Create Stand Out Content & Memorable Messaging With Clair Stevenson (Episode 42)

If you struggle with creating content for your business or you worry about getting seen and heard , this is the perfect podcast episode for you and your small business. 

Rachel is joined by content expert, Clair Stevenson, who shares exactly how you can create memorable messaging that resonates with your audience, helping you to get more clients.

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Meet this week's guest - Clair Stevenson

Clair is the founder and director of content marketing consultancy Up Write Ltd, teaching business owners how to become their own marketing department.

Knowing what to say and how to say it, Clair specialises in working with coaches, consultants and service-based businesses to attract more of the right kind of clients.

Clair started her business in 2018 after deciding at the age of 40 that there was more to life than the 9-5 and sitting in traffic on the A470 for 2 hours every day.

Building her business from the scratch she replaced her full-time salary and eventually retired her husband so that he could stay at home with the kids while she worked with other female entrepreneurs helping them to build their dream businesses.

Clair spends her free time walking her dogs or swimming in the sea when she can. She lives in the Rhondda with her three children, husband, two dogs and a cat.

Visit Clair's website  for more resources to creating your memorable content: http://www.upwriteonline.co.uk

And connect with Clair here:
https://www.facebook.com/upwriteonline
https://www.linkedin.com/in/clairstevensoncontentstrategy

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Transcript

0:00

welcome to the money, mindset and miracles podcast. Helping you to grow a predictable and scalable months of high income from your business as gracefully as possible. I'm Rachel Smith business coach mindset expert. And the founder of momentum mastermind, your 90-day sprint to scaling your business to five care. Join me every week as I dive into the tips, inspirational stories and strategies that are going to support you on your journey. To growing your awesome business. Hello and a really warm welcome to this very special podcast episode where I am joined by the fantastic Claire Stevenson. She's gonna be talking about one of the key areas that every single business needs to nail in their business, and Claire is going to. Take you through what you can do to really make your messaging memorable and take the pressure off creating content. I can't wait for you to meet Claire. Um, Claire's been in my world for a little while and, uh, her content, honestly, sometimes it just makes me laugh out loud. And there's one story in particular, and Claire know which one it is that I'm like, the first time she shared it online, I was like, That is bold, but I think, you know, that is like one of your like amazing attributes is that you create such. Content that does stand out and it really resonates with your audience, and I know that you've built a really successful business through that. So let me just introduce who Claire is and then we'll get into today's content because it is amazing. So, uh, Claire is the founder and director of content marketing consultancy, right? Limited. Teaching business owners how to become their own marketing department. Yes. Knowing what to say and how to say it. Claire specializes in working with coaches, consultants, and other service-based businesses to attracting the right kind of clients. So we're gonna be talking about content today. And before we into this, Claire, you. Becoming a business owner. So can you just share with the audience, just, you know, your story of how you came to be running this business that you're running today? Yeah, sure. So I was, um, I think I was just, I was just 40 and I had been working for, well, working since I was 15. Um, and I didn't really know any other way. I'd never entertained being self-employed or running a business. You know, I was telling myself the usual stories I. Didn't, you know, I hadn't done business studies in school or in college. You know, I didn't feel like I was probably motivated or, you know, worked hard enough to be one of those people who ran their own business. Um, and I, I didn't really, I had no idea of what I could sell or what I would even start a business in. So it just, it wasn't on my radar. Um, I had my third and final baby. I always say Final baby. I'm very, it was adamant there were no more babies after that, and I had just come back to work. It was kind of, it was a perfect storm really. I had my, my final baby, I'd hit 40 and, and I say hit 40. I'd kind of crash, landed into 40, and I had just come back from a lengthy maternity leave. And a couple of things happened. I was spending a lot of time sitting in my car on the way to work and on the way home, and I worked it out and it was 60 hours a month, sat in my car. Wow. Commute was awful. And. It wasn't time that I was spending with the kids. I wasn't working, I wasn't being productive. I wasn't doing anything I enjoyed. I was just stressed for an hour at the, at the start of the day, really need to get there, and then feeling guilty every day on the way home because I wasn't getting home to, to be with the kids. So I kind of thought, God, do I wanna be doing this in five years time? And is this what I want my life to look like in five years time? And it absolutely wasn't. And then at the same time, a couple of things happened at work. I didn't really feel appreciated, and I thought, why am I doing this? Why am I spending all this time and all this heartache for something that ultimately doesn't feel rewarding at all? So, It was a bit of a knee jerk decision really. I was, I'd spoken to somebody else who was a copywriter and they said, oh, you could start your own copywriting business and you could write for other people. And then one day I was driving to work, um, a truck hit me, ripped the side of my car off, took all my body work off, and I thought, I am not losing my life for this job. And, and that was it really. I handed in my notice and started my business as a social media manager and a copywriter. Amazing. Well, not amazing, you know, all those things that kind of got you to that point, but amazing that you just took that leap of faith and it was just like, I'm just gonna do it. It was really interesting actually because I, somebody told me about freelancer groups, and so I posted the question in a freelancer group, what would you do? Would you just quit your job and go for it, or would you save up for three to six months and then go for it? And every time somebody answered or I'd save up, I knew in my gut that wasn't what I wanted to do. I knew that I just wanted to go for it. So I did. I said to my, luckily my husband was working full-time, and I said to him, just give me a year to get this off the ground and if it doesn't work, I'll get a job. And you know, the rest is history. And in October, my business will be five years old. Amazing. One of my favorite quotes is from, um, the Artist Swear, which is written by Julia Cameron, and she says, uh, leap and the net will appear. And I think your net definitely appeared at that point, didn't it? It was like, I'm gonna hold you. But with that, and this is something I talk to my audience about all the time, is that it sounds like you started your business with really great intention. Like, give me a year, let me see if I can make this work. So, you know, did that really kind of propel you forward? Really help you to take some of those big leaps that have got you to the point where you are today. Yeah, I think, I think there was a couple of things going on at the time. And previous to meeting my husband and having that final baby, I'd been a single parent for 15 years. Mm. So I kind of, I was quite a resilient person. Yeah. But also I was quite a resourceful person. Um, and, you know, I've had to pay my bills, my own bills. I've been in significant debt. I've been in some really touch and go situations. And what that does is it kind of, I will say, you know, I, I'm like a cat. I've got a, I've got a land on my feet because there's no other choice. And I think, I never treated my husband's job as it was a security blanket, but I never really saw it as that. I always saw it as I have to make this work or I have to go back to work, and I really didn't wanna go back to work. Yeah. Yeah. And, and that is such a driver, isn't it? It's very similar to my own story. So obviously you became a social media. Manager and now that's kind of translated into something quite different, which is about really helping people with their marketing now. It's one of the biggest challenges I see people struggle with. You know, people come to me and they're doing a lot of things right in their business, but actually being consistent with creating content which is compelling and resonates with our audience and actually, Is helping them to achieve the results they're wanting is something that people really, really struggle with. So, you know, what is the biggest struggle that you see for online businesses when it comes to creating really good content? So I think for me, the, the top struggle is that people don't know what to say and they don't know how to say it. Right. So, especially, you know, I work with service-based businesses, so they are, you know, they're, they're coaches, career coaches, executive coaches. They're, you know, they're health professionals. They, they have a relationship with their, with their clients, right. And they are. They're not just solving one problem and they're not just delivering one service. So what I see a lot of is, look, I do so much. My prob, my clients come to me with so many different problems. I just, I don't know where to start. And because they don't know where to start, they or they're, they're procrastinating because they don't know what the. Best thing to talk about is it's like, you know, when you know you were a kid and used to stand in front of the suite counter and you were told that you could, you could choose a suite. Mm-hmm. And you just didn't know which one to pick because you were so afraid of making the wrong decision and regretting it, that you just, you couldn't make a decision. I mean, I was in a restaurant the other day and I was like, oh my God, I, I dunno what to choose because what if my food comes and then I'll look at someone else's food and I'll think, oh, I should have had that food. And that's, that's really where I see people getting stuck first, is there's so much they could be doing. Yeah. And there's, there's an expert over here saying, grow your TikTok. There's another expert saying, uh, Pinterest is the biggest, uh, search engine, uh, after Google. And then there's another voice over here saying you must have a YouTube channel. So it's very conflicting, isn't it? About what to do, and I've definitely been like, I'm gonna do this, I'm gonna do this. And you just spread yourself really thinly. Mm. Yeah. And I would to that, I would say it's, it is really gotta make sense. I mean, you know, TikTok might make sense for someone else. You know, YouTube might make sense for another person. Instagram works well for somebody else. It's really about what makes sense for you. Where are your clients, you know, rather than trying to be doing what everybody else is doing. What is right for your clients? Where are they go, you know, f where are they first, first and foremost. You know, you can always add things in, but you, you know, you have to start with one platform. Yeah. You know, really nail that message and then you can repurpose out. Yeah, yeah. Absolutely. And I think this is something that people need to have the confidence to do that rather than thinking they've got to do a bit of everything, so. They've got to have that confidence to say, I'm actually gonna really focus on this one thing. And to, and it's the same across the board with lots of the market, uh, lots of the aspects of business is that people do get really like, oh, I should be over here. And it's like, Stay in your lane, keep going. Be consistent and just you will start to see the benefits, but I think it just takes a level of confidence for people to do that. So let's get into your content today. Cause the thing that you are sharing today is about how to create standout content and memorable messaging. So how are my audience going to do that, Claire? Okay, so the, the first thing you need to do is you need to be really specific, right? So understanding your ideal client is a non-negotiable starting point. For me, with any of my clients, we, we've got to understand who they are, and that doesn't mean, you know, where do they go shopping? What magazines do they buy? You know, have they got a cat or have they got a dog? I mean, those, that kind of demographic information is important at a later stage. Um, and it's really important if you're selling pet food, but if you're in a service-based business, then you really need to understand how is their problem impacting their life and how is it making them feel? What are kind of the consequences of not getting that problem solved? And what are all the potential benefits of getting the, the problem solved? Because you really need to understand what is going on for them, what is prompting them. To buy. What are the, the psychological and emotional drivers, you know, that, that are motivating them and what is it gonna do for them, the transformation that you are offering? So you have to understand that first, because if you don't understand them, and if you really are just going to say, my ideal client is anyone with money, then you are. If you're talking to everyone you're talking to, no one. And you know, you're not gonna be able to create content that really stands out. For me. The second thing is being really specific about the promise that you are making. Mm-hmm. So what is someone going to be able to do or have once they finished working with you? And my rule of thumb is, you know, is to under promise and over-deliver. Right. But be really, and be really, I would say, It's, it's difficult to describe. So I think, you know, we, we are all looking around and I think what people can fall into is the trap of comparisonitis. So there are lots of, you know, lots of people making standard promises, making, you know, big financial promises or time-based promises. And again, like we said about having the confidence to do less so, Have the confidence to have a really specific promise and own the value of that promise. Because you know when, if you are looking around thinking, oh, well, you know, I need to sound like that person, or I should offer what that person is offering, then how is anybody gonna be able to distinguish you from that person? Um, I think another, another key issue is understanding your ideal client's fears, but also your own fears. So whenever anybody writes content, I. We, we kind of, we play this game where we're mentally rehearsing all the potential responses, right? So, oh, what if they think this? Or what if people, I mean, I was chatting to a client yesterday and she said, she was talking about how she felt, At an event last week and how she felt like she'd really become really resilient as, as a, an effect, as a direct effect of this event she's done. But she said she was really reluctant to share how she felt in case people thought she was attention seeking. And I think what we do a lot of the time is we put our content through this fear filter. So we're, we're kind of overly concerned. It's really a natural thing to do. Loads of people do it, but we're, we are mind reading how people are gonna respond to our content and I would. I would encourage people to kind of go, well, if this is your fear, or if you think that people might respond in that way, what is the absolute best thing that could happen and why don't we start rehearsing those really good responses? Because ultimately, The people who are gonna react negatively towards our content, they're not our ideal clients. Yeah. It's the people who are gonna read our stuff and go, yes, I agree. Or That really touched me, or that happened to me, or, oh yeah. I feel exactly the same way. Those are the people that we are writing for. Yeah. Um, and if we are always working to avoid a negative reaction. You're ultimately creating content for people who you don't want to buy your staff, which is really counterproductive. I think that's such an interesting thing to bring out, actually, Claire and I think we often talk about, you know, ideal client and just, you know, talking to that one person. But I think the idea that anybody that you might upset with your content, they're not your ideal clients. So just focus on just speaking to the heart of your ideal cl. Client and the more like vulnerable or authentic or even if you need to call'em out on their bs. The more that you can do that and the braver that you can be with your content, the more that you will actually stand out. But not just, it's not just about creating content for standing out, it's allowing people to see themselves in your message so they know that they're not alone, that they're not the only one who has done something or felt something. And for them to see the value in your messaging and for them to get something, even if they never speak to you or never see another piece of your content, that they know that that one piece of content has helped them shift forward in some way. Yeah, so there are, there are two rules of thumb that I've got for writing content and, and it's exactly what I said to this client. I said, well, if you know, people could think that you were attention seeking, so, But people, what people think is well out of your control. Yeah. Um, so focus on what you can control. And my number one rule is mean. What you say and say what you mean. So even if people disagree with you, which the chances are people are allowed to disagree with you, your business will survive. People disagreeing with you, there are plenty of people who disagree with you. There are people who disagree that the world is round. You know, I mean, you, you can't argue with those people. You are not there to please implicate everybody. You are there to appeal to a certain type of person. And the other general rule, which I think, you know, I encourage all my clients to write their content to, is. What do I want someone to know, think, feel, or do when I have, when they have finished reading this piece of content? So what do you want them to think about you, about the topic, about your service, about the message? How do you want them to feel about. The message about your service, about you. What do you want them to do? What do you want them to do when they finished reading it? What action do you want them to take? So it's really about giving every piece of content that you create a really important job. Mm-hmm. Yeah. I love that. I love that. So important, isn't it? I think sometimes when people aren't feeling confident about the content, they're just creating something because then they can tick off that they've created some content, but it's actually the ones that. Speak to your heart that you remember, but I love that, that you get your clients to really have intention behind their content creation. Yeah. Amazing. Claire. Thank you for that. So obviously you've been in business for five years now, and the question that I ask my audience, um, every guest who comes onto the podcast is this question, which is, you know, after five years of being in business and there's gonna be your highs and your lows as well in all of that, you know, if you were starting out again right now, what is the one thing that you do differently in your business now? So when I started my business, the person who egged me on and I didn't need much egging on, told me that the most important thing that I needed to do was work on my mindset and that I needed to do it constantly. And I, and I did it. And I did it for a while. And when I was doing it, my business thrived. Every time I stopped doing it is when. I started doubting myself. I put out offers that didn't work. My messaging went a bit foggy. I was like, oh, I lost bit of confidence. I lost momentum. And then as soon as I started working on it again, things picked back up again. So I think if I could kind of travel back in time and stand next to 2018, Claire, I would say, Never stop. The mindset would never stop every single day. Never, never stop because it's, I think it's completely normal for business to have ups and downs and highs and lows and I, you know, I wouldn't want anybody to who's going through a rough patch in their business to take that personally or, or think it's a sign of their ability. But I would say that the secret to, it's not even a secret, I would say the key to resilience and the key to success. Is that is the keeping the going with the mindset stuff, really taking care of yourself and really asking yourself, who am I? What am I about? What is important to me? Why do I do the things that I do in the way that I do them? Why is that important to me? And really locking in to who you are. Yeah, I think that, yeah, I totally agree with you. Um, you know, on this podcast there are stack of mindset, um, Resources as well. My most downloaded minds, um, podcast episode is actually my walking meditation, and it's so surprising that, you know, there's so much content on the podcast already, and every time I check the starts it's like, it's the mindset. Pieces that people keep coming to. Cause I think we we're beginning to understand more and more how important that is. And it's 95% of your mind is your unconscious thoughts and they drive, you know, how you think, what actions you take. It drives absolutely everything. So I think you're absolutely right to to say that. Yeah, definitely. I'm glad that, um, You know that you, you've got that, you've got that sorted. Amazing. So thank you Claire, so much for being here, for being a guest here on the podcast. You have been amazing. So many nuggets there for people to take, and I recommend that people go back and listen to what you were saying, take some notes, and really be brave and very confident in your content creation. For people who are like, oh, I need a bit more Claire in my life. How can people keep in touch with you, Claire? So you can find me on LinkedIn. I am Claire Stevenson, and that's with a V, not a pH. And on my website I've got loads of freebies. I've got loads of blogs. Um, and so you can just go and binge my stuff. There's loads of how to stuff on there. Loads of free resources, and that is www.uprightonline.co.uk. Amazing. And I will put your, um, details down in the show notes. So there will be, uh, the links to all your social media and to that one as well so that people can go click on it. And just, I said I have a lovely binge. Claire, thank you so much for being here. You have been amazing. I can't wait for people to listen to this content. Speak to you again soon. Bye.