Episode 161: Michelle Mazur – Finding Your “3 Word Rebellion”

Michelle Mazur  00:25

Making sales social means to me like having conversations and building relationships because I’ve noticed this trend, especially in online business where they’re like, “Oh, don’t have sales conversations. You don’t need to have sales conversations, they can watch a webinar and then buy.” And then I’m like, Well, that takes all the humanity out of it. And if it’s a high ticket purchase, like I want to talk to an actual human being and make a human connection. So to me, sales should be social.

Bob Woods  01:00

Welcome to the Making Sales Social podcast, featuring the top voices in sales, marketing, and business. Join Brynne Tillman and me, Bob Woods, as we each bring you the best tips and strategies our guests are teaching their clients, so you can leverage them for your own virtual and social selling. Enjoy the show.

Brynne Tillman  01:25

Welcome back to Making Sales Social. I’m Brynne  Tillman and I am here with Michelle Mazur. She is a messaging expert who works with brilliant business owners. So if you’re not brilliant, you have to be brilliant but she’s working with these business owners who are shaking things up, but they’re having trouble talking about articulating it. So she combines the tools of successful social movements with qualitative research. See, I passed the third grade, I promise. She earned her communications Ph.D., she’s Dr. Mazur, to help them craft their powerful captivating message. She’s the author of the 3 Word Rebellion, and the host of The Rebel Uprising podcast and I have been listening to Michelle on audiobook and when I work out, I listen and I have worked so hard, I’m at forward rebellion that I can’t get it down to three, but I’m working on it.

Michelle Mazur  02:34

4 is perfectly acceptable. It’s in that range of two to five words.

Brynne Tillman  02:40

Awesome! I’m so excited that you’re here. We met through just other fabulous women, brilliant business owners and I just was so excited to bring you on the podcast because I think you bring incredible value and I’m so excited to start to talk to you. I’m gonna start with the 3 Word Rebellion, you know, again, I’ve been working on this and it’s amazing how hard it is. I forget who was a president, maybe it was Ben Franklin, not a president, you know, who said, “I would have written you a shorter letter, but I didn’t have the time.”

Michelle Mazur  03:15

Yeah. Mark Twain has a similar quotation. Yeah, he talks about, if you want and like a two hour speech, I’m ready right now. If you want a five minute speech, I’ll be ready in two weeks.

Brynne Tillman  03:28

Yeah, so I love that. So we’re gonna dive into that but before I ask you the 3 Word Rebellion questions, we ask all of our guests, what does making sales social mean to you?

Michelle Mazur  03:39

Making sales social means to me like having conversations and building relationships because I’ve noticed this trend, especially in online business, where they’re like, “Oh, don’t have sales conversations. You don’t need to have sales conversations, they can watch a webinar and then buy.” And then I’m like, Well, that takes all the humanity out of it. And if it’s a high ticket purchase, like I want to talk to an actual human being and make a human connection. So to me, sales should be social. They should be relationship-based and conversation driven, instead of being like, “Oh, no, no, just watch this webinar and give me all your money.”

Brynne Tillman  04:21

I am 100% in agreement with you on that. I think it’s an art and a science. The fine line is it needs to be human. So I love that. All right, so let’s jump into the 3 Word Rebellion. Let’s first tell us a little bit about what that is and then how do you find yours? 

Michelle Mazur  04:46

Yeah, so the 3 Word Rebellion is this idea that I came upon when I was kind of in this huge business transition. So I had been working with speakers for many years, and I realized that I didn’t love the speaking industry, I didn’t love how it treated speakers, how it doesn’t want to pay speakers. And I also noticed that my clients were using the speeches that we were creating in different ways that show up in the copy on their website, or they would turn it into a three part video series and I was like, “Wow, my work has a bigger application.” I’m like, I wonder what that could be. And then I noticed all of the social movements that were happening back in 2016, whether it was like “Black Lives Matter,” or “Me too,” or “Make America Great Again,” like, all of these social movements are rising up and I found this curious connection between these social movements, and what some of my favorite entrepreneurs were doing, like Simon Sinek, and “Start with Why,” Mel Robbins, and the “The 5 Second Rule,” Marie Forleo, “Everything Is Figureoutable”  And I was like, this is really interesting both of these groups have this short, memorable, curiosity provoking message and I was like, I wonder if I took social movement questions and let my clients just empty their brains on them just free write on them? Could I come up with this really sticky message? And it worked. And that’s what became the 3 Word Rebellion, which is all about creating a one of a kind message that really positions you in the industry is a category of one, but then allows other people to spread your message so that you can grow your business into a movement, and really make a change and make a difference but it starts with finding that core message and then you can build all the other messages around it for your marketing but yeah, what is that 3 Word Rebellion is always the question that I start with my clients.

Brynne Tillman  06:59

Yeah, I love that. And I am working on mine and working on mine and I just realized I had said earlier, it’s four, it’s five, because the word two, isn’t it. So I gotta bring it down but I’m working on it. And I do. I think about it all the time. So I think it’s great. So for the audience, and selfishly, for me, even though I listen to you, you’re in my head a lot. How do you get started finding yours?

Michelle Mazur  07:26

Yeah. So I think the most important thing to do is to use a process of freewriting to find your 3 Word Rebellion. I know most business owners tend to be up in their heads, most of the time you think about your message, you think about your clients, you think about “Oh, is this resonating? Is this not?” And you can never find a message from this brain like it’s, it’s up here somewhere but this is not where it’s going to be created. So the first step is to get all of your ideas out of your head and onto paper, where we can actually like, look at them, deal with them, see if there’s patterns, interesting turns of phrase. 

So how I do that is I have a set of questions that I talk about in the 3 Word Rebellion book that I have you just free right on, which is free writing is a process of just putting pen to paper or typing on a keyboard, and you don’t stop writing. So the two sets of questions that I asked people are the first that is all about, like, what are you rebelling against? Like what in your industry ticks you off, makes you roll your eyes and be like, “I hate it when people say that.” write all of that down because that is the foil. It’s also for most of us really easy to access stuff that makes us a little annoyed or ticked off. 

And then the second set of questions is all about what is the change you want to create? And allowing yourself to be in that place of being dreamy and what if and not worrying about the “how” to make it happen because I think that’s another place where we get stuck. It’s like, yeah, I want to make this big change in my industry but I can’t put that down on paper because I don’t know all the steps to make it happen. It’s like, that doesn’t matter. Focus on the “what if” what is that change you want to create and don’t worry about the “how” piece?

Brynne Tillman  09:30

That’s interesting! And I think, you know, it’s hard as business owners or as entrepreneurs to not get stuck in the weeds. It’s hard, I think, and that might be some of you and my issue is it’s hard for us to come up here and look at that big dream, that big picture because we’re in it all the time.

Michelle Mazur  09:54

Yes! And that is the thing I see with my expert business is that we’re so in the weeds, right? We’re so close to the message and the work that we do and what’s interesting to us about our work is not interesting to your potential client. I always tell my clients, like your people want to benefit from your expertise. They don’t want to be an expert themselves and I find with a lot of experts, when they’re communicating their message, they’re focused on like, the expert message and what that means as an expert versus like, know, what does that your expertise actually do for other people?

Brynne Tillman  10:38

Yeah, I love that. And we often say when we’re talking about content for LinkedIn, is “Stop sharing content that you want to consume and start sharing content your prospects want to consume” otherwise, you’re just going to attract your competitors. So I love that. I think that’s brilliant. I love that. So, you know, what is your definition? Your definition of messaging? And what does it do generally, for a business?

Michelle Mazur  11:07

Yeah, there’s a lot of misconceptions about what messaging is, I swear, I’ve heard it defined as like, it’s a content plan. It’s your “I help” statement? It’s, oh gosh, what are some other things like, oh, yeah, it’s just your “elevator pitch.” And it’s like, messaging is so much more than that. Messaging is literally everything your business says, whether it’s in your marketing, in your copy in your sales conversations, that attract people to your business, makes them raise their hand and say, like, “Ohh yeah, I want to know more,” makes them realize that they have the problem you solve, dispels any misconceptions they have, and then makes the offer and I think we get so focused that the message is such a small thing, but really, it sits over your entire business and I don’t wanna say dictates, but tells you exactly what you need to say, in order to convert strangers into clients. So it’s not just this very small piece. It is a foundational piece of your business.

Brynne Tillman  12:20

Would you say it’s seeped in, like a philosophy? Or is your messaging that overarching? Is it like, how you want to show up in the world, what you want to look like, what you want people to feel when they…

Michelle Mazur  12:36

It’s all of that! Yes, yes, It’s all of that so for me, like what messaging looks like, like one of the first parts of messaging that I create with clients outside of your 3 Word Rebellion, is we do a client empathy map, like really understanding the worldview of the person you want to be talking to. So what are they thinking, doing, feeling, seeing, hearing? What are they struggling with? What do they want? And understanding that and using that as a part of your message, but then you have your 3 Word Rebellion, which is the thing that catches their attention and makes them want to know more but then once you have their attention, you have to know, okay, like, what do I need to say? What are the arguments I need to make to move this person who just discovered me into becoming a client and to raising their hands and saying, “Yes, yeah.”  So it’s  based in and part of that is presenting your unique solution that is very much a part of the messaging, your point of view, how you’re different. So all of that is messaging and I think sometimes it’s such a huge topic, that I think it blows people’s minds when I talk.

Brynne Tillman  13:53

I think most entrepreneurs just wing it, like I don’t, like I think, I mean, this is something and I don’t typically say this in the middle of a podcast. This is something that every single business owner and entrepreneur needs to do because, you know, especially like, I have some clients that have these ghost writers and so they’re out there doing research and writing, and it doesn’t match the website, and it doesn’t match their LinkedIn profile, and that disconnect is really dangerous, I think.

Michelle Mazur  14:32

Oh, absolutely! Because I’ve had that experience where I heard someone on a podcast and I was like, “Oh my gosh, this person is awesome. I’m gonna go check them out.” And then their website has nothing to do with what they talked about on the podcast, which means they did this PR got this opportunity, and then squandered the opportunity because what they’re talking about, you know, in their PR, doesn’t lead to business and people don’t really Is that that is a whole comprehensive strategy and I think partially it’s the industry is to blame, because I realized I was doing some client research this year and I kind of realized, you know, the biggest result, the first result my clients get is they get more, they get clarity, and they get confidence in what they’re going to say and then that allows them to be more effective in their messaging, which allows them to are in their marketing, which allows them to like fill up the client pipeline, and then get opportunities to speak and be on podcasts but in the industry, we start on the outside, we’re like, “Oh, you’ve got to speak and be on podcasts and do guest blogging, and then that will fill your client pipeline.” But if you don’t know what to say, like a lot of those efforts, just go to waste, and you blow massive opportunities because you don’t know how to take those people who just listened to you, and actually make them want to work with you.

Brynne Tillman  15:57

I love that. Okay, so now we’ve done this overarching umbrella of message perspective. We’ve nailed our 3 Word Rebellion. What do we do?

Michelle Mazur  16:12

Then it’s about figuring out, number one, figure out what your market strategy is because you have a message and now the job is to amplify the message. So what do you want your marketing strategy to look like for your people, they’re going to be on LinkedIn. So they’re probably going to need to do things like tweet their LinkedIn profile, create, like a content strategy for what they’re going to talk about, and what offers that’s leading to. So you want to create that marketing strategy that helps you grow your audience, nurture, and engage them so you can make offers and then, you know, obviously, like updating the websites so that everything is in line. So really, then it becomes about creating these marketing assets that you can use again, and again, that allows you to be consistently on message.

Brynne Tillman  17:05

I absolutely love that. Would you say that a good litmus test of this content is, does this support the 3 Word Rebellion? Everything you write? Do we take that back to the 3 words?

Michelle Mazur  17:17

Yeah. So one of the things that I do with clients is like we do your three word rebellion, I think I talked about this in either chapter eight or nine of the book, we take your 3 word rebellion and then that serves as the free writing questions for creating your client decision journey, which is that bulk of your key messages that actually persuades people? So we start thinking about, like, how do you define this? What layers if it was a person who would it be and why? So we can really get to that core essence and build out a complete message around your 3 word rebellion. So then everything when you do that everything is comprehensive and cohesive. So it leads very naturally from you know, just getting to know you all the way to the end of becoming a client.

Brynne Tillman  18:04

Awesome! All right, before I ask you how people can find you, I’m just gonna be very, very selfish. I’m gonna tell you where I am on mine and maybe you can get me to the next. So I have converting LinkedIn connections to conversations, very long.

Michelle Mazur  18:23

Yes, very long, very wordy. Converting LinkedIn connections to conversations. So for me, I would probably especially since LinkedIn is a trademark to LinkedIn, I would want to drop that and probably put it back in the supporting message, that would be my first, you don’t want to use other people’s copyrighted terms or trademark terms in your 3 word rebellion.

Brynne Tillman  18:50

So how is converting connections to conversations?

Michelle Mazur  18:53

It’s still a little wordy. Like there’s a lot of syllables in it but it’s closer. It’s closer.

Brynne Tillman  19:01

Alright, I’ll keep working on it.

Michelle Mazur  19:02

I like the transformation aspect, connections to conversations. Like that’s very clear before and after.

Brynne Tillman  19:10

Maybe I take out converting and it’s just connections to conversation.

Michelle Mazur  19:15

Yeah, try it.

Brynne Tillman  19:17

That’s my 3 word rebellion, connections to conversations. I love it. Oh, my gosh, I could talk to you all day and I’m sure a lot of our listeners want to stay connected or get connected to you. Other than, must go get the book “The 3 Word Rebellion” or I mean, all my books are on audio and by the way, the stories are fun. Your inflection is wonderful. I am never ever, ever bored. You’ve got me on the edge. It’s just I mean you are, it’s just really, really well written in addition to the value that comes from it. It’s just fun. So I thank you for that so I love that. So go get the book. How else can people get in touch with you?

Michelle Mazur  20:10

Yeah. So you can obviously connect with me on LinkedIn. I’m Dr. Michelle Mazur there and pretty much Dr. Michelle Mazur on all social media platforms but LinkedIn is becoming my main social media squeeze, or at least that’s what I’m transitioning into. And then you can always find me out my website, which is drmichellemazur.com and if you’re still not sure about this 3 word rebellion thing, and you just want to try it out. I have a mini audio workshop that you can get at 3wordrebellion.com

Brynne Tillman  20:38

3wordrebellion.com couldn’t get easier. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. I knew this was going to be fun because you’re just fun and enjoyable but I really think this particular episode brings incredible value. So what I’m going to say guys –Do you have a hashtag that you use, three word rebellion hashtag?

Michelle Mazur  20:58

Yeah! #3wordrebellion, yep. 

Brynne Tillman  21:00

So I’m gonna throw out if you are listening, and you come up with your 3 word rebellion, use the #3wordrebellion, share it on LinkedIn, and tag me or get it in front of me because I want to see, and that’s your hashtag, you’ll see it. So that’s great. All right. Thank you so much. I appreciate it. So much fun. And for the listeners. Don’t forget when you are out and about, make sure that you are making your sales social.

Bob Woods  21:33

Thanks for watching, and join us again for more special guest instructors bringing you marketing, sales training, and social selling strategies that will set you apart. Hit the Subscribe button below to get the latest episodes from the Making Sales Social podcast. Leave a review down below, tell us what you think, what you learned and what you want to hear from us next.

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Resources Mentioned:

You can listen to her podcast Rebel Uprising and have a mini messaging workshop you can listen to on the go, HERE.