#521: Your messaging doesn't need an overhaul - #Tashmas Day 12 - Tash Corbin, Heart-Centred Business Podcast

Full article and show notes available at: tashcorbin.com/521

This episode of the Heart-Centred Business Podcast is a bit of a curveball: I’m here to tell you not to overhaul your messaging. In a world where everyone’s shouting that you need to reinvent, revolutionise, or completely scrap your messaging, I’m offering something different. Nope, you don’t need to do any of that. Here’s why—and how to create messaging that grows with you.

Plus, it’s Day 12 of #Tashmas... which means there's one last gift for you with this episode!

Wait… What is #Tashmas?

I do it for both my birthday (1-12 March) and pre-Christmas (1-12 December) every year! Every day from now until my birthday on 12th March, there will be a new daily podcast episode, with a hot tip or practical strategy as per usual… but you ALSO get a gift! I love sharing the birthday vibes, and what better way to do that?! The daily gift could be a freebie, a special offer, a competition… but there will be something for YOU every single day.

Why Messaging Overhauls Aren't the Answer

I used to be all about messaging overhauls and makeovers. I even have old content floating around about how to “makeover” your messaging. But here’s what I’ve come to realise: Most heart-centred entrepreneurs (especially those in my audience) don’t need total messaging overhauls. What people actually need is steady, gradual improvement.

If you can talk about the needs in your market, speak to the experiences of your audience, and describe the transformation you help facilitate—guess what? You’ve got the foundations of a powerful message right there. But so many people are allowing messaging “experts” to strip away their confidence, making them believe they’re not good enough or that their messaging is fundamentally flawed. That isn’t true.

...read the full article at: tashcorbin.com/521

Join us in Noosa at the Heart-Centred Business Conference in September!

Find out more and secure your ticket at: tashcorbin.com/conference

Transcript

1:35

Here's one for the books. This episode of the Heart Centered Business Podcast, I'm gonna tell you not to overhaul your messaging. In a world where everyone is telling you that your messaging needs to be completely changed and turned on its head and scrap it all and start over, here I am saying, nope, I do not want you to overhaul your messaging. Are you curious about why? Well, then make sure you stay tuned in for this one. This is episode number 521 of the Heart-Centered Business Podcast, and that means you can find all the relevant links and the show notes for this ep over at tashcorbin.com/521. Not only that, it's the last day of Tashmas, so today I have a special free gift for you and also a very important reminder. Let's dive in and get started because I don't want you to overhaul your messaging, and I want to explain why. Let's do it. Hello, I'm Tash Corbin, a business strategist and mentor based on the Sunshine Coast in Australia. The mission of this podcast is to help heart-centered entrepreneurs to make more money, and in doing so, change the world for the better. This podcast was recorded on the lands of the Gabigabi and Jinabara people. Always was, always will be Aboriginal land. So of course, I'm going to have to kick off this episode by saying I used to talk about messaging overhauls and messaging makeovers. And even to this day, I do still have some content about how to make over your messaging here on the podcast. I had an old free training that I used to offer, and I'm sure you could dig it out of the internet somewhere. And I'm not necessarily saying your messaging your messaging doesn't need to have a little makeover or be improved. But I have come to realize that most people, especially in this audience, do not need a complete messaging overhaul. Not only that, they are allowing a lot of messaging and content about overhauling your messaging, upgrading your messaging, changing your messaging, revolutionizing your messaging to have really eroded their self-esteem and their confidence in their capacity and abilities to create messaging that resonates with their audience. And they don't actually need a complete overhaul. Yes, you can refine your messaging. And yes, I still change and improve and refine my own messaging still to this day on a very consistent basis. But it's not an overhaul. It's not even a makeover. I'm starting to find that that term is a little too extreme sounding because when I improve my messaging, when I refine my messaging, it is a very gradual incremental process that is done over time. And for you listening to this podcast, that is what I recommend as well. I know that we live in this fast-paced world and operate in an even faster-paced industry and online industry in particular that has a huge expectation of instant gratification, instant results, fast feedback, big engagement, right? And absolutely that is also contributing to this expectation that either your messaging works instantaneously or it's wrong and it needs to be changed. And so there are people thinking that decent messaging is absolutely terrible. And they are constantly starting over when actually they'd be better off making incremental changes over time. So I want to dig into this one and provide some strategies and advice on how you can improve your messaging without creating this belief that there's something fundamentally wrong with it. But before I do, I just want you to take a moment and consider how you currently feel about your messaging. Because there is prolific content online right now that has been trying to convince you that there's something fundamentally wrong with it and that you just aren't good at messaging. And I actually haven't met a single business owner who hasn't been able to craft some kind of decent messaging for their audience and for their business. If you can identify a need in your market, if you can speak to the experiences of some of the people who you want to be able to support and help, if you can speak a little bit to the transformation that you want to facilitate for them, you've got the foundations of a really powerful message in the making there. It's not like you don't know how to speak about what it is that you do. It's not like you don't know how to describe situations that you could help with. It's just that you've been turned around in circles and messaging has been made to seem like this weirdly twisted combination of science and art that has specific templates and structures, specific pieces that must be met in order for you to have any chance of making anything work online. When that couldn't be further from the truth. In essence, any kind of messaging models, any kind of messaging advice, structures, guidance, templates, pro formas should be helping you to refine rather than being a complete overhaul. It should be helping you to give a little bit more structure and strategy to the messaging you already know, the messaging you've already landed on, and allow you to just close up maybe some of the gaps that are there and identify which parts of your core message might need a little work. That's it. It's not to point out to you that you don't know what you're doing. It's not to point out to you, you're terrible at this. Because even people who talk to me and say, I'm terrible at messaging, this is my Achilles heel, I cannot do the messaging side, this is where I really fall over. I ask them 4 questions, they answer them really competently and confidently. So the problem isn't that you're bad at messaging, the problem is you've let people convince you that you're bad at messaging. The problem is that there is far too much content out there telling you that messaging has a right way and a wrong way, And if you're not making money, you must be doing it the wrong way, when that is not true. Even in my very early stages of my business where I was really trying to figure all of this stuff out and I had very little confidence that I knew what I was doing or that I even knew that the niche that I'd chosen was the right one, I was still trying to figure everything out, I still made sales with terrible messaging. When I look back at the types of messaging things that I shared, the types of content that I shared, the offers that I put out online, some of them were horrendous. Some of them were really poorly written in terms of value proposition or in terms of the structure of my offers. I even wrote a bunch of content that in hindsight and looking back, it's no wonder it didn't do particularly well when I shared things on social media because It wasn't speaking to anyone specific and it was describing problems no one had ever experienced before. But I am so grateful for my past self actually taking a leap and trying some things out. I'm grateful that I kept figuring it out and not once did I ever allow anyone to convince me that there was something wrong with me, that there was a skill set that I was completely lacking and would never be able to develop for myself, that there was some magical formula to this that you'll never figure out for yourself. You have to pay tens of thousands of dollars for someone else to do it. And I'm so grateful that I just focused on figuring it out. I was never someone who would be like, oh, will I figure this out? Won't I figure this out? Can I get my messaging right, or will I never get my messaging right? Instead, I was just diligently focused on how can I make this messaging better? How can I write this differently? What else could I try? How else could I do this? What other structure might I use? What am I missing here? What am I over-explaining? What am I under-explaining? I was consistently reviewing my content and messaging through those lenses of incremental improvements. So I want you to really take this one home from this podcast episode. There, there is nothing so bad with your messaging that we have to throw it all out and start again. Even if you completely change the niche that you're speaking to, there there are still components of your messaging that will still stand to this day because they're about you, because they're about the difference that you want to make in the world. Those things still stand regardless of who you're working with. And so nothing needs to be completely overhauled. You are absolutely doing an amazing job. And all we want to do is make some incremental improvements over time. And as I said earlier, even I am doing that. I am still to this day improving my messaging. When I do my quarterly, planning and my quarterly review, that is something that I look at. Are there any changes I want to make to my core message? Are there any pieces of my message that need to be more strong in my business? Are there things that I haven't spoken about enough recently? And you've probably noticed over the years, if you've listened to me for an extended period of time, I do kind of meander like a river rolling down a meadow this way and that way, trying to find where the right sweet spot is for me with my messaging. And I'll keep experimenting with that. And part of the beauty of seeing this as an incremental improvement over time is that if I do tend to veer off in the wrong direction for a little period of time, I know how to course correct because I can go back to what I was sharing previously because I'm consistently looking at these things and I'm consistently sitting and actually contemplating and strategizing, okay, where am I potentially missing the mark? What are people getting excited about? What are people not really engaging with? Where are the pieces where I feel like I'm letting my messaging down and I'm not speaking about the value proposition strongly enough? There was a period of time where I was particularly sick, and so a lot of the copywriting that I would normally do myself in my business, I had to outsource. I just did not have the capacity to sit at a computer and do a lot of writing. So I sent my core messaging documents to a couple of people who were helping me with different projects, and they did some messaging changes for me. One of those was a big change to my sales page for the Takeoff program. And 6 months later, the conversion rate of that sales page had significantly dropped. And when I went and had a look at the new messaging, I realized that that person had written it through their lens in relation to value for money. And my lens in terms of the value of the Takeoff Program is different to theirs. And not only did I notice that the conversion rate was lower, I ended up also having a spike in refund requests for the Takeoff Program as well. And what that really hit home for me was not that like I should never outsource anything and don't get anyone to help me write things, but that I was, because I was unwell, I was feeling wobbly about the way that I spoke and I was feeling wobbly about whether I was probably missing some things and I was going to need to significantly improve the quality of my written content because I wasn't able to show up on video as much. And because I got so wobbly, I got to the point where I thought someone else would do a better job than me. My sales page did not need to be overhauled. It did not need to be even reviewed. It had been doing a great job. I was really sick, but it was actually a mindset issue. I was feeling wobbly about whether I had the right words. I had never hired a professional copywriter to help me with sales pages before. So I was starting to feel a little bit uneasy about, well, maybe there's like this magical way of structuring sales pages that I don't know about. Maybe I should hire someone who can help me with this. Maybe I should get someone to make a new version for me. And in doing so, it actually reinforced for me that the best person to talk about working with me is me. And that the whole reason why I thought that someone else needed to overhaul it and needed to improve it for me was all about what was going on for me. It had nothing to do with the effectiveness of the messaging or the sales page. So hopefully you are starting to feel like, hey, maybe I could be in charge of my messaging. Maybe my messaging isn't so horrible as I have been making it out to be. Maybe I could stop worrying about needing to completely overhaul it and instead I'm going to look for opportunities to make incremental improvements over time? Well, number 1, I would say practice turning your core message into content consistently. And that isn't something you can do in a half day. That is something that needs to be done over time because it's not just about writing the content or creating the content from that core message. It's also learning the difference between content and messaging. And how to practice expressing that core message through your content and through those different angles. All strategies need time for you to be able to practice them. They need repetition. They need you coming at it at different times and with different energies and with different perspectives. But messaging in particular is something that takes both time and practice because it is only with time that you even see what the response to that messaging is going to be. It's only with time and practice that you work out whether you've got your bases covered. It's only with time and practice that you discover, oh, this is still feeling quite vague. I need to refine it to be a little more specific, or this is all quite high level. I need some more grounded examples, or maybe this is all stories and no real clarity of substance. But you won't know that and you won't be able to see that or see the patterns over time if all you're doing is constantly updating and restarting writing your core messaging document. The second piece of advice that I would give harks back to something I shared in a recent episode, which is that it takes writing long-form content to be able to create effective short-form content. So if you see me talking about a VIP package offer and it feels like I just get straight to the heart of the matter and I've got so much clarity on exactly where I'm focusing, chances are that that used to be 6 times as long as it was when I finally ended up sharing it. I consistently take the time to sit down and write stuff. And sometimes if I don't have the time to write, I will sit down and talk things out. One of my favorite things to do, and this is a tip that I actually got from Ayesha Kennedy, speaker at the 2026 Heart-Centered Virtual Business Conference, When I was living in Bali, which I reckon it was 2015, maybe early 2016, I worked with her as a client and she was helping me with some writing. And one of the things she asked me was, when is it that you feel like you are strongest at expressing yourself, whether it be in written form or in creative form or in speaking form? And I said, in webinars. And I was blocked about writing a big particular piece of long-form content. And she said, well, why don't you make some little mini slides and then speak it out as though you were presenting it as a webinar? And it was the best advice I've ever received in my life. These days, one of my favorite things to do is I actually handwrite a bunch of little mini slides on Post-it notes, and then I will turn on my voice memos app. And I will record myself presenting that as though I'm presenting it in webinar form. But because I'm doing it with all my little miniature Post-it notes, I'm literally like sitting on the floor playing with colored papers, and it keeps me so energetically stimulated. It keeps me so focused, and it is some of my best ever writing is actually me speaking. And in the iPhone in the Voice Memos app, voice memos now automatically transcribed. So all I need to do is just record it, wait 2-3 minutes, and then the little speech bubble pops up and it's been created into a transcription. And I just email that to myself. Now I've got my writing, and it's so much easier for me to refine things when they're actually written down. And the structure of it is usually fairly good in terms of the big picture structure because I've pre-planned it out just in that little miniature slide format. So it's not this long rambling mess of me just stringing one random thought next to the other. Instead, it's got the basic structure. I might stumble over my words here and there. I might tell a little bit of a story and go, no, actually, I don't like that one. I'm going to tell this one instead. I might get myself kind of down a little bit of a rabbit hole or go on a little side quest. I didn't mean to go there. But because I've got those Post-it note slides, I know the key checkpoints that I'm meeting along the way, and it's much easier for me to refine it and fix it once it's in writing than to try and write from scratch. So I mess with my messaging, I play with my messaging, I refine my messaging very consistently and regularly. I mean, one of the other things that I do is I do run webinars very regularly as well. Because for me, speaking to humans and having questions come through, having reflections back at me, having people say, "Yes, I've never heard it explained that way," completely lights me up and shows me that there is tangible, practical value in the things that I'm teaching and the messages that I am sharing. So if you're struggling to write sharp messaging and get it down to its short form, I would recommend don't pressure yourself to write it in short form first and foremost, because you'll sit and try and get meticulously detailed on every single word choice as you go. Instead, just get it all out in its longest form possible. Write as many different angles and as many different versions as you can, and it is much easier to refine then than it is to try and get it right the first time you write it down. Another thing that I do this approach for is when I'm writing sales pages. So whenever I've got an idea for a new anything, whether that be a new opt-in, lead magnet, new product, a new service, a new webinar, the first thing I do is I actually write a long-form sales page for that thing. So anything where I'm asking you to sign up for something or give me money for it, I will write a long-form sales page. I don't use that long-form sales page in its entirety ever. Instead, in doing a long-form sales page, I know I'm covering every angle. Inside some of my programs, I actually have a template for a long-form sales page. And the reason why I keep it within my programs is because it needs to come with very explicit and clear instructions. This This sales page should never be shared with the public. This sales page is to get all of the detail and every single angle out of your brain and onto the page. And then what we do is we go through and find where the key messages are that need to go on the sales page, and everything else that you write goes somewhere else. So when I write a long-form sales page for a webinar, for example, I don't ever have long signup pages for webinars. I can easily get the key pieces that need to be covered for the signup page out of that, and the rest of that content becomes promos. It becomes content that leads to a promo for the webinar. It becomes promo posts about the webinar that go on my Facebook and my Instagram. It becomes promos for the webinar that I send to my mailing list. So it's not wasted energy and effort. And even if I deleted 80% of that content and never used it again, if that's what it took to get me to the tight, refined 20% I needed for it to be effective, it's worth it. There's no like mysterious bin, digital bin where your wasted words go to die and you've only got a certain number of words at your disposal and you're filling up your digital landfill with your wasted words that you wrote, and someone's gonna come one day and say, look at you, you wrote all that content, you wasteful, wasteful person. How dare you write that content and never share it with the world, right? No one's gonna see it. No one's gonna care. The only person who cares is you. And a lot of the time, people hold on to terribly written content to far too long-winded things because of that sunk cost fallacy. They feel like, well, I sat and it took me 2 hours to write out that long-form thing, so if I don't share the whole thing, that's a waste. But if you do share the whole thing and it's so long-winded and it's so unwieldy that no one ever reads it, and an extra 10 minutes of editing, cutting, and refining would actually make it super poppy, people would get it really quickly and it would get people taking action. Isn't it more wasteful for you to share it in its completely unfiltered form simply because you don't want to edit it down because that would have been wasted time? I feel like so many people are so harsh on themselves when it comes to these areas of their business, especially in relation to messaging, to written content. And also I will chuck this one in there as well. Video content, anything that they've ever done ever. I think because getting on video for so many of us is such a big deal that if we've ever recorded a video of ourselves, if we don't share that video 48 times with the internet, well, we haven't repurposed it enough and it needs to go somewhere else. I once sat down with someone and I had to hold their hand while I said this and said, I know that you've spent a long time collecting up all of your old Facebook Lives to put into your Lives library. But if I signed up for this library and watched even 2 of these, I would never work with you. And the reason is because in watching these Lives that you've been keeping and putting into this repository for 6 years, I feel like you don't value my time because most of the lives start with, hi everyone, we'll just give everyone a couple of minutes to get here. Like, you didn't even chop that off. And the time and energy it would take to chop all of that up and actually refine it into a video that got me to an outcome in an efficient way would actually be so much harder and so much more work and take so much longer than if you just sat down and recorded a fresh video that wasn't a Facebook Live where you didn't get distracted by someone making a comment about something that you talked about 2 weeks ago in the comments. And now we have to sit and listen to you vaguely talk about something with that person who no one else knows what you're talking about, but we'll sit here and listen because you don't value our time. And so I know that that's a little sidebar, but I do think it's another one of those symptoms where you get into the extremes. You think you're terrible at messaging, but at the same time, you will not let go of that video you recorded 6 years ago, because if you don't keep that video and re-roll it out over and over and over and over again, it was a waste of effort. It wasn't a waste of effort. It served its purpose. It's done now. It's time for you to craft something new. It's time for you to craft the next iteration of that video. For a lot of people, the reason why their messaging has not improved and refined over time is because they never go back and re-record things. They never go back and refresh it through fresh eyes with new perspectives based on their new experiences. You are clinging so hard to your old stuff that there's no space for the new stuff to pop in. So that was a teeny tiny detour, but I think it's an important one for us to discuss. But the original point that I wanted to come back to is that it sometimes takes sharing something in long form for you to be able to even get to the point where you can share it in short form. Another example of that is webinars. When I first run a new webinar, it generally goes for 2 hours. The next time I run it, it's an hour and 40 minutes. The next time I run it, it's an hour and 25 minutes. The next time I run it, it's an hour and 15 minutes. Sometimes I can't get it under that, but that's because with practice I get better at really narrowing in on what the precise messaging is. What are the pieces that I do need to share? What gets people distracted? Sometimes when I'm running a new webinar, I can see it happen in the comments in real time that I made a throwaway comment or I say something or I've got something written on a slide and I see the panic in comment form. People are like, wait, what did you say about this? Or, oh my gosh, I never even thought of that. And I did. What do I do here? And I'm like, oh, that was a lovely little distraction for them. That took us off path, didn't it? Okay. And so Okay, when I'm redoing that webinar next time, I'm not going to lead us down that little part of the garden path because that's actually not mission critical for what we're doing today. And so I'm refining and getting better and practicing over time, not because I'm still rolling out the same recording from 6 years ago, but instead because I run it as a fresh webinar as consistently as I can. Generally, if I'm recording a video that is a, like a video training that's evergreen that people can watch whenever they like, I've already rolled that out as a webinar at least 3, if not 6 times. When you see my lead magnets and freebies on my website, like the Resonate training, which is one of the gifts I'm going to give you today, I've run that as a webinar multiple times. And the reason why I've run that as a webinar multiple times before I've ever released it as its own evergreen version is because in the evergreen version, my goal is to get you to the outcome in the most efficient way possible. And also my goal is to ensure that because that one's not a live webinar, I want to ensure that I've got all the components that you need to be able to work your way through that training. And confidently get to a result at the end and know what you're going to implement, know what you're going to change, know what you're going to do next without having me there. Of course, there is the safety net of always being able to email me, always being able to reply to any of my emails and ask a follow-up question. But ultimately, I do know that most people won't do that. And so I feel like it would almost be like a bit neglectful of me if the first time I ever rolled that out was as an evergreen lead magnet. It was just a video that you had to just listen along and figure it out for yourself. Instead, I'm testing it in real time with real humans, and those humans, like, it's such a symbiotic relationship because they are getting the benefit of being able to talk directly to me and ask me their questions as we go. If something something does derail them, if they do get stuck on something, I'm there to help them get through it. I'm there to answer their questions. And then from that process, the next time I run it, I can make sure I'm more proactive in either addressing that or not tripping them up by mentioning something that's not necessary or mentioning something that's slightly related but not related enough. Not only that, but once I've done that with a webinar, it often means that I've refined down what my key messages are, what my key concepts are, what the principles are that I'm trying to get across. So I'm much better at explaining the concept and how to implement it much, much more effectively. So that is a time and practice refinement as well. The next part is about understanding that sometimes you need to share your messaging in a scattered way in order to be able to refine it into something that's structured. Your messaging will often be a mess of ideas and throwing spaghetti at the wall first. That's kind of the point. You just want to throw that spaghetti and see what sticks. But it's the see what sticks part that I think a lot of people are missing because they've fallen for this trap of believing that their messaging requires an entire overhaul. People are trying to convince them nothing stuck to the wall, but actually 50% of what you shared stuck. So we've got to take time to appreciate that, to find that out, to be able to interrogate that and refine from there. That's the whole point of the practice and the refinement. And it's that practice and refinement that makes it clearer, that makes your content and messaging more structured, and that allows you to resonate communicate far more effectively with your ideal clients and move them through to the point where they are ready, willing, and able to buy from you far more effectively and efficiently. I even think about myself doing sales conversations when I first started my business. Some people would jump on a sales conversation with me and 45 minutes later I still hadn't pitched them anything and I was still trying to figure out, you know, where they're at and I was giving them some advice. My sales conversations were almost like free coaching sessions in the early days, but I did that because I knew the more I gave myself time and space to be generous, to figure it out, to ask lots of questions, to be super helpful, the more I would understand about the exact person who was in front of me and what they needed to understand, what light bulb they needed to have, and what messaging was the part of the conversation that got them excited, that made it seem like it was a good decision to work with me. These days, I meet someone at a networking event and within 4 minutes I've diagnosed what's going on in their marketing and where their strategy might need some refinement. Generally, I'm so much quicker at that. I'm so much quicker at being able to express it to them very clearly and concisely. But that didn't happen because I sat in my bedroom trying to figure it out for myself on my own. That has come from almost 13 years of practicing, of refining, of upleveling, of clarifying. That has allowed me to build out really beautiful story arcs that perfectly represent the type of example I'm trying to give or the type of transformation I'm trying to talk about. Story arcs that really engage people and make it make sense to them because I am teaching some quite complex strategies and structures to people and some quite complex concepts as well. And so over time, I've tried to explain it using different analogies, different stories, and now I've got some really solid ones that I draw back on time and time again. People even say it to me online. They're like, oh, tell that story about this thing. Tell that story about that thing. Because that's what really landed it for them. And so hearing that reflected back, seeing the story actually makes sense. And for people to actually really land and understand, yep, that's how I'm going to do it. Yes, that's why I'm going to try it this way. Yes, I'm going to keep doing it this way. Really, like, that's where the refinement comes from. Additionally, like my bridge messaging, helping to facilitate those important light bulbs so that people kind of get it, that has all come from over time. And I will tell you, back in 2013, back in my day, back in 2013 when I first started my business, there was no one that I could find that could explain How to message for online business the way that I teach it now with bridge messaging. I gotta tell ya, that has come through the hustle and the grind, through figuring it out, through trying to understand why that part worked and why that part didn't. And I have been a diligent leading learner the entire way. And that's where these representations of what does bridge messaging look like have come from. It's not necessarily from me learning it and putting it in place in my own business, or me figuring it out for my own business. Because when I figure all of this stuff out for my own business, I just figure out what works. I just figure out what I need to say. I just figure out what light bulb I need to facilitate. But because I teach this and I'm trying to help others to do this as well, that's almost like what forces my hand to have to try and break it down even further. Now I'm going to give a little shout out to a client of mine. Her name is Jodie Thornton. She doesn't know I'm going to do this. I hope she's okay with it. Jodie and I are very similar minded when it comes to the way that we learn. Her probably a little bit more in depth than me, but she's one of those people that when she learns something or when I give advice, she's A little bit like, and I say this in a very loving way, she's a little bit like the little 3-year-old who's first learning about things. And it's the, but why? Okay. And can you tell me why here and why this? She also somehow has the most amazing memory and remembers everything I've ever said online in the entire history of my business. But having people like Jodie in my audience has been so valuable for me as a business owner. When Jodie has a question for me, I have all the time in the world for it. And I must admit, probably in the first 1 to 2 years of my business, if a very keen, very diligent learner like Jodie had come into my business and been as vocal and as questioning as Jodie was for me when she did come into my business, I probably would have found it very intimidating and I may have leaned back from it. But I feel like it was like meant to be that Jodie came across me exactly when she did because it was almost like I had to rise to the challenge. And if it wasn't for Jodie asking me, yeah, but why do you do it like that? Or why do you tell me to say it this way? If she hadn't done that, I wouldn't have actually come up with things like the turn process. I wouldn't have come up with things like— and I don't know which ones were exactly in direct response to Jodie, but I credit her with a lot of them. And it's because even when she's not asking me questions now, I think to myself, how would I explain this to Jodie? And I love that, right? Because Jodie is a very smart person. Like, her IQ is way higher than mine, right? She's a very, very smart person. Jodie is also a very diligent student. Jodie, as I said, she just remembers absolutely everything. And so when I'm presenting something that's new or I'm presenting a concept in a new way, I often will think, okay, what questions will Jodie ask me? How would I explain this to Jodie? And it might be— and I'm going to stop talking about Jodie now just in case she doesn't like this— but it might be that you need to think about that as well when it comes to the way you explain the work that you do. And it's actually in that conversation, it's, and even if that conversation's in your head, it's in answering the questions, it's in the response to the people who are asking for clarification that refinement happens.. And I think the combination— this is where like my punchline observation comes from and why I am no longer going to contribute to this messaging overhaul BS that I see online— because I think that it's being combined with something else that is the reason why it's gone wrong. I'm going to paint a picture here for you. So let's say that you've come up with this really cool snappy idea for how you're going to explain a key concept of what it is that you do and why you do it that way. And you're existing in an environment where you're consistently being told, you know, if you're not making enough sales, your messaging sucks. If you're not getting enough engagement on socials, it's because of your messaging. If you're attracting tire kickers and time wasters, your messaging is the thing that's magnetizing them towards you. So you're already in an environment that tells you your messaging is not good enough and you're not good at it, you need someone to help you with it. So you're in that environment, you've come up with this amazing idea of a concept, and you're so excited about it you go and create a video, or you show up and do a Facebook Live, or you write a long-form post about it in the heart-centered group on #TipToTryDay and two people come into the comments and say, oh, this is really interesting, have you considered this angle though? And the other person says, oh, I'm not so sure that that would work for me because— Now, if 2013 Tash had had the experience of doing that, writing a piece of advice in a Facebook group and getting two people asking questions, she wouldn't have been derailed by it because Tash didn't exist in an environment where everyone was telling her her messaging sucked. I really wasn't. In fact, like, there are a lot of copywriters going, hey, you want me to have a look at your copy for you? That was kind of the strongest messaging there was around copy and messaging. And so I didn't have this kind of almost like erosion in my self-esteem and like, that messaging is so critical and it's the foundations of your business and therefore you have to get it absolutely perfectly. Now, Now, I agree that messaging is critical. I agree that it's a very important foundation in your business. It's one of the most critical foundations in your business. But where I disagree is you have to get it right now. You have to get it perfect now. I completely disagree with that. You just need to get started and you just need to pick something. You just need to create the start of the snowball and be willing to refine and update and express it in different ways as you go. So these days, because there's so much prolific messaging out there that is telling you that it's critical and it's a foundation, but also it's the reason why you're not making any money. It's the reason why you're not making enough sales. It's the reason why you had 2 people say that they can't afford it in the sales calls that you had last week, right? Everyone is blaming your messaging and everyone is saying you cannot figure this out and it's just you've got it or you don't. And because of that, when you do get that engagement, when you do get someone say, hey, have you considered that? Or they say, I don't know if that would work for me because instead of seeing that as an amazing opportunity to find a gap and refine, to find a, a butt-tache, right? I always ask people for their hashtag butt-taches. I literally beg people to tell me their butt-taches. And I think the reason why I am able to do that is that I didn't have the erosion of my self-esteem around messaging. And instead of leaning into that and going, oh my gosh, this is amazing, finally I've got some refinements I can make, people these days collect that as evidence that they got it wrong. Oh well, that didn't work, back to the drawing board. And not only do they go back to the drawing board, they don't share a hashtag tip to try for another 6 weeks because they've made it mean that they got it wrong instead of 'Oh, this is great, and.' Yes, and. Yes, that's a great tip, and let's just make sure we address this exception. Yes, that's a great strategy, and if you were going to share it with people who did this, then they would need it that way, right? So it's actually an extension, it's an expansion, it's an improvement, it's a refinement But instead, everybody's collecting it as another sign they've got it wrong and their messaging needs an overhaul. But it absolutely doesn't. So if you ditch one scattered messaging that's spaghetti at the wall and then take little pieces of feedback or a couple of posts that get no traction or a webinar that doesn't get any signups as like an indicator that you've got it completely wrong, start over. And now you're just going to scatter another batch of spaghetti at another wall and then another batch of spaghetti— oh my gosh, I will let you in on a little secret, it's later than my normal bedtime as I'm recording this. I'm just going to keep that in there, right? So if you throw and then you go back to the original wall, you start throwing more spaghetti at that one, but you forgot to clean off the old stuff. So now it's got old stains on there. So is that spaghetti sticking because it's just stuck to the old spaghetti, or is it sticking because it works? You're just creating a cloud of confusion, and that's when they win. That is when these people are winning. And what it does is it ends up with you so lost, so scared, so worried you're going to get it wrong, putting so much pressure on yourself to create the most perfect messaging and express it in the most perfect content you stop sharing anything altogether. And that makes me cranky. In fact, it makes me a little bit sad. And last time I did Tashmas, I cried on the last day, and I think I'm going to do it again, and I'm not going to stop recording because I really need to finish this podcast. So you're just going to have to listen to me talk to you through my tears now, because the last thing I would ever, ever as a business mentor want to contribute to is you collecting any evidence that you are not good enough. Because that is never true. It is never ever true that you are not good enough. And it certainly isn't true that your messaging needs a complete overhaul. Because it cannot be improved unless you accept that what you've got is a good start. And it absolutely is. I don't care whether you've got a hotchpotch hot mess on your hands of messaging ideas. I don't care whether you've leapt from one niche to the other for the last 6 years and you don't even know who's come with you anymore. You've got something and you've got something that is solid gold. And all we need to do is refine it. We grow it, we expand it, we build on what you've already got. Rather than making you get frozen in this perspective that either it's right or it's wrong. And if it's not working instantly, if it's not getting traction from the very first time you share it, if it gets one person asking a question or one person saying it's not for them, it's just wrong. That's not true. And what it means is that we are being robbed of ever getting to hear and see and read your refined messaging because you're constantly starting over. What a waste. The big takeaway from the tangible side that I want for you from this episode of the podcast is that it takes time to write really effective and resonant messaging. It takes time, it takes practice, it takes an audience, and it takes sharing it in order for you to be able to really refine it, to get it to the point where it's getting better and better over time. However, as I alluded to earlier in the episode, there is a difference between your messaging and your content. Messaging is structural, foundational. When I teach core messaging, we're looking at things like the value proposition. What is the transformation from before working with you to after working with you? And why is that valuable in the eyes of the client? It includes things like bridge messaging. What is the difference between what your ideal client thinks is the problem and what they think will fix it versus what you can see is the problem and what you know will actually fix it. Your core messaging also includes your intellectual property and model of change, your process as to how you take them from the before to the after. So it's the core componentry of your messaging, of what it is that your business does and how it needs to be expressed in order to attract, nurture, invite, and convert your ideal clients. Your content are the tiny little pieces of ways that you express that message in micro form. So a tip that you share on social media is content. It's not your core message. It's helping people to understand your core message. It all adds up to the delivery of your core message, but it's a teeny tiny story. It's a little tip that helps people to move closer to maybe that light bulb, which is part of your core message. So understanding and really seeing the difference between core message and the expression of that in your content can make a big difference as well to recognizing that the problem is not your core message. It's just that when you shared it in that format of content, it didn't really land for people. Or you've got some really good basics in your core message, but when you talk about the transformation from before to after, you're really underselling the after. And maybe that's because you don't want to overpromise and underdeliver, which is a really valid and legitimate reason. Reason as to why you might not have the after part of the value proposition really clear and strong. There are ways for us to be able to express that and get that clear in a way that doesn't feel like you're overpromising. But for a lot of people, their reluctance to overpromise means they make no promise at all. So identifying those gaps in your core message don't mean that your core messaging is all completely rubbish and it needs to all be thrown And just like that, if you've got a particular piece of content that was an expression of that message, it might just be that that particular story or that particular tip or that particular thing that you shared didn't land. That doesn't mean there's anything wrong with the core messaging itself. Not only that, the more that you get your core messaging clear and strong and validated, the faster and easier it is to create a bunch of content at pace because you can see that that's the part where you experiment. If we think about your messaging as a giant tree and your core messaging is the trunk, it's the roots, right? It's the big important base bits of that tree. Your content is the leaves and the berries and maybe the little twigs and branches here and there. The big chunky branches, core message. The little tiny delicate branches, expressions of that core message in content form. So let's say like the thin branches are your feature content, like your blogs, your, and, and your emails and newsletters that you write to your, your audience. The thicker branches are maybe the webinars and the big meaty chunky trunk That's the core message, the value proposition, the bridge messaging, all of those key components. And so because of that, leaves fall off all the time. Berries get eaten. That doesn't matter. So long as that tree is still producing fruit season after season, popping out new leaves season after season, that tree continues to grow and thrive and that trunk just gets stronger and stronger. And sure, Or sometimes a cheeky old possum's gonna come and gnaw at your bark and a little bit of your core messaging might get thrown out and grow a fresh bit there. I don't know how bark works. Clearly I'm not a plant biologist, but the analogy stands, right? And so just because someone didn't like the taste of a berry does not mean there's a problem with the trunk. Just because one person was like, oh, that leaf isn't very nice. Does not mean there's a problem with the trunk. So I think there's such a powerful analogy. I totally made that up in making this podcast, right? This is what I mean about like it all comes out in action. It comes out by actually expressing it, talking about it, explaining it, thinking about all the ways that people might argue with you or struggle to get this concept landed. Well, I've just come up with a new analogy of the difference between messaging and content, and I'm super excited and grateful to you, dear listener, for allowing me to chat this out with you and express this in such a way because this is me refining my content and this is also me making a little tiny improvement to my core message at the same time. So isn't that powerful? All right. As a big thank you for sticking with me through this, the longest podcast episode this Tashmas, I would love to give you one reminder and one gift. The reminder is my content creation virtual event is coming up on the 18th of March. It's called Social Sprint. It was what I gave as a promotion and a gift in day 1 of Tashmas. Now all of the coupons are gone. Peek behind the curtain. I'm recording this on day 3 of Tashmas. So all of the coupon codes are now gone for that. Special Tashmas offer, but early bird pricing for the Content Creation Day is still up, especially if you're listening to this on the 12th or the 13th or the early, early morning of the 14th of March, you'll still be able to join us for just $44. And for $44, you get a full day of social media content creation with me in this virtual event. Yes, the workshops and sessions will all be recorded. Some people have asked, like, is it worth buying it just to listen to the recordings? I don't know. I've never run it before. I think it will be worthwhile. But what I've mostly been saying to people is if you can't come to anything live, don't worry about buying it for now. If you can come to at least one of the sessions, then I do think it's worth investing in it to be able to come along live and at least get something done. If you come and join us for something live, I will feel great because I know that you'll walk away with content created. If you can't come to anything live and you tell yourself you're going to watch the recording and then you don't watch the recording, or you listen to the recording while you're out on a walk and then you get, oh yeah, I will do that, I'll do that, I'll do that, I'm going to do that, I'm going to do that, but you never do. I'm just gonna, I'm just not gonna be happy about that. So I'll leave it up to you to decide whether buying it if you can't attend is the right fit for you. My recommendation would be if you're going to buy Social Sprint, at least try and make it to one of the sessions live if you can. No problem if you can't, but please, please, please make a commitment to actually listening and doing the things. It's the kind of thing where listening to the recording probably works best if you're actually sitting at your computer where you can actually put it into action. There's coworking sprints so that you can actually sit down. I'm going to leave all the recordings of the, like, quiet bits in so that you can sit in the quiet as though you're live there at the coworking. So hopefully you find it really valuable. I'll stop yapping about that. Um, but make sure that you go and check that out. I'll put the link and all the details with the show notes of today's episode at tashcorbin.com/521. And my gift to you is the mega refined, very effective Resonate training. This is about crafting your core message so that it ignites the action taker in your audience. And it is one of my best free trainings I have ever run. I don't just say that because I love it and I think I've done a spectacular job. I say that because the amount of people who keep emailing me back, the only, like, I haven't even really shared this with my audience very well at all, but I've been running ads to the Resonate training. So there are a lot of people that this is the first thing they've ever seen of mine, or it's the first of my sort of longer form content they've ever consumed, and they are like really excited about this. And for them, some of the feedback has been around the fact that this is the first time it's really landed for them, and this is the first time that they've actually had the steps and structure to core messaging that they need in order to be able to feel confident that they know how to do it and that they can answer the questions that I ask through that training. They can pick certain decisions as they go through that training that mean now they feel like they've got something solid to build upon. And that is such a powerful observation that makes my heart very happy. And it's been really interesting because these two things have kind of come together at once. That I have just had far too many conversations with people who've decided their messaging is completely pants and they need to give it a complete overhaul. I've had people emailing me saying, how much is it to go and do 3 or 4 days with you because my entire messaging needs to be thrown out and started over? And I'm like, no, it doesn't. But anyway, that's something else I need to go and reply to. So that has kind of coincided with all these people watching my Resonate training going, this is spectacular. I feel so confident in my ability to do my messaging. And so that is my gift for you with today's episode of the podcast. tashcorbin.com/521 is the link that you're going to need. There's no rush to go and sign up for that one because I have a funny feeling it's going to be a core part of my lead generation strategy and my list growth strategy for a long time to come. Now, in closing, the problem is never you. Your messaging does not need to be overhauled. It takes time and practice, and I want you to take the time and have the practice. I want to see your content. I want to see you sharing. I want to read your thoughts. I want us to have philosophical arguments in the comments of your content, right? I want us to have back and forths about these different things because it is in the back and forth that the clarity and the refinement comes. And I am so excited for us to go through that process together. And finally, thank you so much for being part of Tashmas. I hope that you've found it super valuable. I mean, these live on the podcast generally for a very long time, so you might be listening to this like 6 years later. I don't know, am I still around? Who knows? Hi future you, hi future Tash, hope everything's going well. Thank you so much. Can you tell I'm delusional? It is late at night. Have an amazing rest of your week. We'll go back to normal programming with the podcast from here. You don't get Tash Every Day in podcast land for a little while, but if you want a little bit of Tash Every Day, make sure you're following me on Facebook, make sure you're on my mailing list, make sure you go and sign up for the Resonate training. And if you want to work with me any further, maybe this Tashmas has been a bit of a revelation for you, send me an email. I desperately want to hear from you. Email support@tashcorbin.com. Com. Let me know you've been listening to Tashmas Day 12. You made it to an hour and 3 minutes. That is pretty spectacular. That is an accomplish that needs to be rewarded. I will send you a congratulations and a thank you. If you want to keep working together, you've got some things that you're struggling with, you really want to get some support, get some help, get some insight. I generally have a range of different free resources, low-cost programs, as well as my high-ticket mentoring. So there's often something that will meet your needs that will help you to move a little bit further ahead regardless of what your budget might be. So send me an email, support@tashcorbin.com. Let me know what's going on. Ask any questions you want to ask and let's keep this conversation going. Thank you so much for listening to the Heart Centered Business Podcast. Until next time, I cannot wait to see you shine. Also, it's day 12. It's my birthday. It's not my birthday because I'm recording this like 9 days before my birthday, but I just realized you're listening to this on my birthday, or this is being published on my birthday. Happy birthday to me, 44 years old, still at it, still loving it. I hope that you are too. I really have to go to bed. Nighty night. Thank you so much. Love you. Bye.