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slash marketers to learn more. With Marketing, you're trying to get your message out there in a way that says, hey, come and find me and I'm going to actually make it really easy for you to find. And you have to figure out how to stand out, especially in a crowded marketplace. If you can identify the problem that you solve that is different than other people, or you can talk about how you solve it differently, that is going to help you
stand out in the market. And there are people whose problems maybe only you can solve. We want to be able to help you just stand out in the crowds so that people know where to find you. Hello, Hero Maker. Welcome to the Marketing Made Simple Podcast, powered by Story Brand and brought to you by the HubSpot Podcast Network where we believe your marketing should be easy and it should work. I'm your host, Dr. JJ Peterson and I am joined by my lovely co-host, April Sunshine Hawkins. Hi, April.
Hi, JJ. And hello, Hero Maker. April, when you and Brent go on vacation, are you guys matchy-matchy? Like, do you wear identical shirts? Well, Brent hates it when we do. That doesn't shock me in the slightest. But you would want to be a, would you want, I'm actually curious, I don't know the answer to this. Would you be a matchy-matchy? Would you like it? You have been married for 19 years as we have. Congratulations. Thank you so much. We've
worked really hard. Couple of therapies incredible. Sometimes you just end up like, you don't, you get dressed at different times. Yeah. And then it's time to go and you're both wearing essentially the same outfit and you're walking out the door and you're like, we, oh, this is, yeah. And so sometimes we choose to be late so that we actually change clothes and then sometimes it's just like, well, we look adorable. But also, no, Brent doesn't like it.
I am not a fan of that either. But with my husband where we wear the same size clothing, we can actually wear the exact same shirt. Like we can literally wear the same exact outfit because we have multiple shirts sometimes. And so we can go out looking exactly the same exactly like, because we're kind of, I mean, he's much taller than me. But we're like build wise, some very similar. We can wear the same clothing. And so we have gone out sometimes
on accident, sometimes he does it on purpose where we match exactly. I mean, it's a, it's a door. Is it? I, I like it when adults do it. I mean, kids do it all the time, right? Yes, but you feel trips. Yeah. Obviously, you know, you want to dress the same so you can like spot people. Yeah. Yeah. That's what it does make it easy in a crowd. It's like, oh, especially for wearing like both, we're both wearing red or we're both wearing yellow.
Yeah. Is that we can see the other person. And I used to fight him on it all the time. And now I'm like, okay, if our family is going to Disneyland or our family is going to a concert or a pump, confessible, which I love doing, that if we all are wearing yellow, then it's really going to be easy to spot each other in a crowd. It just makes it super easy. So if our seven year old is running off, absolutely, we go, where's the yellow shirt? And we can
kind of just find our people very easily. And you know, I used to kind of mock a little bit like when you'd go overseas on vacation, you see these big groups in a giant tour. And there's one person at the front with a huge flag that's like six feet above everybody. But it makes sense to be able to be like, come here, everybody come over here. This is
where you need to be. This is your people. And we can make it stand out. And so whether it's all wearing like the same shirt when you're on vacation or whether it's putting a flag up that says, Hey, everybody, we're going to make it easy for you to find us. And we were thinking about that principle when it comes to marketing. That's kind of what you're trying to do with marketing is really raise a flag and say, Hey, where's my people? All my people
come here. And a lot of them might end up just wearing yellow shirts when they all show up, you know, because they all kind of can look alike. And they want to be alike. But you can really with marketing, what you're trying to get your message out there in a way that says, Hey, come to me, come and find me. And I'm going to actually make it really easy
for you to find me. Yeah. And it's so difficult because if your market is really crowded. And there are a ton of people like I'm envisioning whenever we would go to the Austin City limits music festival, right? There are a ton of festival goers. Very crowded. It's so crowded. We don't go anymore because it's so crowded and we're old. And but when we would go, we would have a gigantic flag so that our group and our party knew that's where
we're headed. Like we can find our people in this sea of humans. And so whenever you are marketing, you are putting up flags and you're helping people locate you. Yeah. And like you said, it's so important, especially in a crowded marketplace. And in this series where we're talking shop, we're talking to shop, we know that there's a lot of people out there who are in the health and wellness space, maybe health and wellness coach or
sell a health and wellness product. And it feels like in that space, if you're helping people lose weight or get healthier or you're a chiropractor, you are really having to stand out in a lot of noise. You're competing against traditional medicine. You're also competing against other people in your area. You might have a unique approach to it. And so we wanted to bring on somebody who could help us really talk about this about how to stand out in
a crowded market. And we're talking shop specifically in the space of health and wellness. But the reality is this applies to everybody. I don't care. I mean, if you sell tennis shoes, crowded market, if you are a real estate agent, crowded market, if you are a business coach or you sell marketing services, crowded market, and you have to figure out how to stand out in this space. So this conversation, I think, is really valuable and made me really
kind of think about a lot of things differently for business in general. But the shop that we're talking today is we've heard from a lot of you listeners that you are in this space. So we wanted to bring on an expert, Sarah Cook, one of our story brand certified guides who could talk specifically about this space, about health and wellness, how to stand out in that market. Everybody can learn from her of how to stand out in general with your marketing.
So I'm very excited to get right into this conversation with story brand certified guide Sarah Cook. Sarah, so excited to have you on the podcast. Thanks for being here today. JJ, I am so happy to be here. Would you mind telling our listeners what industry you came from before you went into marketing? Absolutely. So originally, I thought I wanted to be a naturopathic doctor, went to naturopathic medical school and did that. And I worked as
a clinician for a bit. And I think I believe we all have our path that really is the best for us. And being a clinician was not for me. And so it certainly did. It took me a bit to kind of sort out. Well, I love naturopathic medicine. How can I still stay in this space and really still utilize all of that knowledge that I gained in a different capacity? And so I transitioned into writing for other doctors. And really, this was all really about 10
years ago. So I've been working with naturopathic physicians, functional medicine practitioners, and mostly helping them a lot with their content. And then getting into more of helping with them, marketing side of their content is when I discovered story brand, which has been absolutely just completely changed how I was really able to help the practitioners and getting clear on their message and all of their marketing copy as well.
I love that so much. And we have so many people in our marketing made simple podcast family who come from this space, who come from health and wellness. So I just kind of want to start out with. So when you get into these spaces, it feels like this is kind of a crowded space a little bit, right? Where even in any given town, there are multiple doctors, there
are probably multiple chiropractors, there are multiple health and wellness coaches. And so what are some things that you have discovered in working with people in these spaces that in how they can actually stand out in a crowded market? Yeah, I'm really happy you started with this question. I think that a lot of practitioners feel that way that they feel it's hard to get traction because there are so many other
health and wellness practitioners. So I will get to answering absolutely 100%. But I also like to slightly do a mindset reframe because I think I certainly come with more of an abundance mindset that it's not actually crowded and that there is absolutely, you know, plenty of clients, plenty of patients for ever, a single practitioner. But I think the way to reframe
it is really just where you focus your mental energy. And if you're focusing on those other practitioners and you're opening your Instagram and you're seeing these other practitioners with thousands of followers and who are creating amazing reels and you're thinking, oh my gosh, how am I going to start doing that? And your mental energy is more on the other practitioners doing it. Then you start to feel that scarcity. It's hard
to really show up in a good way and do excellent marketing. And I think the reframe is really focusing on all of those people who still need help because the fact is we have hundreds of millions of people in the United States alone. There is never ever going to be a deficiency of people who can benefit from improving their lifestyle, knowing how much protein they should eat. What supplements are best for them? Getting functional labs done to understand
what's the root cause of their symptoms. There will never ever be a deficiency of people who need those services. And so I would just say, first of all, it's just a little bit of a mental reframe that it's not crowded. It's not crowded. You just need it is the role of every practitioner than in their marketing to do a fantastic job of marketing so that those people will find them. But there are plenty of people who need your help.
That is gold for anybody who is listening. I mean, especially in the space that we're talking about, but really anybody, I don't care if you're a realtor, I don't care if you are selling shoes, I don't care if you are selling marketing services. It always feels I think for everybody when we walk in with the scarcity mindset that there's not enough
for everybody and that we're competing even over the same exact same clients. And also, you're so right when we look at social media, I mean, even I can look at social media and look at other marketers out there marketing agencies and go, why am I not doing this? There's I'm so far behind, I'm not going to be able to and I start falling into that mentality. And thank you, first off, for that, for everybody listening. I think that
is so huge. And I've said it before, but I forget it so often is that if we can show up within abundance mindset versus a scarcity mindset, we're going to show up better for ourselves and for our clients and our customers. And what that does is it really takes so much weight off your shoulders. So thank you for that. Now, okay, now we'll get back to my question. You can get back to.
Now what can we do? What can we do to get attention? Right? So one thing I will say a word that probably some of our practitioners, our listeners might feel triggered by this word. And so we can unpack it for sure. But the way that you really get traction and get attention is to niche. And so certainly I know a lot of practitioners really hesitate
at that word because it can mean a lot of different things. And so I think I have a there are a few different ways I think in the health and wellness space that you can niche. And making sure that practitioners understand this doesn't mean that I can only treat one condition. And that's all I can ever do for the rest of my career. Right? Because I think that's where they get stuck. They start to say I don't want to niche because I
don't want to only treat one condition. And so what I would say is yes, niching into a condition is one way that does work very well. And so I would first of all encourage everyone listening to actually, I mean, any practitioner listening to actually be open to that idea of thinking about well, what if could it be possible for me to niche into
a condition and still love my job? For example, I think the reason being that a lot of practitioners think they want to just niche into their modality, what they are good at doing. For example, they will say my specialty is environmental medicine. That is my niche. Problem is that people are not looking for environmental medicine. They don't know that they need environmental medicine. They know that they have debilitating headaches all
the time and they don't want to take medication. A practitioner might say, well, my specialty is functional diagnostic nutrition. But again, nobody's looking for functional diagnostic nutrition. They don't know what that means. They don't know they need it. They know that they've tried everything and they can't lose weight. And so this is why niching into a condition is really helpful for marketing because people are looking for answers to their problems.
Like we say, all the time in the story brand and the fact is in the health and wellness space, that means they're looking for a resolution of their symptoms. And so they're looking for the person who is the expert in doing that. And so when you can say, well, I am the expert in people who struggle to lose weight. I am the expert for people who have thinning bones. You know, I am the expert for people who struggle with gas and bloating and they're embarrassed
by their digestive issues, right? That's what people are looking for. And so that's way it's so powerful to focus on that as a niche. That's so huge because it's exactly you're right. It's exactly what we talk about all the time. And that is the difference between you being the hero of the story and your customer being the hero of the story, right? Especially people who are coming into the health and wellness space that you're talking about. A lot
of the people have invested a lot of money and time in training, education. They've had a lot of experience, you know, especially like if they've gone in and become doctors, they've spent a lot of time and money on their education, on their training, on their schooling. And so it feels like that's what people are looking for. Is there looking for an expert in this space? And the reality is they're looking for somebody to solve the problem they're
experiencing. So when you lead with your, you know, what environmental medicine people aren't looking for that. They're looking for a solution to their problem. When you lead with environmental medicine, you're positioning yourself as the hero of the story. When you lead with headaches, you're positioning your customer as the hero of the story. So I like what you're talking about here in that a lot of, when you're talking about niching
down is a lot of people talk about niching your services. But I love this idea of niching down to the problem that you solve. Now again, once you, once people get in through the headache door, they're going to find that you can solve a ton of other problems. But if you can lead with that problem and even make it like tight, you actually have the ability to then again stand out in the market in a different way than other people are doing
because they're leading with environmental medicine. And you can lead with headaches. And that is going to attract the right customer for you. Yeah. So I can give one example of one of my clients. She's an integrative healthcare practitioner. One of her many certifications is trauma informed coaching. And so she finds she does a lot of trauma work. She attracts a lot of women who've had trauma in their past. And I've worked with her actually over several
iterations of her niche and her messaging and kind of refining over time. And most recently she's realized a lot of women come to her that she gets really good results. They're struggling with emotional eating. And this is just a great example of how they're not looking to deal with their past trauma. They're looking to stop their emotional eating. And so we've just completely revamped all of her website and her funnels to be really clear. I have women who struggle with emotional eating.
Create like the greats hosted by Ross Simmons is brought to you by the HubSpot Podcast Network, the audio destination for business professionals. If you're a creator on to Renewer, just someone fascinated by the creative process this podcast is for you. Each episode dives into some of the greatest creations and creators of all time breaking down the strategies
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so many amazing ways to effectively tell your brand story and stay relevant. Listen to create the greats wherever you get your podcasts. And now back to the show. Now here's a question I have for people say who specifically are in the health and wellness kind of space and tell me if you've run into this at all. When it comes to success in the story brand brand script, we always tell people you want to show people what their life is like on the other side of using your product or service.
So in a marketing space like if you were marketing your services, you would say you're going to reach your right client, you're going to get a great website. You're going to get all the things that happen when it comes to health and wellness and this happens in a bunch of different industry, it feels like there are certain claims you cannot make on the other side, certain promises. How do you account when you're working in marketing and you have
some restrictive language around what the results can be that a client will get? How do you approach that with a nuanced perspective? Because this is true for people in the financial space. This is true for people in medicine, you know, and so there's certain promises you can't make. How do you still engage in the success of a customer story without making the promises that go against language? This is probably a full weekend long seminar that I would also bring in a lawyer to discuss,
right? Because I'm not a lawyer, however, yes, I'm very familiar with a lot of the restrictions. And so this very much, it depends on a few things. We have the medical practitioners who are licensed and so they can be using words like patience and treat. And then we have the coaching space where we have nutritionists and we have health coaches and they cannot use any kind of language that even specifies treating disease. And so they'll use clients,
right? There's also because with all of this online marketing, even with, say, these medical side of the picture where they are seeing patients and we can say they're treating and these things, many of them are now doing online courses, group programs, these types of things where now they actually are not delivering medicine, they're delivering education
and information. And so the promises say if they're doing an online group course, they need to use different language that completely avoids anything saying that they're treating a condition or disease. So, and you know, even if we're just talking about, because it can go so deep and down so many rabbit holes, even if we're just talking about identifying, like we were just saying in your niche, identifying, say, a niche by condition. Let's just talk
about that, right? So for example, I have someone in my content membership, she's a licensed pharmacist, but she has her own business on the side as a coach. And so she's very, very careful to only use coaching language for her coaching business. It's completely separate from the work she does as a pharmacist, right? But her niche is people with autoimmune disease. And she uses that word, but she doesn't say she's treating the autoimmune disease.
She's helping them form healthy habits. She's helping them improve their energy. She's helping them with their diet and their movement and just living life to their fullest and feeling their best, despite their diagnosis of autoimmune disease. And her messaging is very, very crystal clear. She fully attracts people with autoimmune disease, but she is also very clear she's not treating that. I love that because that we hear that a lot from people of like, don't want to hire a
marketer or don't want to kind of use even the story brand framework. Because they're like, well, I can't use language around success, but you just showed how there are certain words that you can't use in a lot of different industries, but you can still speak to solving the problem and the results that they're going to experience or the kind of the solving of the root causes or addressing the root causes, like you're going to get a better diet.
You're going to work on your energy versus saying you will get better from the autoimmune disorder. It's talking about some addressing some of the root causes and what some of the results will happen when you address those. Right. So I really didn't answer your question. If you're asking about how to word success absolutely in none of these cases, can we say you will be healed of cancer, right? We cannot say you will absolutely, you know, you will not have IBS anymore. We can't promise
any health actual health result because that is too many variables. It depends on so many things, right? So in any of these cases, we cannot promise to heal or completely overcome a condition. You promise what you'll do for them, but you don't promise the exact outcome. And here's one other way that I love to do this is literally just instead of saying, here's
an outcome you can expect. You don't say that. You say, here are some of the things our clients have achieved or here are some of the things we've been able to do for our patients. Here's some of the results our patients get. So instead of saying, I promise you're going to get these results, you can say, I have gotten other people these results. Yes, that is so right on because even if you are restrictive and well, it's not even
just about being restrictive, it's about having integrity. Like you said, you know, we can't promise we're going to cure this because there's so many variables, but we can say this. You are going to understand this. You are going to see this and we have other people who have achieved these kind of results. We even do that in marketing, right? Because same with us, when we create a brand script for a company, are they going to execute it?
Are they going to actually put it on the website? Are they moving forward? Are they tracking the data, all that stuff? We don't know. So we can't promise that this one thing is going to change everything. We can say that we have a ton of research that shows if you actually implement, you will see significant changes. Like this is data backed, but because there's so many variables, we even don't like promise results. We talk about this can happen and
this is what people have seen. So we've talked about how to niche down in kind of the area
that you're going after to really attract the right customers. We've talked about how even to address success, but really standing out in the market and say differentiation in the market, especially for people who are in this space, they're having to go up against kind of traditional medicine or maybe even other people who are in the health and well in the space who aren't really delivering what they say they're going to deliver, right?
So they're kind of having to position themselves against people's experiences on both sides of the spectrum. People who are shady in this space and maybe potentially even doctors who just aren't the traditional medicine is not doing what they hoped it would do without pills and things like that. So how do you actually help them really differentiate in this space?
Yeah, absolutely. When we look at, I use the story brand framework with every client and one of the pieces of the story brand framework that actually I think a lot of people don't even realize is in there is the paradigm shift. And so this is like part of the problem section. We have the external internal problem, philosophical problem. And then the paradigm
shift is where you fill in the blank of the real problem is blah, blah, blah. So this is one piece of their marketing message that I find to be extremely powerful for health and wellness practitioners because yes, they are going up against tradition. You know, even if they are not particularly controversial like they don't want to specifically be really controversial, still they're not part of the conventional system. They're doing
things a little bit different. They're a little bit against the green. And in order to attract the right clients and patients, they need to help people understand how their approach is really different. And that's what the paradigm shift does. It helps shift people's mindsets and gets people on board with why their solution is awesome, right? And so we
want to fill in that blank of the real problem is. And so for example, you know, in functional medicine, a lot of times functional medicine doctors are doing a lot of unique advanced testing. They're trying to get to the root cause. They're all about getting to the root cause, right? So it could be as simple as the real problem is that nobody has done enough testing to get to the root cause, right? And so it shifts people to realize, oh, this
is going to be a little bit different. Oh, this is going to be something I haven't tried. And then that automatically triggers in their mind like, okay, you know, that's why it's great. That's why it might work for me. You know, and other things, they've been someone who does a lot of mind body medicine, for example, they might say the real problem is that
your body can never fully heal unless you also heal your mind, right? So it's like that paradigm shift is where you can really get to the core of what makes your service unique. As long as that kind of comes after what we already talked about, like leading with the
problem you solve, right? Hooking people in, letting them know your next part in solving their problem, then the next thing is letting them know, well, the reason this is going to be different, it's actually going to work for you this time is because I take a different approach. I love that. That prompt of the real problem is I love prompts when it comes to copywriting because it really gives us a place to start instead of a blank slate. I love that so
much. And I know again, everybody can use that. But for coaches and clinicians and technicians that are really in this space that are in the health and wellness space, you've given us so much gold today, the idea of the niching down being aware of what you're talking about
with the success and how to be able to talk to that. And then really honing in differentiating on this paradigm shift idea of the real problem is if people just begin and look at their marketing begin there, it's going to change everything and they're going to have so much success. So I am so incredibly grateful for you and for your incredible insight in talking shop about this space. It's so clear that you are an expert in this that you come from
this background, but it helps so many people in this space. And we'll say it in the outro, but anybody can go on marketing main simple.com and find Sarah. And if you're in this space, talk to her, just reach out. And I know that she would love to talk shop with you and figure out what to do next. So Sarah, thank you so much for being on and these tips that I'm like already are changing the way that I want to do marketing today. So thank
you. Thank you, JJ. Well, I hope that was helpful for you and really gave you some ideas on how to really position yourself in a potentially crowded market and really raise the flag and tell people, I'm over here. Come find your my people. And if you are still feeling stuck trying to figure out how to apply the story brand framework into your marketing, you can hire a story brand certified guide like Sarah Cook. Just go to marketing made simple.com to hire a guide
that will show you how to clarify your message and create marketing that works. All right, hero maker. It's time to apply everything you learned with this week's actionable step, a practical step from today's conversation. You can immediately use to shape your marketing and clarify your message. It doesn't matter what industry you are in. You are facing tough competition. We know that there are other people who do what you do, but the cool
thing about it is that the way you do what you do is different than everybody else. How you focus on solving your customers problem, the way you solve your customers problem, your expertise, and even you as an individual, you approach things differently than other people. Finding how to talk about that can always be a challenge because we talk here
all the time in story brand about how you want to be clear. Well, sometimes it feels like when we lead with clarity, it kind of can make it so that we sound like everybody else. What I needed to hear is that clarity is so important. And in the story brand framework, for this part really comes from is what the character wants. If your character wants a new mattress, you better say that you sell new mattresses. If your character wants to
lose weight, you better talk about losing weight. Where your differentiation starts to come in is what type of problem you solve or how you solve the problem differently than competitors in your space. So the actionable step that I want to offer you today is a challenge to really start thinking through the idea of how do I solve this problem differently than other people who are in my space. Another way of thinking about that is what problem do
I focus on that other people don't. If you can identify that, if you can identify the problem that you solve that is different than other people, or you can talk about how you solve it differently, that is going to help you stand out in the market. Yes, there are maybe a lot of other people who do the same thing as you, but nobody does it like you. Nobody does. And they're not going to be able to. And there are people whose problems
maybe only you can solve. We want to be able to help you just like we said earlier, raise that flag and stand out in the crowd so that people know where to find you. And that really is how you do it. Identifying how you solve a problem differently or talk about a problem that you solve that is a little bit different than your competition. If you can just pause and begin thinking through that right now, you're going to be able to clarify
your message in a way that will help you stand out in the market. And when you're able to stand out, when people are able to see you and find you, they're going to be able to hire you to solve their problems, which ultimately makes them the hero of their home story. And that's what makes you a great guide. That's what makes you a hero maker. Well, that's all for this week's episode of Marketing Made Simple. Thanks so much for listening and
believing like us that your marketing should be easy and it should work. Follow Marketing Made Simple wherever you listen to podcasts. And if you found this episode valuable, please rate and review the show, letting us know how these tips are clarifying your message and growing your business. We'll see you next week.