And something changed once I really started building my confidence. Well,
actually, confidence is a choice, but when you started just choosing to
be more confident, choosing to be more intentional, choosing to really have that leadership
vibe, the people that reached out to me and I'm not going to
put people in a hierarchy or anything like that, but it was highly committed.
People like people like I wanted to work with because my
energy and my personality and who what I stood for
was infused into that.
Um, I give enough
without a fight and
I'm not sleep until I wake you down too
quick,
too quick,
too welcome
to Too Legitimate to Quit Instantly actionable small business
strategies with a pop culture spin. I am
your host, Annie P. Ruggles, and my guest today is
the dynamic and fabulous Joy Buffalini.
Meet Joy Boofolini, creator of the Simplify to Multiply Method,
helping women scale their businesses by simplifying their focus.
In her eleven years as an entrepreneur, she's been featured
in both O and Entrepreneur Magazine.
As a leader in the business coaching industry, she's known
for her warm but no fluff approach to helping women do their
sole work in this world. Even while raising her daughter
with multiple disabilities, joy has built a robust seven
figure business by keeping a simple and scalable focus.
Joy Buffalini, my sister in selling
for nontraditional sales folk. Big glorious red
hair, and so many other things. I'm so excited to have you on
the podcast today so I could ask you the tltq question, which is
what do small business owners need to focus on this week? Love it.
Thanks for having me, Annie. All right, let's go right to it.
Redheaded sister. Redheaded sister.
Well, what they need to focus on is something that introverts
initially won't like to hear.
Communication.
Communication. So one of the reasons that a
lot of people who have a business, online service based
business, don't have the number of clients that they want,
if they're not communicating enough,
they're not communicating to enough people. They're not in front of enough people.
They would rather be a back end face of the
business. And at some point you can do that. Get past multiple
six figures and you could freak it just be like a background
face in your business.
Oprah level shit. Like when you are Oprah, you could take
a backseat in your business. But for right now, you need to be talking to
a ton of people all the time. Yes. Because they're hiring you,
even if it's something that's not a one to one type of thing. So communication,
I think we can forget. We can get so busy with all the
busy work of the business, like the tech stuff, endlessly updating
your website that nobody's actually on.
Hey, no offense, but really I'm laughing. Because that was
me. I'm laughing because there was very much and
this is one of the things I've talked about, about being a business owner with
OCD, like, when I fixate.
And there was a time where I never looked at the analytics from
my website because I knew no one was there. But every day I would wake
up and be like, got to make my website better. Got to wake my website
better. And it wasn't until, like, a year of that conscious stress that I was
like, wait, am I actually driving any traffic
to this website? Right? So I laugh because,
A, that was me. But also, so many
of us have that tendency to want to pour energy and
effort into the biggest, shiniest thing that feels
like work instead of prioritizing the uncomfortable,
which for introverts like me, is connection and me.
Absolutely. And it almost gives you a sense of safety
and security. Like, yeah, I'm working on my business,
right? And that was me from 2011 to 2016.
I'm working on my business. But guess what? I never made more than $20,000
in a year. Like, wait a second.
Something's wrong here. Now, during that time frame,
obviously still, I have three kids at the time.
We're younger teenagers. And my daughter,
Amber, she's my sweetheart. She has significant disabilities from brain
damage at birth, like, 18 month old level in a now
22 year old body. So I have a lot on my plate, and I'm an
introvert. I'm not like, the person that wants to be raw, raw, raw,
and peopleing all the time. So how do I make this work? Because I'd
be working hard, but I wasn't getting traction, right?
And I think we can almost be unconscious of
how little people are actually seeing our content. Even if
you're sending out one email a week, and let's say
you have a really good open rate and 35% of the people open it,
that's a lot of people that do not see you in the course of a
month. Correct. Or if you get social media overwhelmed or
you're like, on LinkedIn one week, and on Instagram one week, and on Facebook another
week, but not any one place consistently, there's very few
people who are actually going to know about your awesomeness. Right?
Exactly. Which is why I had to get over the
I don't know. I want to say stigma, even though I know that that's not
the right word, but I was so resistant as a former marketer
to repurpose content. I was so resistant.
I had just a freaking mountain range. Not even a mountain,
but a mountain range of resistance to repurposing.
Because I had that fear that you're talking about it's like, I don't want to
oversaturate. I don't want to talk too much. I don't want to annoy people.
They've heard this from me before. And finally,
I caught up to the fact that, A, your best stuff not only deserves repeating
or bears repeating, it demands repeating number
one. And number two, people aren't paying close
enough attention to you at any given moment
in their lives that they're going to go, excuse me, Joy.
Three and a half months ago at 02:12 p.m., I already saw
this post on LinkedIn, so I'm going to unfollow you. That's what we fear,
but nobody actually thinks like that. And I've had one person
in my last year and a half of repurposing
content, religiously, like, as my religion, I've had
one person acknowledge that they had already seen
something. And you know what they said? They said, oh, my gosh, Annie, this is
one of my very favorite posts of yours. And I'm like thank you.
Okay, so the people I was worried about annoying are like, oh,
yeah, my favorite. Why do we think that we can watch
hours and hours of reruns of television, but people only want to see our memes
one time? I don't know. Right. And email is similar
in that we have new people coming on the list all the time. And 35%
is a wonderful open rate. It's a wonderful freaking open
rate. But that still means that 65% of your people have no idea what
you're talking about. Exactly. And the
thing is that every time you hit post on a post,
every time you hit send on an email, you see that. I mean,
assuming you're doing it yourself, eventually you get team to help you out with that.
But you're seeing every piece of content that goes out there. Correct. But when people
are scrolling through their feed, unless your content is really compelling,
they are not going to stop the scroll. No, they're going to keep on going.
Right. Or unless they've been following you religiously, they're not going
to get a notification that you just posted something. Right.
Unless they're connected and engaging with your content. I mean,
I get my own push notifications of me. It'll be like new on LinkedIn
from Annie P ruggles. And most of the time, I don't even open those and
I'm me. Right? We know you're communicating.
Exactly. Here's the thing. A couple of things for
me, in 2016, I had this line in the sand moment of
like, all right, I got to figure this shit out or I've
got to go get a job because my kids are getting older, medical expenses
have been piling up. Like, I've got to make this work. Right? And honestly,
I was not doing the one thing that in every other area of my
life I was really good at. I'm a former math teacher.
Focus and simplicity. I was
trying to do trigonometry without first having mastered
algebra one. Right. I was going to say, we got to go back to freaking
triangles and geometry.
Right? I knew I was smart, I could figure things out and managing
my daughter's care over the years, and I'm a freaking amazing case manager.
Why am I not a good CEO of my own business? Well, I was
doing all the things and not the things that actually mattered.
So when I started changing this and I had to do it in a
way that worked for me as a mom with a lot on her plate and
also as an introvert,
I knew you had to be communicating with people. How do you do this in
a way where you're not on? Like, I've heard of
people that follow a business model where it's like, 30 cold
calls breakthrough. And breakthrough calls, like, with cold Leads, a month,
like, hour long, totally burnt themselves out. I knew I
would never do okay, the idea of 30 hours of
bullshit on my calendar.
Listener, let's key in to the fact that Joy and I,
both of whom teach sales, don't want to
be on sales calls. I love sales calls. They're my favorite thing
in the universe. My discovery calls are amazing. I have a blast,
and I make good money. That being said, the idea
of 30 hours of my precious baby
bird time being eaten by
the shark of Cold Leads, it's crazy. Makes me
break out in hives. Totally. And I have clients that come
to me out of that model and like, God, I'm so glad
that the path I'm going to be on now is. So much
I'm like itching myself now. I'm like, I totally
get it. I wasn't one of these people that would say, I'll do
whatever it takes.
I had experienced significant burnout ten
years before, actually, when my daughter was little and all the hospital stays and
overextending myself. And I mean, her life was literally on the line back
then. So I learned that lesson. I intuitively knew, like,
I am not going to kill my health or my relationships over
this business. But when I had this line in the sand
moment, I was having a conversation with my husband,
and I really was like, at this point, like, my back up against the wall.
Like I said, I've got to figure this out. And I had
healthy anger, I'm going to call it. Right? And when I
get mad, I'm not a person that gets mad easily. I got
mad, threw a pillow across the room, said a few
expletives, right? Okay. I'm like,
I'm freaking going to do this. I'm going to figure this out. And literally,
I went in my office and I wrote down three things, and the next year,
I made $104,000 and worked less.
Sam wait a minute. Something here.
Because you wrote down three things. Not ten things, not 300
things, not 30 things. I was doing too many
things, and none of them were taking me in the right direction.
So one of the three things actually was consistent
content. Consistent, focused content.
So one of the things we try to do and content is
part of the selling process, and I'll talk about how that leads to that.
Consistent content. That's not for everyone. Sometimes we
can seek to be people. Pleasers. We want people to like us, especially.
Introverts, if we come out of our shells, we're like, I'm out,
I'm already unsafe. They may as well like me. So let me just not
stir anything up. Like, let me just peek my little head out of my turtle
shell, make sure everybody's happy, delight everyone and go back
inside for three months. People, pleasing and introversion
is not a Venn diagram. It's like a circle. Yes. And so you
can tend to want to be everything to everyone. Right. And everybody
who follows you is not the right fit client. So I really had to
dial in, like, who is what I now call your yes client?
Like, that person who would be a perfect fit for what you have to
offer. Who is that yes client? And so then the next level of
focus was just talk to them in my contact, just talk
to them. Two other decisions I made were
to not sell anything under three K.
That was, like, a really bold decision, but I knew that
my time needs to really count and I'm going to really give to these clients.
But I changed my pricing structure too. And you know what I
like about that a lot? Three K
is mid ticket. Yeah. A lot of the time when I
see people lose their brains in similar Scarlett O'Hara moments
that wind up going really well for them,
they're aiming from undercharging to mid ticket.
Not that I'm against high ticket. I've talked a lot on the show about different
models and different strokes for different folks. Right. But I
love that in your striving, you were like, I need to get my rates
to mid ticket. You didn't immediately go,
what's the most expensive thing I could sell? No, because I see a lot of
that when we're in that shake your carrot in the air, I'll never go hungry
again space. We want to go for the shiniest, low hanging
fruit, which for many of us in our industry is the highest ticket we
could imagine. Whereas you were like, I want three K. It's going to give me
what I need. And I could own that. And I felt like I could deliver
on that. It's an investment for the clients, but one that they can
make that they don't have to take out a separate credit card
to do, or they could do over a payment plan. We're getting them to the
point of spending three K. We're not rushing to the 30K. So I know that
I'm taking us on a tangent there, but just for me, when you said three
K, I was like, I love how grounded that
choice is in that it's a perfect number if you're trying to
grow your business without overgrowing your business.
Yeah, cool. Exactly. And really, that's three
clients a month. And in 2017,
the year that I'm referring to, I didn't get three clients in January and
February, but by the end of the year I was getting four, five,
six, right. So it all came out in the wash.
It took some time for this compound effect of this consistent content.
One of the things that helped me as an introvert as well is writing my
content offline. Now, I did live videos once a week. You just get yourself
in the mind space. It's important to do that too. And I don't mind being
live on video. I need to have recharge time if I've been on video a
lot. Again, introvert. But I write my content
off of social media. So like, I'm writing in a Google Doc or a Word
doc or sometimes in the note on my phone app just to run
some ideas. I can get the basics of a post down and
really things that are top of mind for
my yes client. Because the more of your clients you
serve, the easier it is to write content. Because not
that you're talking about your clients by name or anything like that, but the
people that are reaching out to you, what are the challenges? The patterns
become so crystal clear that you're like,
I had five different client calls this week of different people
in different industries and they all have the same problem. Okay, I should probably turn
that into content. It's a lot easier to keep
your finger on the pulse when you have your finger on more pulses. That just
makes sense. Exactly. So you have to get these conversations going.
So the third thing on my list was talk about my
offer, which at the time was a one to one coaching program, and talk about
it by name. That sounds kind of bold to me. Kind of ballsy.
But I know how the brain works and it needs to make what I'm doing
concrete. Yes. Otherwise you become what I call
like, a likable expert online. Like, oh, that was nice. Oh, that was food
for thought. But it's like your brain doesn't wrap around the fact that,
oh, I can reach out to her. We don't pay for food for
thought. You know what I mean? Like, food for thought is a Costco
appetizer. We show up when we want it, we walk around the aisles and we
get what we want and we go, oh, wow, I'm sated for now.
But that is how we wind up with influencers.
With 30,000 people on Instagram making no money.
It's a thing, unfortunately. Right? And quality beats
quantity all the time. Having quality audience.
I've had clients hit six figures with an email list of 300
and a Facebook group of 300. Right. But again, to your
previous point, it's got to be consistent. Yes. You can't
get there with sporadic good content. You can get
there with rare,
reduced, amazing content. As long as it's consistent.
Totally. So this is how the selling process changed once I
started getting consistent dialing in my content, paying attention
to what was working like, okay, I'm dialing in my content. I'm getting more
people reaching out, booking calls with me. And I was at the
time, I think I was doing hour or 45
minutes calls at the time, I can't remember. And I was like, you know what?
We can dial this into 30 minutes. This is a 30 minutes call.
And then I started my sales process, and I don't do
twist arms or overcome objections or anything, just tap into desires.
You wouldn't be on the show if you twisted an arm. Yeah, I know,
right? Anyway, and then those conversations,
what I started doing was taking what was happening in those conversations
and moving that into content as well. And I
started creating a new system for selling that. I finally, in 2020,
kind of just went for it,
and that was selling completely in DMs. And I thought, okay,
I had 20 sales calls. 30 minutes.
20 sales calls booked in a month. We were
moving, and the pandemic had just started. Still have
multiple children. Your kids didn't voluntarily
be like, it's okay, mom. We've got this. We don't need a parent for right
now. And I had been thinking, like, I've seen
people do this. I wouldn't do that. I would do this, I wouldn't do that,
I wouldn't do this. And so what I did was,
I took what I was doing in the sales call,
the questions I was asking, and the details I was giving about the program,
and I put it in a PDF. So basically, my new sales process
became consistent content that gets people leaning in, leaning in, leaning in.
They reach out, fill out a short application, thumbs up,
yes, they're a good fit, and I send them the PDF. And I had been
running this program for several years at that point, so I really knew what the
energy of it was, what the client journey was, what the
value is to the client. So instead of spending time on the phone,
we could do it right? And here's the thing. A lot of women in
my world tend to be maybe a bit more introverted or sensitive
or like to take time to process things. And when
you're making an investment in your business, you don't want to be on a phone
call. Like, I have to say yes or no right now.
So what I like about this new sales process, too, is they
get a chance in their own time to take in,
what is this program? And I actually
ask them, is this aligned for you? And what questions
do you have? Because that's exactly that
is, like, I feel like, a very respectful sales process.
It respects my time and energy. It respects their time
and energy. And also, as a human being, they can make their own
choices. They know what they need better than I know what they
need. So if it's not, that's okay,
too. That's one of the main tenets of the non CC sales academy is
people are going to make decisions on their own time and in their own speed.
So if you stand against the current of that, you look like
an asshole. Right? And so a lot
of traditional sales training is willingness to look like an asshole.
Our people, your people and my people, the listeners of this show,
again, we're introverts, we're people, pleasers, we don't
want to look like an asshole. And so I'm like, look, here's what you do.
You have to honor people's decision making process and
make sure that your processes and your systems are
rising to the occasion of facilitating that right.
And not trying to salmon against up
the current of how people make decisions. Because you're totally right.
Nothing can lose someone faster than when it feels
like you're trying to make that decision under duress. Like oh right.
And so that's why it's like stuff like fast action bonuses, they work really well
when they work well for your right audience. But if you put a fast action
bonus in front of someone who is in tough times or
a fast action bonus in front of someone who is stressed out of their gourd,
or a fast action bonus on somebody that already has
a 70 hours work week is going to stress them out more than convert
them. Exactly. And that's not what we want for people.
And so I think that whenever you
really come at it when your content I'll use this analogy
if you think of like a golf course, there's a golf course actually over here,
right back here behind my house. And when
somebody comes into your world, like, let's say here's the flag hole in one,
they're way over here. When they first come into your world, they're just kind of
like half reading your stuff. They see your name here or there or whatever.
But the more that they see your name, your face associate
the energy of who you are and your personality and your style and your way
of communicating, what they're going to do is they're going to kind of move towards
that hole in one themselves. They take themselves there
rather than us pulling them there. In a sales call, your content,
without being salesy, your content can actually pull them in like, wow,
I'm really feeling aligned with what she's saying. Yeah, that really resonates.
That sounds like me. Yeah, I really get that voice.
She's really on point with the pulse of what's been going
on for me. So that's not going to be for everybody,
but for the people that you're meant to serve, they're going to really resonate.
So by the time you have the sales conversation, whatever type of conversation
it is, they're going to be 90% of the way there. Ideally, if your client
is doing the. Work for you well, and I think it's our mutual friend
and fellow dame, Cat Stancik that says experts don't chase.
Right? And that's part of it, too, is like,
if I watch a Netflix show, if I start a Netflix series
and I watch one episode, when I go back into Netflix,
it says, Continue watching. So the prompt is there, but Netflix
doesn't call me on the phone 57,000 times saying,
how likely are you to watch the second episode of The Witcher?
How likely are you to do these things? Why don't you go watch it right
now? You should put it in your calendar. When can we connect? Would you like
us to watch The Witcher together? Netflix don't cur,
okay? That's not what they do. They just put
the suggestion in your thing you've previously watched, or if
they complete it, you go, Cool. You absorbed that and you liked it. What about
this? It guides you toward the next step. It doesn't hound you
about your choices. Yeah, absolutely.
That's such a good illustration that it's like, oh,
I love because if it was a show, it said, continue watching, and you saw
that and you liked it. Nobody has to convince you
like, oh, yeah, I want to watch more of that. Right? Because they've already created
value there that matches you or matches me.
You start watching something, you're like, no, that's not my thing. They're not
going to continue watching. And that's the way it works. That's the
way that it works. And again, to your previous point, we're only
talking to your yes client. Your yes client
will Binge on their own with support from you.
Yes, exactly. Your non yes client is
not going to become your yes client through binging your content.
Right? Sometimes we think that we create this metamorphosis and a
lesser client type will suddenly become the
ugly duckling, will become a perfect client swan. And that doesn't
happen. There are people with resistance in your yes
client roster that need extra support and care, but they're
not shifting what they need or how they show up. They're just
shifting their willingness to invest in themselves and to invest in you.
Right? Like, we're not saying, okay, cool. Now you're this perfect,
functional thing. Come give me money. Which I think a lot of us
kind of fall into when we're trying to create transformation,
right? And especially transformational content. So I love that all of this keeps
going back to content is like, what is the cause
behind the post? Like, why are you posting this purpose?
Right? What's my purpose, and what are your expectations? Right?
Because I also know people that are like, this is the
single greatest LinkedIn post that I will ever post, and if
this doesn't make me $20,000, I'm going to jump off a cliff and
they get crickets on that post. And then they're like, Well,
I'm done it's. Like, no, what are your expectations
for this post? Is this expectation for your post
to make $20,000? That's probably not realistic with your current list size.
Yeah, right? Absolutely. I love that.
It's the compound effect of people seeing your
name and associating with your style of writing and what you're talking
about. It's also about like when you give someone a shift in your content,
like a perspective shift or an insight that they had never
thought of before, that shifts something in them internally and they associate
your name with that shift. Right. And I'm sure
there's tons of people, thousands of people who I have helped through
my content who have never become a client and that's like totally
fine because I'm here to help people in the world no matter what.
That's great and I get paid. Well, it's all good. But you
can create some positive things in the world just by being you and speaking
your truth and sharing the things that you know that
are the deeper things rather than the tools and the tips and that kind of
stuff. That does not get people's attention
anymore. There's way too much noise out there now. There's not
enough differentiation. If you sound like everybody else in your
industry, everybody's just going to scroll past. They're just going to scroll
past your email or your post. So with
all that being said, we've had this elephant in the room of this conversation this
whole time, which is introversion. Yeah.
And when I met you, the first time I met you, we talked
a bit about being introverts. And what I love about you is
that you, like me, are the only other person I know
that every single time you self identify as an introvert,
everyone around you goes, what?
With your big eyes and your big red hair and your beautiful outfits
and your loud voice and you're this you're an introvert. What?
And your big internet presence and the DA DA DA. And I'm like, oh,
joy gets it like joy gets living this loud.
It's not shy. It's that you need
time away from people to recharge yourself.
Right? So, for instance, in a couple of weeks, I'm flying my team here
into Florida. We're having a retreat at my condo, but guess what
I'm going to do for two days before and two days after? Nothing.
I just got back from Podfest and I had to extrovert so
much that I may as well have been in a coma.
In that. When we got home,
the downstairs guest room, watching TV, and Ryan came in and
he was like, I know what this is.
This is you recharging. I just need to see
can I get you anything? But he identified before I did. I was like,
what's wrong with me? Am I depressed? Am I sick? What's going on?
Ryan's like, no, you just went to a
five day conference and talked to people the whole time. You can't
handle this anymore. You need to watch your dateline and eat some Dominoes and sleep.
And I'm like to do
those things. Right, but you're totally right. Introversion is
about recharging. Exactly. You can show up in a
big way and be present with you. We're both Italian as well.
Here I am talking with my hand, right? You can't see us, but we're
flailing and our hair is gleaming in the sun. Like,
this is a poster child for introverts you wouldn't expect, but yeah,
you can have personality. You can show up and be present.
You just need to know how to take care of yourself. Yes. It took me
a while to learn that. Like, when I
moved into a girl's dorm room in college, I was like,
oh, what's this? I got to share a room with people with
college.
I like to do stuff and I like to have fun and all of
that, but there was no quiet time to recharge. So,
like, getting to know yourself and what you need. And most people
can shorten their sales calls if they just do better in
their content. Just in your content.
Yes. And let your content do some of that
extroverting for you. Exactly. Right? Like,
again, repurpose your video. If you have great videos, play them
more than once. For heaven's sake, Annie, pass an easy ruggles.
Like, come on, get to it.
But I think for me, running a business as an introvert
is energy management and marketing. A business
as an introvert is extremely energy management.
And selling as an introvert is the highest level of energy
management, which is why, with my clients and also with myself,
I try to give a tax, like an
energetic tax, to those tasks so that I don't
schedule 57 calls in a row. I can't do that.
I can write 57 emails in a row,
right? I can run 57 client reports in a row.
But if you put, again, 30 hours of cold calls into my
week, I'm going to die, right?
And so sometimes when my clients make these big
leaps in their marketing, especially if they identify as ambiverts or introverts,
and they come to me and they go, what's next? What's next? What's next?
My answer is, slow down. You just took
this big scary leap. You just did this big brave fold thing. We cannot
forsake consistency, but what we can do is reduce
the pot from boils to simmer for a little bit while you
recharge, right? Because you've already mentioned this,
the risk of burnout for people like us
who have on off switches is really high if we're not willing
to hit the off switch. And so with my clients, sometimes they feel like they
can't, and I have to be the one to be like, Your homework is go
take a nap. Like, they're paying me to help them
sell. They're paying me to help them make money. And I'm like, Cool, go take
a nap, legit. And they're like,
how many people did you talk to yesterday? Twelve. How do you feel today?
Crappy. Cool. Right? Don't talk to anybody
in terms of your three pillars.
Right. Like consistent, focused content, a price point
that works and isn't people pleasing and making your
offer a household name for the households of your yes
client, not a household name internationally. Right.
Is there anything there that you
know is particularly difficult for introverts, that you kind of want to guide
us through? That's a good question.
I think introverts can be really good, actually, at the
content when they get tuned in, tapped in,
have a ritual routine or listen intuitively.
Everybody like finding what is your writing process?
And then I think it's when they have people
reaching out, when you start growing and you have people
reaching out that you don't know them, you've never met them before,
I don't know what they're like energetically. And that's going to start happening.
I remember when that started happening for me, it was kind of like, oh,
but like, okay, who's this? Is this a creep? Is this somebody you know,
a person I would jive with? Pardon me?
Are you a creep? I know, right?
But here's what I found started happening, is that as
I fine tuned my content and it
was like the people who were I would call them,
like they just wanted to piggyback off of my
energy. They just wanted to be
friends and they really pick my brain or something that
really went away. Once my content had this leadership energy in it,
there was just a leadership energy to it that if somebody reached out,
it wasn't something like they weren't dumping. This is what
I was always afraid of, especially if I opened up my DMs, they would just,
like, dump in my DMs, right? Like over
sharing too much information. And something changed once I
really started building my confidence. Well, actually, confidence is a choice,
but when you started just choosing to be more confident, choosing to
be more intentional, choosing to really have that leadership vibe,
the people that reached out to me, and I'm not going to put people in
a hierarchy or anything like that, but it was highly committed people
like people like I wanted to work with because my energy
and my personality and what I stood for was infused
into that. Somehow, accidentally, I figured it out. And over
time, you can too. It just takes some practice and some fine tuning showing
up. So my clients are amazing and delightful
and so like me because they got
to know me very well. It wasn't a cold call. It wasn't
like some referral like, who's this Joy girl?
Whatever. No, they actually were like,
yeah, I want to work with Joy. I want to
be in a container with Joy because they were aligned. So I got higher quality,
if you get what I'm saying. Completely committed, higher commitment.
Right. We don't want to put people in tears,
but I will put people in tears all day. By commitment. Yeah,
right. By readiness and willingness to put
in the work. Right. Because so
many of us again, it's not that you can't nurture someone,
you can absolutely nurture someone to readiness.
But at the same point, if you're spending all that time
incubating interest, you're missing creating
change with your people, which is more of that
leadership energy, which I got to tell you, Joy, in a million years,
I never would have thought of that energy as leadership.
But once you said it, I'm like, that's exactly what it is.
So before we transition to our phenomenal pop culture topic that I'm
so excited about, I want to sit in that spot for just one more minute
about tapping into that leader energy. Now, I completely
agree with you that confidence is a choice and I
am not a fake it till you make it person. I'm much more like my
friend Ben, the failure guy says fail it till you nail it, which I
adore. But let's say that I want to show
up in that leadership role. Number one, how do I
know if I'm doing it? Or number two, how do I lean further into
it? For me, how do I know until
I'm in it fully and can identify it? How do I
know or how do I grow in that leadership energy?
Sure. One way to do that would be through story.
Okay? So sharing your story a
bit in a very natural, authentic way, that's a bit of a hero's
journey to inspire your people, something that you have
gone through, something that you have learned.
The things that in retrospect, like,
oh, if I would have known this big thing,
you kind of be a leader by leading the way,
by sharing what you know, not in a braggy kind
of way. This is not brew marketing or any of that stuff. It's just
about really speaking, like not being afraid to say
one of the mistakes I see women entrepreneurs making over
and over again and why they're overwhelmed on
social media all the time is right. And how do I
know that? Because I've gone through that experience myself.
And what I hear and what you're saying right there is transparency,
vulnerability, self awareness, and the
ability to find takeaways for other people through your own exampleing.
Right. I love that though,
again, leadership, you wouldn't think about transparency,
but hell yes. If you're walking the path and
other people are watching you, you're leading whether you expect to or not. So you
may as well lead into the fact that people are watching you. Now, again,
back to the very beginning, they're not watching you so meticulously that you're like,
oh, I already said this. Oh, God. Let's freak out. But they are watching you.
They are consuming you, and they are behind you on the
learning curve that you are on. So we may as well
be instructive. Exactly. So it's not
tools and tips for the sake of tools and tips, those are useless without context.
When you're in a story and you're sharing examples,
then they can connect the dots. Did you all hear what
she just said? I'm dancing. Tools and tips.
Yes, tools and tips are useless without context.
Quote joy Buffalini that is just now.
It's also a perfect transition segue
to our oh, my God, so excited pop
culture topic. The king of detail.
The king of red herrings.
And then stuff that actually matters, right? The king of
putting it out there and seeing what people resonate with and seeing what people pick
up on and tweaking that and definitely leading a tone.
And energy management. I mean, it's everything we've talked about. What the
heck does any of the stuff that we've talked about
today have to do with Notorious?
Asshole? But filmmaking complete genius.
And one of my personal favorite creators and one of the biggest inspirations of
my book, alfred Hitchcock. Talk to me.
Yeah, absolutely. It's funny that I grew up
watching old movies with my parents. They were just, like, loved all
things black and white. We watched
some of the popular things, too. But on a Saturday night, we watched an
old movie. I just thought that was normal. I mean,
I grew up watching Turner classic movies like other kids watch Nickelodeon,
like, totally. And I
really appreciate I appreciated the realness of acting
back then. And like you said, the attention to detail.
And people had to be real actors. They weren't just
getting, like, short clips. And it all got crossed together for
them. They had to really act. They had to really show up.
And so much about what
I love about Alfred Hitchcock. Yes.
Not as a person, but as a talent. He made his cameo
appearances, right? One flip at his movie, like the introvert just
floating in and floating out. And so many people have done that since.
Stan Lee has done that. Peter Jackson has done that. But I'm like, okay,
cool. That's your little Hitchcock cameo. It's literally called the Hitchcock cameo
because Hitchcock was like, by the way, I'm going to do
some grocery shopping in this scene. Here I am, blah, blah, blah.
But it's him reminding people that it's his.
Exactly. And he had such a unique style
that if you had never seen a movie, you didn't know the name of
it. It wasn't on your screen. If you knew enough about
his style, you would like, is this a Hitchcock movie?
A lot of movies have been confused for his because of some similar characteristics
in it. And so just like you as a brand,
you have a style, you have a vibe, you have a unique
flavor that your people are
going to want to consume, like you said on the Netflix. Continue watching.
Let's keep watching. Let's watch all 30 of these Hitchcock
movies. Let's watch all 30 of Annie's videos or whatever the case may
be. Right? That whenever you
bring something unique, and you keep interest and
attention. Right. And you get to be honestly, as a content
creator, you get to be the director. Right. And not get lost
in the content. Right. Like one of the things we talked
about in Prechat and the thing that directly inspired the chunks
of the coach who would not sell is on Hitchcock Presents,
where before they would go to commercial breaks, which is always really fun
how he segues to commercial breaks. But before that or after
that, he interjects himself in the story
to make sure you got the moral to recapture your
attention. Yes. To cut to a sponsor, but also to bring you
back into the story. And what we talked about before, about everyone's
social feeds being so loud, that continued
curation, that welcoming back to the story
that last time on right. Is so critical
on multiple fronts. Number one, it keeps engagement up. But number two,
it reminds people when your face isn't front and center,
whose content this is. Yeah. Right. So that they
see the style and then they see the style and then they
see you. And the very next thing alfred Hitchcock's logo is a very unflattering
picture of his face. It's a caricature of
his face, right. His bald head and his multiple chins.
But then when he steps into it, he literally steps into his logo
and becomes his brand. That is the clearest thing of
personal branding I could possibly think of.
For someone who did not always like to be the center
of attention. He wanted to see what he could create,
not how he could position himself. And I think that's so brilliant.
He made it work. Absolutely. And freaking brilliant.
Right. But you're right also about, like, acting back then was
not super over produced. Sometimes. It was big.
Hollywood. Right. We were still getting people used to the talkies.
So every now and then, somebody had to be reined in. But when you
shoot that over the top response
in a Hitchcocky in style right. I'm pretty sure
he told Janet Lee to make a bigger, scary face. Right.
And I'm pretty sure he threw more birds at poor Tippy.
Right. But at the same point, you add the shadow,
the sound, the long.
Stanley Kubrick did this years later, where there'd be long gaps in the movie with
no sound. Right. All those things.
What else can we learn about branding and putting ourselves out there
as a Hitchcockian devotee?
Yeah. I feel like it's
about like I think, again, it's the story.
So as we were talking about story immerses,
you and somebody's facing something
kind of scary. Right. If you're sharing something sort of
vulnerable and you're capturing attention.
And Hitchcock sometimes had those boo moments,
or the lights and the shadows
were a certain way that it communicated. It brought up
emotion. And as a brand, when you
can tap into somebody's emotion and they do it, that,
you know, you're not forcing anything on a sales call. We're not talking about that
at all. But they can see, for instance, sometimes when I share my
story about my daughter, amber and I share the dark
side and things that we've been through and what it looks
like, that's a. Huge part of your life. She is a huge part of
your life, and she's a huge part of your day to day.
Yeah. And I think people appreciate story where there
is an arc that happens,
somebody goes through, you get to the climax,
and there's the moment or whatever the thing may be.
And what people like about a movie, too, is there's resolution to
it. Right. Having that
story arc, which I think Alfred Hitchcock did so
well, of just capturing
attention and the nuanced things
that. Made a big difference and bringing tension into the mundane.
Yeah. Right. Like Rear Window is such a great thing of that.
It's a dude looking out his window the whole movie. Right?
It's not like a Seinfeld principle where most of the time it's not Agatha
Christie. It's not people out on an island having this weird experience because
they've been brought there by an eccentric millionaire. It's like, my husband
and I went on a honeymoon, we met this weird dude, and now this weird
dude is ruining our lives. I live in an apartment. I have a broken leg.
I have binoculars. I see what I think is a murder. It's in
that every day. And so I feel like, in content as well.
There is magic in our mundanity.
There is magic in the day to day for us. There is power in
the story of you and your daughter, who you see every single day of your
life, right, without it having to be too dramatic.
There's rich content in the everyday. It's real
lives, like you said in that movie. In particular, you're seeing real through other
people's windows. Seeing real lives behind
the curtain, basically. Right? And then also shit like gardening.
There's a whole big thing about people, like, doing the community garden in the middle
of the thing, and you're like, Cool. Got it. Right.
But I think that that's so profound. So I love I did not
in any way expect when we started this conversation today that we would spend so
much of it on content. But I'm so grateful we did, because only
through consistent outreach are we
going to meet and find our people. So, that being said, I have two more
questions for you before I release you back to your gorgeous day. One of
them is about this mundanity. Okay? So entrepreneurship
can be a horror story in and of itself.
Hardcore. It could be really weird. It can be really
hard. It can be really scary. And in combination of all three, right?
Vulnerable, horrifying, you name it. If you were going
to approach Alfred Hitchcock, who is dead,
but let's say he's not and you pitched him a movie about
a blip of entrepreneurship that he could turn easily into a Hitchcocky
in horror. What aspect of marketing or
selling or running a small business would you pitch Hitchcock?
Oh, that's a fun question. Which part would I pick to be the
horror movie? I would say when
they sit down to probably write
a piece of content, like all
the funny things, like they go in to skip their computer.
My cat needs to be fed. Let me go feed my cat. And the laptops
here. Let's just say it's right in the middle of the kitchen. Sometimes I just
sit right there.
Those dishes need done. Let me go do those dishes over
here. Just a neglected laptop sitting
on a table in, like, a single stream of shadowed light.
Just the laptop longing for you,
closing for the day. Yeah, the laptop
just quits and starts to close itself. Okay, that's brilliant ghost
of Alfred Hitchcock hit us up. We got some ideas for you.
But in the meantime, if you are not the ghost of Alfred Hitchcock, and you
are, in fact, an introvert out here trying your damnedest to make a mark,
but knowing that you could make a bigger, bolder mark within
energetic management, they need you. What's the best
way for them to start a conversation with you? Well, reach out to me.
Facebook is my main social platform, so you can reach out to me. I have
good boundaries. It's all good,
friendly. I have an opt in on my called
the Daily Needle Movers cheat sheet. That would be great.
Hitchcock movie like, here's the only four things you need to focus on each
day. They're just simple actions. So you'll find that right
on my personal page. I have a simplified and multiply Facebook group.
I know everybody's in a Facebook group, but I do really quality content
in there. That's where you'll see most of my videos.
My brand is simplified and multiply, so you
can find my group that way. And yeah, I'd love to connect with
you. If you're not selling your offers with ease, if you're
burnt out with trying to figure out content strategy,
if the way that you're selling or you're not getting people
booking calls with you, or you've got people booking calls with you that are not
buying, you actually have to backtrack the process a bit more. And when
you go back in the process and think of it like a triangle, like,
here's your yes client, here's your offer, here's your message. Your sales
process is up here. And it becomes late and easy when the bottom piece
is really strong. So that's what I focused on,
helping women to strengthen that. So business just gets lighter
and easier. Lighter and easier. Isn't that what we all
want when we're living through the Hitchcocky and nightmare of scaling a
personality driven business? Joy Buffalini it has been an absolute
joy interviewing you today. Thank you for all of the wisdom
and transparency and leadership to use your word, which is very clear
that you brought to this episode today. Thank you so much. Such a great
conversation. You're brilliant at it. Thank you.
I'm going to bask in that compliment for a second, guys, and I'll be right
back with my final thought. And your homework for this week no
live birds. Don't worry, J.
Well, hey there. One of the things that makes a Hitchcock movie completely
unmistakable, other than the shadows and the
lingering music, is the choice of what
details to include and what details not to
include. A zillion years ago, when I took a playwriting
class back in my musical theater performance days, they told
us, don't put a gun over the mantle in Act One
unless you plan to use it in Act Three. And Hitchcock
is a master of this. Everything is purposeful.
Either it ties in eventually or it's meant to
throw you off track. This reminds me of this week's homework.
One of my very favorite tools dialogue and detail.
So often people come to me to revamp or rewrite their copy
and they say, annie, how do you make it sound so much like me?
How do you make it sound so much like the people I'm talking to?
The answers are dialogue and detail.
This week, I want you to pay close attention to the chatter
going on in your head and write it down verbatim
and listen to your clients. In the same way, if they tell
you that they are exhausted to death, don't come back and say,
I understand you're tired. Come back and say, I'm exhausted
to death. Put that in a bank of copy that
you can pull from in the future. It's not about using people's
personal details. We're not going to start telling tales out of
school and spreading gossip all over the Internet. Their details
are their own. But what are the patterns in
the language? Or what are phrases that are not someone's intellectual
property, but is so unique to your work you
just have to use it? I can't wait
to see what you come up with. And if you'd like to see an example
of how I use dialogue in detail, both my own and
my clients, check out that book I mentioned@sellcoachcell.com.
That's right, my little Hitchcocky. And Noir. The Coach Who Would
Not Sell is available@sellcoachell.com and
Amazon, but it's free for you on the first one if you use the
code legitimate.
Hey, thanks for listening. If this episode kept you laughing and learning,
I have two requests for you. First, make sure you hit
that subscribe or follow button, depending on your platform, so you
never miss an episode. And also,
more importantly, if you are looking for support,
inspiration, networking collaborations, or just a
chance to hang out with me, annie P. Ruggles, and our fantastic
guests, make sure that you are a member of
our LinkedIn community, the legitimate. It is a weird
and wonderful place. I can't even believe it's on LinkedIn.
And we want you there. You'll find the link in
the show notes. Big shout out, as always, to the fabulous
dudes who helped me make this show. My producer and editor,
Andrew Sims of Hypobol Impact, my theme
composer, Riley Horpacio and my show art
creator, Francois Vino. See you next time.
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