Imperfect Marketing
Imperfect Marketing
Turn Words Into Wealth: The Neuroscience of Marketing That Actually Works
In this episode of Imperfect Marketing, I sit down with Aurora Winter—media coach, author, and neuroscience-driven marketing expert—to explore how the brain actually processes messages and why that matters for selling, storytelling, and authority-building. Aurora shares how a neuroscience-focused MBA in Italy shaped her work helping entrepreneurs craft clear, compelling messages that turn words into wealth.
We discuss:
The Neuroscience Behind Messaging
- The brain’s 3-part filter: croc brain (hook), midbrain (status/social proof), cerebral cortex (content)
- Why most marketers skip the midbrain step—and lose trust fast
- How attention is expensive, so your message needs to re-earn focus every few minutes
Progress Over Perfection in Marketing
- Why waiting until you’re “ready” keeps you stuck
- How real market feedback beats imagined feedback every time
- The power of launching messy and refining as you go
Skin in the Game Marketing
- Why totally free offers often get ignored
- How even a small payment creates commitment and consistency
- Aurora’s “free book + small shipping cost” test that generated $250K in 90 days
Books as Business Growth Tools
- Why being an author instantly boosts perceived status
- The surprising truth: best-selling authors earn most revenue from back-end offers, not book sales
- How a book opens doors to speaking, consulting, coaching, and training
Storytelling That Sticks (and Converts)
- Why humans are wired to learn and survive through stories
- Aurora’s “Hell to Heaven” story blueprint for simple, high-impact marketing
- How stories help handle objections without pushing or over-explaining
Aurora’s Biggest Marketing Lesson
- Why a strong YES requires a strong NO
- The importance of choosing ideal clients you can confidently help get a 10x return
- Letting go of energy-drainers and misaligned opportunities to protect your business
Connect with Aurora Winter:
- Gift for Your Audience - Includes your Turn Words-to-Wealth starter library and a video masterclass on how to attract capital, clients, and media coverage.: https://turnwordsintowealth.com
- Aurora Winter Website: https://www.aurorawinter.com
- Same Page Publishing: https://www.samepagepublishing.com
- Marketing Fastrack: The Little Book That Launched a New Business by Aurora Winter- on Amazon: https://a.co/d/8xrIglK
- Turn Words Into Wealth: Blueprint for Your Business, Brand and Book by Aurora Winter - on Amazon: https://a.co/d/7RRkVYb
- Magic, Mystery, and the Multiverse Book 1 Amazon: https://a.co/d/5cmA6Um
- LinkedIn: https://linkedin.com/in/AuroraWinter
- YouTube: https://www.y
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Hi, I'm Kendrick Corman. If you're a coach, consultant, or marketer, you know marketing is far from a perfect science. And that's why this show is called Imperfect Marketing. Join me and my guests as we explore how to grow your business with marketing tips and, of course, lessons learned along the way. Hello and welcome back to another episode of Imperfect Marketing. I'm your host, Kendra Corman, and today I'm joined with by Aurora Winter. And I'm really excited because I've started geeking out on this whole topic of neuroscience and marketing. And that's one of the topics that we're going to be talking about today. Welcome, Aurora. Thank you so much for joining me.
SPEAKER_01:It's so great to be on the show with you, Kendra. And I look forward to helping people turn their words into wealth using neuroscience.
SPEAKER_00:Talk to me. How did you get into neuroscience?
SPEAKER_01:I took my MBA in 2015, actually in Italy. That was kind of a fun story. And they had a focus on neuroscience and leadership. So I'm like, okay, that's the MBA for me because I've been fascinated with communication since I was nine years old. To really understand communication, you need to understand how the brain works. So I loved leaning into that. And now I help people, you know, I'm a media coach or media consultant. I help people write books or uh get their TEDx talk or pitch to raise capital. And understanding how the brain receives words is key to having a clear, concise, compelling message.
SPEAKER_00:It is so, so important. Okay. So is the is the Italian MBA a long story or a short story? Because I'm very curious.
SPEAKER_01:Well, you know, it just goes to show the power of podcasting. Because I was listening to a podcast about neuroscience, and the guest expert said blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, Chimba, Italy. Uh, we have these, you know, MBA there. It was just an offhand comment, but that made me, you know, go on Google and search it and apply. And I'm like, okay, why am I taking my MBA in 2015? I already have a successful business. I've been a TV producer, this, that, and the other, but I wanted to. If not now, when? I think this is a really good question, actually. My friend challenged me, if not what now, when? And that's why I took my MBA because I wanted to do it. So if not now, when? It's the same with most important things. You know, getting married, having a kid, writing your book, starting a business. Don't put it off.
SPEAKER_00:No, I think that's so important. And I like that. If not now, when? Right. And that I think that goes for so much in marketing. I'm going to do a little plug for my whole progress, not perfection, right? If you're not going to launch it now, when are you going to get around to it? Right? Let's let's move forward. Let's just let's get it done. It can be a little messy, right? We can fix it as we go.
SPEAKER_01:But and I love the name of your podcast because I am a recovering perfectionist. And I can't tell you how many times, you know, the perfectionist in me wanted to put it off because it wasn't quote unquote good enough. But yeah, imperfect marketing, imperfect life, imperfect human beings, but show up and you make progress. And you make much more progress offering something to the world and then getting feedback and then refining using real feedback instead of imagined feedback to perfect your product or service or offer.
SPEAKER_00:Yes. I am a hundred percent on board with the real feedback. I've I've shared the story about before, but I had a friend who was leaving corporate and because of our corporate mentality, for lack of a better explanation, and I was there with her, she had flyers, she had swag, she had a website. She didn't have one customer and she actually didn't know how to go out and find them because what she was selling was a service that needed a lot of networking. But she hadn't done any networking because she wasn't ready yet, because she needed more changes to the website.
SPEAKER_01:The way to get ready is to start asking for orders. Also, filter opinions through money. So, for example, one of the little books that I wrote after I finished my MBA, I'm like, I could do anything, I could go anywhere. Ah, too much choice. There's I actually went on down a rabbit hole of uh the problem of too much choice, which is the thing. But then I gave away a free book. It's actually this little book, Marketing Fast Track. Ooh, okay. And um to my list that knew me for something else, and gave away the book, but they had to pay shipping$4.77. That actually is important because giving away something completely for free, zero skin in the game. So I gave away a book for free, charged$4.77, gave for free videos adding value, and the result was$250,000 of new business in 90 days. That is a real market test. And that's what I challenge people to do. Do a test that has a small amount of money attached, five bucks, 20 bucks, something, and then get on one-on-one calls and offer a bigger package and see what you can do. Opinions from people who have not invested anything are useless. You want to filter opinions by people who don't just say they like your book title or they like the idea of you, product or service, but they're willing to buy it.
SPEAKER_00:So, oh my gosh, like I feel like I should be taking so many more notes because there was so much in what you just said. So I love doing that. Opinions from people who haven't spent anything really don't matter. And I think that that's so important because there's so many of my clients send things to, and I'm like, they're not gonna buy your service. Why are we even talking about what they think? And I think that's so important. I never really thought about it that way. And I love how you had a little bit of skin in the game with your free book, right? So you were giving them the book.
SPEAKER_01:And yeah, even a couple of bucks make a big difference. Which is why I actually think it's better for somebody to buy your book on Amazon or to buy it through you for a couple of bucks shipping than to just give away a free ebook. No skin in the game. So many of those ebooks never get read. But if somebody actually gets a book, it arrives, you know, if it they hold it, they touch it, maybe they read it, maybe they don't, but they will put it on their bookshelf and it'll sit there bugging them until they read it or until they have the problem that that book solves. And like, didn't Aurora send me a book? I should read turn words into wealth. And then what happens next is after you have delivered value, whether it's a podcast or a book or a video series, um, the next step can be thousands of dollars because you've invested, you've built no like and trust. They already go, Kendra's my person. I love her, I love this whole imperfect marketing idea. I'm gonna hire her as my consultant.
SPEAKER_00:So let me ask this question. We're totally off script, but um, and all the questions that I was going to ask, which is awesome, because I'm I'm really interested in is there a part of neuroscience that makes that that backs that up? Or how did you come up with the idea to make sure that people had skin in the game with that first book after you graduated with your MBA?
SPEAKER_01:That was, I think, just basic marketing understanding. But yes, there probably is neuroscience. And let me see if I can pull that out. There is a neuroscience around commitment and consistency. So people who express an opinion, especially if that's visible to other people, like people who put political signs on their lawns are very unlikely to change their vote because of commitment and consistency. People are attached to being consistent. So even a small amount of money, they've already said that they're uh buying this product or service or something. And then they want to align with consistency of that. And then how you deliver the message, of course, would go with the the neuroscience, which we can get into. There's three simple steps in neuroscience. Most of most people would be familiar with these steps, but most people, especially the well-educated people, do not do them in the right order and forget to do the middle step. And the middle step really matters. All right. So what are the steps? And what's the order?
SPEAKER_00:Dying to know.
SPEAKER_01:All right. Well, we'll just keep the words simple so the neuroscience of the brain language doesn't throw you off. But the people, human beings, didn't survive for so long without filtering messages. It takes a lot of calories to absorb a message. It takes a lot of fat. There's so much happening in your environment. You cannot process everything. It's a complete illusion if you think you observe everything. So the very first filter comes from the ancient reptilian brain or the croc brain. It's looking for novelty. It's looking for, is there something in this for me of value? Is there something a little bit scary that I need to know about? Or is this the same old message I've heard a hundred times? If you don't pass that first filter in the first few seconds, they're not paying attention. And you might be speaking at length, but you are not communicating. So that would be the hook. We commonly call that a hook. But you're appealing to the croc brain. It's a little tasty or a little dangerous, not so dangerous that they completely shut down. So an example is a book title, Marketing Fast Track, the little book that launched a new business, uh, Turn Words into Wealth. It's like, what category are we in? What is this about? The next step, which is the step most people miss, is the social midbrain step. So you've passed through the reptilian croc brain filter. The next filter is the midbrain, which is around social proof. People are hyper-vigilant for status. Who else thinks this is a cool idea? Who else is involved? You know, is this person like scum of the earth or are they like high status? So being an author already confers status. Being a professor confers status. Awards confer status. So when you're speaking, if I was talking about this book, Turnwards into Wealth, Crock Brain, it's an award-winning book. What outstanding nonfiction book of the year, the year it came out in its category, which is publishing. So when you're communicating, you can do these very, very quickly, but you have to, or you don't have to do anything. It serves you to do them in this sequence. And then the third step, which most people jump to way too early, is to appeal to the cerebral cortex, which is the meat of your message. But just like you wouldn't open an Excel spreadsheet that was attached to an email from somebody that you don't know about that didn't have a really compelling subject line anyway.
SPEAKER_00:We should say, I hope you would never open up an Excel spreadsheet from someone that you don't know. Okay.
SPEAKER_01:We should. We should. But the same things happen when we're speaking. We don't listen to the cerebral cortex message if it hasn't gone been approved by the croc brain and by the midbrain. The other thing that people don't fully understand is deeply listening is so expensive, you need to circle back around again. Just like we're doing in this conversation, podcasts are great to study from this. So ideally, the host and the guest will revisit these three points maybe every five minutes or so. Every time you ask me a question, actually, that's crock brain if you're asking a good question. Hopefully they're good questions. But you are, I'm sure, because it's a little dopamine hit of curiosity, right? The other thing is like speaking at length is not communicating. So when I'm helping people, you know, pitch to raise capital, the common mistake is somebody is so deep in the weeds of their business. They're at step 14 and they're all excited about step 14. People don't understand step 14. They don't even know what quadrant we're in. So it's a very common mistake to leap into way too much detail and you've lost the person. So I've had people come to my media training events. The person would speak before the training and explain who he who they are. Everybody would be like, I know the person is smart. I have no clue what their business is. And by the end of the training, people in the audience would actually be investing in that same person's concept because it was clear.
SPEAKER_00:So keep it simple. You were talking about your books, and I think that's awesome. I wrote a short book on a whim one day and decided to use it to get speaking gigs, which was fun. My question for you is I have found a ridiculous amount of success from my book. Not my book being successful, but the fact that I'm an author and wrote a book has really helped me in speaking and training and everything else that goes with it because you help people write books. We talked about that, right? In the whole media world. What are you seeing this, these thought leadership or these books? How is that translating to revenue streams for your clients?
SPEAKER_01:Yes, I love knowing about the revenue streams because I'm in publishing. I have access to data that most people don't know. And it's really interesting to see. So, for example, we were talking about Brene Brown before we jumped on uh the recording. I don't have her data just off the top of my head, but I remember Mel Robin's book, The Let Them Theory, which just launched December of last year. It did about$300,000 very quickly and it became a New York Times bestselling book. Interesting thing, though, a self-published book by Alex Hermosy just recently launched, and it did$100 million in three days. It's a nonfiction book, and he won the Guinness Book of World Records. It outsold any other nonfiction book. It did about double. He sold three million copies in three days. It did about double the next closest, which was Spare by Prince Harry. It's so interesting to see all the different models of monetization. Oh, one of the things I wrote about in Turn Words into Wealth is like there's seven different ways to make seven figures with your book. And what most people don't understand is that even best-selling authors like Mel Robbins or Brene Brown or maybe Kendra, we don't know how your book's doing, they get 85% of their revenue not from the book, from consulting, from coaching, from speaking, from training, sometimes from, you know, film and television, from other deals. So I'm a big proponent of let's make sure if you do have a book, let's make sure that you have thought through the back end so that you put that like a little bit of yeast in the content of your book. Your book can still make a big difference and change lives as is, but add a little yeast to, oh, by the way, if you want to hire me as speaker or as a consultant or you want this, that, or the other support, I'm available for that. This is my website. Here's some success stories, a little bit of yeast, and that will make the book far more powerful. Have you found your book working for you for bringing consulting clients and speaking gigs?
SPEAKER_00:It's like they fall out of the sky, which is probably horrible to say. It's like I joined a, I joined a group called Innovation Women to help me with speaking gigs and things. And um and I've now actually applied for one. I actually was getting booked so much to the point where I've had to start turning things down. And most of them are paid gigs. So most of them are paid speaking, which is nice. Uh, and I haven't had to do much with it. Like someone will see me speak because someone brought me because of the book. And then usually someone in the audience is like, hey, we need some more help with this. Can you help us? And I'm like, Yes, I can. Um, or no, I'm fully booked. Um, so it That's working beautifully then. Yeah. So it it's uh, and I would say that like none of them have read the book, but that's okay. It's just even just having a book really, really helps as crazy as that sounds.
SPEAKER_01:It changes the author because anybody can write a book, but so few people actually do. And the fact that you dedicated the time to put your thoughts together and pull them into a book shows that you have a message and you have the passion and that you have persistence and follow-through, all great traits in a speaker or consultant.
SPEAKER_00:I think that again, going to that social proof, even having just written one, a lot of people just assume that I know what I'm talking about, which by the way, I do, but still they make that assumption.
SPEAKER_01:The neuroscience, people are hyper-vigilant to status. So one of the easiest ways to change status is to become a best-selling award-winning author. Well, I say it's easiest because I, you know, don't want to get an MD or a PhD. I think an MBA is enough. Stop already. It changes the whole equation. Then instead of being, you know, a dreaded salesperson or just another person who's another consultant or another coach. No, you are the expert. You're the author who wrote this book. This is your passion. And yeah, it changes everything.
SPEAKER_00:Talking about books, right? A lot of people tell stories in their books. Whenever I'm working with my students in marketing or my clients, I'm always encouraging them to tell stories and tie that back to their offer. It really seems to connect people. Um, I had a guest on several months ago. Um, her name is Cena C. She 10X'd her business and she sells fish by telling stories, right? About showing behind the scenes with her family and talking about things that don't seem related, but yet were really interesting. Like she talked about her son's wrestling match and that he won. And that was probably due to the fact that he had access to great fish, um, which was amazing, right? So these stories seem to stick more with us, right? So why?
SPEAKER_01:Stories are how human beings survive through millennia. You know, books and printing only happened in the 1400s. The Gutenberg Press changed everything. And initially it only printed Bibles. But before that, people told stories around the campfire and the oral, you know, verbal tradition was was what was how the Odyssey was passed forth. It was how how to survive was passed on. And now we're coming back around to that with podcasts and video and YouTube being the number two search, number two search engine, Amazon is the number three search engine. So most people make a really big mistake in anything that they're doing, in my humble opinion, by du and I've made this mistake myself. So I speak from experience in spending so many hours working on their product, on their service, studying for their exams, doing the thing. And they spend no time learning how to talk about the thing. Most people know the 80-20 rule. Well, that in the 20% of things that will make 80% difference is talking about what you're up to. So learning how to communicate using the neuroscience of communication is going to help you get better grades. It's going to help you get a better job. It's going to help you solve problems in your marriage. And it's most definitely going to help you attract and enroll clients. So I wish I could have shaken my earlier self who was working so hard on different things in the business and didn't spend time collecting stories. So a simple uh, and everything has a um a blueprint that you can model. I put a bunch of blueprints in my book, Turnwards into Wealth. But here's a simple one that you can remember from today is tell the story of the hell that you were in or that your client was in, and then the heaven that you took them to. Just tell the story of the problem, the pain, the agony. I'm calling that the hell, and then skip to after they consulted with Kendra, after they took her course, after they read Turnwards into Wealth, the heaven that they were in. Do not tell me 49 steps of the bridge between the hell and the heaven. If you just practice that and you pay attention and collect the stories of every person whose life you impacted positively, you'll have a whole bunch of hell to heaven stories. And then write them down, keep notes, and you'll have those handy to handle objections or to tell a story instead of pushing against somebody else. You can you can receive an objection and say, gosh, I'm really glad that you shared that concern about hiring a marketing consultant. You know, my client Sarah had the exact same concern. And then you tell the hair, the hell that Sarah was in before she worked with Kendra and the heaven that you took her to. Boom.
SPEAKER_00:It sounds so simple, right? The problem is it takes focus, it takes commitment, and it takes some consistency to make sure that you're getting those stories. So I want everybody to take note of if you're listening or watching, make sure that you're taking note of this because there's so much that we can do that really truly doesn't take a ton of time in our business that can make a significant difference in our revenue. You can easily 10x your business.
SPEAKER_01:Easily. It's like working out at the gym. You need to practice. So practice telling these hell to heaven stories with the person standing waiting, you know, for your grocery order to be processed at Trader Joe's. Just practice telling quick stories, practice the um the format of it, and then you can apply any story to that. And there's a bunch of different formats or um blueprints for powerful stories. Once you understand the blueprint, then you can you can have hundreds of stories that fit that blueprint. And you know it will work because the blueprint's there. It's like it's like building a house, you know, foundation, walls, roof. And the neuroscience, you know, basically the foundation, croc brain, the walls, mid-brain, social status, social proof. And you can't put the roof on, which is your main message of cerebral cortex, until you have done those other two things, because the roof will fall. The other thing that most people don't know, which relates to neuroscience, is especially in academia, people love data, but that actually triggers the analyst brain. The analyst brain does not buy. The analyst brain will never be satisfied and always wants more information. Most people don't understand that you actually, even though you you might trick yourself, you actually make emo buying decisions emotionally a fraction of a second before you justify that decision.
SPEAKER_00:Well, I just had a had a conversation with a friend of mine. We were looking at her landing page, and I was like, no, you're telling people what they need, they're not gonna buy that. They want to buy what they want, not what they need. So you need to change the wording on this to change really what happens to be what they want, and that is to spend less time on social media, um, at least for their business, right? They can scroll through TikTok all day like I do, but it's just it's so much tied. It is. It is so addictive. Um, it is just tied so much to how people buy. And I think it's it's so important. And I think there's so many things that we actually know about neuroscience that we don't even really realize is neuroscience, right? And so it's really important, I think, to that as people move forward in marketing that that we include um those thoughts and we really think about how the brain works so that we can grow our businesses, right? And I think that that's hugely important. This has been an amazing conversation. I could go on and on and on with more and more and more questions. Um but the data says the people stop listening to me after a certain amount of time. So I want to make this bite-sized so that everybody else could get back to the rest of their day. But before I let you go, I do want to ask you a question that I ask all of my guests. And that is that this show is called Imperfect Marketing. Marketing is anything but a perfect science. What has been your biggest marketing lesson learned along the way?
SPEAKER_01:Gosh, I have had so many lessons, but I think the one that's most valuable to the listeners and most top of mind right now is in order to have a really strong yes, you have to have a strong no. So every person is not an ideal client. So for me, knowing who my ideal client is and that I can produce at least a 10x return on their investment, I can show up with such compassion and integrity and purpose for that particular avatar means I need to say no to people I could help, but that I don't have certainty that I can produce at least a 10x ROI, which causes me to wilt inside personally. So I would love to offer that as something to consider. Like in order to have a strong yes to your business, to your time, to your next book, to the client, you also have to have a strong no to the things that waste your time, to the things that um leach your energy, to the people that you might want to please because you're a people pleaser, but they are not your ideal client. They're somebody else's ideal client, you know, send them to that person.
SPEAKER_00:I had that conversation earlier today. I was like, you know, I call it, um, I learned in Sandler sales training, it's head trash because we get stuck in those ways and we don't do those hard noses enough. And that's that's a really difficult piece. So I think that that's that's just huge. So oh my goodness, so many, many things um have been shared. So we've got the croc brain, then we've got the midbrain and the cerebral cortex. So build your foundation, your walls, and your roof before you actually start marketing, right? And then stories stick with people. So take a look at the stories in your business. What are those stories that you can tell and the simple blueprint of how you took someone from their hell to their heaven without the 45 steps in between? It's very important. So it's digestible. Um, if you want to connect with Aurora or get any of her books or check out her new YouTube channel, which is called Strategic Basics. Strategic Basics, we have all of that down below either in the show notes or the YouTube description, wherever you're listening or watching. And if you got something out of today, whether, and I and I know you did because I did, and I've been doing this for 20 plus years, would really help me out if you would rate or subscribe wherever you're watching. So thank you so much for tuning in. I look forward to seeing you again on a future episode of Imperfect Marketing.
