Omnichannel - Your Message Ecosystem: Build a Relevant Personal Brand that Consistently Attracts Right-Fit Clients | Parmees Yaz
Episode Date: April 23, 2024Send us a textAs a former ghostwriter who stumbled into the world of copywriting, Parmees takes us on her unexpected entrepreneurial journey, she paints a vivid picture of the necessity for clear comm...unication in our hustle-driven society.Parmees's transformation from student to messaging specialist underlines the power of resonant writing, as she recounts the ah-ha moments that propelled her forward and the profound impact her work has had on local businesses and service providers.Meanwhile, we also dissect the strategic architecture of personal branding, discussing how to craft messages that truly echo our values without overstepping boundaries and diluting our professional presence.Concluding our session, Parmees shares her insights on the significance of establishing a brand identity that resonates with clarity and authenticity!Get a FREE Copy of the High Converting Online Events Book: https://book.dominikalegrand.com/
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behind every single piece that we craft. And it doesn't matter whether it's a social media post,
whether it's a sales page we create, whether it's an email that we put out there,
the human touch is what makes messaging powerful. Where instead of looking at your message or your
solution as just one siloed thing that you do, I want you to look at it as an ecosystem that
comprises of three core pillars, simply because I think that good writing is clear thinking.
And the more we get into this practice
of being able to articulate our thoughts in a very cohesive, structured way, the more we realize that
there's more expertise in us that we can get out there.
Hello, welcome to the Omnichannel podcast. Today, I have the amazing Parmese joining us today and
sharing all her business ethics slash messaging wisdom.
I really hope you're going to enjoy this episode.
Thank you so much, Hermes, for coming.
Okay, so I already filmed the intro for you, but hi, Hermes.
Hello.
You know, I've been courting you for months now, so I'm so happy to have you on the show.
Me too.
I know.
It feels like we've been wanting
to do this forever. So I'm glad that we're finally here, finally doing it.
So you are in Mexico, right?
How's that been for you?
It's been an adjustment. It's been wonderful in some ways. And then more of a kind of like a
mindfuck in other ways. I feel like I've had to readjust.
It's a bit of a culture shock when you come from Canada or from the US and you're used to things
being a certain way. You're used to people being a certain way, order in society. And it feels like
here everything is a lot more on island time and everything is a lot more laid back and people
just operate on a very different, more laid back
mentality. So if you're very hustle, go, go, go and need things to be done a certain way,
it's yeah, it's different. It takes some getting used to, but it's kind of nice. It's kind of nice
for those of us who are constantly in this state of like things need to go our way. It's a nice
opposition to what I'm used to. Just walk me through from the moment of you starting to write at school, you know, being a ghostwriter to becoming the person that you are now.
Yeah. So you want me to start at the very, very beginning, not even just what I'm doing right now?
It's up to you. But I think that's kind of your genesis story anyway, you know?
Yes. Yeah, absolutely. So yeah, I kind of call myself
the accidental entrepreneur because quite honestly, writing, copywriting, marketing,
it was definitely not in my wheelhouse. I started my business out of a need for survival
when I was in my second year of university, recognizing that I very much value freedom and I
value working on my own schedule. And back in that time period,
what was really a value to me or priority to me was being able to be a good student and have as
much capacity as possible to put all my effort for my academia. And I didn't want to have a job,
but being the ambitious person that I was, there had to be a way for me to make money.
And so I remember this one night sitting on my computer, looking for remote jobs,
looking for things that I can do, you know, what are skills I can monetize, or, you know,
going into different people's businesses, and what value can I bring to them, where I can charge
money. And one thing that I had known for many years, even, you know, before getting into
university, is that I'm a very talented communicator and writer.
But up until that point, I didn't realize that I can actually monetize my writing ability.
And it wasn't until I came across a couple of ads of a few local businesses talking about how they want to bring someone on board to manage their emails and their newsletters and their
blogs and their website and social media. And back in the day, social media and blogs and websites were not anywhere close to what they are now. But there was a huge demand
for writers. And back at that time, I didn't even know that copywriting was a thing. I'd never heard
about copywriting. But what I did know is that I understood humans very well, and I understood
writing, and I understood how to frame concepts in a way that get people really engaged
and get them to consume material. And so I took on a couple of freelance writing jobs. I wrote for
different offices like medical spas, chiropractors, CrossFit gyms, just anyone who had any sort of
presence or had burgeoning their presence in the online space and just wanted to get more and more
people on board with what their business does.
So yeah, I was writing for a lot of local businesses.
And these were a lot of brick and mortar businesses where they had people physically coming into
their shop and purchasing either services or products.
And what was interesting about that time is that I got a lot of experience writing for
a vast array of an audience.
So it wasn't just coaches you know, coaches and consultants
or people who sell courses and digital products. It was actual products. And how do you position
them in a way so that when people come into the store, they already have a good idea of what the
value of this product or the services. We were selling, you know, CrossFit packages, supplement
bundles for some of these clinics, chiropractic packages. So various
different, you know, services that all differed in what their value proposition was. And again,
back then as a young copywriter, I didn't necessarily know fully what I was doing. I
wasn't deploying marketing tactics. I wasn't, you know, I had no idea what the best copywriting
frameworks and templates were.
I was just simply going on what need does this product or this service solve?
What is it about this product and service that will fulfill a gap for a specific type
of audience that's out there?
And how do I communicate the value of it in a way where people can understand how it's
relevant to their lives?
And so the more and more I started getting experience in writing,
and my writing really started to take off. And people would come into some of these clinics and
say, hey, I open your newsletter every week, or I look forward to the emails that I get from your
clinic. And it was nice for me, because it was a sense of validation as to the things that I'm
writing is not just because I'm a good writer, but people were actually consuming it and they found it very helpful. So at that time, I kind of set up shop
where I now realize that this freelance copywriting business is actually very lucrative. And there's
many ways that I can reach more audiences, more businesses through this way. So naturally,
through word of mouth, the demand for my writing started to increase. So I started from the little clinics and gyms and medical spas to doctor's offices, dentist's offices, other chiropractic clinics was in university, I was making a full time income, basically writing for all these various products and services.
And around that time, I started realizing, you know, that the online market is growing even more. and leave the brick and mortar businesses aside for a little bit and focus more on the digital entrepreneur landscape
and looking at the people who are really starting to take off with their digital products.
And we're talking this is probably around 2016, 2017.
And I started attracting a lot of personal brands that were in the process of establishing themselves as authorities online.
And of course, that's not the language we used back then, but people who wanted to establish a presence and attract a more sophisticated audience
with their online presence. And they simply needed someone to help take their expertise and craft it
in different messages and help them build that presence with their social media content in a way
that attracts more and more qualified buyers into
their world. And so I started working with, um, once again, other kind of celebrity-ish figures
within the health space, uh, people who wanted to write books. And I started ghost writing for them
and basically took on the entire, uh, project of writing the book, editing the book, launching the
book, coming up with a side course that went along with the book for many of these figures.
And from there, I started realizing that my gift is not just in being able to convey other
people's ideas in words, but very much more about being able to help craft concepts and
ideas where people can establish a presence and people can establish a brand that is recognized
and is known for its way of thinking.
And so around this time, I started feeling very resistant to taking on copywriting projects.
And anyone who knows me now knows I have a very strong stance on this.
And it's a little bit controversial even in the copywriting world, where I really do believe that as much as I think words are
important and being able to convey meaningful content and being able to get your ideas out
there is important through copywriting, I really now know and I've come to believe that as a
thought leader or as a person in a space where you want to develop a brand and get your ideas
out there, you need to learn the mechanism behind messaging and not to just delegate that part to somebody else to do for you. And so much
of my own development and growth went from being the person who was the voice behind a lot of these
brands to then recognizing that my gift is actually helping these brands hone and recognize what their
true message is and how do they convey that in a way themselves
that makes them feel more powerful, that makes them feel more in control.
One of the stories I use is I remember I was on a vacation, on a trip with my boyfriend at the time
in Greece, and I had worked really, really hard, like 40 to 50 hour weeks on different copywriting
projects up until that point.
And I had just requested three weeks off, no email writing, no sales page writing, no newsletters, no products or launches or anything like that. And I remember one of my clients
emailed me once at like six in the morning in a panic, being like, I just got asked to deliver
a speech in a couple of days. And I have no idea what to say. I don't know how
to craft my intro. I don't know how to craft the talk. And I remember at the time, as much as I
knew I could help this person, I was more disappointed in the fact that although this
person is such an authority in their field and knows their expertise so well, they were really
stumbling and really struggling with how do I craft a talk? How
do I get there and talk about my expertise? Simply because this person had always delegated their
expertise to a copywriter or someone like me to write for them. And so it really became evident
for me that my zone of genius is not just being the person who translates the words for you,
but someone who helps craft the ideas and helps you actually understand the importance of articulating the value that you have.
And so from then on, I decided to make this massive pivot from going away from the copywriting
world and being the voice behind the scenes for you to then establishing my own messaging
and positioning and personal branding brand in
helping thought leaders actually get really grounded and solid in what their expertise is,
what is the unique stance they take in their industry, how to actually craft a personal brand
that not only brings in a lot of demand and people into your world, but actually stands for something.
And now I'm fully focused on helping
people articulate the value of their offers, articulate the value of their expertise in a way
that feels like them, not in a way that they've been told to do or deploying these copywriting or
somewhat manipulative tactics to instill scarcity or urgency in their people. But instead, how do
you do this from a very authentic, ethical way to get your ideas out there, to fulfill a gap, to be able to sell your offers with more ease
and attract more aligned people into your world without having to rely on somebody else to do
the marketing for you? So that's a bit of the more long-winded backstory of how I got into
what I'm doing right now. Yeah. Thank you so much for sharing that. Do you think that anyone can write for
their self? Like, do you think there is just a skill that anyone can learn and no matter which
business they are in, or how talented they are, or not talented in writing? Can they learn it and do
it for themselves? Or should they do it for themselves? Yeah, it's a good question. I genuinely
believe that writing is a skill that everyone
should put the effort into mastering. And although many people will say that writing is not a skill
that they were just naturally born with, or they're more visual or more abstract thinkers,
and they require someone to take those abstract ideas and put it into context. And I used to
believe that a lot too. And I just said, you know, some people are just not naturally born writers,
like, you know, delegated to the people who are naturally good at it.
And as I've evolved and matured through my own journey, the more I've realized that I
don't necessarily agree with that line of thinking anymore, simply because I think that
good writing is clear thinking.
And the more we get into this practice of being able to articulate our thoughts in a
very cohesive, structured way, the more we realize that
there's more expertise in us that we can get out there. And for those of us who have trouble,
I would even argue, articulating our thoughts or putting things onto paper or putting things into
words, that typically is a sign that you yourself aren't fully clear on the idea that you're trying
to convey. Because the moment you try to put it into words, if you're stumbling, or if you're having a hard time understanding how to convey
it in the most effective way, yeah, that's a sign that the thinking behind it isn't clear,
or that the conviction behind the idea isn't there. So I do believe that everyone has or should,
especially if you're a brand, not if you're just working a regular job, but if you are someone who has ideas or a concept or a framework, something that you want to offer to the world, or if
you have a business or a product or a solution, I think it's imperative for you to learn how
to articulate at least what you're doing in the terms of how other people can understand
what it is that you do and how it can be relevant to them.
What are your thoughts on AI?
Because that's something that, you know, all digital marketers, entrepreneurs are harnessing and using chat GPT, chat GPT and everything.
Yeah, yeah.
There's a lot of thoughts that I have about AI.
And I think there's two kind of schools of thought or two lenses to look at it.
And the first one is the most easy, which everyone talks about, you know, leveraging AI to get your time back and
getting your time back through using AI to be able to duplicate or, you know, exponentially
be able to create more content than what us as humans are able to create. And my argument against
that a little bit is that if we start thinking of our
content creation or of our ideas as just commodities or things that just need to be pumped out
religiously, then we start to lose that spark, that creativity, that human edge, and the essence
of the message gets diluted because it simply becomes about more, more, more. How do we get
louder? How do we get get louder? How do we get
more frequent? How do we get more consistent? Rather than actually putting effort and energy
and intention behind every single piece that we craft. And it doesn't matter whether it's a social
media post, whether it's a sales page we create, whether it's an email that we put out there,
the human touch is what makes messaging powerful. And so by delegating that to a robot or to a machine to do for us, yes, it can be more
efficient in the short term and the long term because we're creating more in less time.
But efficiency is not always by the volume, but it's also with the value that is being
put out there.
So that's my first one.
The second argument, which is a little bit more philosophical, and many people have disagreed with it, is that I genuinely believe that if we are consistently delegating our creative
process to somebody else or something else to do for us, we lose the ability to think deeply.
And it's almost like back when we were in school and our teachers would say, you want to do mental
calculations when you're doing addition, subtraction, multiplication, because if we don't, you know, the calculator is not always going to
be around. So you want to learn how to do that for yourself. And I personally think that just
the mental exercise of being able to think more profoundly about your ideas or to be able to take
an idea and craft it into words that uses a mental muscle that we humans
uniquely have. And to only delegate that to a machine to do for us, once again, we're losing
that ability to think more deeply, to think more creatively, and we're becoming overly reliant
on something else or somebody else to do that thinking and that creation for us.
So all that to say, how do I think
AI can be used? I think it could be used to amplify certain ideas. It can be used to take
ideas and concepts that you have already created and think about newer ways to present them.
It could be used for overcoming certain blocks in creativity and wanting to see different
perspectives that you perhaps haven't thought about. But the con with that is that we want to keep in mind that AI only
pulls from information that already exists in the world. And many people that I work with or who
are attracted to my work are trailblazers in the industry that are introducing disruptive concepts
that don't exist. And that requires human intention, that requires human creativity. We can't just put
that into an AI machine and expect AI to be able to come up with new and unique ideas for us.
So that's kind of my take on the current AI debate that exists.
Yeah, thanks so much for sharing that. I think I want to go back to, because we had this conversation, I think, over chat.
And it was something like, hey, I feel like I need to dumb down my messaging because it's
too abstract.
And you were just saying how, you know, sometimes those messages and the ideas can be a bit
of a tailblazer ideas in the sense that, you know, it's new. What is your stance on
dumbing down messaging or it being too abstract to a creative creator?
Yeah. So there's two ways to look at this one as well, which is I do believe as someone who
works on people's messaging and positioning, and especially as a copywriter, we know that we want
to make sure that our message is digestible. So if something is way too abstract, where it's not relevant, there's no context given, it's not clear what the real
message behind it is, we definitely want to add relevance, tangibility, specificity,
so that the person consuming it can understand how it resonates with their current situation.
But that's a separate argument to dumbing the message down, because I think with a lot of people who have more developed ideas or have new ideas that they're bringing to the marketplace, they're constantly told that if it's too different or if it's too new or if it's not own way, but make sure that people understand how it's relevant to them. Or even within the messaging marketing world, we're always told, you know, you want to write at a fifth grade or at an eighth grade level so that everybody can understand it. And that, the energy behind it, and the level of
sophistication behind it attracts the type of person that you want to have in your world
or attracts the type of client that you want to work with.
And so if I'm consistently dumbing my message down so that it pertains to everyone or that
it's easily digestible and easily understood by everyone, I'm also only going to be attracting
people who only resonate with that frequency of messaging. And that's not necessarily what I would like to do. I am targeting the
trailblazers. I am targeting people who have very unique ideologies and concepts that they want to
bring into their space. And they know that it's very rarely talked about or barely even touched
upon. And so they're coming to me so that they can understand how do I position this idea? How do I position this offer in a way that people understand? But in doing that,
if we dumb their message down too much to make it conventional, it loses that essence of being
unique and being new. And I want to kind of go back to, we had a VIP day in London. And I think what I, you were teaching a
lot of things with Emily. And one of the things that I want you to kind of to, if you can explain
that to the listeners, and I'm not sure if you spoke about that before, but I'm so, you know,
I'm interested if you could share that with us, is it's basically like a foolproof way to write your messaging. And that is really, you know,
how you structure your messages in which is your core messaging, your peripheral messaging.
Can you share that with the listeners too, so that they can never feel like they're making a
mistake when it comes to your messaging? Yeah, absolutely. So this is a concept I only developed, I would say probably in the last year and a half. And it started from a
place of observing how frustrated many of the personal brands are that I work with, who've
always been told by people in the marketing space that you can only be known for one thing.
And you can only have one message, one way of talking about it. And in your presence, you need
to have these clear cut content pillars, and you can't veer away from these content pillars. And typically
speaking, especially in the marketing and sales space, a lot of our message revolves around the
offer or revolves around what it is that we do. And so the problem that I was observing in the
last year and a half or so was a lot of creators coming out of the woodwork or a lot of creators developing very unique things in the world, but then only
feeling like their presence needs to be consistently convincing their audience of why their product or
solution is the best thing ever. And the frustration of many of my clients was, well, I have a lot of
other things I want to talk about. I have a lot of opinions and perspectives, and I have a lot of
very hot takes on things, or there's parts about me and my life that I want to share, but I'm
consistently told by, you know, the marketing gurus that if I do that, I'm going to lose credibility
or that people are going to get confused about what it is that I do. And so this concept that
I created is what I call the messaging ecosystem, where instead of looking at your message or your solution as just one siloed thing that you do, I want you to look at it as an
ecosystem that comprises of three core pillars. So the first one is your core message. And your
core message is what people come to you to solve. So when someone comes to you as a copywriter,
it's because they're lacking the words, they're lacking the understanding of how to craft the
words or how to articulate their value in a way that makes sense and that converts.
That is the problem that is being solved. So with your core message, the question that you want to
be asking yourself is what is the gap that I'm solving? What is the need in the marketplace
that I have a solution for? What is the actual thing, the tangible thing that I do for people
that gets them results? That is the actual thing, the tangible thing that I do for people that gets
them results? That is the core message. And again, unfortunately, way too many people focus on just
the core message being their core thing. Whereas now there's these two other pillars that I've
added to the equation as well. The second is your adjacent message. And in my experience,
and even looking at consumer psychology and the research coming out about why people make
decisions in today's landscape, I would argue that your adjacent message is probably even more important
than your core message, meaning people don't always buy what it is that you do, but they buy
how you do it. And so your adjacent message is your approach, your philosophy, and your take
on how you solve the problem. So for example, you can go to two
different sales coaches and one person might have a method or a blueprint where, you know,
you're posting consistently, you're doing live launch events, you're consistently online,
and they have a very loud method of selling your services versus somebody else who perhaps maybe
resembles my methods a little bit more is a bit more on the quiet side is a bit more on, you know, let's demonstrate your expertise.
Let's play the long game. You don't necessarily need to go live every day. You don't need to do
live launches, but I have a different approach and a different methodology to help you get to
your goal. And so people aren't making decisions just based on the end result of what you get them.
They're making decisions based on your mechanism, your approach, and how you solve the problem. And what's really important with the
adjacent message is that you're really allowing your values to be on display. You want people to
make ethical decisions about whether they coincide or whether they see eye to eye with your values,
who you are as a person, what your perspectives and opinions are. And so it can be
very controversial, but just as any good marketing is, you're meant to repel people as much as you're
meant to attract. So your adjacent message, I just want you to think of it as your perspectives,
your ideologies, your approach on how you solve the problem that you solve. And then very lastly
is what I call your peripheral message. And with your peripheral message, the resistance that comes up with it is that when I describe
it, people think that it seems a little bit influencer-ish.
It seems a little bit like it's me focused.
But here's why your peripheral message is important.
The way that I define your peripheral message is that it's all of the things that make you
you that perhaps has nothing to do with what you do for work or what your opinions and
perspectives are on your approach or on the industry. that perhaps has nothing to do with what you do for work or what your opinions and perspectives
are on your approach or on the industry, but it's all the things that make people feel like,
oh, we have something in common. So for myself, I like to go on very long walks and I always
document my nature walks and it's become a very big thing and a part of my presence where people
know that I enjoy my daily 90-minute nature walk because it's my time
to think, it's my time to ideate. And although that has nothing to do with what I actually do
for people, many people are attracted to my way of living and the way that I live through my
lifestyle. Maybe it's your passions, your hobbies, your things that you do outside of your work. But
as a personal brand, I think it's imperative in being able to display your authenticity and being able to display what are the things that
make you, you. So once again, it doesn't mean that your peripheral message is just, you know,
always showing your food or your travels or your husband, or, you know, it's, it's not necessarily
taking that influencer flashy lifestyle, but it's demonstrating what are the parts of you that make
you, you. For you, for example, you have your pole dancing, which has become a really big part of your life. And that
is something that has nothing to do with what you do for work, but it's a great way for someone to
look at your brand and be like, that's something I would like to get into as well. Maybe that's
something that they want to initiate a conversation with you about. And right there, you're establishing
a relationship or a connection. So the intention of your peripheral brand is to establish familiarity, is to humanize the brand a little bit so that people are not just
looking at, okay, this is what Parmese does, this is what Dami does, but now looking at the full
scope of who is this person, what do they value, what do they spend their time doing, what areas
are we familiar in? And so once you start looking at your messaging from these three
pillars, you realize and you recognize you have so much more freedom to talk about the things that
everybody tells you you shouldn't be talking about or that it's distracting from your message.
And you have so much more flexibility to be more you and still inspire and create demand within
your audience without needing to constantly be talking about your offer or what it is that you do.
So basically what you're saying is that the peripheral message is meant to humanize people, right?
It's to, I'm a human, I'm not just a robot, I'm just working all the time.
So that is a very attractive threat to see.
That's right.
Because if we think about what actually establishes that connection with a personal brand,
yes, they have to trust you. And yes, they have to see that you have a relevant solution to a problem that they're looking to solve. But there's also an
element of intimacy that needs to be created. And with many creators who are consistently just
pitching their offers or constantly talking about the problem that they solve, although they might
be amazing at what it is that they do, the thing that is missing or the element that is missing in
getting people involved with them is that intimacy factor is that familiarity is feeling like, oh, I really enjoy what this person
does with their free time. I really love that this person is as into as fitness as I am, or is into,
you know, the keto diet or travels to destinations I would love to go to. It's adding that human
touch so that we can breed familiarity and for someone to feel comfortable with our presence, not just see us as a walking, talking solution or pitch.
Do you think there are areas that we should not be sharing?
Because when you brought up pole dance, I'm thinking maybe that that should be something
I completely stop sharing with people because every time I do, I get some creepy messages
and I don't want people
to think that I'm like a whore or something, you know, I just like, um, so like we can talk about
religious, you know, beliefs and, you know, those are also peripheral. I think, um, do,
what do you think is like a no-go zone or, or that it's maybe too much or, you know, what,
how can we think about it?
Yeah, this is a great question.
And a lot of resistance that comes up, like I said, with the peripheral message is many of my clients say, well, I'm a very private person.
I don't necessarily want to share, you know, details about my intimate life or details
about what I do with my free time.
And that's totally fine.
The intention, again, behind the peripheral message is sharing things that you feel comfortable
sharing that make you you.
The example that I always use is that I'm very heavily tattooed. And if you were to look at my presence online, you never would be able to tell. That's not really something that I think is
relevant to my brand. And although I know maybe there's plenty of people in my community who are
really heavy into tattoos or people would be like, that's so cool. I have no idea that you
were so heavily tattooed. That's awesome. I like you even more now. That might be a thing.
But personally, I just know that my, you know, imagery or what I create on my body was something
that I created for myself. It's not necessarily really relevant for my audience to know.
So the question you really want to ask yourself is, is this something that I feel comfortable
bringing to an audience that displays my values,
that displays my personality, that displays who I am, and is something that I'm comfortable
overtly sharing with people who I want to establish a relationship with? Or is it just something,
you know, private that I want to do on my own? Because the fine line here as well is that I do
see many people in this space sharing intimate details that actually kind of backfires.
And there's a way to be able to share your peripheral message in a way that's grounded, in a way where you're displaying your personality without turning certain people off.
You know, I've seen creators talk about their very intimate sex lives.
I've seen creators talk about their kinks.
I've seen creators talk about things that, again, maybe that attracts the type of person
that they want to work with.
But there's also some beauty in mystery.
There's some beauty in not having every single intimate detail about someone.
So if you're talking about your hobbies, your passions, how you'd like to spend your time
on weekends or your Bible study group or whatever that might look like. And that feels like it's an integral part of who you are and it will attract the type of person who also will
resonate with that. That's something you want to share. But if it has no relevance to it, like,
you know, what I do in the bedroom or what my tattoo on my back looks like, that doesn't seem
like it's really relevant information to get someone really on board with with me yeah well makes perfect sense to me and
I mean about the kings if we are talking about that if you are this like you know sex coach or
something like you know they have in that case that would be like a perfect thing to share right
yeah what are your I'm not gonna ask what are your plans but as far as your business
goes like where do you see yourself do you have any kind of predictions sort of where you're headed
are you happy with where you are like where are you going yeah i made um i wrote something out
about a week ago that talked about how i don't have any intentions of growing my business that
once again it's another one of those things that I've said that wreaks havoc amongst the marketers of the world because
I've been consistently told that I'm small-minded, I need to work on my money mindset, and what I
offer is so powerful, and how dare I not want to get it into the hands of thousands and thousands
of people. And going back to, again, your energy attracts what it is that you want to do. And
even what you asked about dumbing down your message is that I don't have a desire to reach thousands and I don't
have a desire to reach the masses with the work I do. I take a lot of pride in being able to take
one or two individuals and really go deep in helping them develop their frameworks, develop
their concepts, being able to hone what their zone of genius is
and how to best present it in a way that resonates with where they're at and what they want to become
known for. And so the way I work with clients right now has evolved greatly, even just in the
last couple of years, as to I went from being the messaging person that people came to so that they
can get my eyes and my brain on their copy, on their funnels and looking at, you know, what are the gaps and what are the things that are not converting?
What are the things that they need to improve to now?
People come to me because they say, I am a creative.
I have mastered my field or I'm in the process of mastering my field.
And I'm recognizing that I'm developing a solution that does not exist in
the marketplace. And so how do I bring this to the marketplace in a way that doesn't confuse people?
Or how do I establish myself as that authority in this domain? So people come to me ready to buy,
or people can genuinely see the value that I have. And so I've kind of shifted even away from saying
that all I do is messaging, and it's really creative mentorship. And the program that
I have right now, which is set up in a way that is unscalable, you know, and I say that with pride,
unscalable, because I take on a handful of individuals and really help them develop what
are the concepts that they want to become known for? How do they position themselves? How do they
start thinking about their content? How do they start thinking about their content? How do they
start thinking about, you know, the problem that they solve and who the ideal person is that they
want to reach? And yes, of course, there's many marketing and strategic, you know, branding and
positioning and copywriting tactics that I still teach within that. But much of my work has evolved
now into taking aspiring thought leaders or people who want to establish, you know,
movement-based personal brands and how do I help them convey their ideas in the most practical,
digestible ways. So that's kind of where I'm at right now. And I'm perfectly fine with the way
that things are at. I'm consistently developing my own frameworks and coming up with new resources
and new solutions for my clients. And as long as I have the freedom and the flexibility to do that at my own pace, without
the pressure of needing to scale and needing to sell and needing to have more people in
my world and all of that, I'm pretty good with where things are at.
I think my next step would be writing a book.
Oh, yeah, please.
I don't know when that's coming out, but I would love to read that.
Has this always been the case, by the way, that you just wanted to kind of maintain your, you know, just making yourself happy and comfortable in a way or you used to have beginning of this conversation, I started my business because I just simply wanted to have the freedom to focus on school and not have a boss tell me what to do and when to come into work and, and all of that. And I think for a short while in my early 20s,
I did get caught up with the, you know, what if I'm thinking too small? What if I can go for world
domination, and I'm just simply limiting myself? Or what if my upbringing put me in a position of being in a lack mindset or thinking small
and I need to overcome these money blocks and I need to overcome my fears of getting
big and my fears of success.
And once again, the older I got and the more mature I got.
And honestly, when my business started creating real money is when I realized that whether
I'm making 200K a year, 500K a year, or 2 million a year, my day-to-day and how I want
to spend each and every present moment in that experience is not going to change.
And as long as I can maintain a balance or a harmony between me being able to create
and show up for my clients in a very sustainable way
and also having time to be human behind the scenes. That's all that matters. And so can I
create courses that, you know, gets into the hands of the masses and can I come up with scalable
offers and can I do X, Y, Z to grow my business right now? I absolutely can. And I've done it
for other people, so I know exactly what I would need to do. But currently, I don't necessarily see a need for it at all.
I love that. And just to finish up our episode, what's the status on your current container?
Like, do you accept, you know, more people? Is it open? Is it closed? Because I think you said
behind the scenes that you want to make it a one year thing as well.
Yes, yeah. So when I
originally started Neuromessage, which is a three pillar program focused on helping you establish
your brand identity. So what it is that you want to become known for, what is your unique idea,
your framework, your concept, your story, and getting really clear on that. Because I find the
majority of the time people will come to me because they want to establish more authority in their presence or they want to have more clear messaging and better content, but they forget that without having that clearly established brand identity, none of the other stuff is going to stick.
And so the first pillar we focus on really developing your brand identity. that, then we finally move into messaging and it gets into all the nitty gritty details of how do
you make your message more tangible, relatable, specific? How do you make sure that you're
speaking to the desires of your audience? How do you speak to pain points in an ethical way? So
it's much more about like the copywriting from from Parmesa standpoint. And then we get into
establishing your presence. So how do you now show up now that you have a solid brand identity
that you know how to communicate with your audience? How do you now show up now that you have a solid brand identity, now that you know how
to communicate with your audience? How do you show up with what types of content on what platforms
with what frequency in a way that makes you feel good and in a way that also evokes or elicits a
desire from your audience to want to come into your world so that you're not constantly adding
calls to action and pitching and launching, but it just naturally attracts people into your world.
So because of the complexity of developing all of this, and there's a lot more of a bespoke approach with me and each client in that program, I originally set out to have it for six months,
and that was working fine until I realized that the stage where people are coming up with their
brand identity is not something that just happens overnight. It's actually something that takes some time, some iteration, some experimentation
to develop. And I would much prefer people come into my program and not be rushed to have to have
all that figure out before they can get their messaging and their presence well. So I've decided
to actually extend it to, currently I've extended it to nine months and I'm thinking to extend it to
a whole year. And instead of just seeing this as a messaging program that you come in there and you learn how
to upgrade your content or increase your conversions, it's more of a thought leadership
or a creative mentorship that allows you the time and the space and the support to develop your
ideas, to get more grounded in your authority, to really understand what makes you different in the
space. So that's kind
of the trajectory of that. And because of the level of intimacy in the group, I do keep it
limited to a certain amount. So I had closed it off all winter because we were pretty much at max
capacity. I will be opening up for enrollments in May. And once again, there's only maybe spots for
a few more people to come into this world because I do want to maintain the integrity of being able to have that one-on-one interaction with every person in the program.
Yeah, I love that.
And I know that you're very diligent in selecting the type of entrepreneurs that you want to work with.
Can you just walk me through who are those people that are perfect fit for the program?
Yeah, amazing. So there's a couple of criteria that I have. And my criteria has very little to do with demographics, or, you know, what level you're at
in your business, how much are you earning, like, I don't really care to look at that.
What I'm looking at first is do you have a validated area of expertise that you feel good
in? Because many people who are looking to just simply scale their programs or build their programs
or market themselves are forgetting completely that before you do all of that, you need to have a validated offer.
You need to have a validated solution or you need to at least have a good grasp of what is the problem that people are willing to pay to solve.
And so the first thing I look at is do you actually have expertise or mastery of the domain?
And do you have a validated solution that you know people
are looking for and are willing to pay to solve? The second thing that I look at is that you really
need to come into this mentorship from not a transactional standpoint of now I need to create
more content to get clients, or I need to learn how to fix my messaging so that I can get more clients. And instead, like I said, it's much more of a creative developmental space to help you That's not the mentality that really kind of works with this.
And very lastly is that we need to be able to conversate and have fun.
Meaning if you come into the program, and knock on wood, I've never had this happen,
but if you come into the program and you're very resistant to my ways of showing up
or if we just don't have the same values or if we just don't share the same values, or if we just don't share the same ideologies about
the marketing space, then there's very little of the strategic things that will actually stick with
you. Because again, that level of intimacy, that level of familiarity, and the alignment of values
for me is really important. Love that. Well, thank you so much,
Parmese, for your time and just sharing all your wisdom. Wow.
There's so many just nuggets there that you just shared with us.
Thank you so much.
Thank you for having me.
This was great.