This morning I asked in my Facebook group, what is your why? This is such a common question around entrepreneurs right? We’ve got our vision boards and our mantras, but that’s not the why I was talking about.
People don’t buy what you do, they buy why you do it.
Are people going to work with your business for the reason that your “Why” you’re in business is that you want to work at home in your yoga pants? Probably not. Are they going to hire you because your business “why” is that you want more flexibility in your schedule? They might appreciate your drive, but it’s not going to make them support your business.
The WHY of your business goes deeper than just your personal reasons for starting the business. Your WHY needs to be the very culture and messaging of your business.
There are a hundred thousand writers out there, why should they hire you? There are thousands upon thousands of coaches. Why you? Why your business?
I don’t know about you, but when I start thinking about those questions, I automatically switch to the “What”. What I provide, the adjectives, right? I do it better. I can provide services faster.
But that’s gaining customers on, novelty, not loyalty.
When you switch the focus to gaining customers on loyalty, that’s when your business will explode.
So, there’s a scientific reason why this works. When you show up and stay consistent to your WHY of business, that’s when you’re appealing to the limbic btain, which is the center of your brain. The limbic brain is responsible for our feelings, like trust and loyalty. When you focus on what you offer, you’re only attracting the neocortex, which is the analytical side.
That’s why when we listen to our instinct or our knee jerk GUT reaction, it’s a decision from our limbic brain. It’s when we ignore our gut instincts and listen to manipulative sales tactics, that we experience buyers’ remorse. And manipulative tactics include things like those countdown timers we’ve all seen or sale prices, free bonuses, etc. They aren’t necessarily sleazy ways to do business, and they work, they work pretty well, but it’s not going to built a loyal audience. The second their friend says “Oh, well I hired this designer instead”, if there’s no loyalty to you and your services, they’ll jump ship.
Knowing your WHY and being consistent with that is going to attract your people. When you’re consistent, it creates an understanding and a brand loyalty, right? It’s just like Apple computers. In the Steve Jobs era, their following was compared to a cult. Their company culture and focus has changed in the last couple of years, and their stock prices are reflecting that.
When you’ve got brand loyalty, the competition doesn’t matter. You can CHARGE more for your services and people have built a relationship with you based on identifying with your company why or your culture. You can take longer to deliver because you’ve built loyalty and trust. When you try to sell your services based on being the cheapest, the fastest or offering steep discounts, you’re not creating brand loyalty. If you’re offering your services for free, you might get a fast “yes” on your proposal, but you’re not working with someone that is going to come back again if you raise your prices.
You need to focus on helping your clients make decisions based on feelings, not facts. And you can’t do that if you aren’t 100% clear on the WHY behind your business. People choose you for your voice, your personality, your relationship with them. As long as you’re consistent in your who, what, when, where and why, you’re acting as a leader in your business, and people want to follow a leader. They trust someone who acts as a leader.
So, how do you do this? You’ve gotta dig deep and understand your external business WHY. You need to analyze all the different areas of what you offer, who you want to help, how you help them, and when people need you the most.
When those items are consistent across the board, that’s when you’re showing up as an authentic business, and THAT is the sweet spot of building trust and loyalty. That’s when people will hire you because it just FEELS right.
For the last year, I pussy footed around with my whats. What I offer. What I do. Who I help. How I help them. It wasn’t until I became clear on my WHY that things started to fall in place for me, and showing up consistently started to feel really good.
So even though I know marketing, I know design, I can occasionally write copy that doesn’t suck, my WHY is about being kind and building relationships with people.
My parents always tell me stories about being a little girl on vacation and finding anyone my same height and age and instantly wanting them to be my friend. We vacationed in Florida once, and I met a little girl who was French and didn’t speak a word of English. And we played and played and played.
My why is being able to relate to people. So, while my WHAT might be teaching you how to run Facebook ads, you better believe that it’s going to tie back to my WHY or “how can you use this ad to build relationships with your audience”. If we’re talking about the technical details of creating a sales funnel, you KNOW that it’s going to be based on not only what works, but what is going to help you build loyalty through your brand. Because a sales funnel is basically a trust funnel, right?
Everything I do, is going to be driven from focusing on being a good and kind human and building relationships with people and teaching them to do the same thing with their online marketing.
So, if you’re in a position where you don’t fully KNOW your why yet, and you’re still operating and marketing based on your whats, then I have a worksheet for you to download.
Since you’re likely reading this on your phone, or on your computer with your phone in your hand, so text FBLIVE to +1 (773) 770-4377 and I’ll have the worksheet emailed to you.
Alternatively, you can go to alliebjerk.com/why/ and sign up to have it emailed to you.
