Britney Gardner 00:03

Alright, Michelle, I am super excited for this conversation. I say that basically at the start of every show, but you get an extra special one, because you have the great honor of being a repeat guest on Know, Like & Trust Show.

Michelle Mazur 00:15

Oh my gosh, I do feel very honored. I know it's been six years since we last a while, but I'm excited to be back.

Britney Gardner 00:25

Yeah, I like what you said, honored as if it's like a real honor. Because, you know, like, there's like, Oh, I've done this, this and this and had been on Britney show twice. I mean, it doesn't quite cut that list. But

Michelle Mazur 00:37

I like it, it means a lot to me.

Britney Gardner 00:39

Good. That sounds good. Well, I've been following you for a while if the listeners cannot tell her. And I just I love everything you do. And I love how you talk about messaging. And I've been an avid listener of your own podcast, as well as your podcast that you co host with Maggie Patterson - Duped, it's just such a fantastic show that I think anyone in the online business world like owes it to themselves to come check out. So you know, nod, wink, wink, everyone. But you have The 3 word rebellion. And maybe it was three worlds of rebellion? I don't know. But

Michelle Mazur 01:16

it could be very good. That can be true.

Britney Gardner 01:20

But, I would like to talk about that a little bit. And I saw when you originally launched it several years back. And it's so intriguing to me, I know that you've revamped your book. And you're you're you know, moving on and you've got, you know, obviously a fantastic roster of clients. But But how did you first happen upon this?

Michelle Mazur 01:41

Yeah, I happened upon this when I was at a point of I just can't do this anymore in my business. So before I had this iteration of the business, I was working with speakers doing public speaking, coaching and helping them write their keynotes and do their speaker marketing. And I noticed two things. The first thing I noticed is I really don't like speaking industry, it doesn't pay speakers, everybody wants your your knowledge for free. I don't feel like that's a fair energetic exchange, especially for the experts I was working with. So that was the first thing I noticed. And I was just like, I don't know if I can do this anymore. The second thing was I was also seeing my clients take their speech, and then use it in a variety of surprising ways. So it would show up in their website copy, it would become like a three part launch series for their new program. It would become blog posts and podcast interviews, like it just had this life of its own. And I was like, well, that's really interesting. I'm like, I wonder if there's like, I didn't know, I was like, I wonder if there I could do something with this, like, is there another iteration of this business? So I took a pause because it was Christmas time. And I always take a pause. And I noticed an inch. Another third interesting phenomenon is that what social movements, social movements like Black Lives Matter me to time's up, and entrepreneurs that I really respected and admired, like Simon Sinek. And start with why Mel Robbins in the five second rule, they have something in common and that was communicating the change they wanted to create in just a couple of words. And in my head, I was like, huh, I took a social movement class in graduate school, and there are questions you ask to build your social movement, things like what are you rebelling against? What change do you want to create? I was like, I wonder if I took those questions, asked my clients to answer them, could we come up with a core message? So we started playing with it, and I would just let them free, right. And then I would do some analysis. And I found it to be really effective in getting to the essence of their message, the essence of the change they wanted for their clients and for the world. So I got super excited was like, this is fascinating. And I told my friend, Jenny Nash, she's a book coach, because I was thinking about revising my first book, which is Speak up for your business, and then we're having lunch and talking about it. And she's like, Well, tell me about this new idea you have. And so I told her, and she's like, Oh, my gosh, this is so great. She's like, you could call it something like the three words speech and I'm like, I like the three words. I don't like the speech part. I really want to move away from that. But after that lunch with her, I just sat there and I'm like three words. That's that isn't that's intriguing. And then it just hit me. My brand is Communication rebel. It's the 3 Word Rebellion and it all kind of just fell together. And I'm like, ooh, like, if I had that moment of like, I just know that I'm on to something here like this could be a really powerful framework to help people communicate what their business is all about. And yeah, the rest is kind of history. Like, the first thing I did was I created a webinar to talk about it not to sell anything, I just wanted to get people's feedback and see if they thought it was as cool as I thought it was. And they loved it, they thought it was great. And I got lots of good feedback that helped me really form the book and even form, like the services that I'm still delivered to this day.

Britney Gardner 05:33

You know, it's, it's so funny, because right, like, you know, the three words speech, it didn't fit, you're like, I like it, there's something here, maybe pull a few threads there. And, you know, like, that's like the like, go take a shower, or like, go take a spin class or go chop some vegetables situation for me, because I get that feeling a lot of times and and yeah, you already have the rebellion thing going for you. Right. But like, it's something that I think another person would have been like, I like it, but I don't love it. And they might have moved on to a whole different thing. Yeah, all those threads.

Michelle Mazur 06:06

Yeah, I have sometimes see that where people are like, well, I like this. I don't love that. Love it. And I'm always like, if you like it, put it out into the world and see what happens. Because you can always evolve that message. I think people are like, well, if I put it out there, then I just have to stick with it for the rest of my life. It's written on my tombstone. And I'm like, no, no, you can really you can change the stuff at any time. Nobody's paying that much attention to do begin with.

Britney Gardner 06:36

Yeah, yeah, we all think we're very important. But it turns out we're not. So I know that you have obviously your framework. If someone's not seen your book, not seen your website, not heard your podcast, all of that, you know, where would someone start with us? And let's, let's pull back the perspective just a little bit, right. Most of my clients and most I think of the audience listening to the show, has been in business for a little while, they've probably gone through a couple shifts. And and even even me, you know, I've done several shifts, the last time you and I spoke, I was selling quite different services than I am.

Michelle Mazur 07:14

Yes, you were Yes. Yeah. Right.

Britney Gardner 07:16

And, you know, like, I've looked at the things I've done, and I could probably look back at what I was doing at the time and pull a good 3 Word Rebellion out of it. But you know, I shift I move and when something becomes interesting to me, and I realized that there's a real need for it in the marketplace, I'll probably find a way to offer that unless I'm really stuck on something else. So it was a how do you approach that for people who have been in business for a while, and they've done a few different things? And I'm not talking necessarily about like the multi passionate, I'm talking about people who are just doing business, but things shift along the way.

Michelle Mazur 07:53

Yeah, well, I think that's the power of a 3 Word Rebellion. Because it's a, it's the overarching message that sits above your business. And if you do it well, you're able to grow into it and shift it and Morphett as it needs to be. Because I think that's one thing people worry about, like, well, if I do a 3 Word Rebellion for this business, and then what if I changed my offers, it's like, well, most likely what you will be offering unless you're going for something like I do astrology, and now I'm going to do accounting, yeah, your message is not going to apply. Like that's just not going to work. But if you're evolving and pivoting within a certain industry, or niche, or your, or the way you solve a problem evolves, that message should be able to grow with you. And you can just refine it, refine how you talk about it. Because one of the things I do, like once I find somebody 3 Word Rebellion, the next thing we have to answer is like, Okay, how do I get people to buy into this idea, right? How do I persuade them? How do I move them from not knowing me to being interested in working with me? And for that, it's like, okay, so we take those three words, and we kind of define it. So really, what you end up doing is refining that client decision journey, and not really the core message itself.

Britney Gardner 09:17

I love that. And yeah, I can actually even my own business, see that things I would say now are still pulled from from where I came from.

Michelle Mazur 09:27

Yeah, yeah.

Britney Gardner 09:29

So you mentioned persuade, right? And I know that persuade can be a naughty word at times. It can also be used in a really great way. So yes, my feeling is that if you have a core message that you can distill into a small handful of words, especially if they're easily communicated words, right, there's there's not a lot of subterfuge there. Like you're pretty dang clear about what you're doing. But then you had like the persuasion layer, shall we say, and you can start kind of getting into where your areas. So, you know, when you're talking about, about really selling people on the message, can you dive more there?

Michelle Mazur 10:12

Yeah, for me. So the way that I look and approach persuasion, there is a theory, I'm not gonna bore you with it called the Elaboration Likelihood Model. And basically, these two researchers found that there are two paths to persuasion. And the first path is relying on the social trigger. So like scarcity, and fomo, and fear and authority and social proof, like all of those kinds of manipulative things we see in the online space, it shuts down our critical thinking, and then we make a decision based more on emotion, then, is this the best decision for my business? The second path to persuasion is about building an argument for your work. And this is about centering your potential customers agency, their ability to make a decision, your goal is to make a compelling case for why people should work with you. So that often looks like talking about like, where they currently are, what they're struggling at, naming the problem, naming the villain for them, and then showing like, how does your solution actually fit into this? And how does it like slay that villain help you with the problem? And so you build out a compelling case? And then at the end of it, they decide, yes, this is for me, or no, it is not. And that's really what the goal of our marketing and PR efforts are is like, how do I build this compelling case o prepare people for my work? And yes, they can say no to me, but they, you know, somebody might listen to this podcast and think, oh, my gosh, Michelle is great, I'm gonna go check out our website and download whatever she has to offer. They do that they get the couple of emails, they might be like, Oh, this 3 Word Rebellion thing. It's not for me, and then they unsubscribe or they're like, oh, 3 Word Rebellion, this is for me, I'm going to get the book, they get the book, they read the book, they're like, I really could use some help with this, okay, and then they end up booking a call. So it's a so like, I through my content, I have built this case, for why messaging is important, why you need to think about it, why you need to build an argument for your own work. And that gets people prepared to work with me. And I think that's the way I look at persuasion. It's like you give people the information they need, you make your best case, and then they get to decide.

Britney Gardner 12:44

I love the way you phrase that the building an argument, building a case for why they should work for you. It's not saying, I'm building a case for why all these other people worked for me or with me, it's why you might work with me and what benefits you're going to get out of it. And you gave the example of someone you know, hopping over to your website, downloading your thing, getting a few emails and being like, peace out, right? That's my favorite. I have those unsubscribes because that means everything I've put out there is doing its job.

Michelle Mazur 13:17

Yeah, because I mean, our content should help people make a decision. I think the worst thing is just to languish in indecision, or, or especially languishing in indecision, because they don't know what exactly you do, or how you can work with them. Because, because it's, it's painful to be like, Oh, is this the person who can help me? Is this the person who can solve my problem? And if the answer is, yes, that's great. They want to take the next step. But if you never give them that information, if you never build the case, then they don't know. And they can't make a decision. And that just sucks. It sucks for you. It sucks for them.

Britney Gardner 13:56

Well, and like, you know, so many of the quote unquote, online marketing things that I know you don't love, and I also don't love you, a lot of them come from a place where it started out good. And I think, you know, like what you're saying, right? You're languishing on someone's email list, you have not the clearest picture of what they do. You're not really sure why you're there. But you don't unsubscribe because they don't email with a great consistency or frequency. And then even three months, four months later down the road, you get an email from them, and you're never clear on who they were to begin with. They've kind of fallen off in the memory world. i This happens to me all the time. I get an email in my inbox and the name sounds vaguely familiar. Why am I on this list? This doesn't make sense to me. Why would I do this? And and maybe they were always talking about the same thing. Maybe they were not. But they clearly haven't built enough of a case that I have a strong memory of who they are. And and that's never a good situation, right? So when you hear you know, email marketers say, you know Be consistent, always even, like about the certain things like the reason for that is so people remember who you are. But if you had that stronger argument, and you weren't maybe the most consistent, even if that's, you know, the better option, they'll still remember you because your argument had merit in their world.

Michelle Mazur 15:18

Yeah. And I think there's something to be said of like, there's two different types of consistency, right? There's consistency, which is frequency, and then consistency of message. When you email, are you on message? Are you furthering the argument for your work? Or are you just emailing with some random story that happened that day, because you need to warm people back up, because you have a launch coming. So like, I feel like you can be like more frequency inconsistent if you're just consistently on message, because people will remember you as being Oh, the messaging girl, whatever it is that you do, oh, or the success coach, or whatever it is, like, that's what you want. But you have to be on message in order to get there.

Britney Gardner 16:07

I love that different kinds of consistency. That was definitely a bit of like, oh, I should remember that one. Thank you. I want to talk a little bit about if it's okay, that the idea that if you are in the marketing world, that you should be able to figure out all this stuff on your own. I fall into this trap, like, everyone's maybe. And and the reality is, you know, I'm so close to my own work. It's really hard, right? And I often get insights where I'm like, I am brilliant. I can rock this, I am so good. And then I, you know, I'm you're a couple days later, I'm like, What am I doing here? What's going on? And I know that you talked about this, like, you know, in the long past, but where does someone go when they're like, I have an idea? I think I think this might be like the beginnings of a thing. Can we pull some more threads at it? But what's next, like? How do we get there?

Michelle Mazur 17:12

Yeah, I think when you're in that idea, phase, so it's interesting, because I tend to work with people who are established to have an offer. But every once in a while I get someone who was like in that new phase, like they have an good idea. They know that there's a need in the marketplace, but then they just don't have the clarity with it yet. So for some people, I'd be like, Oh, well, you need to like do some audience interviews, figure out like what the need is for your idea. Do people need it? How would they see it like interacting in their life? And for other people? It's like, okay, you've done some of that work. It's like, well, let's figure out how do you want to talk about this? How do you want to communicate this message, this idea, and even for people like I have worked with people who've been in business for 10 years or more, and they've relied on word of mouth. And they get to a point where they're just like, I want to show up with a message. So my marketing actually works. And the thing is, it's like, there we are all way too close to our own messages to see it clearly. Like I have worked with a lot of branding people, marketing people, other messaging people on their brand message, because they can do it for other people all day long. And we just can't do it for ourselves. Like if Jenny wouldn't have said to me, oh, it's the three word speech. I don't know, if I would have gotten to the 3 Word Rebellion without her feedback, like it would have been impossible. So I think when you're in that place, where it's like, things aren't working for you, as well as you'd like. And you're like, you have all of these ideas and you don't know how to communicate them, you know, what you have is valuable and that you want to reach more people. That's the time when it's like, Alright, I need some help. I need to get this sorted. I need to get some clarity around it.

Britney Gardner 19:12

All right. Which leads me to like the whole next next thing, right? So you have clarity, maybe you've even chosen your version of your 3 Word Rebellion. How do you get it out there and not get sick of your message? Because I actually my clients say this to me all the time. I already said that. Yeah, and I'm like, Yeah, you got to say it again.

Michelle Mazur 19:37

Yeah, you've got to say it a lot. So I mean, there's a few things. Number one, I always feel like our messages, especially once we kind of lay them out have way more nuance and depth. In fact, I was working with a client, and we're like in her implementation time for getting her message into her marketing and she's like, I am surprised at how many angles I can talk About this, this idea this 3 Word Rebellion from. So she's always like and I did the same thing, it's like I can always generate new angles, especially to reach audiences who don't know me yet. So there's always going to be some freshness, there's always new stories you can tell there's going to be a book that you read that blows your mind that relates to what it is you do, that you can bring into the message that doesn't get you off message, you're literally not repeating yourself again, and again. And again. It's like finding those angles. And sometimes in in high risk situations, like sales conversations, you're on a TEDx stage, you're doing podcast interviews, you do want to repeat yourself, like you want to know what you say works. So that is the first thing it's like, there are going to be times when slipping into your message and saying the same thing is going to be the most confidence boosting, like comfortable thing that you could do, especially in more of those high stakes situations. And the second thing I would say is that you need to stop thinking that you have to be the one who has to constantly talk about your work. You have to create marketing assets in your business, that relay the message, right? Whether that is a book, a training, your email sequence that goes out when people first subscribe to your list, like those are all passive ways. You can share your message. Like, we were talking about this beforehand, like my book drives the vast majority of my business. And I'm not rewriting it every day. Yes, I promote it. Yes, I will talk about it. But it's not like this, like, oh, I have to say the same thing. Again, it's like, no, I've created this asset. It's really cool. It's really helpful. My job is to help get it out in the world. And then a cool thing happens where I had, like, I had a sales conversation last week. And she found out about me through her business coach who makes all of her clients read my book. And I didn't know who this person was. And that's when you know, your message is out there working for you. And I mean, all I did was create the book, she found it, she read it, she loved it. Now she gives it to all of her clients. So that is what you're going for. It's not always this active thing. I mean, for a while you are the main steward of your message, but after a while it starts gaining its own momentum. And it's it's more passive than it was before. So for me, I don't get sick of it. Because there's always new angles. And I know it's out there doing its job.

Britney Gardner 22:51

Yeah. I love what you said, first of all, you don't have to be the one that's always sharing it right? Yeah, your assets are doing a really good job of doing the heavy work in your business. But as for the former point where you're like, you know, there are times that you really do want to stick to your message when you're doing a guest interview, when you are doing a TEDx talk, right, you know, maybe maybe have that be good and practiced and you know, solid. But that's so different than hopping onto a quick Facebook life. You know, it's so different than putting out a LinkedIn post or, or, you know, writing a blog post that you can direct a pin to, right, like, those are the areas where, you know, maybe you tell a different story. You know, maybe you're right,

Michelle Mazur 23:38

You can have so much more creativity, especially with social media, social media, is this like one big giant experiment where you're just trying to figure out what is going to work to get people interested in my work and onto my email list, right? Like, that is what you're trying to do. And so I just, you know, for me, it's like, yeah, there's always a new angle, there's always a new story. There's always a new learning, or you have a conversation with a client that sparks something for you. But when you know what your message is, you know how to use those moments to freshen up your content instead of writing something completely new that says the same thing.

Britney Gardner 24:20

Very good. Well, Michelle, where can people find you? Obviously, we've been talking about the 3 Word Rebellion. So it's pretty easy to Google. But beyond that.

Michelle Mazur 24:30

Yeah, you can find me at drmichellemazur.com And if you're interested in the3 Word Rebellion, there's a free taster at https://drmichellemazur.com/3-word-rebellion-book. And I'm always well less so on Instagram these days, but I'm always in my DMs so feel free to connect with me at @drmichellemazur slide into my DMs told tell me what you took away from today's show.

Britney Gardner 24:52

Perfect. Well, thank you so much.

Michelle Mazur 24:55

You're so welcome. Thank you for having me back.

Britney Gardner

Ofcourse.

Transcribed by https://otter.ai