But today, we just want to make sure that we all understand that this is kind of your job, this is part of your job. I had somebody recently ask me, “Do you consider yourself to be a marketer, or do you hire somebody to do the marketing for you?”
And in my case, the case of Voice of Influence, Rosanne teams up with me on a lot of things. But in general, I have to say, no, I am a marketer. I had to put on that marketing hat, that influencing hat a long, long time ago in order to get any kind of message out into the world. And so, you need to do that. You need to put on that hat of not just marketing but like, “Okay, I am here to get this message to actually connect it to the world.” It’s not just about doing the research.
It might be if you’re just a research person, and you just want to do research, and you’re within a system – like a university system – that is going to push it out for you, you may not have to do anything besides the research. But if you’re leading a team that is doing the research with you, if you are trying to communicate with industry based on your research that you’re doing, if you’re trying to communicate with the general population or the population who would use your research, you absolutely are marketer. You’re having to sell your idea.
Rosanne Moore: Or get funding.
Andrea: Or get funding, yes.
Rosanne Moore: You have to be able to explain why your research matters for them to fund it.
Andrea: Absolutely. So, here are the things that we want you to do. So, first of all, we need to get really honest with ourselves about where we’re missing the mark on communication. What is it costing you? Are people paying attention? Are they doing what you’ve, you know, recommended they do? Are they listening? Are they paying attention? And just figure that out. If not, then what is the cost? Does this mean that you’re not getting the funding, you’re not making as much money as you had wanted to? You know, people’s lives aren’t changing, they’re not being transformed?
Rosanne Moore: Are you talking at people and their eyes kind of glaze over, like my son with the fish?
Andrea: Right, you’re losing people. What is the cost of that? What is the cost of losing people? What is the cost of it? And be honest with yourself. You can take some time. Take an hour out of your day to try to really think through this, “What is the cost to me right now?” And then decide what you’re willing to do to get over this hump. I think one of the things that it’s hard to do when you feel like you’re stuck or you feel like your message is stuck, it’s hard to imagine your message actually getting free from being stuck, actually getting out there into the world. So, you have to envision that. You have to take a step back and say, “Now what would it look like if my message was making a difference in the world?” So, you know now what it’s costing, so what would be the benefit? “If this information were really out there and people were really taking it in and they were doing what I had recommended or whatever it might be, what is the benefit?” If you can see that, then that’s going to help you to be able to see that, “Okay, it’s worth the effort to become really good at influence.”
Rosanne Moore: Yes, and we have an easy first step for people to take. You developed something called the Deep Impact Method. It’s a path that we use for working with clients. So, we begin with the Deep Impact Method and helping people communicate in a way that gets beyond the surface barriers. And once people have a chance to learn about that and start exercising that, then also follow-up to that could be a Clarify Your Voice Call with Andrea, where you, listener, could learn more about your style of communication and how others experience you. There’s assessments that we use and some insights that we glean from materials that you provide for us. There’s work that we do on our end, but then we help you gain clarity on your personal sense of purpose and mission so you know what step you need to take next to be able to better connect with your audience, whoever that may be.
Andrea: Yes, so the Deep Impact Method. Let’s talk about that for a second. The Deep Impact Method is a free course. It is free because… I do use it in more detail with clients who want their managers or their leaders to be able to communicate more clearly and do a better job at giving feedback so that they really get people on board. I use this in a kind of extended format with clients. But I care about this material so much. This simple method could be so helpful that I was like, “We’ve got to put this together in a way that people can just take it and go if they want to. If they, you know, aren’t going to work with us as clients or whatever – maybe they’re trying to figure out whether or not they want to – but they need a next step,” I’m like, “This is it. We need as many people to take this as possible.”
That is a free course that you can access through our website. You go to voiceofinfluence.net, press the Free Course button, and it will take you to the page where you can register for it. Again, it’s free, and you can have as many people in your organization as you want take that. I don’t care. We’d be thrilled. We want that information out there because we want people to ethically influence in positive ways as much as possible.
But the next level of that really is understanding your own voice. It really is, “Okay, wait a second, but how do I come across when I am in this conversation with somebody? What is the main thing that I’m trying to get across? What are the things I really care about? What am I trying to do with my voice? What am I trying to do with my influence?” And that’s where that Clarify Your Voice Call comes in.
Rosanne Moore: Yeah, but Deep Impact Method is a great first step of looking at just what will help your listener open up and hear you and you hear them better. But then like you said, there’s much deeper dive that you do with clients who do the Clarify Your Voice Call.
Andrea: Right. Or even work with a team that is, you know, wanting to do something more with feedback.
Rosanne Moore: And that’s really exciting when you see a whole teamwork because then you’re practicing it. We’ve seen that with clients. Then they’re all practicing it, and so the benefit to that is exponential.
Andrea: Right? And then you end up creating a positive feedback culture where people aren’t afraid of each other. They’re not afraid of speaking up. They’re not afraid of saying the things that they need to say, making the changes that need to be made. Even if it’s peer-to-peer or you know, somebody that is talking to the leader, there isn’t that sense of being feeling threatened. There isn’t that sense of, you know, you’re stupid for not understanding something or whatever. I mean, whatever it might be, it’s a much clearer, focused way to be able to understand how people tick and why you want to be intentional in a conversation.
So, anyway, the Deep Impact Method, we’d love to have you check that out. Again, you can access that through our website voiceofinfluence.net/free course, or you can go to our website and click on the free course.
So, thank you for being with us today. Thank you for checking out our podcasts, our YouTube channel. We would love to have you around. We are excited about the things that are to come. We are being incredibly intentional. We’ve become more and more laser-focused on helping people with this particular issue of really building their influence so that their expertise and their experience is utilized fully. We need your voice because your voice matters, and you can make it matter more. Thanks for being with us today.