Here’s a little exercise for you to connect deeper with your audience.

Read this.

A: “I was feeling so alone and didn’t love where my life was headed, so I decided to make a change.”

Pause and check in with yourself. What do you feel after reading this?

Be honest.

Did you pause and actually check in?

So… did you feel anything?

Okay, now read this.

B: “It was 9pm and I was sitting behind my desk for the 5th straight Saturday night working on my business. I’ll probably be here until midnight. I grabbed my phone simply as an addictive habit and that’s when it all hit me. I had no notifications. Not a single text. In fact, this was also the 5th straight Saturday nobody texted me to make plans for the weekend. Do I not have any friends? My heart sank. I felt utterly alone. I’ve been grinding on my business… and for what? Life wasn’t meant to be lived alone. It was time to make some changes in my priorities.”

Pause and check in with yourself. What do you feel after reading this?

You feel something now, don’t you?

More than what you felt after reading line A, right?

And you’re like, “well yeah, Matt. You wrote 12 sentences compared to 1. So of course you gave us more time to understand the situation.”

And I would say, “yeah! EXACTLY!”

Haha

That’s MY point!!

Line A is how most people make content. They offer a high level overview of their situation which drives zero connection.

Most creators don’t do this consciously. There is a deeper fear that keeps us from sharing more details because

1. We fear getting specific will alienate people and nobody will “get it”
2. It feels vulnerable to get more specific

However, what you may notice is that, even though you haven’t spent 5 straight Saturdays working on your business until midnight and check your phone to see no texts, it landed with you.

You were able to put yourself in those shoes and imagine the pain that person felt in that moment.

You can’t do that by skimming over details.

The fear of alienating people is actually the thing that’s keeping you from connecting deeper with your audience.

Real Life Example

Here’s an excerpt from a client in the Growth Community who asked for feedback on her post.

This post is a very high level overview of being forceful vs being in flow.

It’s not bad. I absolutely love this share, but anyone could slap their name on this. I don’t actually learn anything about this person and therefore I don’t really learn much about myself.

What I want to know is:

• Where was she dragging herself along? In a business decision? What was the business decision? Is it an art project? Website redesign? Launching a product? Firing an employee? Going public with your company?
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  The answers to those question will connect you deeper with other artists, or other entrepreneurs or other CEOs and founders depending on what’s true for you.
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• What did she push and push and grind and grind at? What goal was she pursuing that lead to burn out? Then she says, “Driven by the idea of what you need to accomplish?” — What are you trying to accomplish?
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  Maybe I am grinding at the same thing and think I’m the only one struggling over here. Maybe I am trying to accomplish the same thing as you and unable to get it done because I haven’t set micro goals.
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  Being a freaking human is hard. So often we feel like we’re on this journey alone as an artist/entrepreneur/CEO. You have an opportunity to make people feel more seen and less alone when you get more specific.
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• You approached things differently? What did you approach differently? How did you do it differently? Okay, smaller goals, but what does that look like? Is that taking a task like “redesign website” and turning it into “1. write copy for about me page. 2. Take new photos. 3. Look for designer on Fiverr for new logo 4. Interview favorite designers. 5. Hire a designer. 6. Finalize logo by April 10th”
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  If you actually shared what you did I could learn something and maybe change my process into one that feels less forceful and in more flow simply by creating micro-goals. That would feel so good and I would associate YOU with making me feel so good. That’s what it means to create a brand people love!

Now, I wouldn’t make ALL these changes unless you’re creating long form content (YouTube, Podcast, Newsletter). If you’re focused on short form videos for social media, you want to be discerning with what areas you get more specific on.

This leads us the One Core Point.

One Core Point (OCP)

I drill this into my clients’ heads.

In the original example of A and B we feel like we don’t have space to write 12 sentences on the details because we have so much to say (So Much to Say is a great DMB song in case you were wondering).

However it’s probably the case that you are trying to say way too much and give too much backstory or tie in too many lessons.

Instead you want to get clear on the One Core Point. What is the one thing I want my audience to take away 4 hours from now. Because they’re probably gonna scroll through 10 more videos and if you overload them with info they won’t remember any of it. But they can remember ONE thing and they will remember the details.

For example… without looking, what did I even say in line A above?

I don’t even remember and I wrote it.

But I remember paragraph B. Being alone on a 5th straight Saturday night.

That’s because SPECIFIC DETAILS STICK.

I can see that person sitting alone in the dark all alone. I didn’t even say it was dark but that’s what our mind does. We begin to fill in more gaps to make the story make sense and to me, I picture this dude working so hard that he’s been working since the sun was up and once the sun set he never even got up to turn any lights on. Just sitting in front of the glow of the computer.

For the member in Growth, after prompting all those questions I would ask her, what is the one core point she wants her audience to take away?

If it’s not to teach them how to set micro goals, then I wouldn’t spend time talking outline all 20 steps of turning a big goal into a micro goal like I did with that website example.

Good news though… now you have an idea for another post 🔥

Practice

This is a practice.

If you spend a bit more time with your ideas and read them over and ask yourself these question on how to get more specific, your content will drastically improve and you’ll begin seeing more comments like these on your posts.

This is hard to do right off the bat. If you try to write toward your one core point and try to get specific you end up editing as you write. And that keeps EVERYONE blocked.

Instead, a great way to get good at this is to write out your idea like the member in Growth did. Just brain dump it out. No editing. No real thinking.

Once your done, then you can read it over and THEN you ask yourself, okay what’s the one core point.

Once you have the OCP, THEN you see where you can add more specific details.

If you want to take this a step deeper and learn 4 ways to inject specificity into your content without having to re-write an entire idea, you’ll love the latest podcast.

​Bippity boppity, give me the zoppity.​
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See ya next time,

Matt