Too many great ideas remain unheard, unsold, unsuccessful.
And it’s not because people aren’t ready for them. It’s not because you’re not good enough.
The reason is much simpler.
There are two parts of your solo business:
The core value you offer and marketing.
For solopreneurs, it’s important to stay focused on delivering their core value to the best of their abilities.
That’s what will keep you in business, will get you recommended, will get you great reviews, will help you command higher prices.
To be able to do that though, you need to make marketing easy.
If marketing is hard, you’ll be stuck in that loop and won’t have the energy to deliver quality. Which means that all marketing efforts will lead to clients who leave feeling meh. They won’t come back. They won’t recommend you. They won’t leave reviews or will leave bad ones.
I know everyone is telling you to focus on marketing but Jeez! Don’t!
Only focus on it long enough to make it easy.
A crucial part of making it easy is understanding that…
Attention and value are governed by completely different rules.
Attention is about recognition — the familiar framed slightly differently, the promise of resolution to a problem your audience already feels.
It’s neurology.
Value, on the other hand, is built through depth, nuance, earned trust, and repeated demonstration of expertise. It accumulates slowly.
And it requires the audience to already be present.
Hard to deliver value when there’s no one on the other side.
So how do we get people to pay attention?
Simplify.
This is the lesson, in a word.
Simplify your marketing. Whatever you want to say, say it simpler. Make it shorter. Think upstream.
People took Britain out of the EU by saying “Take back control.” That’s it, that was the official Brexit slogan, and it did most of the heavy lifting.
Did you know that the day after the referendum “What is the EU?” was the second most searched question in the UK?
And you sweat over how to explain your offer?
Now, if you can take this advice and run with it, go! Go simplify. Enough reading.
But here’s what I’ve noticed happens after I give this advice in 1-1 conversations.
People say:
Yeah but what I do is too complex and oversimplifying it will make me look stupid.
Yeah but I will sound stupid to the people who really know what it’s all about (including my former boss and colleagues).
Yeah but HOW? I want examples.
Yeah but even if I do simplify it, will people get it? Will they buy it?
The answers to these questions below.