Trust, Authority & Influence: The Personal Branding Secrets Every Female Leader Needs with Deirdre Martin

Lucy Gernon (00:00)

Welcome back to the Lucy Gernon show. Today, I’m absolutely delighted to be joined by Dierdre Martin. Dierdre Martin is a business coach, a certified Story Brand coach and Ireland’s only top neuromarketer. And she’s also the founder of the Millionize Mastermind, helping service based businesses to scale their business to multi-millions and beyond. Not only that, I am very privileged to know Dierdre personally. We actually grew up together in our childhood and I’m delighted to have her here on the show. Dierdre. ⁓

 

Lucy, so excited to be here. my God, I can’t believe we’re here. my God. So excited to see you today. So obviously we’ve known each other a long time and it’s been a journey. And this season we’re here talking all about, you know, confidence in business and reaching your potential and all of that. So let’s just get into it firstly. How are you today?

 

Well, sure, you know, it is lash and rain, cats and dogs and stuff out there. But Lucy, I’m here with you. You’re back in your pink. You’re looking fab. And it’s like, woohoo, let’s do this. Oh, yeah, we’ll get into the pink later on in the brand stuff. So Dierdre and I go back a long way. do you want to tell, tell the story where we started and where you are today? Gosh, we grew up around the corner from one another back in the…

 

80s and 90s Lucy playing outside. ⁓ Your dad was my athletics coach. He helped us win three All-Irelands, which was incredible. He’s super guy. Your sister was on my He’s still by the way. I know. Yeah, like super coach.

 

It’s no wonder where you get your coaching from. Yeah. We worked together, didn’t we? We went to school together. Yeah, I forgot we worked together. Oh my God, we worked together in Aberdeen. Actually, before that, didn’t you get me the job in the fun fair at Oak Park? Yes. Oh my God, my very first job was fun. This is so funny. When I was 15, Dierdre was working in…

 

in this, like, what was it, the plowing championships? So every year in Ireland around the 20th of September, there’s a three day event which is called the National Plowing Championships and there’s usually a fun fair at it. And so my thing was, hey, can I make some money at this? you were like, 15 then. 14. Yeah. 14 I’d say. And I remember Georgia was up there making, she was like, oh, come on, I’ll get you a job. And I, the place was massive. And I remember I was at the front.

 

in this like fun fair when I was on the popcorn machine. We were getting paid a fiver for the day. I remember it was like five pounds. Do know how long I lasted? I left after like two hours. There was no customers. Oh my gosh. And it was so wet that year at clown championships. Afterwards, I ended up being so sick. I had conjunctivitis and all sorts of things afterwards. Oh my God. And then she got me a job in a fast food restaurant in Carlow where I actually worked for like seven or eight years. How long were you there?

 

I was there about two or three years as well, think. Yeah, it was great fun. I still have burns and scars. too. Oh my God, I literally am destroying the burns. Oh my God. So we go back. We’ve always worked hard though, haven’t we? I think that’s one thing about about us. going back to you then. So obviously, tell us where you’re at now, what you’re doing, and then we’ll kind of reverse back into it and we’ll have some questions that I’d like to ask you as well.

 

So I’m five years in running my own business now after working for 20 years in corporate. I was in banking for 20 years and was a bank manager and now I help people all over the world to grow their businesses. So whether they’re starting out a few years in or they’re well established, it’s just helping them really get their shit together a little bit more so that they can scale exponentially. And it’s not just about the money piece. Yes.

 

they’re doing it so that they can make more money. But ultimately, it’s the freedom, flexibility. It’s the relief from being able to pay off a mortgage or the dream of buying their forever home or their holiday home or, you know, being able to put the kids through college or even pay for the kids to get their house. It’s all that sort of stuff. And the knock on effect for me, which lights me up so much is the positive impact that they make on the world around them and the people around them. So it’s like.

 

I freaking love what I do. And like, I’m so passionate about it. And I don’t think I felt that way in my corporate career. At least I didn’t for a long time near the end. Yeah. And it’s, it’s gas. Like you are now, I would consider like one of Ireland’s top brand strategists for sure. One thing, and I’m not just saying this because you’re my friend and you know that you are literally like a fountain of knowledge. Like you are, you study, you, you really upscale yourself and

 

Even as I say that, I’m thinking about you, you you were in the bank, right? You were in financial services and then you did a complete pivot into a completely new industry and area. How do we get there? What drew you into that? That’s a great question. think one of the things that I’d studied in 2014 in the bank was it was a course. It was a level nine diploma called Banking in a Digital Age.

 

Actually, when I went to college, I’d studied computer applications and I left after a year. So I had no degree and I went through the bank kind of like almost an apprenticeship. I did loads of courses throughout the years and I was always studying. So was always doing ones that weren’t asked of me or that I was sent on. And so in 2014, one of the ones that I did was that banking and digital age. And one of the modules in it was customer experience management. And I thought, oh.

 

That’s going to be a walk in the park. I’ve been like working since I was 14. And, you know, I don’t think there’s any customer experience issue that has ever cropped up that would surprise me at this stage. Surely I’ve encountered them all. But actually, the course in my brain and in my mindset made me do a complete 180 because customer service is not the same as customer experience. And so what happened then was I started to roll out some of what I’d learned from customer experience management.

 

in the bank, which was great because at that time in the bank, there was a huge shift into digital as well. We were moving from cashiers into ATMs that were a lot of machines. Nobody liked that. Nobody liked that. Why can’t I get a person anymore? Right. Yeah. And then there was like taking out cash and all that sort of stuff. So when I started my business, first off, then in 2017, 2018, I got headhunted from one bank to another. And I rolled out customer experience management.

 

program, if you like, in the branch that I was running that then put us at the top in the country. So then, you know, customer experience department, marketing department, all of that were like, what did they do down there in Kilkenny? And so they decided to roll out that same framework across all of the other branches. So. you didn’t get paid for that. I wasn’t being paid for that. So 2020 came, hit, as we know.

 

And September 2020, I was called in for a meeting with my area manager and somebody from HR. And I was going, what’s going on here? And so I kind of had a feeling that something was going on, but I was like looking forward, looking for something else. And what had happened was they were telling us that they were closing down the branch, that they were cutting back on some of the branches. And it transpired that the bank I was working for were leaving the country.

 

The first thing I did was I reached out to a coach and when I spoke to that coach, I was like, I don’t know what I want to do. I’m making six figures here and I don’t want to commute. I’ve done the commute thing before. How can I make six figures in my own business if I was to start my own business and what could I do? And one of the things that I loved doing throughout my career was actually helping my colleagues. It was helping them get along, get a step up on the ladder, put themselves forward for promotion and

 

helping them with that little bit of confidence that, you know, sharing the things that I could see in them that they couldn’t see in themselves. And so I thought, could I be a career coach? And if I’m a career coach, could I make six figures? And she’s like, hmm, let’s see, Dierdre. So we started doing some coaching and where that led me to was customer experience management consultancy. But what most people don’t realize about customer experience is that it starts when somebody has a need, desire or a want.

 

And that’s where every customer journey begins. And it goes right the way through until after the transaction, when somebody’s finished working with you all the way through. And the things that impact that are brand, marketing, sales, the delivery of showing up and your integrity and delivering on what you set out that you were going to do. And then all the things afterwards, the operations, everything. So it’s like it’s not just a transaction thing.

 

It’s everything. that’s actually what brand is. It’s designing something that focuses on everything and can help you position yourself uniquely so that you’re not competing with somebody else that if they compare you with apples and oranges. And so when I started on this journey, the people I was working with, they were very similar to the people that I’d worked with. It was like the bank. There was a lot of bureaucracy and red tape. And I’m like, I don’t really like working with organizations on this type of change stuff.

 

And what I realized was small business owners and the small business owners I wanted to work with at the time were women business owners. So that’s where I went with this. And what I realized was when those women business owners, when they get clients, they’re so grateful to have those clients that they over deliver. Huge business mistake because what’s happening is it’s the people pleasing bit that creeps in and they want their clients to like

 

them and loved them and they, know, all this scope creep kicks in and women end up burning out. so what I learned then was that the challenge for smaller business owners was not the delivery and the experience piece. For sure, there’s some things around there, around mapping out customer journeys so that that scope creep doesn’t creep in essentially. But the biggest challenge that business owners have

 

tends to be attracting clients in the first place. And again, that comes back to Wow. So we, we start in the bank, we, we move into the customer experience piece and then you, you kind of pivoted it away a little bit from customer experience because people are not really investing in customer experience, right? And this is where we’re right. Well, let’s get into marketing and messaging. Even though you are helping people with customer experience.

 

That’s not what they’re looking for. Right. So that’s, I think, I think a huge lesson. I remember you learned and we all learn in business about fucking messaging. Right. So let’s get into Brand.

 

People think a brand is a logo on a website and it’s not. What is a brand? ⁓ it’s so much more than a logo on a website. It’s a strategy. A brand is a strategy. It’s your onliness. It’s the thing that only you can do. It’s your unicorn thing that you have. It’s your superpower. It’s the thing that makes you identifiably you.

 

uncopiably you, unmistakably you, unmissably you, all of the things that are you. And a lot of people that I work with, they’re personal brands. Some of them have company brands and business brands as well. But it’s what you stand for, the people you serve, the things that you are doing. from a strategy perspective, it’s a strategy is like the war of art or the art of war, whichever way you want to look at it.

 

And what it is, is it’s about outsmarting the market and your competitors. And my mentor for brand was actually somebody who mentored Steve Jobs from Apple on brand. So I don’t have a degree in this. I didn’t go to college and spend years learning about it. I went and found who is the best person in the world that I can learn about brand from. And then that’s who I chose to be my mentor. And I did the same with marketing and I continue to do the same with these things because

 

I want to learn what they’ve spent years acquiring knowledge from and actually practicing in public. So it is it’s about positioning yourself to be further along than everybody else. And when we think about brand and you come back to strategy, it’s like it’s pushing the boundaries for what doesn’t exist yet and for what people don’t even realize that they want. And I think Apple is a really great example of this because Steve Jobs just had this vision and that sometimes is what

 

Brand stems from a vision like I want to put a thousand songs in your pocket. And that’s what he said. And it’s like it’s the simplification of being able to do that in a little device that has one button. Yeah. You know, and that’s what Brand is. Nobody else had even thought about doing that. You couldn’t compare a Discman or a Walkman if you even remember those things to an iPod, right? So it is about its story, its strategy, its style, it’s all of those things meshed.

 

And then it’s the gut feeling that people have about you and the things that they say or feel when they see you or hear from you. Or it’s like, you know, Lucy with your unmistakable pink. It’s like if somebody sees Lucy, you know, in a video, if you see the pinky, you instantly know it’s Lucy before you see her name. Right. So it’s like those are the things that become synonymous with you. And it’s like little captions like just do it.

 

who said that, you know, and even movies like Marvel. Marvel, the whole franchise has a whole lot of things with brand. But the big thing with brand is that even as an individual, if you’re an employee in the business, if you’re working in a corporate, you have a brand. We all have a brand. How you show up on social media, that’s your brand. The things that you say that you become known for, those are brand.

 

Brand is huge. It’s like it’s everything. And it’s mad. I remember I was in L.A. last year and I got the pleasure of being with Jay Shetty, right, which was so cool. And we were talking a lot about this with the age of AI and the importance of having a personal brand as a business. So that’s essentially why I rebranded my podcast to the Lucy Gernon Show. Do I want my name? Like probably not. Right. I think a lot of business owners

 

You know, I don’t know, maybe they do. I don’t love always putting myself out there, but I know if I don’t, my customers, my clients won’t find me. Right. So what do you think about, ⁓ I suppose, like people who are afraid, which most people are. So if I back up a little bit, I think especially with I know when I started out, certainly I thought I was too late, even though I was 40.

 

I thought there was so many other coaches and, ⁓ you know, leadership and training companies out there. They all had big, the big guys. And there was no way that little old me who loves pink and who’s a bit bubbly and energetic. didn’t fit the mold for like traditional leadership training, right. Which scared the shit out of me. And then, as you were saying earlier, I hired, I didn’t.

 

go and do courses in academics. And I think that’s the biggest mistake people make is thinking, you know, if I have another degree or if I do a diploma or if I do an MBA, now MBAs are absolutely necessary needed if you want to progress in the, in like the corporate space, for example. But if you’re a business owner, absolutely not. You’re way better off finding somebody who has done the thing you want to do or has a proven track record and helping others to do it to show you the way.

 

because in the majority of cases, people in the academia world are there for 20 years. They haven’t been in industry. They’re teaching theory and they’re not actually giving you tools that are actually going to expedite the process for you. So as I’m saying that, like what’s coming to mind to you around the things you’ve learned, like the top three things that make

 

disruptive brand. So I know you talk a lot about disruptive branding. would explain what that is and the top three things. Okay. So disruptive branding is stuff that is so different that people go, wait, what? And it makes them think, ⁓ I don’t get this. And why don’t I get it? But they don’t get it in a good way because it just stops them in their tracks. Right. So

 

That’s what a disruptive brand does, but it’s something that can be the first, but it doesn’t always have to be the first. And probably a really great metaphor of this is I have horses, right? And so if I take my horse out of my stable and imagine I have three fields, the horse from the stable can see the first field. And so if I take my horse out of the stable, it’s going to try to go into the first field and graze in there. And when we’re doing or trying to create something disruptive,

 

That’s typically where our brain brings us into the first field. But if I’m like, okay, no, no, my horse is Vincent. Vincent, no, we’re not going into the first field. We’re going into the second field. Vincent is like, no, I like that first field, bring me back. And it feels hard, right? So our brains sometimes don’t let us get that far forward. So Vincent’s going to try and stop the gate of the second field and go in there.

 

but really disruptive brands go into the third field. And that’s where Vincent will go because the grass is highest in the third field. And so he’s like, my gosh, this is a lush green meadow. didn’t even know that it existed. And so essentially what you’re doing is that’s what getting to that third field is what will make your brand more disruptive because everybody else stops in the first field.

 

Some people will stretch into the second field, but that third field is that lush green meadow that makes you stand out because it’s ungrazed and nobody else has gotten that far with their brand to be disruptive enough. Does that make sense? Yeah, absolutely. Like, and I’m thinking about as you’re saying that, like literally when I started my business, right, I had a vision, literally a vision of creating something that would be super practical, super useful that women could actually

 

doing an hour a week, right? Every other like leadership or like development stuff, you’re either doing a course for a year with loads of assignments or you’re in the evenings and you’re, you know, you’re going into a university to study or you’ve got like a big commitment with like tons and tons of work. And I was just like, who has time? Like who has time for that? Because we were kind of taught, right? If you want to progress, you need a piece of paper, which you absolutely don’t.

 

So I was like, this is probably a stupid idea. Like I literally was like, who’s going to do this because it’s so different. I want to do something snappy. That’s going to be an hour. I want it to be high impact. And I want it to be fun. And I want to connect women together. So I was like, OK, I shied away from that messaging because I thought it was different. And I started leaning more into that messaging about like last year, for example, about the fact that it’s only an hour a week. You know, you don’t need blah, blah.

 

We have the tools, they’re high impact. You get all of these things. It’s designed to create results in real life. I was afraid to say all of the things that it actually did because I wanted to be in the first field. Right. And when I did, we had the highest revenue year in my business. And, know, you’re continuing to kind of refine your messaging and all that kind of good stuff. So like when it comes to brand and like, obviously, my example is there. I’m sure you’ve loads of other examples if you want to share one. Like what

 

When it comes to messaging and neuromarketing relates, let’s talk about how does that link and what are we trying to communicate to customers and clients? Yeah, and I think actually that’s another way to be disruptive as well is to really focus in on your messaging and just explain a little bit around what neuromarketing is. It’s marketing blended with neuroscience and psychology around buying behaviors and buying decisions. And to simplify that or break it down even more.

 

It’s looking at trust and how do you develop and create trust in your messaging and what does that look like? And that can vary depending on the type of content that you create or how you show up or the platform even that you use to show up on. So it could be video content or podcast content, short content, long content, all that sort of stuff. Then there’s attention and attention comes back to disruption again. So it’s like using headlines that are disruptive because they’re provocative or contrarian or bold or

 

Like I say fuck a lot, you know, it’s like sometimes I say fuck in my head. You’re when you say the F word. ⁓ my God. No, this is like corporate dear to unleash. wow, I love it. And then like also that can come into naming as well. So if the name is a little bit different, that can work and you can leverage your IP in that way as well in terms of attention like.

 

My mastermind is called million eyes and million eyes in and of itself is not a real word. It’s a made up word, but it explains what it does. Neural strategies. So to good words. Right. love it. Neural strategies. That’s a made up word. And that’s how I describe what it is that I do, because it’s neuroscience and psychology behind strategies that I help my clients create. So that’s disruptive. So naming and getting attention with some of the language that you use in your messaging also helps with that. Then there’s memorability.

 

Like, again, simple words with fewer, fewer syllables can help make your message more memorable. But having a sticky catchphrase at the end, it’s something that you say at the end of your podcast or every introduction that it’s this sticky little thing that you say and it embeds in people’s memory. That’s really impactful as well. Another thing is emotion. And this is the thing that so many entrepreneurs miss. like LinkedIn is the primary platform I use.

 

Most of my ideal clients use LinkedIn as their primary platform too. But LinkedIn is so super professional that people rarely share content that has emotion in it. And so I’m always like, where’s the emotion in this? How can you demonstrate empathy? Because emotion is what actually causes people to purchase. Later on, they’ll go home and they’ll look at their bank balance and their spreadsheets and say, ⁓ crap, this is going to make my finance cashflow tight, whatever.

 

But emotion needs to be in your messaging as well. And that really is what helps create some resonance and fires up people’s mirror neurons so that they really see themselves in your story. And when you’re sharing a story about you or your clients and they can see themselves in it, well, then they’re going to have this little bit of dopamine hit because they anticipate that then they’re going to be able to actually achieve the same result as well. And so then once they start, it’s this whole ⁓ oxytocin piece.

 

And that’s great because what that does is it helps to drive decision making, which is the final part of neuroscience, essentially, and your marketing. And it’s understanding what not what the brain does when it buys, not just the logical piece, but the emotional piece that impacts the decision making in terms of when people are making the decision, what what are the chemicals that are going through their bodies and their brains?

 

What is the good feeling that they might have about this thing? And do they know in their hearts and minds that this is what’s actually going to help them get to where they want to go? So all of that said, it’s I’m talking trust, attention, memorability, emotion and decision making. Once all of that’s factored in, then what you can do is really leverage that to be more disruptive. I love that. like

 

Let’s talk about the emotional piece, right? Because it’s so funny that you’re saying that. I went too far on the other side, right? Because I think I heard before, isn’t it? That people, they… Well, we buy with emotion and then we rationalize with logic. So we make the decision based on emotion. But that’s when buyer’s remorse comes in because the logical brain kind of kicks in. So how do you do both?

 

great question. And this goes back to customer experience, right? So in one of my programs, Business Accelerator, we’ve been working on this over the last number of weeks. And one of the things that we’ve been doing is mapping out customer journeys. But from a customer journey perspective, there’s three layers. There’s the touch points the customer has on the front end. So the things that they do, like they put their credit card, they take out their credit card, they enter their details into the checkout link, whatever. And then the process in the back end is how do you make that possible?

 

But then the third layer is empathy. What might they be feeling as they’re going through this stage? And really from a client perspective, I mentioned earlier on that a customer journey starts when somebody has a need, want or desire. But then there’s different phases that they go through. And one of those phases is ⁓ affirmation. So after they’ve evaluated what you have, the next phase that they go through is affirmation. Did I make the right decision here?

 

And it’s thinking through when they’re thinking that in their brain, it’s thinking through what are they thinking, feeling, saying, doing, seeing or hearing. And when you factor that in and break that down and they’re thinking, God, was this the right thing to do? What are people going to be saying to me? You can mitigate against that because you know that at that point people might experience buyer’s remorse. So some things to check in that instance might be

 

From the time that they affirm they’re going ahead to the time that they get onboarded and activated in whatever service program, offer, package you’re providing to them, what is the time lapse and how quickly can you get them a win or show them that they’re making progress ASAP? Because if they feel like, actually, I’m already achieving something here.

 

What tends to happen again, and if we come back to neuroscience on this, is that adrenaline kicks in when we say yes. It’s like the gun going off at the start of a marathon and people are like, woo, I’m saying yes, yay. But then slowly afterwards that adrenaline fades off and they realize, shit, I’ve got 26 miles to do in this. It’s a bit hard. So when you are conscious of the empathy as they go through those phases, that can help.

 

with managing the things that they might be feeling at that stage and really listening for the signals or the friction points that are causing them to feel like that adrenaline is dropping off. And what you can do is intentionally build in little dopamine hits because the dopamine is the stuff that makes them keep going. So it could be like, think of the marathon, little nutritious drinks that they could pick up along the way at different stands. How could you embed something like that into the journeys that you create for your clients?

 

my God, that is just such gold. So give it like I’m just thinking of like a product based business. You know, I’m thinking of I ordered something from Polka Beauty, for example, like their delivery is speedy. So I’m like, I want I ordered my product online. I fucking wanted. I don’t want to wait. Amazon is the same. Amazon is like a great example of that, isn’t it? Super. And even Alexa lights up to say your delivery is out today. We don’t like Alexa at the moment, though, because she’s crap, isn’t she? She’s sorry. Side note.

 

Sorry ADHD much. Is she not like really annoying? She doesn’t understand anything we say in our house anymore. I don’t know. Alexa’s just timers for us in our house for the cooking stuff and the shopping list. had a beef with Alexa this morning. yeah, like and it’s funny, like last year I really doubled down on customer experience because not because anyone taught me because I’m that person that walks into a hotel.

 

And I’m watching. I’m like, I’ve paid you like I like my Feist or hotels. You’re the same, right? The tables are the same and we’re away in restaurants. I expect high service because I’m paying a premium price and I hold myself to the same, if not higher standards than that. a couple like obviously I’m in business five years now, but at the start I wouldn’t have been. I thought I just designed this thing. I put it out. I give people things and they’re going to be, you know, they’re just going to know they’re going to come. They’re going to do all the work and they’re going to come and they’re

 

No, wasn’t the case. So I hired a community manager and that person responded. We’ve mapped out every single stage of the customer journey to make sure. But you know what it is as well? think I actually care. And I think I think if you’re you’re doing if you’re in business and you’re doing something that you love and you’re passionate about and you care about your customer and you care about them getting results, you’ll know what to do. I think with this as well. And this again, I said I touched on this earlier.

 

is that what tends to happen with a lot of people in business and women in particular I’ve noticed this with is that because they’re people pleasers, they tend to really over deliver in this space. And that’s the thing that can lead them to burnout. But what really helps is to map out this customer journey, because then you know, OK, it’s within the bounds of what I’ve set out here. And then you can contract for that at the start and you can really contract with it with clients as you go through it. So it’s a really helpful exercise to make sure that you don’t over deliver.

 

But another thing with this, and this comes back to disruption too, is depending on what you set out in terms of what that journey or delivery is going to look like, is it luxurious? Is it the most luxurious in your industry or niche? Is it the highest quality? Is it the cheapest, the fastest, the quickest or a multiple of all of those things? So imagine it’s the fastest, just think Amazon, the fastest, the most frictionless to purchase through. And you can have it on your doorstep in a couple of hours.

 

Like nobody’s been able to replicate what Amazon have done. And what they have done is leverage three different things. Fastest, most frictionless and like easiest to buy, quickest delivery. Right. So it’s like those things together combined make Amazon disruptive. And the brand. It’s like it’s it, isn’t it? Like as you’re even saying that as well, I’m thinking about like anyone listening who has a business, first of all, I think one of the biggest mistakes I made was

 

thinking that my brand was external to me, whereas now I know brand comes from what you want for your customer. So ⁓ Jeff Bezos clearly wanted, he had a problem, he wanted to solve. I wanted quicker, wanted faster, I wanted to be able to get everything. But a lot of business owners think that they need to be a certain way or they need to have all of that. So I think a lot of that comes back to self-doubt and confidence in yourself and your

 

We were talking about this before we came on air on air. How does self-doubt and confidence impact messaging and marketing and brands negatively? It’s because you keep going back and tweaking things because you don’t believe it’s actually working. And it’s the website, looking at the website again and tweaking it and ⁓ that message isn’t landing or whatever.

 

Sometimes it’s it’s, you know, rewriting a post and writing it again or recording a podcast and recording it again and again and again until it’s exactly right. ⁓ And I think that’s a lot of what the self-doubt is. And sometimes what I see happen with clients as well is they tweak a message and it comes back to something beneath that. It’s the conviction because they don’t really fully believe in it themselves. So that conviction doesn’t come through.

 

And the self doubt can be not being direct with calls to action as well. So the calls to action can sound really vague, whether it’s on again on a website, click here to learn more or, know. And I always just kind of think, God, if a guy walked up to me in a bar and said, dear, click here to learn more. I’d be like, what the fuck? You know, it’s like, now. But you know what’s so funny, though, it’s so funny because I think it depends on your audience as well, because I actually test, we’ve tested messaging my audience, right?

 

And think this is what’s so important to what you were mentioning earlier about listening to your customer. And it’s the little whispers I think you always listen to. And we were I was taught a lot of marketing by American marketers, bro marketers, right. And for my audience, when I’m too direct, it doesn’t convert as well as when I say something like click here to discover more, which I was told never to do. And we’ve tested it, which is just interesting because my audience, a lot of them are corporate and it’s what they’re used to kind of seeing.

 

what do you think? I think it depends on your audience and the situation. Yeah, I think, OK, for what I’m talking about, it’s like you need to know what you want people to do. And again, it’s thinking through from that journey perspective, what is the first easiest step that they can take?

 

And what is the psychology and the decision making for your audience that’s going to prompt them to buy? So, yes, the marketing piece is you want them to buy now. But if you know the psychology of your audience and you know the types of decision making triggers that are going to prompt them to buy without being manipulative or, you know, and obviously maintaining ethics and whatnot, then yes, use the language that you know is going to work.

 

but you need to know what is it that you want them to do. And I think where the self-doubt creeps in for people is that they’re not, they’re self-doubting that that’s what they want people to do. And that self-doubt comes back to fear, fear of being rejection, not being good enough, fear of people’s opinions that, know, and usually the people’s opinions that we fear are friends and family and people who are never going to buy from us or work from us. Hi to all the haters. Say hi to your dog. Hi!

 

Yeah, right. Or fear that there’s better options out there, that their competitors are better to them and not really believing in themselves enough to have a call to action in the first place. So like I’ve seen website pages with no calls to action.

 

I’ve seen people share so many posts with about five calls to action on them and all of them are so wishy washy that you don’t know what the next step is. it’s like, yeah, it’s like, just say what it is that you want people to do, you know, ask for it because if you don’t ask for it, you’re not going to get from it. And messaging very rarely or very often doesn’t have that asking for it. I think it affects women more than men. In my experience, what do you think? I do.

 

Yeah, I do. And like I serve both male and female clients and I love working with both and it’s interesting to see the dynamic and the things that crop up for them. like pricing is a thing that affects both. Messaging is a thing that affects both visibility being on camera that affects both. It’s interesting. I don’t think I well, let’s say from a female perspective, it’s much more about how we look.

 

We still care about how we look so much more so than men and men care less about what they say. But men are less empathic than women. Yeah, by design. I remember when I was I met this amazing entrepreneur, male entrepreneur, and he said something to me that really stuck with me is actually Daniel, my mentor’s husband, Darius. He’s built this big tech app, massive. And he was talking to like a bunch of women in the room and he was like, you need to be delusional.

 

He was like, men are delusional. He’s like, I have no doubt that I am going to be my app is going to be the biggest one in the world. Like, I am so delusional that it’s just going to happen. He’s like, you need to be delusional. And I was like, OK, that’s actually quite fun to think about it like that, because I think women just tend to play small. And I think today, hopefully, Dierdre has given you permission to really own who you are, put your message out into the world. And obviously, we linked Dierdre’s ⁓

 

information, the show notes as well. So you can go check out her programs and everything. But just before we kind of finish up, I want to ask you one or just one more question, and then we’re going to do like a rapid fire round. OK, that one. So.

 

What’s one mindset shift that you would invite people listen here today to take to have?

 

to enable them to grow their business or if they’re not in a business and they’re in their career to really unleash their power so they can reach their potential. That’s a lot in that. Don’t ever do that marketing. think the first thing is it’s actually I think the biggest mindset shift is identity.

 

So I see a lot of people starting businesses and they call themselves a coach or a consultant or they’re they tend to be a service provider of sorts and they call themselves a freelancer or a solopreneur. And I often hear language like I’m just a coach. I’m just a consultant. And my God, it pisses me off so much because no, you’re not. You’re so much more than that. You just don’t realize it yet. And what it is is that, you know, when you’re an employee in a company,

 

Often you just see yourself as an employee, but you’re integral to so much more of the operation in the business. You just don’t see yet how you fit into that jigsaw. But when you start your business, yes, you’re the coach, the consultant or the freelancer. But actually, if you start to think about it like, but actually I’m the head of finance, I’m the head of marketing, I’m the head of sales, I’m the head of all of this. Holy fuck, actually, I’m a business owner.

 

I’m the CEO of my life and of my business. And when you step into that identity instead of a CEO of my life, my business, instead of I’m just a coach, I’m just a freelancer, whatever that identity shift is like it literally unleashes you. And it’s the same, think, as an employee as well. Instead of just seeing yourself as I’m just this person, you’re not. You’re so much more than that. You’re a leader for the people around you. You’re a leader for what you do.

 

whether it’s at home or even in a boardroom, doesn’t matter. You are a leader and stepping into that identity, whether you have the title or not, the title is irrelevant. It’s the identity shift. And I think, isn’t there a saying around, we would often say to ourselves, like, you know, like, or who am I to do this? Like, why not you? Why not you? And it comes back to the whole attachment theory in psychology, which is usually there’s three things that we all say, every single one of us say.

 

because in the first 36 months of life, we either couldn’t cope because our maternal figure didn’t give us the things we need when we cried or I’m not good enough, which is all the self doubt, limiting belief shit that so many people think. And that’s the most common one of all. Or the third one is I have no value or self worth. And so we’re all attached to those. And no matter what fear creeps up, it typically comes back to the root of those three from attachment theory. my God. Like.

 

I could talk to you about this all day, literally all day. Diorda has a podcast as well. Do you want to just give your podcast a quick shout out there? Sure. Check us out. It’s the Master Your Business podcast. I have amazing guests like Lucy and others. haven’t been your podcast? No, but you will be. Oh, I’m going to be on your podcast. I was like, I could forget. Like Lucy, it’s a guest show with some solo episodes as well. So yes. Yeah, amazing. OK, cool.

 

So Deirdre, this has been an unbelievable, like so much goal, like you’ve so much wisdom. Thank you so much for being here. We’re going to do a little bit of fun because you know my word for the year this year is fun. OK, let’s do it. So we are having a bit of fun and we are going to do five questions in 90 seconds or less. OK, so we really have to get this going in under 90 seconds. It’s a wrap of fire. Are you ready? Let’s go. You’re allowed to swear. OK. What’s one thing you wish more women would stop apologizing for?

 

Everything. Women just apologize for no reason. So stop apologizing unnecessarily on your shit. Love it. What’s one thing you love to do for fun that might surprise people? I wanted to say something dirty, but I wanted I knew you were going say that! I literally knew she was… I literally will just pass on that question! Horse riding. Horse riding. Horse riding. What’s a life hack?

 

What is a life hack you wish more people knew?

 

Plan your recipes on a shared cloud platform. So if you can’t cook and you have all the food in the fridge, somebody else can cook the dinner. I love that. ⁓ What does success, balance and happiness mean to you? Having flexibility and freedom to do what I want to the people that I love. And what is the best piece of advice you’ve ever received and from who?

 

Oh, a regional manager who was pushing me because I had succeeded in my career as a result of my own success and focus and diligence. And he said, Deirdre, if you want to progress in life and your career, you need to be able to bring others with you. Absolutely love that. Deirdre, thank you so much for being here. You’ve been an amazing guest. We will link your website in the show notes.

 

Guys, thank you all for tuning into the show today. I hope that you found it as valuable and had as much fun listening as we did. I’ll be back again next week with our next week’s episode. So until then, same time, same place. Bye for now. Thanks, Lucy.