Holly Chantal is a master at helping you align your marketing message so that your business can grow. Too often, business owners chase a platform, and they don't have a great message. Holly ensures you have a great message to take to any platform. Listen to this insightful conversation, and then grab a copy of her free resource, The High Ticket Buyer's Guide, and learn how Holly can help you align your message to grow your business. Learn more about Holly at her website.
Experts Speak
Align Your Message to Grow Your Business with Holly Chantal
[MUSIC PLAYING] Welcome to the Experts Speak Podcast with Michael D'Alon. Each episode features a leading expert who shares helpful insights, practical tips, and memorable stories that will inspire you, educate you, and help you enjoy more success, freedom, and purpose in your life. For the next few minutes, enjoy listening to Experts Speak with Michael D'Alon. And welcome to another episode of Experts Speak. I am Michael D'Alon, and today I'm talking with Holly Chantal. Well, Holly, first of all, thank you for spending some time with me and being my guest today. Well, thank you. You're welcome. You act like I'm doing you a favor. It's so nice to be here. Well, you are doing me a favor because running a podcast is amazing when I have amazing guests. But if you weren't here, it'd be me doing this monologue thing, and that would be boring for everybody. So it is a blessing to have you here. So Holly is a very, very talented lady. She helps people. She helps business owners who hit that ceiling and revenue and growth. And she really helps you bring alignment with your messaging, your offers, your business model, all of that so that you're marketing your business actually grows. And we're going to dive into this because I know Holly, a lot of business owners, I talk, we struggle with a lot of this, and they think the next thing is to talk or LinkedIn or whatever, they're just not doing that. And that's really not always the right next step. So before we get there, let's talk about you. And how in the world did you get doing what you are doing today? So it's so funny when people ask me that question, I immediately think back to like, why did I start my business? But the reality is I started my business right out of college. So it's kind of like, it's like my career that I've done this entire time for the last 15 years. And anyone else would have started a job. So why am I doing what I'm doing now is kind of a whole other story. So I have three kids, and that has required me to get very efficient in how I work. And the pandemic, when everything closed down, I was only able to work two hours a day in my business. If I was lucky, it was kind of like my husband would take a long lunch so that I could get my client calls in. At the time, I also had just had a baby, like had a baby, in May of 2020. So all of that combined forced me to really figure out where to focus my attention to my business. And for those of you wondering, well, what does she do? I am a specialist in messaging and selling high ticket offers. So I've been writing website copy, I do website strategy, I do funnels, I do all of those things to sell high ticket offers for service professionals. And to be able to do that in two hours a day, if you're lucky, requires a very specific set of priorities. So that kind of forced me to really zero in on my own business. So I wasn't able to do all of my ideas. So I wasn't able to do all of the different marketing trends that come and go as they please. I really had to figure out what works for me, create systems around it, and work those systems. So now that I have 20 hours a week to work, which is still not a lot, it's luxurious. I feel like I can do anything, if you can scale back that much, then when you expand to 20 hours, it's a lot. So how I got doing what I'm doing is because the systems that I put into place and the way that I looked at marketing, the way I looked at messaging, and my business model are all the things that now I do with my clients. It was kind of an organic evolution into what my next step was with clients. And now that's kind of what I help them do, is be paying themselves six, multiple six figures, working minimal time so they can focus on other things that they enjoy. Yeah, amen on that. Well, and I love that because messaging is one thing that I harp on a lot. I preach it a lot to my audience because it really is, in my opinion, the most important thing you have in marketing. Yeah, especially, I mean, you help people write books. So you gotta have a message in order for the book to be interesting and people wanna buy it. That's right. But even if you didn't have a book and you're just selling a high ticket offer, now, and I wanna unpack that because so many times, when somebody hears high ticket offer, they're thinking immediately, oh, coach or a mastermind group or something, I was like, no, it could be that, totally. It could also be an estate plan that's gonna cost $15,000, right? Or you might be convicting somebody to sign over their $100,000 IRA because you're a financial advisor. It could be all kinds of things. So I don't want my audience to think, oh, I'm not, I don't have a mastermind. I don't have a high ticket offer. No, no, no, no, no, no. This applies to service providers as well. If you're a business owner, what Holly has to say applies to you because she's connecting and aligning your message with your business. And I love that word, Holly, systems. Putting all of those three together. So let's talk a little bit about where business, where you find business owners that you work with, where are they struggling and/or, what are some of the myths maybe that they believe that are constricting their growth? - So one, you kind of just brought up is my industry doesn't support high ticket offers. And I kind of wanna point out that high ticket is relative depending on your industry and who you serve. So high ticket for-- - You wanna get on a milk lately? I mean, that's a high ticket offer. - Exactly. Oh my gosh, don't even get me started. So in the B2B market, a high ticket offer might be, you know, $60, $70, $100,000. But if you're an attorney, your high ticket is really just more than whoever your competition is because the way people buy services is different in different industries. So if you are a more of a consumer service, most people are Googling who's closest to me and they're calling around and they're seeing who's the cheapest that can do the things that I want to do. And every service professional that I've talked to hates that. They believe that their clients are just looking for the cheapest option. And the reality is they don't know what they don't know. So in your marketing, if you are able to educate them on why your services are superior and they don't have to be superior, it might be different, better fit, you know, stronger, more focused on getting a specific result or dealing with a specific problem, it allows you to charge more than your competition would because you're no longer being compared by price. If someone knows that they can only get the result they want or only follow the process that you have, they're not going to be calling, you know, John Smith, the next person in the phone book, dating myself, don't have phone books anymore. The next line on Google, to see, you know, can they do it cheaper? Because they know they're going to be getting a different experience, a different result, it's going to be a completely different ballgame. - Yeah, and it's really interesting because it's a mindset, I don't want the person who wants the cheapest book. That's not my client, right? I want people who want to pay for value and quality. So we just moved, you don't know this, we just moved from Little Rock, Arkansas to Lexington, Kentucky. And so I took, when I was in Little Rock, I took my car to the same repair shop for 20 years, okay? The lifetime value of Michael at a car repair shop is lots of money, right? And so we moved to Lexington, guess what? I'm trying to find a repair shop. I don't know anybody. So I'm Googling, I'm looking around and I'm going to the websites, I'm reading the copy. Most of it's terrible. You can have lots of work here. But I found two of them that actually had decent wording, decent messages on their website that gave me a feel for who that company is, how they operate, how they really try to take care of their people, some warranties and things. And I thought, okay, I've got two now that I need to go research. I need to go in and talk with them. And all the rest, it has nothing I like to do with price. It has everything to do with connection. And what does that website message tell me about you and your business? Do you find that, I mean, that won't that work in any industry? - Yes, it really, in any industry, if you look at, I'm willing to bet that if I were to look at the same automotive websites you were looking at, they probably all said very similar things listed what their services were, what their hours were, and same with service providers. They list, you know, here are my credentials. - Yeah. - This is the school I went to and these are my certifications, et cetera. Here are the services I offer. These are the cases that I deal with the industries I work with, et cetera. And maybe packages like, oh, yeah. - Come on, I'm going before you're staying, come on. - I know. Listening like what their services are, you know, not necessarily how they work, what the process looks like, what the client should know, in many cases, because some of these industries, it's intimidating for a client to even reach out to you because they don't want to get hoodwinked, because they don't know enough about the service or enough about what they should be asking that they have to really actually trust you to even talk to you about your service because they're afraid you might trick them. - That's right. - Especially in the automotive industry. That's like my... - It totally is. And so you have to vet, but so many times it's, we look at our website and I think in the years past, it was like, oh, everybody has a website and that's where all the focus was, but now it's like social media. And we've kind of forgotten about the website. It's like, oh, do I even need a website? I'm telling you Holly, I've got two repair shops here in town that don't have websites. They use Facebook. - Yeah, a lot of companies don't. Well, I said, you don't get my business. I have this thing that if you don't have enough to have at least a website, you're not the kind of company for me. Now, that's just kind of how I do things, right? Because Facebook can change their logarithm and kick you off and now you are a nobody. And so you've got to have some domain there, but it's your messaging wherever you are that connects with me and helps me take that next step. And it's that trust that positions me to not negotiate on price as much. I mean, price is important. If I go to this guy and he's like, well, yeah, we're a car dealer or a car repair shop and we charge $800 an hour, I'm going somewhere else 'cause I don't drive that kind of car, right? But if you're in the ballpark, I'm happy to pay you money if you're going to repair my car well and I can trust you. And I think that's what the general audience is looking for is I need somebody I can connect with. You help business owners do that by aligning a message with their business strategy so they can get that breakthrough. Then if they want to go through TikTok or LinkedIn or wherever their marketing is going to work a whole lot better, is that what you find? - Yes, so by doing the foundational work on messaging, really any marketing strategy that they've already been doing or plan on doing is going to become much more effective because they're not sounding just like everyone else. They're able to describe the value that they offer very clearly, which I think is another big challenge, especially where a lot of this service person they work with, there's a magic to them. They have this just special ability or viewpoint or something that they do that they can't quite quantify. And they'll just say, oh, my clients say this, this and this or this is the results I get. And it's like, well, how do you get that result? I don't know. (laughs) I actually just had a conversation. She's like, I coached them. And I was like, well, like, duh. (laughs) That's what they're hiring for. But what are you doing? And she's like, I don't know. I'm just asking the right questions. And I'm like, okay, well, we need to dig into what that is. - Yeah. And I want to stop here because I think that's so common. Business owners of all stripes, myself included, we are too close to what we do in our business to really find that right message. And that's why you, how they are so important and so valuable is you have this outside set of eyes that you can ask questions and dig in and go, there it is. That's it. I do it all day, everyday with my clients. They come to me, they're boring as all get out. And I'm like, no, you're not. You've got a story. You're just not telling them. - I love it when people think they're boring. (laughs) - It's so fun. But if you're a business owner and you hit that ceiling with revenue or profit, your next move is probably not a new campaign. It's probably to pick up the phone or the Zoom link or whatever and connect it with Holly because she's going to be able to have this x-ray vision into your business, your life and go, what is that special thing about you that's going to separate you from everybody else that's uniquely and wonderfully you? That makes all the difference in the world. Is that what you found? - Yes, that's definitely a big piece of it. And you brought up the revenue ceiling part and I kind of wanted to talk about that. That largely those revenue ceilings have to do with your personal growth. And that might have evolved beyond your current messaging. And that can often be why things stop working. You stop getting as many clients. You start feeling dissatisfied in your work and your business eventually starts to suffer. You start to suffer. So, yeah, the messaging, just getting back to that can fix revenue ceilings. It can make you feel more satisfied in your work. You can attract better clients. Like there's so many things that just that one piece can make a huge difference. - Well, it does because when you get the message right, number one, then you can take it to your website, your email, your social media. I mean, you take that message everywhere, obviously your book, you've got to have a book right now. - And your book, I was going to add that for you. I was adding it in my head. - Thank you, your book, your podcast, but it's your message. And would you have that message? You never, you're really never at a lack of something to say. - Right. - Because you can just tell another story that connects to that message. It's kind of like all the Disney princesses movies and the Hallmark movies. It's one, it's one message. Told a thousand different ways, right? - Yeah. - And we keep going back. It's like, well, maybe this will be different. No, it's not going to be different. Here's something. We get tired of the message, as long as the audience doesn't get tired of it, but you, and you hit a good point, is sometimes the audience, it's not that they're tired of it, it's that we maybe have milked that market and we hit that ceiling. It's time to maybe go back and try a different target audience, try a tweak on a message, try something else. And I think business owners are hesitant to do that, 'cause that's what I built my business want. - Right. And I find that it's not always that you've overused the message or the audience is tired of it, 'cause there's always going to be new people that can learn about you for the first time and your message is brand new to them. It's actually that you start to outgrow it because you have been doing your work for so long and you've started finding new better. Like you evolve and how you work will evolve, your skillset will evolve, your viewpoint will evolve. Like your values change based on, I mean, think about before you were a parent versus after you were a parent, your values changed overnight. - Yes. - So that happens in micro events and your message needs to keep up with that. Otherwise you do find that it just doesn't fit anymore. - Yeah, that's good. And it's hard to walk through that on your own. You can talk to the man in the mirror, the woman in the mirror all day long. They ain't got the answers most of the time. That's why Holly is so important and so valuable because she comes at things from a different perspective and you work with so many different people and industries that you can see something that might work for a coach over here that you could apply to an attorney over here that they would never see that connection. - That's actually really fun. Yeah, to take things from other industries and it's like dentists are not doing this but it's working really well in this other industry. I bet you should try. - Absolutely, and lo and behold, most of the time it works because people are people, right? But it's having a voice of reason per se to look at your business and go, okay, first let's get your message, right? Let's make sure we're communicating in value systems of your audience, right? They don't care that you went to Harvard or Stanford most of the time and I don't know what all those letters are behind your name anyway. And so stop that, talk to me about me and how you helped me and how you helped other people be a real person and oh gosh, we could go down the whole rabbit trail Holly on being real instead of posing, but we're not gonna do that. We could talk for hours ad nauseum about this Holly because this is a hot button for me and you do such amazing work on messaging and I love that word alignment, aligning the message with the business and helping that owner grow. So so many times there's a stumbling blocks, those roadblocks in not just revenue, but in growth and in understanding and giving somebody a safe place to go where they can have conversations to go, here's what I'm struggling with Holly, can you help me? What's it look like to engage with you initially? Is it like a discovery call type thing or whatever? And then do you work on like a five-year program, a one-year program, a three-month program? Just give on us generally, what's it look like? - So big picture, I like to work with my clients for a year, sometimes end up working two years to reach kind of like the first year is kind of like fixing things, getting things in order. And then the second year is systematizing, automating, getting things really running. But usually where I start with is just looking at what you have in place already. So oftentimes we can find what's wrong immediately by just someone telling me, here's the type of client that I'm looking for, here's what I'm selling. And then I look at their website and I can tell them exactly, okay, well, this is why you're not attracting that client. It's because these turns a phrase. And I realized that we didn't even define messaging in the very beginning. So those of you that have been wondering this whole time, like what are we talking about? When I'm talking about messaging, I'm talking about the stories you're sharing, the examples you're using in your marketing, the point of view that you're sharing and why you do things the way you do. Like those are all messaging. And so that's really where we start is figuring out, okay, well, where are the, I call it the message to market match, where are those off? And then if you want to have me help you with those things, then we dig, I ask you, we basically have three hours over the course of two calls where I'm asking you a ton of nitpicky questions and having you tell me stories of clients and basically figuring out what is the magic behind what you do and who is the audience that's gonna be the best fit for your services, for your personality, for what you want to do, what you enjoy doing, people often confuse it to. They think, you know, I want to be working with this specific industry because they think that's gonna pay the best, not necessarily because that's what they enjoy. And then when I ask them, okay, like, we were just to take viability off the table, what would you want to do? - Wow, seriously. - And then we find the message to market match for that, craft your offers, rewrite your website, copy. And that's kind of the baseline and from there, that's where we get into the systematizing and creating lead generation machines and like all that like sales-y stuff. - Comes after the message though, that's the thing that many business owners jump to that because that's the shiny object. That's what I want. - Right, that's what everyone says is gonna get them the clients. - It's not, you gotta get the messaging, the stories, because it's not just getting the lead, it's the conversation you have. It's the entire process that all comes back to how are you messaging? Who you are, how you serve all of that. Holly, how do people take that next step? If they're, it just scratched right now, they're like, okay, I got it. I'm tired of jumping at the next thing. Maybe this makes a little bit of sense. What's the best way for somebody just to connect with you? - So my website is hollishintel.com and I have a free marketing guide on there that you can download. It's called the high ticket buyer's guide. And so as we've been talking about messaging, there's this decision making process that your prospect goes through before they hire you. And so the high ticket buyer's guide will walk you through what that decision making process looks like and what types of things you need to be saying in your messaging at each stage of that sales cycle so that they, by the end of it, they're ready to say yes. And this has been proven to drastically shorten the sales cycle, especially for high ticket offers. So if you're used to having people reach out to you after years of nurturing or after months of back and forth, having them sign up within a few days of finding you on Google kind of thing. Like that's the power of this decision making process. And it'll tell you exactly what to say on your website, in your marketing, et cetera. - Love it. High ticket buyer's guide that's available at her website hollishintel.com. You don't want to have that in the show notes. So if you're listening on your phone or whatever in your drive, you can go to the show notes, click the link, go to her website, download the resource she just told you the high ticket buyer's guide because that's going to help you understand the mind and the psyche of your buyer, your audience, your prospect, so that they'll become a client which you're going to help you drive more revenue regardless of what you do because you're going to be working on your message, which is most important anyway. So go get that, I'm going to grab that holly stick that in the show notes so that people can hear it, hear you, go get it, and hopefully connect with you and see how you can help them craft and align their messaging with their business growth and just really at the end of that, serve more people and have more fun doing it. Thank you for spending some time with me and for crafting that download, but just for all the brilliance you bring to the table. I appreciate it. - Thank you for having me. I really have enjoyed the chat. - You are welcome. Oh, it's always a joy. Thanks for listening to Experts Speak Tune In Again next week when we'll have another fantastic guest ready for you. - Thanks for listening to Experts Speak with Michael DeLong. If what you've heard today was helpful to you, reach out to our expert guest and see how they can serve you to bring you more success, freedom, and purpose in your life. (upbeat music)