How to Listen to Your Own Ideas and Make Waves and Get Noticed in Your Marketplace – In Just 7 Minutes with Hillary Weiss

Resources/Links:

• To grab the ultimate tool to make waves and more money for your brand, click here: hillaryweiss.com/statementpieceframework

Summary

Do you struggle with finding out the root of what you’re good at and adding a bit of pizzazz to your brand?

Have you been trying to channel your inner creativity to get out of that snooze-worthy branding and digital content?

Are you ready to find out how to become the statement piece in your industry and be everyone’s go-to brand?

Hillary Weiss is a creative director, messaging strategist, coach, and speaker. Every day, she helps hyper-competent business owners like you (and your teams) turn big, brazen ideas into clear concepts that captivate the planet.

Find out how Hillary helps her clients (and you!) become the statement piece in your industry instead of being the world’s best-kept secret through diving into your creative space while making waves and profit.

Check out these episode highlights:

• 02:17 – Hillary’s ideal client: I work with creative service providers, coaches, consultants, and strategists who are really, really fantastic at what they do but are right now still best-kept secrets in their corner of the industry.
• 02:58 – The problem she helps solve: The sort of problem that I solve is, again, for these best-kept secret business owners. A big problem with creatives is that so many of them are so intelligent, so hard-working, so, at such a high level, of output, and have such a high level of client work.
• 04:20 – The symptoms of the problem: So often, they don’t have a clear plan for how to roll it out. They haven’t really done content strategy before. A lot of them haven’t launched. Because a lot of the way people come up in the creative service provider world like coaches, copywriters, designers, strategists, all those guys, they are often really handed to mouth with their work.
• 05:37 – Clients’ common mistakes before consulting Hillary: The biggest mistake I find is that people tend to overload information. I have this email that goes out to my list that says, “Stop unhinging your jaw.” It talks about how Python eats a cow.
• 06:50 – Hillary’s Valuable Free Action (VFA): People tend to create by a committee in the creative space, which they really shouldn’t! Because all the best work comes from going within, thinking about, “Okay, how do I do this? How do I see this? How would I solve this problem that I’m talking about in a way that is backed up by my own experience? What’s the answer here? And what’s my answer?” And I think, sort of, taking the time and the discipline to reflect on that, before in, or better yet, without crowdsourcing outside opinions is how your best work gets done.
• 08:04 – Hillary’s Valuable Free Resource (VFR): To grab the ultimate tool to make waves and more money for your brand, click here: hillaryweiss.com/statementpieceframework
• 08:38 – Q: Where did you get the frickin’ headphones? A: I got them from a very cute little frickin’ brand called Skinny Dip London which I believe has various shops in Australia as well. Highly recommended! Fabulous fun stuff.

Tweetable Takeaways from this Episode:

“It's self-trust that's essential to take that big step, making that movement, taking that leap, and they actually need less information and more focus on action.” -Hillary Weiss Share on X

Transcript
(Note, this was transcribed using a transcription software and may not reflect the exact words used in the podcast)

Tom Poland 00:10
Welcome, everyone, to another fun edition of Marketing the Invisible. I’m Tom Poland beaming out to you from Sunshine Beach, meeting today with a fresh and frisky Hillary Weiss. Hillary, good day! A very warm welcome from down under, where are you hanging out?

Hillary Weiss 00:23
I’m in beautiful Brooklyn, New York. It’s wonderful to be here! Thanks so much for having me, Tom.

Tom Poland 00:26
How do you say coffee in Brooklyn? Do you say it like with an R? You say it like “Coffee”?

Hillary Weiss 00:32
No, we actually just say coffee. So, I’m from South Florida, so I’m a transplant. But I think you’re thinking, sometimes “coffee”. There’s a W in the New York pronunciation of coffee, especially the Brooklyn front station coffee. So, it’s not coffee, it’s coffee.

Tom Poland 00:47
Coffee. Okay.

Hillary Weiss 00:49
There we go. Perfect!

Tom Poland 00:49
-Is what I say, as long as it’s in my cup and I’m drinking it, I don’t mind what you call it. Folks, Hillary and I worked together before and she’s just flat-out fun and a breath of fresh air. She has this- so her unique thing is how to take you and shine the spotlight on you and your personality and your beliefs and what you stand for. Because a lot of us find when we articulate that or try to present that on our website, it kind of looks templated or muddy. Hillary knows how to get you shining brightly, and how to get noticed, but for you and not for some marketing formula thing. She’s a creative director. She’s a messaging strategist. My goodness! She has some cool stuff about how to articulate your brilliance. She’s a coach. She’s a speaker. Every day, she helps really competent business owners just like you and your team turn big, brazen ideas into clear concepts and captivate the planet. Ta-da! Thank you, Hillary. Thank you to Hillary’s mom who wrote that bio. I did add my own flavor at the start there, from what I know. I’ll give you, Hillary.

Hillary Weiss 01:58
No worries.

Tom Poland 01:58
Our title today is, which we co- we co-wrote this, didn’t we?

Hillary Weiss 02:03
We did! Indeed. We’re a collaboration.

Tom Poland 02:05
Collaborative effort! “How to Listen to Your Own Ideas and Make Waves and Get Noticed in Your Marketplace”. Now, our seven minutes start now. Hillary, question number one is who’s your ideal client?

Hillary Weiss 02:17
So, I work with creative service providers, coaches, consultants, and strategists who are really, really fantastic at what they do but are right now still best-kept secrets in their corner of the industry. So, they’re phenomenal at what they do, no one knows about them yet. And they want to create really phenomenal, standout personal brands that don’t just represent who they are and what they do so phenomenally well, but also give them a platform to continue to grow– to grow their thought leadership platform, to speak, to teach, whatever it is that they want to do. The bulk of my work is- yes, creative direction and messaging strategy, but positioning coaching, as well, is a big core of what I do, because that’s the focus of positioning itself, I find.

Tom Poland 02:54
Sweet spot. Thank you! Tell us about the problem you solve. Six and a half minutes left.

Hillary Weiss 02:58
Oh, I just got into it. See, I’m a fast talker! I’m getting ahead of myself here. I’m killing it right now. Has everyone heard that? But no, the sort of problem that I solve is, again, for these best-kept secret business owners. A big problem with creatives is that so many of them are so intelligent, so hard-working, so, at such a high level, of output, and have such a high level of client work. They don’t have the ability to sort of see the forest or the trees of what they’re doing so well. So, nine times out of 10, a client will come to me and say like, “Hey, I want to do this. I need to figure out my most powerful position in the market. I want to be a strong personal brand. I want to speak. I want to teach, but I have no idea how I do what I do so well. Maybe this whole thing was actually a fluke. Clients keep coming. I have a strong referral network, but I want to be generating more leads. I want to be sharing content. I want to be putting myself out there, but I have no clue what makes me different, or what makes me stand out in the marketplace. Can you help me?” And luckily, I said, “And the answer is yeah.”

Tom Poland 03:56
Right. So, question three is what are some of the typical symptoms? And we’ve already mentioned a few. I mean, they feel like they’re the world’s best-kept secret. You know, there’s like they’re under their hundred fluke. In other words, they’ve got 100 successful clients, and they still think, “Wow, I’m getting lucky here.” So, let’s talk about symptoms. And we’ve got five minutes left. Is one of the symptoms that they really are- they create some brilliant ideas and put them out in the marketplace and they hear crickets?

Hillary Weiss 04:20
Yes, absolutely! Because so often, they don’t have a clear plan for how to roll it out. They haven’t really done content strategy before. A lot of them haven’t launched. Because a lot of the way people come up in the creative service provider world like coaches, copywriters, designers, strategists, all those guys, they are often really handed to mouth with their work. So, it’s like okay, “Project, let me deliver. All right.” So, there’s just not an opportunity for them to think through the strategy of rolling out, of what it takes to show up consistently, of what it takes to create an offer for a really specific target because, again, they’re just so close to their work every single day that they need somebody to help them pull back, figure out what the game plan is. And also make sure their offers are really powerfully positioned and targeted for the people they want to be working with. So that when they get that in front of their ideal client, it’s a no-brainer and an immediate “yes”.

Tom Poland 05:09
Gets cut through and motivate people to want to know more. Thank you! Four minutes left. Let’s talk a bit more about some of the common mistakes because again, you’re ahead of your time. We’re talking about bright people. They’re typically smart people. They’re hard-working. They are not going to feel fulfilled. And that’s a real driver for them. Unless they’re getting noticed unless they’re helping people and getting a cut through. So, they’re trying stuff is what I’m saying, what would you say are some of the most common mistakes they make in trying to solve this problem? Three and a half minutes left.

Hillary Weiss 05:37
Oh, you’re eating into my time? Oh, my God, no! The biggest mistake I find is that people tend to overload information. I have this email that goes out to my list that says, “Stop unhinging your jaw.” It talks about how Python eats a cow. And it’s just very slowly. And so that is the inclination of creatives to just take in more and more information, because surely, once they know everything, they’ll be ready to act. But actually, it’s self-trust that’s essential to take that big step, making that movement, taking that leap, and they actually need less information and more focus on action.

Tom Poland 06:07
And that’s one of the things we talked about before we started recording. The best stuff, folks, happens before I press the record button. You know, you talked about people hearing their own ideas, and understanding that they’re often goals. Probably not one of the ideas, I used to drink a bottle of red wine and have ideas into lower ground. Well, breakers the next morning, I wake up and say “What?” Not those ones. Just a little bit. Now I’m going to stop the clock for this. Tell us a little bit more. Question six is a valuable free action. So, let’s take a little time to go. How do people listen to their own thoughts? And which ones are good? Which ones are rubbish? Tell us a little bit about that.

Hillary Weiss 06:50
So, this, the which ones are great and which ones are rubbish, unfortunately, it comes with practice. And it’s really important to get into that zone of- I think it’s so tempting, especially, with the availability of social media, to treat your audience, even if it’s tiny, like a focus group, and just crowdsourcing every opinion, either from experts that you follow from your own audience being like, “What should I do?” to asking your mom. People tend to create via a committee in the creative space, which they really shouldn’t! Because all the best work comes from going within, thinking about “Okay, how do I do this? How do I see this? How would I solve this problem that I’m talking about in a way that is backed up by my own experience? What’s the answer here? And what’s my answer?” And I think sort of taking the time and the discipline to reflect on that before in or, better yet, without crowdsourcing outside opinions is how your best work gets done. And I actually have a freebie called the Statement Piece Framework and which is all about creating standout content by learning to listen to your own ideas. And we kind of have three categories of places where your best ideas come from, and they’re often conversations. When you’re going back and forth with somebody when you are and the three kinds of buckets. Am I getting ahead of myself? Should I wait for the timer?

Tom Poland 08:04
Because no, this is perfect. Question six is where can they go to get more information and you’ve got this very, very valuable resource. This framework is at one Hillary Weiss, so Hillary has two L’s, folks. She’s overachieving everywhere. Weiss is W-E-I, double S, .com/statementpieceframework. The link is below the video if you’re watching the video. If you’re not, if you’re listening to this, it’s hillaryweiss.com/statementpieceframework. Go get it!

Hillary Weiss 08:33
It’s good fun.

Tom Poland 08:34
Forty seconds left. Last question, what’s the one question I should have asked you but didn’t?

Hillary Weiss 08:38
Oh, well. First of all, you should have asked me what are the buckets in the three statement piece categories which are conversations with your clients, your colleagues, and conversations with yourself. But the last question you should have asked me is, you didn’t ask me where I got my headphones, Tom?

Tom Poland 08:51
Hillary Weiss, queen of bling, where did you get the frickin’ headphones? Twenty seconds.

Hillary Weiss 08:56
I got them from a very cute little frickin’ brand called Skinny Dip London which I believe has various shops in Australia as well. Highly recommended! Fabulous fun stuff.

Tom Poland 09:06
Skinny Dip. For those of you who don’t know what Skinny Dip is, just Google it, alright, because this is a family show. Hillary Weiss, thank you so much for your time.

Hillary Weiss 09:14
Oh, Tom, thank you so much. We did it!

Tom Poland 09:17
Thanks for checking out our Marketing The Invisible podcast. If you like what we’re doing here please head over to iTunes to subscribe, rate us, and leave us a review. It’s very much appreciated. And if you want to generate five fresh leads in just five hours then check out www.fivehourchallenge.com.