The Power of Personal Stories for Small Business Owners
Imagine you're at the grocery store.
You're picking out some oranges, looking at cucumbers across the way, and a stranger comes up and pitches a $4,000 website build.
How likely are you to pull out your wallet? Probably not at all.
They have zero credibility with you.
I'm Katie McManus, business strategist and money mindset coach, and I want to help you avoid being the online version of that off-putting stranger.
In this episode of The Weeniecast, "Build Trust with Ideal Clients & Create 'Superfans,'" I'll guide you through the process of turning total strangers into devoted superfans.
You'll discover why sharing weird and seemingly mundane details about yourself is critical in building trust and memorability with your ideal clients.
You'll walk away from this episode understanding how to create a connection with your audience that goes beyond business.
No more blending in with the crowd and being 'just another expert' in your industry.
You'll feel empowered to be authentically you online, making your business not just memorable, but magnetic to your tribe.
Timestamped summary
00:00 The grocery store.
05:14 Create holes in the canvas.
09:17 Former clients aligned.
12:17 ADHD minds & diverse interests.
20:07 Being overly generic hinders hiring and memorability.
21:21 Prefer human connections; embrace your authentic self.
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Honorable mentions
30 Rock
Taylor Swift
WWE
Mentioned in this episode:
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00:00:00
Here's how you can take people from stranger danger to super fan
00:00:03
by simply sharing weird factoids about yourself and building trust.
00:00:07
Hi, I'm Katie McManus, business strategist and money mindset coach. And
00:00:11
welcome to the Weeniecast. I want you to
00:00:15
imagine that you're at the grocery store, you're picking out some oranges, you have your
00:00:19
eyes on some cucumbers across the way, and a random stranger
00:00:22
comes up to you and tells you that
00:00:26
they can build a website for you for
00:00:28
$4. Would you give them
00:00:31
$4? Probably not. You'd probably get a little
00:00:35
skeeved out. You'd probably think, oh, a stranger danger. This is what my parents always
00:00:39
warned me about. Next they're going to tell me they have a van full of
00:00:42
puppies and candy, which honestly, like, if someone came up to me and they're
00:00:46
like, I have a van full of puppies, would you like to come see? I'd
00:00:48
be like, I love puppies. Yes, absolutely. And
00:00:52
then that's how I would disappear.
00:00:57
You're not hugging. Hiring strangers for big jobs. So why are
00:01:01
you expecting your clients to do the same? It
00:01:04
feels counterintuitive. But when you start a business and you're promoting it online,
00:01:08
yes, you need to post about your work. Yes, you need to talk about your
00:01:11
ideal clients and the results that you get them and share
00:01:14
testimonials. But you also have to share about
00:01:17
yourself because otherwise you get lost
00:01:21
in the noise of all the other people who do what you do.
00:01:35
How many executive coaches are there out there? How many consultants,
00:01:39
how many lawyers, how many email marketers? They all do what
00:01:43
you do. So the fact that that's all you're talking about,
00:01:46
you're never going to stick out to your ideal clients, you're
00:01:50
never going to be memorable. And that's really the crux of it. Ooh, I just
00:01:54
got to use the word crux. That's an exciting day. I love it when I,
00:01:57
like, throw in a vocabulary word that I know but I don't usually get to
00:02:00
use. This is gonna be, this is like an auspicious sign for
00:02:04
today, especially since I only got like 5 hours of sleep last night.
00:02:08
I'm using impressive vocabulary words, at least impressive to me. You're probably like,
00:02:12
that's not an impressive word, Katie. I don't know why I'm so excited about this.
00:02:15
I'm gonna move on. The crooks of it is that
00:02:19
as small businesses, we do not have a marketing problem.
00:02:22
Okay? We're not sitting around a boardroom wondering how we're
00:02:26
gonna spend our $17 million on our commercial for the
00:02:30
Super bowl. Okay, well, maybe you are. I know I'm not. And I
00:02:34
know all of my clients are not having that problem. We have a
00:02:37
memorability problem. We simply need to be
00:02:40
remembered by the right people at the right time when they're
00:02:44
ready to invest in the thing that we help with. I have a client
00:02:48
who's a litigation attorney. He's not relevant to everyone at all the time. Thank
00:02:51
God. If everyone were getting sued and suing other people all the
00:02:55
time, I mean, it would be great for him, but miserable for the rest of
00:02:59
us. Right? So his social media content has to be memorable.
00:03:02
It has to stick out. He has to seem like a friend. He has to
00:03:05
seem trustworthy so that when you do get sued
00:03:09
or when you think, hmm, today feels like a
00:03:12
litigious day for me, I really want to go and sue someone.
00:03:16
And not just sue someone. I'm gonna sue the pants off of them. You're gonna
00:03:19
think, oh, I should call David Frymande, right?
00:03:23
Versus, oh, there's legal issues.
00:03:27
Who do I know? Who's a lawyer? And then you go and ask a bunch
00:03:30
of people, do you know a lawyer who handles this? That's the magic of
00:03:34
being memorable. That's the magic of sharing a little bit about yourself. Not a ton.
00:03:38
You don't have to be super vulnerable online, but you have to share enough so
00:03:41
that people feel like they kind of know you.
00:03:50
Let's talk through the client journey so that you can really understand
00:03:53
how sharing a little bit about yourself can take people from absolute
00:03:57
stranger to super fan. So I want you to imagine, if you want to draw
00:04:01
this, long as I describe it, go for it
00:04:05
on a line. There are five points. The point all the way to
00:04:09
the left is stranger. These are people who have no idea
00:04:12
who you are. They've probably never seen your content. If they have seen
00:04:16
your content, it didn't catch their attention, and they have no
00:04:20
reason to see your face or your name and think, oh, my God, I know
00:04:24
that person. The whole world starts off this way.
00:04:27
I mean, honestly, you come out of the birth canal, you don't even know your
00:04:31
mom. You've never seen her face. You don't know her name.
00:04:35
You don't know your dad's name. Everyone is a stranger to you when you're
00:04:39
born. Throughout our lives, we tend to close that gap.
00:04:42
Not a lot. There are a lot of humans in the world, right?
00:04:46
But we tend to make friends. We tend to get to know people.
00:04:50
Your goal with starting a business and promoting
00:04:54
yourself is to turn as many of those strangers into people
00:04:58
who know you. Our goal is to share content
00:05:01
that is interesting enough to those strangers that they think,
00:05:05
oh, I want to see more of this. I'm going to follow this
00:05:08
person. So they go from stranger to follower. And
00:05:12
it could be something funny you shared about your life. It could be something helpful
00:05:15
that you shared about the thing that you do. It could be a
00:05:18
testimonial. It could be anything. I always like to have my clients
00:05:22
just imagine that they're standing on stage and
00:05:26
there's an audience of thousands of people in front of them, but no one can
00:05:30
see my client because there's a canvas in front of
00:05:33
them blocking them from the audience. Their job
00:05:37
is as the performer, as the person on stage is to
00:05:41
jab their finger through that canvas as many times and create as many
00:05:44
holes so that the audience can see them. And one
00:05:48
hole is gonna be, I don't know anything about sports. Another hole can
00:05:52
be, I love dogs. Another hole can be, I've
00:05:55
watched West Wing 47 times. Plus, I've lost count.
00:05:59
This is me on stage. This is all my stuff. Another one can be, I
00:06:03
talk about hot dogs all the time and weenies, but I don't actually like hot
00:06:06
dogs. Another hole can be I help people start businesses. Another
00:06:10
hole could be, I have adhd, and I work with people with adhd.
00:06:14
Another hole could be, I love cheese. It literally doesn't have to be
00:06:17
anything that is super interesting or
00:06:20
exciting. It just has to be stuff that people can read
00:06:24
and think, oh, I like cheese too. Cool. Oh,
00:06:28
I also am not that interested in sports. Huh? Oh,
00:06:32
she's telling people not to be a weenie. I think I'm kind of being a
00:06:35
weenie. Maybe I should follow her. She'll get me to stop being a weenie. It
00:06:38
doesn't have to be anything groundbreaking. And I think this is, like, where we
00:06:42
get really, really flipped out when it comes to
00:06:46
creating content for social media, is we think that we have to go skydiving every
00:06:49
single week. We have to have big, elaborate trips. We have
00:06:53
to be impressive. No, you don't. Literally, if you go
00:06:57
and share how you take your coffee, like, think of the
00:07:00
reaction people have to how people take their coffee. When
00:07:04
I see someone putting a bunch of sugar in their coffee, my teeth starts to
00:07:08
hurt. Okay. The amount of sugar just makes me want to recoil.
00:07:11
Even though I'm not even drinking their coffee. It's their coffee, right? My
00:07:15
sister, like, I'm gonna share something that's gonna make you think she's a
00:07:19
sociopath. I promise. She's not. She's a very nice person. But she drinks her
00:07:22
coffee black with three ice cubes. Cause she doesn't want to wait for it to
00:07:26
cool down. So she drinks black, kind of watered down
00:07:30
coffee. Like, people have a reaction to that. Right.
00:07:34
But, like, when you know something like that about someone, it makes you feel like
00:07:37
you know them. It makes you, like, that's something that you would know about
00:07:41
a friend that you went to coffee with. Right. So as
00:07:44
we're creating content and we're sharing it online and we're sharing parts of ourselves,
00:07:48
like, I want you to think about. You're poking all these holes in this canvas.
00:07:52
You're letting people see and have more details so they can add it
00:07:56
to their little folio of who you are. And eventually,
00:07:59
that person who has gone from stranger to follower, we'll jump
00:08:03
to the third point on our line of our client journey, and
00:08:07
that is friend. Now, the funny thing about this friend
00:08:11
point is it doesn't necessarily have to be an actual friendship. They can feel like
00:08:14
they're your friend and you still won.
00:08:18
You're not responsible for becoming friends with tens of thousands to people online. That's
00:08:22
not what I'm saying. That would be totally overwhelming, and your birthday parties
00:08:26
would be very expensive. We don't want that for you. Although I do love a
00:08:29
good birthday party. I'm starting a nonprofit called the Gay Birthday Club, and
00:08:33
it is a organization where we're going to call anyone in
00:08:36
LGBTQ community who wants a phone call. They have to sign up for it. It's
00:08:40
not like we're just going to randomly call everyone, but we're going to have volunteers
00:08:43
calling folks on their birthdays, singing happy birthday to them.
00:08:47
And this is specifically for folks who have stopped
00:08:51
getting a phone call from loved ones, from family members because
00:08:55
of who they are. And I'm a big believer that everyone
00:08:59
deserves, like, really bad, cringey singing on their birthday, whether
00:09:02
they want it or not, as a show of love. And just to know
00:09:06
that there are people in the world who are happy that they're there.
00:09:10
And so I'm really excited about that. But, like, speaking of
00:09:13
birthdays and there's more to come on this, I will be sharing more. I'm
00:09:17
super excited about it. I also am so excited because I actually have some
00:09:21
clients, some former clients, who are going to be on the board and getting involved,
00:09:25
and I just want to share this a. Because it was relevant because I mentioned
00:09:28
birthdays, but also b to point to this is the beauty of
00:09:32
being who you are online. This is the beauty of
00:09:35
showing up exactly who you are and building trust with people because you
00:09:39
literally attract the clients who are not just willing to pay
00:09:42
you money for the thing that you do, but who become friends,
00:09:46
who become super aligned to what you do, who want to
00:09:50
get involved in anything that you're up to. It makes your life
00:09:54
that much richer. It also makes the like your
00:09:57
power to have impact in the world that much greater.
00:10:04
So anyway, back to the client journey and building trust to his
00:10:07
people. So we have people who've moved from
00:10:11
stranger, absolute stranger, don't know who you are. If they tripped and fell over you,
00:10:14
they still wouldn't know who you are. At some point, they tripped and fell over
00:10:17
you. They saw your content. They thought, this content's kind of good. I'd like to
00:10:20
see more of this content. They became a follower. Oh. After becoming a follower
00:10:24
and seeing more of your content because it got pushed to their
00:10:27
newsfeed, they felt like, oh my God, this person just told a
00:10:30
story and I'm going to tell the story, but now I don't really know how
00:10:34
to refer to this person because they feel like a friend to me. At some
00:10:37
point, these people who are your friends online
00:10:41
are going to go to one of two places. Either they are your
00:10:45
ideal client and they have the problem that you solve.
00:10:49
At some point they're going to see a piece of content that you share
00:10:53
that is going to hit them in the gut and they're going to think,
00:10:57
okay, I can't do this anymore. I can't keep struggling with this
00:11:00
on my own. Here's someone who I know and trust, who I
00:11:04
like, who solves this problem. It could be
00:11:08
a legal problem. It could be you don't like doing your taxes on your own.
00:11:11
It could be, I want to start a business. It could be, I want to
00:11:14
get in shape. Whatever I need to just book a call with them. I trust
00:11:17
them. I know them. I feel comfortable with them. Right. That
00:11:21
basis of trust is there and they're willing to have that conversation about
00:11:25
giving you money to have your services, or they're
00:11:29
not your client at all, but they feel so connected to you that they
00:11:33
actually jump over the fourth point, which is client, and go to the fifth
00:11:36
point, which is Superfan.
00:11:41
And superfans are people who know you, trust you, like you understand
00:11:45
exactly what you do. They show up to your webinars, even if
00:11:49
they're not your ideal clients. They comment on your content even if the
00:11:53
content's not relevant. Them, because they want to promote your
00:11:57
work, because they believe in what you do. They believe in the help
00:12:00
that you offer. And these become some of
00:12:04
your best referrers. Squirrel. Which that word
00:12:07
referrers reminds me of that one episode of 30 Rock where
00:12:11
Jenna Maroney is in that movie the rural juror, and no one can pronounce
00:12:15
it. The rural juror. Yeah, that was a great show. Anyway, back
00:12:19
to the point, squirrel. Either way, you're either getting a client or you're getting people
00:12:22
who want to refer to you, which is incredible. And the
00:12:26
beauty of this, for those of us with ADHD is we tend to
00:12:30
have a lot of weird interests, and we tend to change interests a lot.
00:12:33
So we always have something new and novel, generally, to talk about.
00:12:37
And I know there's, like, this fear because we get made
00:12:41
fun of for it. We have weird interests, and, of course, like, our friends make
00:12:44
fun of us for this because we're constantly jumping from one thing to the
00:12:47
other, and it seems, like, really scattered to them, especially if they
00:12:51
don't have ADHD, because people who aren't
00:12:54
neurodiverse tend to just kind of have a couple interests, and we tend to
00:12:58
overthink this with our marketing because we're like, okay, well, I have to have content
00:13:01
pillars, and I have to share very specific things about my life, and it has
00:13:04
to be part of my quote unquote brand. And no, it
00:13:08
doesn't. It doesn't have to be this, like, perfectly formulated
00:13:11
brand image. It has to be you.
00:13:15
One of the best compliments you will ever get on
00:13:19
a sales call with someone that you've never spoken to before who has discovered
00:13:22
you through social media is they'll show up to the call, they'll
00:13:26
talk to you for a few minutes and say, oh, my God, you are
00:13:30
exactly how you show up online. You are the exact
00:13:34
person whose content I've been reading. You
00:13:38
sound the way you write, you sound the way you summarize stuff
00:13:41
on Instagram. Instagram or TikTok or wherever you're showing up. And
00:13:45
it's that click of it wasn't an act.
00:13:49
That nail in the coffin of, this is the person that I'm going to trust
00:13:52
with my money and with my future. But here's the thing.
00:13:56
Trust is two ways. Ooh, what am I going to say next? Well, you'll have
00:13:59
to keep listening to find out. But first, squirrel, squirrel, squirrel,
00:14:03
squirrel.
00:14:09
This is really scary. To go and be ourselves, our genuine selves
00:14:12
on social media. We have to trust
00:14:16
that we're going to find the right people out there. We have to
00:14:20
trust that there are going to be people who are going to resonate with us.
00:14:23
We have to trust them enough to accept us as we
00:14:26
are. Often people shy away from this. There are a few ways
00:14:30
people shield themselves from having to trust their audience.
00:14:34
One is they become the teacher. They spend a ton of time
00:14:38
giving away their knowledge for free and shoving
00:14:42
infographics at people and creating all of these slides
00:14:46
on canva and carousels and all that jazz, and
00:14:50
they just shove knowledge in people's faces. And sure, yeah,
00:14:53
that proves that you know some stuff, but there are a lot of people who
00:14:56
know stuff. Doesn't necessarily mean that I trust them enough with my money. And also,
00:15:00
if you're teaching me how to do the thing on my own, why do I
00:15:03
need to hire you? You've just given me everything I need to be powerful on
00:15:06
my own. Right. Even if it's just the surface knowledge,
00:15:10
which normally it is, it's not actually gonna help anyone, but it gives them enough
00:15:13
confidence to think that they can go and do it on their own, and then
00:15:16
they just get themselves into trouble. A recent client was creating kind
00:15:20
of a Persona on LinkedIn, in particular, a Persona of someone who is, like,
00:15:24
way grouchier than he actually is. Wonder who I'm talking about,
00:15:28
Neil. Hmm, I wonder. And of course, I just want to
00:15:31
name. I don't divulge information from my client sessions. Neil has
00:15:35
volunteered for this to be featured on this podcast. I do
00:15:39
honor confidentiality with my clients, unless they don't want me to.
00:15:42
And of course, like, you know, we see, we see actors doing this, we see
00:15:46
personalities doing this. We see a lot of public figures doing
00:15:50
this, right? And of course they are. There's. There's
00:15:54
protection in that. But as small business owners, we don't
00:15:57
necessarily have to do. They go to the same lengths to protect our privacy as
00:16:01
Taylor Swift does. We, we're also not in an industry
00:16:04
where we have to, like, put on, like, a particular Persona, like the
00:16:08
WWE. You know, a lot of those wrestler guys, like,
00:16:12
they're not going around being the villain or being Mister
00:16:15
America or whatever. I don't really watch wrestling, if you can tell.
00:16:20
As business owners, we get to just be human beings. We do not need to
00:16:23
have a Persona. One of the things about starting a business is learning, you know,
00:16:27
you have to learn how to sell your services. And it feels so icky, right?
00:16:31
Because we've all been in those buying situations where we're working with a
00:16:34
salesperson who we do not trust, they have not given
00:16:38
us any reason to trust them. They're using every
00:16:41
single pushy, manipulative tactic in the book,
00:16:45
and we just feel super grossed out by
00:16:48
them. Right. And oftentimes we don't buy from
00:16:52
them. We. We peace out sometimes. Like, we're in a situation where we can't.
00:16:55
We can't peace out. Like they have something that we genuinely need and we just
00:16:59
have to deal with it. But I can personally think back to
00:17:03
several purchases I made and investments I made in the beginning
00:17:07
of my business with people who I had red
00:17:10
flags from the very beginning that I didn't trust them and I
00:17:14
overlooked them and I regretted it, like, literally
00:17:18
had this whole arc in my head and
00:17:21
then went off on that one little tangent and I lost it. Those of
00:17:25
us with ADHD, one of the most magical
00:17:29
situations we can set up for ourself is where we're surrounded by people
00:17:33
who get us, people who get our weird sense of humor, who have
00:17:36
some similar interests, who have the same values.
00:17:41
We launch ourselves into, like,
00:17:44
the stratosphere of our best selves, of our favorite
00:17:48
selves. We become so creative. We have
00:17:51
clients where we're not worried if we're good enough for them. We
00:17:55
can take chances that oftentimes work out when
00:17:59
you focus on building trust with your audience,
00:18:03
showing them enough of yourself that
00:18:06
they can think, oh, man, I really want to hang out with this person. And
00:18:10
actually, I want to do more than just hang out with this person. I want
00:18:13
to invest in working with this person. You're not just getting business.
00:18:18
You are attracting your tribe. You're attracting
00:18:21
the group of people who will not just
00:18:25
make you feel good about who you are, but will become that
00:18:29
rising tide that lifts all boats. This is one of the reasons
00:18:33
why, you know, when I have clients who come to me and they're like, I'm
00:18:36
a witch and also I want to do corporate coaching, so I know I need
00:18:39
to drop the witchy stuff completely, forget it, hide
00:18:43
it, like, not bring it up at all. And I just need to go, like,
00:18:46
really hard with the corporate stuff, I'm like, no,
00:18:49
absolutely not. Absolutely not. Because here's the thing about
00:18:53
people. People can sense when you're hiding something. People
00:18:57
can sense when you're not showing up the way you actually
00:19:01
are, when you're putting on a front. They may not be able
00:19:05
to know exactly what it is you're hiding or, like, where the disconnect
00:19:08
is, but, you know, when you're talking to someone when they're being
00:19:12
fake, you know that feeling? There's like, this, like, creepy,
00:19:15
crawly feeling under your skin? You're just like, I gotta get away from this person.
00:19:18
It's not real. You think you're helping your business by hiding the thing
00:19:22
that you think makes you weird and not hireable.
00:19:26
By hiding it, you're making yourself actually weirder and
00:19:30
less comfortable to be around and less trustworthy. And not only
00:19:33
that, you're not giving the people who actually love the witchy
00:19:37
side of you. You're not giving them access to you. They're
00:19:41
out there thinking all these corporate executive coaches like, eh, they just
00:19:45
don't feel like the right fit for me, for who I am, versus if
00:19:49
you trust them enough to come out of the
00:19:52
broom closet or whatever it is that you call that and be yourself and
00:19:56
let them be themselves with you, you'd be able to
00:20:00
do some really incredible work together. And again, we don't have
00:20:04
a marketing problem. We have a memorability problem.
00:20:07
If you're an overworked, really stressed out,
00:20:11
overwhelmed HR rep who has to find an executive
00:20:14
coach to do some kind of lunch and learn workshop,
00:20:18
you're gonna go through the stack of resumes that are all the same
00:20:22
generic leadership development, executive coach
00:20:25
language around synergy and all the other buzzwords. Are
00:20:29
you gonna think, oh, my God, that funny person on
00:20:33
LinkedIn or on Instagram who talks
00:20:36
about clearing energy and all this stuff like that would be really
00:20:40
interesting to bring into the office? That would be entertaining, at least. And I know
00:20:44
there are a few people who'd really connect with it. The ways you've had to
00:20:48
dilute yourself to be able to fit into, like, a corporate
00:20:51
environment and be acceptable, and that's made you have an
00:20:55
easier time matriculating into school and workplaces and social
00:20:59
events, that's not gonna serve you in running a business. You
00:21:02
blanding yourself out blends your brand out
00:21:06
as well. It makes you harder to remember. And if you're harder to
00:21:10
remember, you're harder to hire. And there are enough
00:21:13
robots on social media right now sharing
00:21:17
generic information about whatever it is that you do
00:21:20
right. I don't want to be friends with a robot. I don't want to become
00:21:24
the client of a robot. I don't want to refer other people to robots.
00:21:28
I want to be friends with a person, and I want to work with people
00:21:31
I like, and I want to refer to people I like. And I don't
00:21:35
care how weird your interests are. There are people out
00:21:39
there who will like you for it. So go and be
00:21:42
your glorious, weird, interesting
00:21:46
hopping all over the place ADHD self. It will get you
00:21:50
clients and it will build the trust that you need for those
00:21:54
clients to stick around and actually become your tribe.
00:22:00
Honestly, like, if someone came up to me and they're like, I have a van
00:22:02
full of puppies, would you like to come see her? I'd be like, I love
00:22:05
puppies. Yes, absolutely. And then that's
00:22:09
how I would disappear. So if I ever disappear from
00:22:12
the world, just know that that's probably what happened. That or I saw a bobcat
00:22:16
and I was like, kitty, kitty, kitty, come here, be my friend. And then it
00:22:20
mauled me to death. Something I need to work on is to increase that
00:22:24
fear of wild animals. I just don't have it.
00:22:27
Squirrel, squirrel, squirrel, squirrel.