Understanding Mindsets in Messaging & Marketing with Linda Perry

NOTE: This podcast was transcribed by an AI tool. Please forgive any typos or errors. Erin Ollila 00:04 Hey friends, welcome to the Talk Copy to Me podcast. Here we empower small business owners to step into the spotlight with their marketing and messaging. I’m your host, Erin Ollila. Let’s get started and talk coffee. Hello friends today I am here with mindset Maven, Linda Perry. And what you may know not know about her is that as someone who loves to speak and who even gets paid for speaking, she used to have to take beta blockers so that her voice wouldn’t shake as much in front of the judges that she argued in front of. And right before we started recording, I actually had to ask her, what judges were you talking in front of because I learned something new about Linda, and that is that she was a trial lawyer before moving into this world of copy and marketing and messaging. And most importantly, as we’ll discuss today, mindset, so welcome to the show. Linda, can you tell us a little bit more about the transition from working in the law to working in the marketing world? Linda Perry 01:13 Yeah, absolutely. First, I kind of wish it was like some other cool judges, like I always had this desire to sing like, I wish that would be true, but never, ever. You know, like a lot of us, I ended up a lawyer because I was kind of checking the box along the success path. If you go get the law degree, if you go get the pretty house, the everything you want, you’re gonna be really happy, you’re gonna make a lot of money, it’s gonna be great. Only, you know, somewhere in my 30s, I woke up and said, whose life is this anyway. And so I actually started learning about coaching and mindset work. And I had followed the work of Debbie Ford, who ended up being my mentor and teacher. And under whose program I got certified as a coach, and I really was just seeing so many changes in my life. And I ended up leaving the law, which everyone’s like, wait a minute, you’re crazy. You invested how much in your education and 17 years like, but it really I was ready. And one of the things that I discovered in coaching is is that 80% of life coaches fail. And so why is that? And as somebody who, whose paper walked through into a courtroom before I did, I understood the art of persuasion, I understood the art of writing and messaging, and how do you actually convey something but I had to learn it in a completely different arena. Right so I ended up learning everything I could about copywriting marketing, helping other coaches get started, actually teach business that a Life Coach School still. So the idea is, is I wanted to transition into that and understand that world so I could help my own business but be help others understand this. I ended up really redefining how I wanted to be a coach as a result. So long story short, is I have a ton of skills that I now utilize to help other business owners really get to the next level. Erin Ollila 03:06 When you when you started doing this work and really recognizing that there was so much more to understand when it with your clients in order to market to them in a way that felt right. What were some of the key things that you noticed that you needed to look for, or you needed to acknowledge when it came to like talking to them and speaking to them in the copy? Linda Perry 03:29 Well, the first thing is that mindset is not static. You know, when you were talking about doing this, the demographics, the client avatar, people think it’s this one and done. This is how they feel about this situation. However, when it comes to mindset, it is it is an evolution and it is consistently evolving. There are a couple of things to think about. First and foremost, we have to really consider that while we have the demographics where we have all these things, just like you they have fears and limiting beliefs that are impacting how they look at a certain situation and it can vary on a day to day basis. Unfortunately for so many of us, we are looking at our self worth outside of ourselves. It is extremely, extremely sick. And so we look at how we’re performing like copywriters, for example, it can be devastating when you get feedback. And it’s not what you thought and all of a sudden you think you suck, what your clients are going through the exact same thing on a daily basis in their world in their business. Maybe it’s about parenting, those of us who are parents have had those moments like I’m a rock star mom today, the next day it feels horrible, but it is they’re going through some of those same self worth issues and really to be mindful of the fact that that exists. They have the same limiting beliefs of not enough. They have those stupid beliefs. They have all of those things that we’re holding on to so while we often and talk about that thing that they’re waking up at 3am worrying about, like, you know, whether it is Is this all there is, or I really am never going to figure this kind of thing out. It is also impacted by some of the things that is that are occurring on a day to day basis. Recognize that 90% of our decisions are really being made by the subconscious brain. And we don’t see that. And so that’s the same for your client. So we want to start to think, what are those things that are impacting? Well, number one, we have those beliefs, right, we all come with our experience that our beliefs or fears. Number two, we’re walking through the world every day listening to messages, and I think this is really central you and I started talking before we start hit record. And essentially one of the things that we forget to do is think about how are we moving through the world? And what is it that we’re actually absorbing? Right? There’s a recession have we noticed what or at least there’s the news of the recession consistently? What have we noticed about our own spending habits? What have we noticed about how we’re showing up in the world? What are we noticing about our own languaging? They’re watching the exact same things, they’re looking at the same things. And what we want to do on a daily basis, is ask ourselves a simple question, how is this impacting the way they’re looking at my business, my product, my service? How is it impacting the message I’m going to share? Right, we often hear about things like being tone deaf. And it’s not necessarily only about being tone deaf, but it is really about understanding just that nuance of where they’re coming from right now. And so those are really essential to be thinking about it. The third thing I often talk about is, is we often have hierarchies of needs, right? Like and we’re we’re moving through them, where are you on that hierarchy of needs, we think, Oh, my God, we have a solution. And it’s the best thing ever. But if it’s lower on their hierarchy of needs, we may have to really spend more time on our messaging, we may actually have to be more often prominent and visible. For example, mindset is not necessarily a high up there on people’s hierarchy of needs, even though in my mind, it should be because it changes everything. But yeah, but the idea is, is I’m very well aware that because there’s some education around mindset, and because mindset is often the last dollar out, my visibility has to be higher. And so those are some of the three, those are three of the things that I asked people to start to consider before they even formulate the message. Erin Ollila 07:54 Yeah, no, ever, everything you said there, we could probably just stay here all day talking about all of those things. It’s so true, because I think a lot of what we’re trained to do is to look for personality traits, or look for things that motivate people. But we really need to spend time understanding like the stages that they’re at, right? Like, are they aware of what you’re offering? And how aware, right, you talk about a hierarchy, when we write, copy, you know, everyone loves to say like, Oh, I hate long sales pages, but they’re there for a reason. Because for the people who can make very quick decisions, and are both aware and ready to purchase, they’re not going to read the entire page, and they don’t need to, but there are customers. And I’ll say customers don’t just leave, there are customers who they need nurturing. And that’s an example of why the long sales page is there so that they can read, they can feel more confident they can work through all of those pain points that are addressed everything that the bullet points that are listed, right. That’s a reason because we have so many different types of clients in one bucket, right? Like, it’s not just this one human who wakes up and makes these subconscious decisions that we’re talking about. So I love that how all three of those different kinds of categories that you addressed there. You opened up the conversation to showcase that there are different people that might fall under those clients that were talking and different things that may be motivating them. Linda Perry 09:27 By nuance, one little thing on that to talking about like even stage of buying, one of the things I noticed particularly around let’s say, the way we talk about time or the money, mindset issues, stage of life impacts tremendously. So at the beginning of this conversation, we were talking before we hit record again kids, and you know you have kids, the different varied age ranges, but they’re younger than mine, and how I think about my mindset now around money In Time is entirely different, because my I’ve one in college one graduated from college, my time is my own again. And so I can expand into time easier than for example, say somebody who is a new mom, or you know, I’ve understand 20 year olds mindset because I tend to actually communicate with a lot of them. And they have a whole different thing about time they have an urgency that is really interesting. So we want to think not just in terms of stages of buying, but really aren’t where are they in life, because how they’re looking at your service, or your product, or how you’re showing up is impacted even by those small things. These are the things we almost lost over and really take from our own perspective. But it is worth considering how is someone else looking at this from where they are in life? Erin Ollila 10:50 Yeah, I think this is a huge one. And maybe just because I’ve personally experienced it, let’s say in the last decade from heaven, all these kids, my last baby, I was doing excellent business, I really wanted to join a group program, and I inquired like, when’s the next time you’re offering it? Well, of course, the next time they were offering it was the day after my C section was scheduled. Now, for my second child, which is the first trial of owning my own business, I was still working at my full time job, about to start my own business. And I worked in the delivery room as I was waiting three days to deliver this child now. And then I like jumped right back into work shortly after. And I just remember saying to myself, like I can’t have the same experience, like we’re very likely not having any more children after this, I need it to feel better, because that didn’t feel good for me. So of course, the second I’ve realized, it’s the day after she’s about to be born, I’m not going to join this program. And I got a lot of pushback from that business owner about how like, if I want to succeed, I need to like, you know, you pray, okay, so I need to like work through it. And like if the finances aren’t a problem, and the rest of it’s not a problem, like study while the baby sleeps, and I just for me, in that instance, it was a very tone deaf response to ideally, because what they could have had was someone who was like, really amped and excited to purchase. The next time, I already had the readiness, I already had the awareness, but then that just showed me a lot about how they how much they care about their clients. When we talk to our clients. It’s part of this like human to human communication that I’m always trying to, like advocate for and marketing, like, they’re real people at the end of the page at the end of the Zoom call, however it is you’re communicating. So if you do happen to know things about their specific life, I think we have to take that into consideration. And when you don’t have all of those, like clues, if you’re talking to a mass audience with things like sales copy, or however you communicating with them, then I just think we have to recognize that it’s not all about us as business owners. So if someone doesn’t purchase it is again, like you talked about, like it’s not a reflection on on whether we’re doing a good job as as copywriters or as business owners, everyone has different needs, and that that will affect whether they purchase, not simply the effectiveness of the copy, but just where people are in their own stage of life. Linda Perry 13:11 Yeah, and I think the way that we can talk about our products, our products or services, or you know, here’s the thing, we made up even tweaking what we offer as a result, like I remember this whole conversation, even around time, I have a product, self guided products called expanding into time. And one of the things I added was this whole concept of stage of life, because a mom said to me, she said, I’m mad at you for the content, I know your contents, right? But it’s triggering me and I said, okay, cool, let’s talk about it. But it gave me a reminder to not approach my messaging from just my own current perspective on something, to really broaden my horizons, open my eyes and take a look. And if you don’t have that mindset or understand it, it is an opportunity to seek out the people who can share it with you. So that your messaging is it’s not that you have to tailor it to every single city like you have to touch upon every little thing, but that you aren’t inadvertently turning some people off. And I think that’s really an opportunity to be mindful in a way that allows our services get to get to the people that we need. Again, I am really not, you know, again, you can sell to the point that you want to sell. But it is for me about being ethical and about being able to really capture that pain in a way that you probably want to as a business owner. Erin Ollila 14:46 Yeah, I agree. And I think this is such a great transition into like the heart of our talk right now because it we’re talking about assumptions, right. So like we’re saying, like, we have our own assumptions, and we put those on our clients and we put them into our copy But how can we gather assumptions? Like how can we learn about our clients? So, you know, I think one thing that comes to mind and we’ve had an episode on this before is voice of customer research. And I think good voc research is really pushing past the standard questions like, it’s not just where you were before you decided to work with this person, and how, like how you move through that, which are quality questions to ask, but we need to ask more why questions? What do you have when it comes to questions and actually speaking to clients who may be able to give you feedback or research? Do you have any advice for the people listening on how to communicate with their clients and how to talk to them so they can get quality research? Linda Perry 15:44 What’s interesting to me is, is that in coaching, we never asked the question, why? Because it invites story, and it puts people in their sort of victim mode. But I think in customer research, why is a great question because we do want to elicit story. I think, more than the question I what I care more about is the listening. So many of us listen for specific answers. So many of us listen for what’s going to validate that my product worked, what’s going to actually put on paper that I’m a hero? Erin Ollila 16:18 Or what’s going to validate the assumptions you already have, too. Right? Linda Perry 16:21 Exactly. What I invite people to do is listen with absolute curiosity. We call it active listening and coaching. And there are certain words that will help you really find and dig anytime anybody says should I have to? Is this where you stop? Right? Like this? Is this is okay, what’s the underlying belief that’s driving the shutter or the halftone? Right, this should have to you need to? Where are we seeing group thinking? Right? group think is, is the timeout for we don’t reinvent the wheel. There are some really great best practices out there. But when we’re listening to our clients, right, where’s group think versus what they’re really saying they really need or how this benefited them. Like we think it should work a certain way. So we’re talking about it that way. So listening is really instrumental. I think we also want to really from instead of assuming we know how something impacted them, really have people break it down into those little step by step. And how does this circle back to the initial problem? We’re so quick to get the testimonial, we’re so quick to get what is that little bite size thing? The other way we can sort of test those assumptions, and I actually had somebody do this, even for my business recently was go out into the real world. What is it that they’re saying is it echoed in these groups where the same topic is being talked about? Whether it’s a Facebook group on LinkedIn, I am not a fan of sitting on social media. However, I sit on social media scouring words, I am actually looking for the words that my clients are using, I’m actually looking for the problem set in a certain way. Is it being mirrored in my customer interviews? Again, this is taking data from multiple sources so that we’re not really looking at this through our lens of how do I see the world? What do I want to validate. And so it’s very interesting actually had somebody do this and was fun because new languaging came about and new ways that I talked about what I really do, because it really made it clear, what do I really do for people. And so those are the opportunities for you so that you’re communicating. The other thing is, is I do want you to trust your gut, like when you wake up with a good idea and test it out in terms of your communication. See what kind of feedback you’re getting, this isn’t about being liked so much, but what’s really resonating What are you hearing back in that email response back to you? Those are really that’s customer data at all times. Like every single communication you have is an opportunity to collect this data, or use it all what’s the word? What are they needing? What are they what are they telling me here? So Erin Ollila 19:25 yeah, I think that’s really important and I do love vSee research to this so this is not a dig on it but what’s limiting with voc research is you’re only speaking to your customers right? Linda Perry 19:38 So even a slice of those customers that are like super fans you know Erin Ollila 19:42 exactly or it could just be a slice that are have like one particular pain point right so you’re hearing the same thoughts kind of echoed and so the idea of of what you’re saying of go out and collect data from social media groups from you know, Amazon, when like books that people are like commenting on and I I’m looking at the words that people are using over and over again, I think are complementary to things like voc research, because you’re getting the words that people are saying that aren’t your clients and aren’t already predisposed to like you and are filtered through the relationship you’ve already had in the work you’ve already done. So I think it really gives a good clear understanding of what people need. But that’s a key thing to think about, you know, one conversation I have with every single client I work with is like, what are you offering them? And what do they need, because there’s often blinders there for the business owner, on how they speak to their own clients based on what we think our clients need. And then the, the level that the client is ready to, to look toward that needs. So as an example, I offer SEO to my clients. I’ve done SEO for like, almost 10 years now. And I know that SEO is valuable. I know it’s it doesn’t have a lot of urgency, but it is valuable. So the way that I know a lot of the times that my clients may need it or leads when we’re having conversations as I’ll often they don’t come to me and say like, yes, I would love Seo unless they’ve been referred by like a friend, would they come to me as they say, like, oh, I need help with my website, because I’m not getting leads anymore, all of my leads have dried up, I need to attract more clients to my business. And then they’ll complain about how they don’t like spending time on social media or like whatever it is, but like, what I’m hearing from them is they need to try something new, to attract people to their business. And what they’re looking for is clients and when I know they need is SEO. So there is a disconnect that I think we have to understand in our own visitors that we can’t always be offering what we think that they need, we have to understand again, where’s that what is their mindset, telling them that they actually need, and figure out how to speak to them based on that, you know, like if I if someone said that they need leads, and I just like threw SEO, you know, at them immediately, they’re not going to be receptive to that they need me to listen, like as you mentioned, listening being one of the most important things to like, understand where people are, they need me to empathize, they need me to talk to them about what they’ve been trying so far, and what’s worked and what’s not before I could even suggest SEO as being a tool for them. So I think as when it comes to mindset, we also have to understand like what they’re ready to receive from us based on what we know they might need. Linda Perry 22:31 What’s fascinating about that is, you know it, it allows you to broaden the scope of voice of customer research. When you know, I used to work with coaches a lot when I was doing more marketing and copy. And the mistake was always using languaging of the transformed versus the language of the person who’s struggling. And when I still teach at a life coach training school, when they’re getting their business up, I said do not talk from where you are now. Right? Like people are not going to understand what it means to communicate from your heart versus your head, they’re sitting at home, wondering how to deal with this relationship, that’s a problem. They’re sitting at home, struggling with, you know, being visible, whatever it may be. It is to remember that there is that filter of where we are, where a lot of our current customers who’ve been through our process are and where they started out. And I think as you’re walking through the world, it is almost like I will say put on a pair of glasses as your current customer, how are they seeing their world? Be mindful of stepping into that, so that you can have blind judging? Yeah, I mean, if you talk to me about SEO early on, I’d be like, What, no, I just need to get this up. I just need to be visible helped me out, like the importance of it would have I would have glazed over. So the conversation has to be different. And so it is really talking about the pain points. You want to get clients, right. Like, Well, yeah. And that makes more sense. Well, my way works better than this way. Right? And so it’s really being mindful of all of those kinds of things. So that we can show up and really almost not be mind reader’s but recognize that we can speak to them at the level they’re at. Erin Ollila 24:32 Yeah, absolutely. You know, so I think one thing we’ve talked a lot about is like the skills that we need as business owners as copywriters to be able to understand where our clients are at and how what we might offer them is not necessarily what they may need in the moment but one thing we didn’t really address that you had mentioned and I wanted to dive a little bit deeper into was groupthink because I thought that is just one of those things that like, isn’t talked about as often but it is very persuasive. serve, you know, and I would say it’s incredibly persuasive in this online business world, right, which is its own island of advice. And, you know, we’re taught, we as business owners like putting aside marketers for a second here, we’re taught from a selective group of people who are kind of recycling a lot of the same messages. And I think that kind of does a disservice to the people who are DIY and or even the people who are hiring it out, because they have like expectations when it comes to working with marketers have of success that are not necessarily where they should be considering things, right. So I think when it comes to mindset, we also have to kind of like look at like, who we’re surrounding ourselves with both as the client like both as the people that we work with, and ourselves as business owners to understand like, there’s a lot more that goes on in group thing. And there’s a lot more that goes on in like societal, or even cultural conversations around these types of things that we need to bring in and at least recognize when it comes to speaking to our clients are marketing to our clients. Yeah, this Linda Perry 26:15 grip thing can be really interesting. You know, I see it on so many different levels. It is dangerous, if you are an online business, and you’re trying to build your own business and or help your clients and some method doesn’t work for you, it will mess with our head trash in that you’re wrong somehow, as opposed to maybe it wasn’t right for your business. So it can be really dangerous. I remember one time I had somebody in one of my group programs, and he was telling me that he was onboarding for sale, his sales process was based on XYZ expert. He was struggling with the second call, because that’s the way you’re supposed to do it. But somehow he lost people. And I said to them, why you’re doing it that way. Right? We never asked that. Is this right? For my business? Do I need to tweak this? There’s that aspect? And then the group think in Am I behind? Am I doing this the right way? We join rooms where we think we’re going to network where we think we’re going to be able to get forward in our business. The danger of it is often brings up again, head trash. Am I good enough? Am I like them? There’s always the comparison game. And it can be like, Well, I have to do that. Because they’re doing that. And since they’re doing that, and they’re the exact kind of business I am I have to do it. And it’s somehow not working out for me. We need to ask the important question of is this right for me? The other temptation is also judgment. So judgment is this thing that happens even sometimes in groupthink? Well, they’re stupid. That’s just dumb. Whereas we might be resisting resisting something that actually is good for us. And this is an opportunity where we can put the cap of discernment on and again, I think discernment is such a different tool than judgment, discernment, asks questions, judgment comes to conclusions. And so it takes some practice to do this. But I teach people how to break the groupthink, right? Even about your like, beliefs about who you are identity foreclosure is, is one of the the biggest problems because you’ll go into these groups and someone will be like, well, you’re naturally good at this, you should be doing this. Do you want to write there’s no discernment? Is this aligned with my vision? Is this where I want to go? So I believe groupthink can be incredibly detrimental to a business owner. If you’re not cognizant, if you’re not very intentional, if you don’t have a vision. And this is where I land ultimately, and always say, if you are not 100%, clear, and I don’t mean, how much money you’re gonna make. I mean, where are you going? What do you want your business to look like? Are you working on Fridays? How do you want to set this up? What kind of clients are you willing to say no to? Because we’re taught can’t say no, because money’s coming in. So all of these things are important because ultimately, they play a role back full circle to the message you’re sending out. Because if the group things impacting every other aspect of your business, you’re going to come out muddled. Erin Ollila 29:31 Absolutely, and I’m so glad this conversation kind of like directed this way. Because, you know, when we first started talking, I really thought we’d be talking about like the mindset of our clients and like understanding it, so that way we could speak to it, but I was neglecting even myself to think about how each person or each business owners mindset really impacts the message that they put out. Right. So like if your felt like it just exactly what you said. If you’re following what your competitors are doing, or you’re following it advice that has been given to you by someone that doesn’t feel right. Your message is never going to be clear. I can’t tell you how many clients have come to me and they’ve said, like, I need a new website, and I’m like, what your what your website’s, okay? Like, why do you need an entire new website? And they’ll just say, like, you know, I did it like a year and a half ago, it never felt right with me. I didn’t think my copywriter was listening to me. And then the more and more we dive into it, we find actually that it wasn’t necessarily so much the marketers that they were working with it was that they didn’t understand their business at that time. And for many reasons, like you said, it could have been that they’re taking advice from an expert that that just wasn’t aligned with how they wanted to run their business. It could have been that they weren’t like trying as hard as they could to, and copy and not in a negative way, not like steal, copy, but like copy a competitor, because they thought that’s how you had to show up in your business. And I think it gets to the point the, again, to go back to the client mindset, it gets to like a breaking point where they are. These are intelligent, smart, lovely, wonderful people, but they just don’t know anymore how to show up as themselves, because the message that they’re getting is so muddled, that the message that they’re giving is so muddled. So I think that when we think about how we’re going to write our own copy, and how we’re going to speak to our own clients, we do have to examine our own mindset. And I think that if one way that I think would work really well, especially for the DIY errs is a website audit because that’s when I see so clearly that people will have aha moments, you know, when I’ll be like, Wow, this one page that you have is so clearly written like I was ready to buy even though I absolutely do not need this, let’s say it’s like, you know, male deodorant, and I’m like, Yes, give me that men’s deodorant, because it was just so like, interesting and captivating, then you go to another page on this site, and the same type of writing the same person writing it in your life, what are they even selling here? So we all have our own personal blinders on when it comes to creating copy. And I think that when you have an outsider simply review what you have, especially if you have a finished product, it gives you a lot more understanding of where those muddled messages are. And then you can start to address them. And honestly, what you’re doing is you’re working through your own mindset, right of like, why is this unclear? Maybe it’s something you don’t want to offer, and you think you have to offer. Or maybe it’s just you haven’t clearly worked through the client’s need or why you’re offering this to them. But at least having that outside perspective gives you the opportunity to know what you can work on in those instances. Linda Perry 32:46 What I’m also hearing and what you’re saying too, is if you’re experiencing this, even in your own stuff, now imagine the mindset of your client. Look, they’re impacted by groupthink. When you know, like, if I went onto my social, there’s so many marketers mindset people, like that’s my feed. That’s it, but what are they looking at? That is giving them this groupthink, that it goes back to, again, the shoulds, the half dues, the need twos. And so where are they being that way in their business? And how do you support them? How do you support them back to themselves? Because there’s, you know, it is that one complaint, well, that that doesn’t really fully represent me or doesn’t fully represent what I do. I had a friend of mine the other day, she is a Body Works human and she’s the best Bodyworks human I’ve ever met. And she had her she’s like, I paid somebody this and my website is, you know, it was pretty bland and cookie cutter and I went let me fix this for you. Right like, and she just was so frozen to I don’t know how to translate this. I don’t know how to do this. They’re having that same head trash. And so simply again, my listening to what she needed is an opportunity to communicate with her and put her back at ease. The most of what we are doing is saying yes, I have a solution we are offering hope. You know, we think we have to come up with on every line of like, Yes, I can 10x this for you I can you know and absolutely you’re gonna like be a rock star on the next planet right? But the idea is is really what we need to do is solve a problem take something off their plate, give them hope they can then run with it and recognize that sometimes we’re putting so much pressure on ourselves to over deliver, overstate over whatever in our messaging, that really we’re missing the mark of I just need this done. I just need some help. Erin Ollila 34:46 Yeah, yeah. And I think honestly that like when I talk about like just the human human conversations, it’s this right like whether you’re in the sales process or past the sales process. Your clients I think sometimes need to be listened to. And I think good marketers, if for the marketers that are listening here or even for the business owners who are writing their own copy, let’s say that, I think sometimes you might think you’re wasting time listening, because there’s not like an exact equation at the end where it’s like, okay, if I listened for 10 minutes, I’m gonna get this data from them. You know, sometimes you’re listening so that people can get their thoughts out before they’re able to share constructive information with you. You know, a lot of the conversations I’ll have with my clients, especially the ones who are kind of working through this muddle of like, maybe they have like this bland messaging, and they feel shame, right? They like I hear a lot of I’m a business owner for so long, you know, this person’s only been in business for a year and a half. And I feel like they’re so advanced for me, look how great their messaging is. And it could be great messaging, but I have to like, let them talk about these things, and let them kind of like, feel their feelings. And to get to the point to understand well, what’s off for you. Because you know, whether you are great at psychographics or not, we’re not mind reader’s. And again, we have to go back to that word assumptions. Like we can’t use our own assumptions all the time. So sometimes that listening is a longer process. But then once someone is able to, I think, kind of talk through whatever it is that they need to talk through, then you’ll start to get the hints of how to move forward and how to speak to them after they’re able to kind of get it out. Linda Perry 36:24 Absolutely. I think those are really important things. And it all comes back down to, you know, when we’re looking for the mindset of sales. When we’re looking at the mindset of our customer. We’re looking at all of this, it really begins with listening better. Erin Ollila 36:39 All right, Linda, this has been such a fun conversation. And I feel like we could again, talk for a good couple hours about these kinds of things. And just go deeper into each of those facets. Before I let you go, I do have a couple of questions that I ask everyone. And the first one is if you could give a homework assignment, a teeny tiny one, to the people that are listening to this conversation that are trying to understand their own mindset better and the mindset of their clients, what would that homework assignment be? Linda Perry 37:05 I love this, I think we first need to look at resistance. But the first thing we do is we set up goals, even to the goals of understanding our clients. And resistance is the first thing we meet along the way. And resistance is fear, judgment, comparison, excuses. And I the homework assignment would be really like what am I afraid of? What are the excuses I have for not doing what I’m doing? Where do I judge or compare? These are really big doorways into your own mindset. But also, if you’re experiencing this, chances are your clients are. So this is my homework is is it step one resistance? What is it? What are they resisting? What are you resisting, list down those fears, excuses, judgments, comparisons, you’re getting a lot of information from that Erin Ollila 37:49 you had mentioned earlier, like you had hired someone to kind of be a listener for you, and you gained all this information. I think those questions that you mentioned are ones that people should probably come back to regularly because they may change over time. I’m assuming you know, like, what you’re resisting at this point in your business may not be what you’re resisting later. So those are questions we need to kind of keep asking ourselves in our business. Linda Perry 38:13 Yeah, for sure. Over and over is is not a one and done. Erin Ollila 38:16 All right. So my next question is, is a connection question. If you could meet anyone right now, who would it be and why Linda Perry 38:23 this is really funny. So again, window back into my speaking, so used to have struggle with speaking. I mean, I used to literally shake, and I really used to look up to Bill Clinton, this is hilarious for his speaking voice, not the rest, just to speaking, I love to just sit down and really pick his brain through some of his own storytelling techniques, silly as that may seem. But I love storytelling. And he was such a good storyteller always. And I just wanted to what makes him that like, What were his own stories that really helped help form how he shows up. Erin Ollila 38:57 All right, final question, because we’ve talked about your business having some transitions, you were a lawyer, a coach, as well, marketer and a coach still and working in the Life Coach School, what was one of the best moments of transition in your career, Linda Perry 39:15 I think coming back into coaching, fully embodying all the pieces from before, like, I really know, this is my purpose at this point. And I love what I do. And I think the moment I could embody all the pieces where I didn’t have to ignore lawyer, Linda, who’s really direct, where I didn’t have to separate myself from my writing, I use my writing for my emails, I love them, where it could combine all these things that, you know, was experimentation. Alana knows along the way to get to this spot and was really that key moment. I kind of feel like I live it every day. Like I’m really lucky that I get to bring all those tools together. Finally, Erin Ollila 39:50 thank you so much, Linda. It was so great having you today and I appreciate all your time. Thank you Erin. Thank you so much. for listening to this episode of Top copy to me, if you enjoyed spending your time with me today, I would be so honored if you could subscribe to the show and leave a review. Want to continue the conversation? Head on over to Instagram and follow me at Erin Ollila. Until next time friends