Episode 10 — Transcript
Robyn Savage (00:13.516)
Hello, welcome back to the 17 minutes podcast. I'm your host Robyn Savage and I am super, super happy that you're taking the time to invest in yourself, your personal brand, your business. So today we're talking about that subtle ick factor that sort of lies
beneath the surface for a lot of you when it comes to building, scaling, marketing, selling, your brand and your business. And all of these things are connected, right? The more you sell, the more you grow. The more you market, the more people you reach, the more conversions, et cetera. And for a lot of us, while we have this dream to have recurring income or
scale our offers, to help more people, to make more money, whatever it is, underneath that goal, underneath that vision that you have for yourself, there's this whole sort of, I don't know, let's call it like a cesspool of ick. And that ick can be a lot of things, but ultimately, the most common reason that I see entrepreneurs struggling to scale, to market, to grow,
is that they are trying to perform as an entrepreneur rather than being themselves and showing up to talk about their work, to sell using their voice, to create content in a way that is truly actually who they are. And I'm talking like no layer of shmoo, no layer of inauthenticity.
No layer of performance, no layer of, my gosh, this just doesn't feel good for me. Now, this obviously requires some work. This requires you to fully understand what your voice is, how you naturally like to talk about your work. And if you don't know that, then welcome to the club. You are like one of everyone.
Robyn Savage (02:40.162)
who was never taught that, right? And authentic marketing has become such a buzzy thing over the last decade, really. When we started to learn that people connect more with people than they do businesses, marketing took this like giant turn, right? We saw businesses hiring influencers to do the marketing for them so that that influencer could promote the brand and the products so that the person was representing the business.
And then we saw this go to micro influencers who are people with even smaller communities and followings. And that was having a huge reach and massive success because what we learned is that you don't need a huge audience to be trusted. What you do need to be trusted is a consistent voice, an authentic voice, persuasion, conversation. You need to build trust, right? So we have these giant corporations.
now hiring people with 10,000 followers or less to promote their brands because they know that ultimately the best style of marketing, the best way to grow is by getting people to connect their products to other people. And this in itself gives us a lot of information. This tells us that personal brands are really powerful, right? And so if you are in a position where you are trying to market, to sell your services, your offers, your products,
And you aren't leveraging the personal elements of who you are. You're performing. You're copying really old sales tactics. You're forcing urgency. You're trying to nurture more than you should be, et cetera, et cetera. If you're falling into this trap, then the ick factor for you is high. The problem with this is that when you are operating from a place of ick, it's not just a feeling for you.
You are actually, and I'm going to sound super dramatic when I say this, but I really want this to land with you. You're actually lying to your audience. That's why it feels yucky, right? You're trying to be someone that you're not. And that doesn't feel good. That feels like you trying to like pull the rug over someone's eyes to get them to buy something. And I don't know about you, but that's not an integrity with me.
Robyn Savage (05:06.796)
And when we operate out of integrity, it's really hard to keep ourselves in momentum. It's really hard to feel genuine excitement in your bones. It's really hard to continue to show up that way because you're trying to keep up a lie, a subtle lie, but a lie. Okay? Now your body knows this. This is the thing that catches so many people off guard. So many people that I work with.
will implement the high level funnels. They will have the ads. They will be posting daily content. They will have the offers. They'll have the client testimonials to prove that their offer works. They're in a really good situation. And because they're trying to perpetuate this ongoing persona that isn't actually who they are, this cesspool of emotions only continues to grow.
It continues to fester. continues to feel, it continues to feel yucky from that place. It's going to be very hard to scale. Impossible. Probably not. mean, there's a lot of business people in the world who operate this way, right? Who probably fall asleep at night and know that what they're doing isn't entirely aligned with who they are, but they can do it anyways. Right? That's not you. Solo entrepreneurs.
Creative entrepreneurs, heart led, soul, embodied, passionate, creative, impact driven entrepreneurs have a really hard time keeping up the facade. They have a really hard time performing over long periods of time because when you are operating out of alignment, when you are not marketing in a way that is authentic or natural or honest and easy for you, you will burn out.
hands down 100%, you will hit a wall. And when you hit that wall, you will have a day where you are like, I just can't do this anymore. This is not available for me anymore. This feels too yucky. It's like the cesspool of emotions, the cesspool of lack of integrity, the cesspool of these like mini micro lies with every piece of content that you put out there is just, it gets bigger than the payoff. And when that happens,
Robyn Savage (07:30.573)
you will stop. You will ghost your audience. You will stop selling your offers. You will ditch the launch, whatever it is. So what we want to do is we want to learn how to market in a way that feels deeply aligned, deeply in integrity with who we are as people so that we can sustain it, right? Scaling, growing, long-term success requires sustainable marketing efforts. And sustainable marketing efforts
is marketing that feels effortless for you, that feels natural, that feels like who you are. Okay? So you may be someone who likes, who's naturally wired for direct selling. You might be that person who's like, yep, I wanna make the transaction. I wanna close the deal. I want it to be fast paced. I wanna get it done and dusted. And that's amazing. And then in that case, the things that are not gonna work for you are long form nurture sequences.
Right? Super long sales pages that feel like novels that to you seem to just like drag on and drag on and drag on over time. If you are a direct seller over time, you are going to be like, Oh my God. I, if I literally have to have one more sales conversation, I'm going to, I'm going to just go float in that cesspool over there. And that will be my new me. That will be me from now on. Okay. We want to protect you.
We want to put boundaries in place. We want to honor the authentic you that is wired for success so that you don't burn out and bury yourself. Okay. Now, if you are someone who really thrives on connection, relationship building, nurturing, having that trust and that ongoing conversation, then direct sales are going to have the exact same result for you. You're going to run away.
consider getting a nine to five job every other week because again, you're acting in a way that's requiring you to perform. So this happened to me. A lot of you will know my story about closing my seven figure coaching business. And I want to take you down this road for just a minute because this was a real defining moment in my own journey as an entrepreneur. I think it's, it's, yeah, it's relatable.
Robyn Savage (09:54.765)
for a lot of you, there's also some really important lessons in here. So I was running a seven figure coaching business with one of my best friends, Jack, and the coaching business grew really fast. And at first it was like such a dream come true. The messaging, the community that we were building, it was everything that I ever hoped for.
in terms of supporting female entrepreneurs, having these conversations that literally no one at the time was having, and really diving into the deeper layers of entrepreneurship as a multi-dimensional, creative, energetic being, right? More than numbers, more than data, like who are you? So we were like trotting along, everything was growing, everything was really great, and then over...
The couple of years, the lifespan of the business was actually really short, but over the couple of years, the messaging started to shift. I started to get really into my branding work. I started to move a little bit away from the energetics. And at this time, the coaching industry was like taking off, like the boom in, you know, 2020, 2021. And so the messaging got a little bit.
skewed from what it was, how it started. And I remember starting to feel this ick, starting to feel this layer of insecurity. And the fascinating thing was the insecurity wasn't in myself. The doubt wasn't in myself. The fear wasn't in me. Like, am I not doing my best work? Am I not providing value?
Am I not capable? It wasn't that. It wasn't imposter syndrome. It wasn't self-sabotage. It was more this feeling of something is not right here. And when you get the feeling that something is not right in your brand or business, your responsibility is to ask, what is it? Is my messaging off? Am I creating content in a way that is not?
Robyn Savage (12:12.803)
True for me, do I like this content? Would I watch this content? Am I proud of this content? And for me, the answer to those questions started to be no.
Now, what's really cool about this is that I acted on it almost right away. I started to have the feeling. I started to explore it. I started to ask myself the questions. And when it fully landed for me, I was like, okay, that's it. I'm out, you know? But what a lot of entrepreneurs do is rather than acting on it, they continue to push themselves, right? They continue to push themselves because there's a lot on the line.
income, community, followers, impact. mean, mostly like, what do I do now? Now I've got myself in this situation where I'm creating content in this way, or now this is my message, or now these are my offers. And pivoting, shifting to get back in integrity, to get back in alignment can feel like a lot of work. Not only a lot of work, but also like, where do I start? Right?
And that's where I found myself. I found myself at this moment of like, okay, if I'm not doing this in this way anymore, because this is out of integrity and what the cesspool of it is too big for me to shove down or to ignore like now what? Right. And what I did from there was I created a personal brand that was authentically genuinely a hundred percent rooted in my truth, my strengths.
my message, my voice, my energy, everything, every word I use, every real audio, every message that I share, everything in my personal brand became this true expression of who I am. No settling, no crossing my boundaries, no doing things to perform because it's gonna get likes, nothing, okay? Every word went through a sieve.
Robyn Savage (14:19.565)
Like, is this my intention? Is this an integrity? Now what happened on the other side of that was pretty fucking amazing. What happened on the other side of that was that I met myself as the entrepreneur that I want to be. No more cesspool, no more doubt, no more lack of integrity, no more misaligned values, no more languaging that didn't feel like me, no more hesitation in my voice, in my marketing, in my sales strategies.
because I was operating as who I am. I'm not sure if you can imagine what this feels like, but all of the stress and anxiety that I had and carried in my business was suddenly gone. Just gone. You know, like the number one thing that I love about authenticity is that authenticity doesn't require you to think. You just be.
So when you're marketing from a place of full authenticity, there's literally no extra effort. Yes, you have to record the podcast. Yes, you have to record the reel. Yes, you have to hit record, write the caption. There's still a doing involved, but the marketing itself is being. How do I want to say this? What's the value I want to provide? What do I want people to know? How do I want to naturally show up to connect with people
about this service that I'm providing, about the product that I'm selling, how can I communicate in a way that is literally just me being myself? And when you start to act this way and you let go and you surrender everything that is not you, your brand and your business click into place. Your brand starts to represent who you are, which is so magnetic.
There's this thing that happens when the performance falls away, right? People start feeling you, people start resonating with you deeply, and people trust you faster when they can tell that you're a human being a human on the other side of the screen. They don't want you to act like a business. Remember that people connect faster with people. So if you show up as a person, people are gonna build trust with you and connect with you and resonate with you.
Robyn Savage (16:46.023)
so much faster than if you are trying to show up like a one person corporation. We don't want that. You don't want that, right? You started this business to have freedom. So keeping yourself locked in this jail cell of how you should be doing things is only restricting you. It's only putting pressure on you. It's only holding you back from actually activating
the magnetic marketing, the connections, the trust, the growth that happens only when you are yourself. That authenticity, and just think about this, right? Think about friends, think about strangers, think about people that you meet at events, out and about, even at the grocery store. The person who is most themselves, you walk away thinking like,
man, what a refreshing conversation that was, you know, or, man, I like, really loved meeting Mary. She was so awesome. Like, my God, that was hilarious when that person just like rolled her eyes in the grocery line and was just so expressed as herself. We remember those moments because we see them as genuine. Okay. The other thing that happens here is there's a moment
or there's not a moment. Can't remember what it's called. There's something, actually just going to skip this part. So I want you to allow yourself to think about this in terms of your marketing. If authenticity means that I don't have to try and I don't have to think about who I'm being, it just is the most natural expression of me, then who would I be? How would I market? How would I sell?
How would I naturally show up to talk about these things? I want you to take as much of the performance out of it as possible. The most obvious example that I have here is like, if you are not a dancer, please, for the love of God, do not try to do a dancing reel if you don't want to. If you want to become a dancer and you desire to share that journey, then by all means, that will be highly engaged content. Your audience will love that. But if you are trying to dance,
Robyn Savage (19:10.873)
for the sake of getting attention, getting validation, selling your offers because you think that's what's gonna work for you, it's not because you're over-efforting. Okay, so here's what I want you to know. If there is an ick cesspool in your business, it has got to go. Now, a lot of people are so, especially empaths, hands up if you're an empath, me, highly.
If you're an empath, if you're absorbing information, content, consuming information from anyone all day long, then you are becoming this sponge to everything around you. Other people's emotions, other people's strategies, other people's expertise, other people's experiences, stories, results, et cetera. You need to become so discerning in what you want to enter you.
what you want to let in, right? You need to become so specific around what advice you follow because anything that you let in, if not you, if not authentic, is going to add to the cesspool. And I know that's not your intention, but that's what's happening. Every strategy you try, every sales tactic, every viral reel that you try and mimic or replicate or implement in your brand and business,
if not fully aligned with you and who you are, is 100 % going to add to the sense of restriction, pressure, and performance that you experience in your brand and business. And that is going to reduce your ability to connect with your audience. We don't want that. We want to eliminate as much of the restriction, pressure, and performance as possible so that your audience can connect with you in a millisecond.
right? So that they can feel you, so that they can hear your truth, so that they feel the genuine you in all of your messages. Okay? So the behavioral science work and the way that we build authentic personal brands isn't by trying on all of these guru strategies that seem to work for other people. What we want to do is build a personal brand from the inside out. And this is going to make a lot of sense when you really hear me say this, but
Robyn Savage (21:34.797)
When you build your personal brand from the inside out, based on your strengths, your behavioral patterns, your communication style, your decision-making style, your leadership style, your energetic capacity, your connection style, your relationship building style, all of the things. When we tap into the truth of who you are and build from that place, my gosh, the...
performance, the restriction, the pressure that you're feeling goes away because suddenly you have this clear picture of who you are and you can build a strategy from that place, from that centered, from that true, from that authentic place. And here's what happens when so many people begin to work with me. They get their identity report because they're wanting to move to their next level. They're wanting to grow. They're wanting to scale. And that cesspool of
you know, emotions that are the result of restriction pressure and performance. Those emotions are holding them back. They create this literal barricade, this literal block. Like you cannot bypass it. It's there until it's not. It's there until you start operating differently. Right. So a lot of people will come to me and be like, I have the offer. I'm fucking good at what I do. I know that. And something here is not clicking. Something here is not feeling good to me.
100 % of the time in what I have seen, it is a misalignment with authenticity. They're lacking something that is true for them. And as soon as they turn that switch on, something shifts. Their message lands, content becomes easier and converts better. They get higher visibility because they're taking up more space or they're speaking in their voice.
They're leveraging their content creator type. They're selling the way that they're meant to be selling. And because that barrier is gone, the connection is faster. So trust is developed faster. So the conversion happens faster.
Robyn Savage (23:46.447)
Do I think that it's easy to build an authentic personal brand? No, I don't. Especially not today when we are all being bombarded by so much information. And my advice to every single entrepreneur who's ready to scale to 5K, 10K, 30, 50, 100K months is to get more you. Tap into even more of your authentic voice.
Tap into even more of your strategic sales strategy. Use it, leverage it, amplify it, double down on it. Don't go try something that someone else did that worked for them because that's gonna create pressure restriction and performance. More of you is always the answer. Particularly at a moment in time when AI is doing so much of the creation for us, I really believe
that this is a moment in time when your voice, your true authenticity, whatever that means for you, whether that means more expression or less expression and deeper truths, whether that means stepping into the role of the strategic educator and teaching, we all have a different way, a different approach, a different set of behavioral
patterns a unique operating system that is going to drive success the most effectively and efficiently for each of us and that requires us to tap all the way in to who we are and to get strategic from that place if you want to find out who you are in terms of Entrepreneurship how am I meant to sell market who is my sole client based on?
who I am, what are they attracted to, what are they looking for in me, what's my persuasion style, my communication style, what are the best formats of content for me to use, how often should I be marketing, how long should my launches be. You guys, the Identity Report takes out all of the question marks. What I love hearing from everyone who's gotten their Identity Reports is, holy shit, this landed. Like, my gosh, I've never had something so
Robyn Savage (26:07.823)
articulate, express and show me exactly who I am. The implementation is also immediate. There's an action plan in the identity report that you can implement right away. So there's no additional question marks. And those question marks pull you further away from who you are, right? When you don't know who you are authentically, that's when you're gonna start to question yourself. That's when you're gonna start to...
Scroll and try and figure out what should I post today? What should I be? What should I be sharing? How should I be selling? What should my launch look like when you don't know how you are meant to operate? It's really hard to stay in your lane because you don't know what your lane is You're trying to figure it out and the identity report is gonna help you do that. So Links in the show notes if you want to grab your identity report to dive in but the question that I would leave you with today is am I being
my real true self in my brand and business? Am I in 100 % integrity? Am I being as much me as I can? And what's in my cesspool over here? What are the feelings like, ugh, I hate selling, come to the sales by design workshop. You're going to learn a lot there. Ugh, marketing myself, promoting my offers feel so uncomfortable.
Great, get your identity report and get your entirely personalized marketing strategy based on your behavioral wiring. When you know and when you see yourself, you cannot unsee it. So what will happen is that you'll see someone suggesting a sales strategy out there in the big wide world and you will know in that moment, no, that is not for me. That's not for me. I don't like long nurture sequences. I'm a quick direct closer.
And I'm not going to even listen to that. So you don't even let it come into your fields. Talk about relief, right? Talk about setting yourself free. So I want you to really question how authentic you're genuinely being and how you could bring more of yourself into your brand. Even if you want some support with that, obviously I'm always here. If you love this podcast episode, let me know on socials, tag me at robyn underscore savage, share this with your community.
Robyn Savage (28:23.471)
Rate the podcast, leave a review and follow along and let's do this. More you equals more of all of the things that you want. And I know that that's scary, but I need you to believe that you are enough. I need you to believe that the real you over there is exactly what your business and your clients want. I love you and I will see you next week on the 17 minutes podcast. Ciao.
