[Case study] How Rachel made a tweak in her messaging and got incredible results

When Rachel made a pivot in her business, her message became diluted, and there was a disconnect in how she spoke to future clients.

We worked together in one of my Brilliance Reloaded groups, using several of my tools such as the Power Paradigm Baseline, 10 x 10 content creation hack, and a raft of other goodies you find now in my Brilliance Hub.

Rachel quickly saw big results in her messaging, and the impact she had with clients.

In fact, she booked 2 1:1 clients who paid in full within 10 days of starting with me.

I am so proud of Rachel for doing this work which can sometimes feel overwhelming, but it doesn't. need to be!

Often it's a minor tweak that's needed, and the power is back with your brand.

Delve into this Facebook Live replay, and read the transcript below to hear about how we did it, and to learn how you can apply the same tools to your biz.

Find out more about Rachel right here on her website,

To go through this process yourself in my Brilliance Hub, click here.

~ Jo xo

Transcript from video

Cool. Hi, everyone. It's Jo Gifford here, and I'm here with the lovely Rachel Foy. Hi, Rachel.

Hello.

Hi. We're here to talk about creating your messaging and the impact that happens when you really connect with your messaging, when you are super sure of what it is that you stand for, and what you are saying, and how you communicate that with people.

I've invited the awesome Rachel on here, because we worked together recently during my Brilliance Reloaded group, and Rachel just had some huge changes. So, should we dive into that?

Yes. Let's do it. Bring it on. I'm ready.

Let's do it. All right, dude. I'm so excited about this. So, let's go right back. Let's talk about what you do.

What do I do? Okay, so I have always been working with women, so this is not a new thing. This is like the last 10 years, I've been working with women, particularly around food, so sort of helping them with binge eating, emotional eating, body insecurities, and this is my passion, okay? You know that. This is my passion, and it's my mission. This is something that I kind of ... I lost my way. If we're being completely honest and vulnerable with this, I lost my way about 18 months ago, because I kind of felt like something want quite right. I knew that I knew what I was doing. I knew that I'm capable of transforming people's lives.

I've been told that I give women their lives back, but something was kind of a little bit out with my messaging.

I thought I knew what my message was. I was like, "Oh, I help people with emotional eating," or, "I help women who struggle with binge eating. That's what I can help them with," so that's where my full attention went in my messaging. I was speaking about food all the time. Then, I kind of thought "Well actually, I'm going to completely change what I do," and then I stopped talking about the food. I think I was a rebel, to be honest. I was like, "I'm sick of talking about food. I'm going to start talking about more of the spiritual work that I do, and the woo-woo stuff, and about awakening themselves and becoming these soul fed women." There was kind of two parallels running in my business, and even though it was kind of working, it also wasn't working at the same time. So, this is then where the planets aligned, and you popped up, and I was like, "Oh, I need some help."

You need some Gifford. This is such a good example, because I think so many people, myself included ... I can resonate with that, because when we're in business, we pivot sometimes. We're trying, we're testing, and we're refining, and that's brilliant. That's all part of it. It's all part of the journey, isn't it?

Yeah.

But you've reached a stage where you recognise, though, that you also bring your magical woo side into the way that you work, and you're like, "Right, okay. Well, how do I talk about this, but also talk about the entry point?" which for lots of your clients might have been feeling overweight, feeling uncomfortable, and you ended up with kind of two pieces of threads.

Yeah, and I felt completely separated. This was an ongoing challenge for probably the last kind of 12 months, up until a few months ago, that I felt like I had two parallel messages. There was a part of me that was talking about the food, on one Facebook live, and then there was another part of me that was talking about the, "Well, let's awaken your truth. Who are you? Speak your truth. Step into the version of who you want to be," because I knew in my head that they were connected, but I didn't know how to connect that to my audience.

You probably know, as well, when you work with your clients, Rachel, that all that stuff aligns together, that you might get one of them in on one of the messaging, but in your sessions with them, it all comes together.

Yeah.

I know myself, as you know from working with me, yes, it's about brilliance, and creative thinking, and about the content, of course, but it's also very much about connecting with that confidence, seeing your own brilliance and the impact of that, and it's kind of all those things. So, you knew that those effects were happening in your sessions and the way that you worked, but articulating those things together was kind of a disconnect. I know you said you knew that it wasn't working, and how was that physically and emotionally ... How was it manifesting in the way that your business was operating? What effects did it have on your business?

Frustration was a big one, because it was kind of that peaks and troughs of some months, I had amazing clients, and then other months, I was like, "I've got no new clients right now." It was just that frustration of I knew that I had such a powerful message, and I know that I am supposed to be impacting the world on such a big scale, so for me, it was a frustration. I was like, "What is it that I'm not doing properly? What it is that needs to change?" Because this parallel messaging, it was actually driving me mad. I was like, "I don't actually know what I'm doing anymore," and I think that's the most disheartening thing of kind of being your own boss with your message. It's like you know what you're doing, but if people out there don't understand, and they don't connect to what you're doing, then you might as well not be doing what you're doing.

Do you know what? I certainly relate. I've had so many times when my Masterminds, or my coaches or mentors have said to me, "Jo, you're doing amazing stuff, but no one understands what it is. You need to break it down into different terms." Then, often, whenever I've made that shift and just said ... You're speaking the language of your clients, and you reconnect with them, and we're going to delve into how you've done that, it's a massive turnaround. It's so frustrating, and I really want to acknowledge that you said, "I know I'm supposed to be making a big impact in the world." Yes, girl. Yes, you are. Yes, girlfriend.

Yes.

You really are. My peeps, the peeps who I adore working with, like yourself, are people who know, know 100% that they're supposed to be reaching people, that their work is going to have an impact, and it's so frustrating when you can't quite work out what it is that's not clicking. Everyone's tried like a million blueprints, or a million swipe files, but that still isn't quite right, because if you aren't really connecting to your message, it doesn't click. So, what do we do?

What do we do? You've given me a bit of a kicking, not in a bad way. You're like, "Come on. I'm going to push you right to the edge, going to push you right to the edge. Then, you have to jump." But I think just quickly, before we delve into that, I think one of my turning points, and this was why I reached out and was like, "I definitely need your help with this," was actually, a pretty good friend of mine who, she knows what I do, like she follows me on Facebook, and she kind of watches from the sidelines, we were having a conversation. I think it was probably the week before you and I started working together. She was just talking about my stuff, as in like, "How's it going? How's everything going with the business?" Then, she just made a comment, and she was like, "It's quite funny, because I watch your stuff, but I don't really know what you do." That feeling of like, "Oh my god, you're one of my close friends, and you don't know what I do?" That was kind of the realisation, you know?

Dude, any of my friends watching this now, no one in my real life, non-business world, know what I do.

All right, then.

They just think I do something with the internet. Hello to people. But I think that's a really good litmus test, though, isn't it?

Yeah.

Because no, you don't need to be in the bubble of business, because we serve people outside of that, so ...

Absolutely.

... what is it that you do? Especially for you in your work as a woman, one of your best friends there didn't know. That's really, that's a good wake-up call, isn't it?

Yeah.

So, we dove on in. You were part of my Brilliance Reloaded group, and what I did with that group was to pull in a few of my sort of tried and tested techniques, which we worked through, and that kind of layer up. I find that different things click for different people at different stages, so what we did was we went right back to something that I call establishing your power paradigm, like your baseline of what makes you you. With that part of it, we brainstorm your experience, your expertise, your approach, and your personality, because we often forget how awesome we are and all that we bring to our offerings, because when we're in it every day, we forget that everything we have done to this point, all of our education, be it life education or formal education, all of our experience in jobs, all of experience as entrepreneurs, all of our approaches inform how we work, which gives us a unique way of working and a unique lens. Was it working through the power paradigm that clicked for you? I forget which one was your clicking point.

It was. It was the very first exercise, which was that, and that was the catalyst for me to actually own my brilliance. I remember posting that in the group. I was like, "Holy crap." It was like, "You know what? I need to own the fact that I have got all these experience and the wisdom." I think you commented saying, "Oh my god, just look at how much stuff you do, your qualifications, your experience, the thousands of hours of clients that you've worked with in the last 10 years." I think it was, you gave me permission, actually. It was that permission of going, "Do you know what? Yeah. You know what you're doing." For me, I felt that shift of completely trusting and believing that I've got what it takes to do what I need to do. Does that make sense?

 I think that we often need to feel seen and validated, don't we? A lot of us overachievers are out here doing the work, and I often feel like I'm literally a reflection in a container, just saying, "You're awesome. I see you. I really see you," and that's amazing, because when we sit down and list all the stuff we ... I have to do this for myself often. I have to sit down and go, "Right, Jo. Let's look at what you've done. Let's look at who you are. Let's look at what you've achieved. Let's look at all the things that make you you," because when we are often by ourselves, perhaps as small business owners, as entrepreneurs, we are serving clients or we're building a business, but often, we're on our own, and that's when I know, certainly for me, the little voices can go in there going, "Yeah, but who really are you to be doing this?" So, you can whip out your power paradigm and go, "Actually, monkey mind ..."

That's what it was. Now, I've got it on my desk. It's on one of my Trello boards, and it's there all the time for me to see now, because it really did feel like I just stepped into that power. It's like I owned it. I was like, "Do you know what? This is who I am, and any kind of ..." I think that the self-doubt thing, and you just kind of mentioned that, because I, up until this point, had these, it felt like two parallel messages running. I think I started to lose trust in myself, because I kind of thought it was like it was me. I was doing something wrong, or I wasn't capable, or I wasn't brilliant enough to do this, because it just wasn't working properly. So, having that power paradigm, I was like, "Oh, actually, I've got everything. I've got what it takes. I now need to own it."

That's the beautiful thing about that, I think. It's already there. Your brilliance is already in your head. Your brilliance is already in your experience. I mean, obviously, we keep on learning, we keep on evolving. No one's saying that okay, we stop here, but you are enough already with what you already know and what you serve. I remember that for you, when I ... Because I was feeding back for everyone, doing screen [inaudible 00:11:29] come back and everything. For you, it was this huge, like reams of experience and amazing stuff. It was like, "Okay, well you're brilliant." As you say, often having that permission is enough to unlock, and what did it feel like? We can say we own that power, but what does ... How does that translate to how you feel?

Belief, massive belief, just kind of ... It's funny, actually, because when I work with my clients, I help them step into their power, but I'd never really done it for me. For me, it was just that feeling of ... It was like standing straighter, and shoulders back, and kind of like, "Do you know what? Yeah. This is who I am," and I kind of feel like that's how I'm carrying myself now. It's kind of bizarre. I feel like my whole inner world has changed, because I've now fully stepped into owning, "This is what I have. This is what I do. This is what I'm capable of helping people with."

*Jo cries*

Are we breaking the five minute record?

10 minutes today. I was just saying to Rachel before we went live that I broke my record yesterday by crying within five minutes on my call with someone. There's not a podcast interview, a live, or a client call where I do not cry.

Love it. Yeah. I get quite kind of emotional at thinking about this, because like you said, you just made me realise that I already had all this in me, but through this not being completely able to pinpoint what I was doing, I think over the last 12 months or so, it really just started chipping away at my belief, actually, belief in myself, because just that traction felt like it was a little bit slow. I don't feel that way now, at all. It's like I can feel it. It is self-belief. It's like, if we don't believe in what we're doing, then nobody else will, and we can't do what we want to do in the world, because that belief, it's tangible, isn't it? It comes across in video and copy, and actually everything that we're doing.

Didn't you go out and sell two one-to-one paid in full clients?

I remember posting that in the group, too, and you're like, "Oh my god." I think that was ...

This girl is on fire.

That was literally within the first 10 days, maybe, of doing the personal paradigm. I was like, "Do you know what? I'm not holding myself back anymore," and I just posted literally a few little random things saying, "I'm looking for a woman right now who wants this, this, and this, who wants to feel this, this, and this. Let me know," and I had about five people reach out to me within no time at all, got on the phone to them. Two of them signed up, paid in full, and I was like, "Shit. That's amazing. Yes. It's easy."

Right. It's also because when you really, really know what it is you're bringing to the table, what it is ... your lens on stuff is, then you know all the other pieces around the confidence, the sales, the knowing where you fit in in the marketplace, the knowing ... That's easy, isn't it? It's easier, because you're like, "Well, cool. I know where I fit in with this." I remember for you, once you'd kind of got that power, then, there was this chain reaction of you were kind of going deeper and deeper with your message. You had quite a shift, actually, as well, didn't you, around you're serving and around how access who you're serving?

Yeah, so the third thing, as I said, I had these two parallel messages, and it was basically not like I needed to change any of them. I think we said this together. It's like I wasn't a million miles away from my message. It had always been there. It was literally taking a sidestep of like millimetres, and that's how it always felt, and actually just merging them both together. So, my message now, you got us to create a one-liner, so now, owning this," I empower female go-getters to stop fighting food, to quieting their inner gremlin by taking their power back, creating the life that they're hungry for, and awakening their soul fed woman."

Yes.!

Yes.

I totally feel like one of the Queer Eye guys. I want be like one of them going, "Who gave us permission to be so awesome?"

Yay.

Right. Here's the other piece of that, right? Because doing that simple one-liner gives us so much clarity, as well, doesn't it? Because there's always those four minutes of, "I help insert here type of person, to do insert here end result."

I'd done that. I'd done that for two years, and I'd never gotten anywhere. It never felt like who I was. It's like, "I help women stop binge eating." That's what I my message had been for like three years. "I help women stop binge eating," and yes, I do, but that's not really who I am. So, that one-liner, and I remember going backwards and forwards to you, and you were helping in the group, and the group were giving feedback, and it took me quite a while to actually get it, but when I got it, I was like, "Ah." It's like I just knew. Everything just felt ... It feels like me. That one statement is like, that is who I am, and it's like ... Ooh, I'm going to get emotional now.

Yay. Come on, come on.  I'm so proud of you. I'm so proud of you, because your work is phenomenal. It's so needed, right? You create a legacy by empowering other women to step into who they are, and by doing ... The legacy from that is phenomenal, so damn right, get emotional. This is big work in the world. But when you own and you really feel that one-liner statement, that becomes, then, well, that's what you pitch people to podcast, for podcast interviews. That's your book framework. That becomes everything.

And it covers everything that I do. I'm kind of struggling to articulate this, like I know that you know the importance of messaging, but up until then, like you said, pitching to podcasts, or being a guest somewhere, or anything that I was pitching, I felt like there was two versions of me. I was pitching the food bit, and then I was pitching the other stuff. Now, it's like it's all in this little container in that one statement, and yeah, the simplicity, it simplified what I'm doing, which is massive.

Yeah, and it's such a simple step, as well, and I think the thing is that we have the tools to go in there and just go, "Let's just check back with what Rachel is, what Rachel's doing," and that was a simple matrix, wasn't it? It was literally look at four things, your experience, expertise, approach, personality, brainstorm them, because when you go in there and you list out all those things, you see the full picture of who you are. Then, when we play with getting it down to a one-liner, there's this real sense of distilling every word to have impact, and using character, as well, in each word, because when we do the boring networking version of, "Hi. I do such-and-such to help so-and-so," great, but we're going to check out.

Totally.

But if each of those words has value, and impact, and a quality about them that speaks directly to your personality, as well, because we've chosen them to be Rachel-ified, then that is where the magnetism is as well, though, isn't it? That is where people are like, "Oh my god, I need to work with you. I need to find out about you, because you've just spoken directly to me." That is where we have that client magnet in action, because people will immediately either repel or attract from that statement, and from there, you build out to your copy, your rest of the stuff, but it's less of a slog. It's so much less of ... The overwhelm is gone, isn't it, when you know what you're saying?

Do you know what? That one-liner, and again, it's on my computer all the time now, because whenever I, before I hop on a Facebook live, before I send an email out ... I'm restructuring everything at the moment. It's like jumping in big time. However, I use that as my reference point now. It's like I read it, and then I just make sure that whatever copy, whatever video, whatever content, fits into that statement, and if it doesn't, then I need to slightly tweak what I'm saying, because again, it's just made it so much easier for me, whereas before, I was like, "I just talk about food," or, "I just talk about not feeling happy," or, "I just talk about not feeling very connected to ourself." Yes, that's still what I'm talking about, but now, I've got this little reference point that just gives me the clarity to make sure that it's on point with my message. I have a message. Yippee.

You do. You absolutely do. So, this shift has been happening in your business, and I know before we jumped on the broadcast, you said you're redoing all your copy and all your stuff. Sorry.

Thanks, Jo.  a lot of work now, but nevermind.

But you are, you're revisiting everything.

Yeah. Well, I have to, because I now have this little ... This is the centre, isn't it? This is like the middle bit that everything's now going to get built around. So, as before we hopped on, I've spent the last 10 days in this little hole of my office. I've cut the outside world off.

Love it.

I've been writing copy on my page, on my website. All of my emails that go out to my community will be rewritten. I'm just changing everything, messages, like social media, LinkedIn, everything, so it's all in alignment. I think that word alignment gets thrown around so much, but I feel that that's what I now have, which ... Again, it's a feeling. It's like everything just feels like the pieces have now connected, and yeah, I'm just really excited as to ...

Amazing.

... how much of an impact this is going to create, because I know, I know that it's about to, so it's good.

That's the thing, because when you have, whether we call it alignment, or whether we call it that sweet spot, or whether we call it just that feeling of, "Ah, all my ducks are in a row. It makes sense." Then from there, you can then go out into the world, send your message out there, doing the stuff, knowing that it's got that impact behind it, and this is where you'll start seeing the posts be shared more. We'll start seeing everything have more engagement. We'll start seeing more people coming into your world, because you are leading from your edge, and specifically yours, because you found that line in your industry, in the vertical that you're in, through your perspective that is exactly what your peeps need, so therefore, it's going to have a ripple effect. It's going to be something which has impact when you go out there and talk about it. So, I'm in awe of you, and thank you for sharing how we went through the process.


I'm so excited to see from now, what happens from here.

I know. Yeah. It's exciting, and I'm just so kind of ... I'm a massive believer about nothing's a coincidence. It's all synchronicity, and literally, it was like that friend said what she said. I kind of had this feeling. Your post popped up. I was like, "Yeah, I'm supposed to work with Jo. I need to define my message," and just so much feels like it shifted since we did that. Yeah. There's still quite a bit of stuff be doing, and that's never going to end, but just knowing that that is my message, it's just made such a massive impact on what I now know I'm supposed to be doing, so thank you.

Thank you so much for being on. I would say, as well, what you were just saying then about you having to redo all your stuff, when you are super clear of your message, like Rachel is, when you are super clear and you've got that reference point, whether you are outsourcing or doing it yourself, you have that to come back to. So, if you are someone who finds it easier to brief someone, or you're at the stage where you're going to outsource copy or content, you still have a way to brief now, don't you, to say, "This is my lens. This is how I speak. This is my brand." You can brand your own brilliance when you know where you're coming from with it, or whether you're doing that yourself, because you feel you are able to articulate what you do so much better. I makes the whole thing flow so much easier with much less resistance, much less overwhelm.

Absolutely. I've never found it so easy to write copy. Since I now have my little thing, I'm like [inaudible 00:24:07].

Yeah.

It's like pages and reams.

It does, though, doesn't it? It flies off, and the more you create, the more you output, the more you find your language, your way of communicating ... There's some days I'm a real nerd with it, and I'll be sitting here laughing to myself with my own copy, "Oh, I'm really funny,". That is how I can approach things. That is my brand. I can be all those things. People will either love me or hate me, and that's brilliant, because then, I've found the right peeps and all that stuff. It's working for you right now, you know? You've found the right peeps. You've, in 10 days, to sell out two one-to-one client spots, and now, you're redoing everything, it's going to have even more magnetism. It's just wonderful. But we have to speak in the next upcoming months and see what's progressed and what's happening, and keep tabs on your epic journey.

No, definitely. I think that, just quickly to mention, as well, I think also having that message really clear has also allowed me to kind of view it in slightly different ways, as well. I think I remember posting in the group not too long ago, I was like, "Well, actually, the women that I work with, it still fits within my brand and within my message, but what if it's also the women, like the businesswomen, who are worried about being visible or actually showing up with visibility, so they can't grow their business because of body insecurities?" That's still my woman, and I can still make that message now work with the message that I have with The Soul Fed Woman. So, I've kind of got these different almost niches to start targeting ...

Perfect.

... which again, I've never had the clarity, and it's just been women, in general.

That's perfect, because you can then target to your different segments within your woman, within who your people are, and you can then send out the direct messaging that's going to speak to even more, hone down to exactly who that is. I'm so, so pleased for you.

Straight back to you. Thank you.