Work on a Consistent Message and Marketing System to Prepare For Maintenance Mode with Michelle Mazur

Show Notes

No one is bored with your business but you.

The last month or two, we've been talking about maintenance mode–the idea that you can create a business that can kind of run itself. There are systems and processes set up, so everyone knows exactly what they need to do.

The same kinds of systems and tools that you would use to prepare your business for maintenance are the SAME ones that you would use to free up capacity and prepare your business to scale.

And that means that spending time setting up repeatable processes and checklists and automation has a HUGE return on your investment of time and effort.

But, what, PRECISELY, do you need to DO to get your business prepared for maintenance mode?

The first step is to zoom out and look at the end goal–what your business will look like, feel like and run like IN maintenance mode.

The second step of preparing for maintenance mode requires you to think about your business as an ecosystem. In order for you to step away, every part has to operate smoothly.

SO how do you prep each PART of your business for maintenance? What do you need to consider and what are some tactics that you could use to help you get there?

Michelle Mazur is the founder of Communication Rebel, a Messaging Coach and Author and she's the voice in my head when it comes to my own marketing and messaging, telling me that consistency is the key to success.

Consistency in your messaging means that you don't have to reinvent the wheel every quarter. It means you know what you need to say and you know to whom and how you need to say it. And it’s the first part of being able to prepare your business for maintenance mode.

Listen to the full episode to hear:

• How to build your company’s communication bible: the Brand Message Guide
• Why consistency and repetition aren’t boring to your audience
• How to experiment in order to optimize and minimize, so you’re marketing where it counts
• What to do when you hit a dip in sales or engagement

Learn more about Michelle Mazur:

• Communication Rebel
• Instagram: @drmichellemazur
• Three Word Rebellion
• Three Word Rebellion (book)

Learn more about Susan:

• LinkedIn @thesusanboles

Creators & Guests

Host

Susan Boles

Speaker, Podcaster & Consultant at Beyond Margins | 15+ years of experience as both a CFO and COO

What is Beyond Margins?

Can you build a business based on… “calm?” On Beyond Margins, host Susan Boles looks beyond the usual metrics of success to help you build a business where calm is the new KPI. With over 15 years of experience as an entrepreneur, CFO, and COO, Susan shares the business strategies that lead to a business with comfortable margins—financial, emotional, energetic, and scheduling margins. Join her and her guests as they counter the prevailing “wisdom” about business growth, productivity, and success to provide a framework for making choices that align with your values and true goals. Episode by episode, you’ll get a look at the team management, operations, financials, product development, and marketing of a calmer business.

Michelle Mazur (00:00):

Messaging and marketing are a system in your business. I feel like so many business owners don't view that their message is a system. It's a system of how you talk about what you do, and who you serve, and how you're uniquely positioned. And then you apply that system to your marketing system.

Susan Boles (00:27):

No one is bored with your business but you. I'm Susan Boles, and you're listening to Break the Ceiling, the show where we break down unconventional strategies you can use to save time, boost your profit, and increase your operational capacity. If you've been following along with the show the last month or two, we've been talking about maintenance mode. The idea that you can create a business that can kind of run itself. There are systems and processes set up. So everyone knows exactly what they need to do. A business that can run in maintenance mode is a resilient business. If you need to step away for a few weeks or months, nothing comes crashing down. It's also a business that is prepared to scale. The same kinds of systems and tools that you would use to prepare your business for maintenance are the same ones that you would use to free up capacity and prepare your business to scale.

Susan Boles (01:24):

And that means that spending time setting up repeatable processes, and checklists and automation has a huge return on your investment of time and effort. And it means you can choose maintenance or you can choose growth and your business will be built for it. But what precisely do you need to do to get your business prepared for maintenance mode? Well, the first step is to zoom out to the big picture of your business. Maintenance mode requires strategy. You have to look at the end goal. What your business will look like, feel like and run like in maintenance mode. That's what we've been talking about in the last few episodes. You have to assess the capacity of your business to handle maintenance. You have to assess your own capacity as a founder and what you want your life to feel like, look like and then you need to assess whether your current business model needs to shift.

Susan Boles (02:19):

Each one of those aspects has an episode in the feed where we talk about that. So if you missed any, I highly recommend you go back and check them out.

Susan Boles (02:28):

The second step of preparing for maintenance mode requires you to think about your business as an ecosystem. You have to examine all the parts and pieces and make sure that they are individually ready for maintenance. Because in order for you to step away, every part of your business has to operate smoothly. If you throw a wrench in one part, it'll stop all the cogs from moving. That's what we'll be talking about in the next few episodes. How do you prepare each part of your business for maintenance? What do you need to consider, and what are some tactics that you could use to help get you there?

Susan Boles (03:01):

First up is Michelle Mazur. She's the founder of Communication Rebel, a messaging coach, and author and she's the voice in my head when it comes to my own marketing and messaging, telling me that consistency is the key to success. I think when most people think about maintenance mode and certainly this is how I think about maintenance mode is that we think about operations and systems and that sort of thing. But you really focus on a different aspect of maintenance mode, marketing, messaging and I think that's an area where a lot of people forget that it's an important piece of maintenance mode. So talk to me a little bit about why marketing, messaging, that's such an important part of prepping your business to go into maintenance mode.

Michelle Mazur (03:51):

Oh, 100%. Because what I have seen when people want to go into maintenance mode is that they fail to think about, "How am I going to get new people to discover me? How am I going to nurture my existing people into becoming clients?" And really that's what marketing is. It's those actions that we're taking on a daily, weekly, monthly basis that lead our clients to work with us. And messaging is what powers your marketing, because it's knowing what to say in order to get new people into your world and move those people in to becoming clients. So you have to have both because I always say that messaging plus marketing equals people prime for sales. And especially when you're going into maintenance mode and you're not going to be as active in your business, you still have to be thinking strategically, "How am I going to get the word out about what I do?" Otherwise, sales are going to stop eventually, and that's not what you want.

Susan Boles (05:10):

No, we want a repeatable system that happens. So in your work with clients, you do a lot of work with them to get them into a consistent message that they can focus on. Talk to me a little bit about the process that you use with them to get them something that they can repeat over and over.

Michelle Mazur (05:35):

I wanted to point something out what you just said, that messaging and marketing are a system in your business. I feel like so many business owners don't view that their message is a system. It's a system of how you talk about what you do, and who you serve and how you're uniquely positioned. And then you apply that system to your marketing system. So for me, when I work with people on their messaging, the goal is to get them to messaging that can power their marketing strategy. So what I do with my clients is I always first start with what I call an audience deep dive. Understanding who your people are, what they're struggling with, why they resist change and getting into the language they're using, how they're thinking about things, how they're dealing with their day to day life, how this problem is impacting their day to day life.

Michelle Mazur (06:40):

And then from there, I take them into the 3 Word Rebellion work, which is their positioning. So that uncomparable message that they want to be known for and that others can spread for them. And once we have that, then we get to go into the fun client journey, which is all of my messaging is based with free writing and just getting ideas out of people's heads and onto paper. So once we know their 3 Word Rebellion, their positioning, then we can formulate that client journey about how do we take people from strangers and turn them into clients and look at their perspectives, and their frameworks, and kind of package all of that messaging up with calls to action, thinking about lead magnets and building their email community.

Michelle Mazur (07:30):

And then we move into signature storytelling because that's how we connect emotionally with people and knowing where our story fits in that journey you're taking them on. And then all of those raw ingredients inform your marketing strategy and what parts and the client journey itself tells you like, "Oh, if I want to gather leads, I need to be talking about these topics." So that is, in a nutshell how I work with people to get to their repeatable and the message. And then we document all of that and what I call a brand message guide because it needs to be all easily accessible because that is really the Bible for how your business communicates.

Susan Boles (08:19):

I love this idea of thinking about your marketing and your messaging as a system, because I definitely have to admit, I am one of those people that it took me a very long time to start thinking about it that way. I was thinking about, it has to be new and different, and I don't want people to get tired of what I'm saying and how do I create consistency? And all of those things really didn't click for me until I started thinking about marketing as part of my system. I'm great with systems, but I've always focused on other parts of my business besides the marketing, and the sales and the messaging. So can we go a little deeper into how you see that working for people and your approach around the systematizing of it?

Michelle Mazur (09:14):

Yeah. Well, once you know what your key messages are in that client journey, and you understand the people you're trying to reach and your positioning in the marketplace, then it is so much easier to apply that to a marketing system. Because really the way I view marketing, marketing has three different goals. Every marketing strategy should have three different overarching components. The first component is growing and being discovered. So what are the activities you're doing to grow your audience and be discovered by new people? And that can be your search engine optimization. It could be appearing on podcasts. It can be social media. The second goal of the marketing strategy is what I call engage, which is getting people to raise their hands and say, "Yes," they're interested in what you're talking about. So engaging with you on social media, signing up for your email community, answering your questions, responding to emails, you send all of those little things we do to get engagement.

Michelle Mazur (10:24):

And that is obviously doing things like sending emails regularly, nurturing people with your podcast or your blog content. And then the final phase of your marketing strategy is that offer. You should be making offers to the people that you've nurtured. So you could be doing that through sales conversations, or your email marketing, advertising. There's lots of different ways to do that. But those are the goals of your marketing system.

Michelle Mazur (11:01):

And your tactics that you use under each of those three categories will look different for everyone. But the thing that powers those categories and helps you actually grow the audience, or generate the leads, or make the offers is the messaging that lies beneath it and understanding, "What do I have to say in order to grow my audience? What do I have to say in order to get people to raise their hands and say like, "Yeah, I think I'm interested in what you're talking about." And then what do you have to say in order to make an offer and start to sell? So that's how the two systems have really worked together and how I view the marketing system overall.

Susan Boles (11:47):

I'm going to raise my hand and say, "I'm guilty of this too." But I think a lot of founders feel like consistency equates with being boring. So they don't want to be saying the same thing over and over because everybody must have already heard it by now. And their audience wants something new and different. So I have a feeling you have a strong take on that.

Michelle Mazur (12:10):

Mm-hmm (affirmative) Let me ask you a question. Do you remember what you had for dinner last Wednesday?

Susan Boles (12:14):

No idea.

Michelle Mazur (12:16):

Exactly. If you can't remember what you had for dinner last Wednesday, how is anyone going to remember what you posted two weeks ago to Instagram or what you wrote on your blog three months ago? No, they're not. No one is paying that close attention to you. And that need for, "Oh, I've got to be saying something new because what if my audience gets bored."

Michelle Mazur (12:42):

They're not paying that close of attention. And if you really want to be known for your work, be referred to by other people for what you do, it's that repetition that's the key. So for the business owner, it's really about how do you keep yourself interested or the way that I also like to think about this is, "How can I make less work for myself by reusing what I already have?" Because I feel like, especially with marketing, we're always on this content hamster wheel feeding the Instagram, Facebook algorithm with new, new, new, and it's exhausting. So once you know what your key messages are and what to say and how to say it, then you can just start recycling that, repurposing that. And you spend less time on marketing, which is exactly what you want in maintenance mode.

Susan Boles (13:49):

Yeah, that's actually the mindset shift that I had to make was that figuring out a system, understanding what is the minimum that I need to be doing, how do I need to be saying it? How can I repurpose things that I'm already creating? That was a real mindset shift that I needed to make. So it's been four years, I think of ScaleSpark and multiple businesses before that, that I had never sent out a consistent email newsletter. For the first couple of years I wasn't even collecting email addresses because my philosophy was, "What am I going to do with them? I know I'm not sending an email. So why bother right now?" And the thing that made a shift for me was figuring out what are the pieces that go in my newsletter?

Susan Boles (14:38):

Because the thing that was stopping me was always, "Well, I don't know what to write." And the thing that clicked for me was, "Okay, cool. Here's this section. That's what goes in there. Here's the section. That's what goes in there. And if I want to do more, because I'm feeling inspired to write whatever I can. But here's the system, that's what has to happen." And that was the thing that helped me get a lot more consistent with it because I know what I'm supposed to be doing now. Are there any other mindset shifts that you consistently see business owners needing to make, to get themselves on board with more consistency in their marketing?

Michelle Mazur (15:19):

Yeah, I think one of the things, because that boredom aspect is so hard for entrepreneurs, business owners, because we're inherently creative people and we're idea generating machines. So we're always like, "Oh, I can put this new thing out." So one of the things is how can you use stories, and examples, and case studies and books you're reading to get your core message across. So you're saying the same thing, but maybe giving it a different twist or example to keep it interesting for you because that's the real problem is keeping yourself interested in your marketing.

Michelle Mazur (15:57):

So anything I can think of to help people do it. I also think that structure, understanding what your non-negotiables are for marketing every week. Like for me, yes, I'm going to release a podcast every week. That's what I do. And sometimes I repurpose those podcasts. I'm going to send an email or two to my email community. And like you, I have a structure that I use every single time and it makes it so much easier to send out that weekly email because I know exactly what goes where, and then [crosstalk 00:16:39]

Susan Boles (16:39):

Yes. It's so revolutionary for me was just all I needed to figure out was what goes where.

Michelle Mazur (16:46):

Yeah. And sometimes in some newsletters I do things where I include an original thought, like something I was thinking of. Sometimes I don't. Sometimes I'm like, "No, I'm just going to promote the podcast this week. That's all I have the bandwidth for. So I'll promote that and then promote a podcast that I was on and tell people how they can work with me at the end. And then that's." It goes out the door. So making it as easy as possible for yourself to really get off that hamster wheel. Oh, and the final thing is to pay attention to what's working.

Michelle Mazur (17:20):

We don't do that enough. We don't go and look at social media posts that performed well and think, "Oh, maybe I should use those again in the future, tweak it a little bit, send it out again in like a month or two." Because if it gets great engagement, once it's most likely going to get great engagement again. Looking at how well our subject lines are performing and what people are clicking on in our emails. All of that is important stuff to start optimizing your marketing and experimenting with it. And I think for me, that's always super fun to do.

Susan Boles (18:01):

Hey there, it's Susan. If you've been listening to this interview and it's making you think about some of these issues and ideas and you wish you could talk to some other real live business owners about it, I wanted to invite you to my free monthly round table Dollars + Decisions. Once a month, I get together live with a group of amazing business owners just like you, to geek out on money, and operations, and workflow and software, all that stuff that you hear me talk about here. The round table is kind of like a live interactive version of the podcast. So I would love to have you join me, no spaces, no hyphens, or you can just click the link in the show notes. Hope to see you there.

Susan Boles (18:48):

The other side of that that I know has been important for me is examining, when we're saying examining what's working to be able to eliminate things that aren't working. So you've tested them, you've given them a shot, maybe not the right fit, maybe not the right place to spend your time, your energy, your effort can also be really empowering when you're trying to minimize the amount of work that you're actually doing. So for me, I did a couple of month experiment on Instagram, which I've always been kind of meh on. Meh is maybe not strong enough of a word. I really dislike Instagram. But I wanted to give it a shot. I kind of had this gut feeling that a lot of the people that I wanted to work with weren't necessarily there. So I wanted to actually give it a shot and say, "Cool, let me at least test it and see if maybe my hunch is right, maybe my hunch is not."

Susan Boles (19:57):

And we did, I didn't, but my CMO did. So I was, "I'm not doing Instagram if I have to actually personally do it, I'm not doing it." But we tested it and figured out is it we're spending time there. And after six months, so far not really. But that's really helpful information for me to say, "Cool. Maybe it could work if it was a platform that I really loved. I think people that do well in Instagram are people that like being on Instagram."

Michelle Mazur (20:28):

Yeah, a 100%.

Susan Boles (20:31):

I love being on Twitter and I've gotten actual clients from Twitter. So it makes more sense for me to spend time there because it's something I enjoy. I've gotten actual clients from it. That's a much better use of my time, but I wouldn't have known that without experimenting and trying to figure out is this worth my time? Is this something that should be a minimum thing that I'm doing every week?

Michelle Mazur (20:56):

Yeah. And it does take that experimenting. I have this conversation all the time with my clients because they serve B2B people and they're like, "I'm going to go on Instagram." And I'm like, "Are your people actually on Instagram or are they going to be on LinkedIn for you?" They're like, "Oh, well they're on Instagram." I'm like, "Yeah. But are they on Instagram looking at cat means and shopping or are they actually looking for what you do?" And they're always like, "Oh yeah, they're going to be looking at cat memes and baby pictures." I'm like, "mm-hmm. Exactly." So it is that mix of where are your best customers coming from and the platform that you like being on because it doesn't matter how great Facebook is for your business. If you hate it, you're not going to be there and you just need to let it go.

Susan Boles (21:52):

So what happened with Instagram is all of my business friends are in Instagram. It's where old Facebook would have been. My friends are on Instagram, so I want to go and support them. And I get a lot of support from my business friends on Instagram. So it sort of felt like there was a value to it, but it didn't turn into clients or people buying courses or hiring me. So being able to distinguish like, "Yes, I'm getting engagement who is engaging," was another nuance that I really needed to pay attention to. And I think being able to run limited experiments and then let go of things that aren't working, the letting go of is hard.

Michelle Mazur (22:48):

Yes. And then there's always the gremlin in the back of your mind looking at what other people are doing and saying, "But look at all your friends on Instagram. Shouldn't you be there too?" And then we put pressure on ourselves to show up there. That comparison gremlin is very real. And that's another mindset shift is you have to do marketing that works for you. And what works for one person might not necessarily work for you because it's not how you want to show up. It's not aligned with you.

Susan Boles (23:22):

Yeah. Like I don't want to be doing Instagram lives every day. It would make me cry. But I have people with similar businesses to mine who do really well on Instagram because they absolutely love doing lives and they're on live all day every day because they think it's fun. Yeah. So I love the aspect of thinking about what makes sense for your business, but also what makes for you and what feels comfortable.

Michelle Mazur (23:47):

Yeah because if you don't like it, you're not going to do it no matter how good it is for your business and then you'll just be [crosstalk 00:23:55].

Susan Boles (23:54):

No matter how systematized you can make it, you [inaudible 00:23:57] make it happen.

Michelle Mazur (23:58):

Exactly. Exactly.

Susan Boles (24:01):

So let's talk about the flip side here and talk about the kind of impact you see on folks who really managed to double down on this consistency maybe even in your own business. What is the impact for committing to that consistency and really following through with it?

Michelle Mazur (24:22):

Yeah, it's interesting because one of the biggest impacts is that all of a sudden people start knowing about you, and who you are and what your business does because you're showing up all the time with the same message. So that makes it easier for people to refer you or when they need help with the thing that you do. They're like, "Oh yeah, so-and-so does that. I'm going to go to her website and check it out."

Michelle Mazur (24:51):

So you become very top of mind and then the other side effect is that people aren't confused because one week you're talking about systems and organizations and the next week you're talking about human design or something. So because it does take that repetition. So it becomes easier to get clients, you get more inbound leads, more referrals. You end up being invited on podcasts to talk about your expertise or invited for speaking. I've seen some of my clients once they really doubled down on their message and got consistent with it, they've quadrupled their podcast audience because it was a more compelling message, which means they were attracting more of the right audience and really growing the people who were finding them for the first time.

Michelle Mazur (25:54):

So when we start doubling down on our message and our marketing consistency, it becomes easier to grow your audience, get more leads, grow your email [inaudible 00:26:07], and eventually get more clients and sales because you're consistent. And the other impact it has is it just becomes easier. You're no longer sitting there guessing about, "Oh, what do I need to say?" Or committing random acts of marketing like, "Oh, haven't posted to Instagram for a week. Haven't emailed my list in the month. Maybe I should send them something." That's not strategic at all. I'm kind of a waste of your time.

Susan Boles (26:38):

[crosstalk 00:26:38] the random incidents of marketing because I'm super guilty of that.

Michelle Mazur (26:43):

Oh, everybody's done that. Everybody's been like, "Oh man, I haven't emailed my list in a month. Maybe I'll send them something." And it's like, maybe rethink that. What is that email for? What is its purpose for the person reading it? What's the purpose for your business? Because when you're just random, you're just like, "I just need to stay top of mind with something completely random," that's not going to really impact your business or actually get people to remember you.

Susan Boles (27:12):

So I am on board with all of this. And I am curious, I imagine the consistency of messaging takes a little bit of time to pay off if you've been shifting your message or you've been shifting your offers, you've been shifting your audience. How long, ballpark, I imagine it will be different for everybody, but how long do you have to be consistent before people start remembering you for that thing?

Michelle Mazur (27:45):

I would say anywhere between six months to a year. Probably leaning more towards a year. Once you find a message and you have that initial interest and that initial inkling that things are working, then it is time to stick to it. Because what will happen is when you come out with a new message at first your true believers, your true fans will be all on board. They'll be like, "Yes, I am into this. I am for this. Let me hire you for this." So there's this initial like, "Oh, people really like my thing." And then that wears off over time.

Michelle Mazur (28:30):

And that's when we start questioning, "Oh, is this really working?" And it's just because we've hit all of our true fans are true believers out there. And then it's about growing our awareness among people who may know of us, but don't know what we're all about. And that takes some time. So pushing through and being like, "No, it's not that the messaging isn't working, I just need to be consistent for a longer period of time in order to see this payoff." It is really a long-term investment when you're working with your message.

Susan Boles (29:10):

Yeah. And I think in that dip between the initial excitement and the "This is the thing that I'm doing," it's so easy to question what you're doing if it's working if it's not, I should do something new, this is indifferent. And that's where we see you end up ping-ponging in your shifts of what you're doing. So yeah, I think that's really helpful to think about it in terms of a year, maybe two years of saying the same thing and being out there known for the same thing.

Michelle Mazur (29:40):

Yeah. Even for me, when I think about when I launched the 3 Word Rebellion, it's like initially, especially after the book launch, it like took off, I was booked out for months. And then all of a sudden there was this lull and the lull lasted for probably a good six months. And it wasn't that I wasn't getting any clients or the book wasn't selling as well. Well, the book wasn't selling as well. It was still selling, but not as where it was before. And I'm like, "Oh, maybe this isn't working. What's going on here?" And I'm like, "No, I am in an audience gathering phase. I have to build awareness around this so that the message is spread." And now I'm seeing the uptick again of that consistency. But yeah, knowing that the dip is there, so important.

Susan Boles (30:33):

It is because you have to remind yourself as you're going through it, "Don't break this. This is still the thing that I'm supposed to be doing. Stay the course it'll come back."

Michelle Mazur (30:44):

Mm-hmm (affirmative) And it's very hard to see that because then you're like, "Well maybe I need to tweak it or maybe I need to do something different." And then you do something different and you get the initial rush again, but then you have the dip. You're always going to hit the dip.

Susan Boles (31:00):

Okay. So if you were putting a business in maintenance mode with regard to its marketing, what are the minimums that people need to consider building in or making sure there's a system around in order to be able to step away for a little bit?

Michelle Mazur (31:21):

Yeah. I think the first system is making sure that you have your messaging down and that you know that it works and that might take some experimentation. So start this before you want to go into maintenance mode. If you're heading into maintenance mode tomorrow it's probably a little too late and you're going to have to spend more time on tweaking your messaging with your marketing. So starting there first and then thinking about what are your non-negotiables for marketing and what's the frequency. So even if you're in maintenance mode, how often do you want to email your email list. Is that twice a month? Is it once a month? What does that look like? And if you're still going to put out new content or even remix old content and put it out as new, which is totally doable, figuring out like, "What's the frequency of that and when am I going to do that? Or am I going to hire someone to remix what I've already written and put it out into the world?"

Michelle Mazur (32:28):

And then finally thinking about social media, are you doing any of that? And if you're not, what activities are you going to be doing in order to get new people to discover you? Maybe that is just search engine optimization. So those blog posts that you're remixing, you're doing some SEO on them so that you're getting found by new people. And that's really how you're driving awareness of your business. So figuring out what are those non-negotiables that you're going to be doing every month, or once a week or whatever the frequency is for you and then making a plan to do it.

Susan Boles (33:07):

Yeah. And I think the thing that I love about your perspective of marketing as a system is that you don't actually have to be stepping away from your business to really reap a lot of capacity benefits from doing these things. So even if you're in your business all day, every day, having a system and being able to be very clear on what you're saying and what you need to do can alleviate your capacity and open you up for other things like more clients or, different business development stuff, or guesting on podcasts. The benefits are there to thinking about your marketing as a system, even if you're not thinking about maintenance mode.

Michelle Mazur (33:51):

Yes because it does free up your time. One of the things that I did at the end of 2020 is I hired someone to go through my existing content and basically create social media hooks. And from the podcast and blog posts I've sent her, I probably have 20 pages of social media hooks that I can try out from my past content. So for me, that's going to be a huge time saver because now I can just go to this Word doc and start pulling out ideas for social media. And I know that it is on message because it's from my message.

Susan Boles (34:36):

Yes. I love that. So is there anything you think we should talk about that we haven't touched on yet?

Michelle Mazur (34:43):

That's such a good question. I do think it's just that reminder that consistency may be boring for you, but it's that repetition that helps people know what you do and how you serve. And repetition is what builds your business and drives clients to your business. So don't be afraid of that. Embrace repetition.

Susan Boles (35:15):

Yeah. In my own head I'm using the phrase radical consistency, because it makes me feel like I'm being rebellious by doing the same thing over and over.

Michelle Mazur (35:26):

Yes. I love radical consistency. I always talk about that in terms of Brené Brown because if you look at what she's doing, she is radically consistent. She knows what her message is, she knows how to relay it on social media. She knows what stories she should be telling. And she just shows up and delivers the same type of message again, and again and again. She is very disciplined with staying on message even as her work expands. She's so good at bringing her old message into the new work she's doing to keep up that radical consistency.

Susan Boles (36:07):

Yeah. And you're right. And nobody is sick of hearing from Brené Brown.

Michelle Mazur (36:11):

No one, no one. I don't think about her Netflix special. I was so excited to watch it. And it was all stuff I'd heard before. There was nothing new in there. And why would she do something new? She's going to bring out her tested material for a Netflix special.

Susan Boles (36:30):

Yes, absolutely. All right. So where can our listeners find you if they want to connect and learn more about what you do?

Michelle Mazur (36:37):

All right. So the best place to connect with me personally is Instagram. I'm @drmichellemazur there. And if you want to slide into my DMs and tell me what you took away from this episode, I would love that. And for everything else there is drmichellemazur.com. And if you want a taste of what the 3 Word Rebellion is like and how it can help you with your messaging, there's a free download to do that at 3wordrebellion.com.

Susan Boles (37:05):

No one is getting bored with your message, but you. That was my biggest takeaway from my conversation with Michelle, that you as the person who is saying the same thing over and over. You're the only one you have to worry about getting bored. Everyone else's begging to hear more of the same stuff from you. Consistency is key in your messaging, in your offers. It builds trust. And it means that people will remember you and be able to refer others to you. But consistency in your messaging also means that you don't have to reinvent the wheel every quarter. It means that you know what you need to say. You know who you need to say it to and how you need to say it. And it means you can develop repeatable systems around your messaging, your offers because they aren't constantly changing. Well, it might seem boring.

Susan Boles (37:57):

It's actually incredibly freeing and having a consistent message and consistent offers is the first part of being able to prepare your business for maintenance mode. You can't set your marketing to repeat if you have to change what you're saying or what you're selling every month. There is efficiency in consistency. Next week, I'm talking to my friend, Alison Davis about creating a repeatable sales process to be able to put your sales into maintenance mode.

Susan Boles (38:25):

Alison is my go-to for sales systems. So you definitely do not want to miss that episode. Hit subscribe on your favorite podcast player now so you don't miss it. And if you want to talk to other business owners about what tactics they use to put their own business into maintenance mode, come to the next Dollars + Decisions round table. It's a finance and capacity strategy session for business owners like you. We talk tactics, share what's working and troubleshoot what's not. Come join us. You can sign up at scalespark.co/dollarsanddecisions, or just click the link in the show notes. See you there.

Susan Boles (39:06):

Break the Ceiling was produced by Yellow House Media. Our executive producer is Sean McMullin. Production coordinator is Lou Blaser. And this episode was edited by Nick Firchau.