I was called an “Entrepreneur in Innovation” at Iterate.ai. My role was to evaluate start-up technology and see which one of our large corporate clients could benefit from integrating that technology, or buying that technology - whatevs. I talked to A LOT of startups.

I wasn't necessarily an expert in all of the domains that I was engaged with, but that was actually by design. It was our job to assess and vet whether this technology was suitable for our clients. Part of the litmus test for quality was whether or not somebody who understood the basics of what the startup did (but was not necessarily a domain expert) could understand it well enough to be able to describe it to someone else who has even less domain expertise. Because inevitably, we would present to the innovation team at our clients, and at some point they would have to go and sell this opportunity to their board or someone else. We discovered early in the process that if the startup could not make us understand exactly what they did and what the benefit of working with them was, there was no chance that project was ever going to make it through a board of directors review.

I got pretty good at understanding startup lingo across marketing, data, health tech, and biotech. But almost everything that came out of the startups was lingo. It was designed to be a little bit mysterious. Some of that came from founder paranoia that someone would steal their idea, but more importantly, these startups were looking at their potential marketplace and potential clients from inside their own startup world.

So the lingo was relevant to the builders of the product. The jargon was shorthand for complex ideas and concepts that were in the product. The lingo and jargon were never important to our clients. They were focused on what the tech did, the impact on their business today and, ultimately, whether or not the technology behind it was worth investing in or buying.

So my work was really in translation of startup speak to corporate concern speak.

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As soon as I watched this fantastic video about legacy mowing, I had a flashback to my days at iterate. And as I talk to agency founders, I see again and again and again that they start explaining what it is they do through the techniques they use to do it and the technologies that they leverage. They talk in lovely, mellifluous language about how different and magical the world is because they have touched a marketing campaign or a website or an email sequence.

But rarely do they ever answer the question that every person in their market, in their pipeline, or in their sales process really wants to know:

Most of the time, when you are engage with someone in a sales capacity. They have some sort of need, and if you can't clearly articulate how what you do addresses that need, it's almost like you are a sadist & you want to watch them writhe in pain…

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Brené Brown is one of my favorite business thinkers - which is weird because she talks about empathy and vulnerability and being clear as a kindness. She deals with the HUMAN aspects of leading and succeeding in business.

As you know, I talk frequently about the need for understanding your prospect, your market & your impact, and the need for market visibility & relationship-focused thinking in all of your marketing & sales efforts.

Does it surprise you that being unclear and not connecting what you do to the benefit that your market or prospect receives from working with you drives me fucking bananas? It shouldn’t.

In order to be kind and be clear, YOU HAVE TO HAVE CLARITY ABOUT WHAT YOU DO! I know that's hard because clarity requires you to make editorial decisions. And because you are human, and as a species we are hard-wired to avoid loss, making any decision about clarity means that you might make a choice that limits your opportunity.

There are giant chunks of our native programming that have not changed with the times. Your brain is almost certainly more worried about loss than it is excited about gain.

That’s why finding the right positioning cubbyhole (AIC #168) can feel so “constricting”. If you find a way to express yourself so that your offer and expertise fit into an existing cubbyhole in your prospect's brain, there's some fear that you are actually missing more opportunities than you are connecting with.

Your brain goes into overdrive trying to keep things “broad” so that you can never miss an opportunity. At the same time, keeping things broad and trying to keep the “expert” stance might trigger a little imposter syndrome…

You start using “jargon & lingo” to keep the imposter syndrome at bay, and your desire to be available to ALL opportunities keeps your language imprecise. So big fluffy concepts & expert(?) language make stuff like “lawn to cloud 360 grass optimization” come pouring out of your pie whole.

That is your dumb old brain saving you from “downside threats” and “looking like a buffoon” while pushing away opportunities and having people say something like, “I've heard all those words before, but never all together in a sentence like you just said”.

Fun Fact: Those were the exact words I received back from my very first sales pitch for my last agency. We were selling technology-enabled services, and the technology wasn't ready for prime time, so I tried to make it sound advanced…and it gave my very first serious prospect an easy way to tell me that I was a dumb fuck.

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As luck would have it, you will never be a dumb fuck like me because I am supernaturally gifted in that realm. But the real answer to your question is to find the courage to make the editorial choices that allow you to be specific and confident and clear to your market, to your prospects, and to yourself about where you bring the most value.

Totally easy, right? 😂

This marvelous little AI agent does one simple thing. It reads your agency's home page and points out where you are using fluffy language that sounds like anybody else. it's free, and someone who had their site checked out by the Wah Wah Detector said, "Your feedback was really tough and funny, and I don't know if I should be angry, hurt, or giggling."

Something that can help you with clarity is being able to articulate the things that you've already done. Also, potential clients love to read case studies because it gives them some sense of your impact. A million years ago, I did a training where I created & published a case study in 7 minutes - it was called, weirdly enough, The 7 Minute Case Study. I always thought if more agencies just had a good, simple process to create a case study easily, they would do it a lot more often. So, I built Case Study Lab - there’s a short interview about your clients' previous dates, how you helped them, what the results were, and a few other questions. You will get a couple of different versions of the case study that are good enough to share… It’s really early stage, so it's not a finished product, but I thought I'd throw it out there because when you go through the process of saying:

You have to get specific and clear to answer the questions, and it will give you evidence of your own expertise so you can talk directly to the needs of your market, specifically about what you do, in a way that is 100% clear to them.

Hell yeah.

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