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A Resonant Recipe to Say What You Do

One of the important things in business is being able to talk about what you do with clarity and consistency.

This article will show you how to master talking about your business in a way that doesn’t neglect your humanity.

Before we get started, please let me introduce you to Ann Brown. She is one of the members of my online Business Support Network called The Village, where we navigate business challenges that arise from neurodivergence, high sensitivity, and trauma.

This article is based on her experience in one of our coaching calls. She gave me permission to share our discussion. 

A person with dark hair and a teal shirt sits outdoors, surrounded by greenery.

Meet Ann.

She helps you overcome self-sabotage and procrastination and find your calm and confident, so you can build the life and business you want.

happybeingyou.com

I can personally testify to the brilliant work Ann does.  She has helped me overcome my most stubborn stuckness in ways I never would have believed. Thank you, Ann!

Ann and I had a marvelous conversation on The Village Coaching Call, and it prompted me to outline what I fondly refer to as the Resonant Recipe

See, I don’t believe that one sentence can be very compelling.  I don’t believe that a pitch on an elevator is going to help you get anywhere.  And an arbitrary time of 30 seconds to say what you do is bonkers.  And yes, I get the intent of all of those methodologies, but they all ignore one thing: your humanity.

So, I wanted to share my expertise and philosophy around creating a Resonant Recipe so you can effectively talk about what you do with clarity and consistency, without losing your humanity, or the humanity of your potential clients.

I’m going to use the discussion Ann and I had today as the basis for sharing this information, strictly as a real-life example. Thank you, Ann, for your transparency, vulnerability, and courage in sharing this.

A bowl of eggs on a kitchen counter with leafy greens and kitchen utensils in the background.

So, what is a Resonant Recipe?

The Resonant Recipe for how to talk about what you do is basically a simple, clear, basic recipe with a whole bunch of ingredients that you can substitute to keep it interesting, fun, appropriate, and attuned to the occasion. 

Let’s talk about it like cake. (If you’re really hungry, it might be best to come back to this post after a snack.)

Here’s the basic recipe / ingredients for a simple cake: flour, eggs, fat, sweetener, salt, liquid, leavening agent.  

If you mix those basics together and bake it… you’re going to have cake. 

But you can change the kinds of ingredients you use and get different kinds of cake.  Cake flour is very different than using almond flour.  Butter is going to yield a different result than using coconut oil.  White sugar will be different than using Stevia.  Heavy cream will make a difference vs. using coconut milk. And baking soda will end up with one type of cake vs. using a different leavening agent.  

Plus, you can also add vegetables, fruit, nuts, flavors, herbs, icing, filling, decorations, etc. to adjust the end result.  

You get the idea.  

The Resonant Recipe for how to talk about what you do is similar.  

You start with your basic recipe, identify different ingredients to substitute, and you can create many different ways to talk about what you do – and they all tie together under one unified umbrella. 

The genius here isn’t in crafting the perfect sentence – it’s mastering the recipe.

Write that down somewhere:  

The genius isn't in crafting the perfect sentence - it's mastering the recipe.

steve mattus

Ann’s Example

Ann’s Resonant Recipe – as of the time of this article (her basic cake recipe) – sounds like this:

I help sensitive, mid-life women who have experienced childhood trauma, who have an underlying feeling of being flawed, which affects their life, relationships, etc.

Ann’s Resonant Recipe consists of four core ingredients:

  1. Identifiable Qualities [sensitive, mid-life, women]
  2. Problem [childhood trauma]
  3. Experience of the Problem [underlying feeling of being flawed]
  4. Impact of the Experience [affects their relationships, life, etc.]

This is not the only way to craft a cake recipe – it’s just how Ann did it.  There are other models that have their own structure to them, and the Resonant Recipe methodology still works.  So, my recommendation to you is to find a structure that you like, and then break it down to it’s core ingredients as I did above.

So, Ann has her basic cake, up there in green.

She can serve that cake from now till 2062 and that will be just fine.  She can lean into that, say it until everyone on the planet can say it along with her.  That’s all fine.  This is a core, go-to, always-at-the-ready sentence she can say as fluently as her own name.

But what she has here is actually, under the surface, a Resonant Recipe that she can use to start getting creative, or adjust depending on who she is talking to.

For example, if you’re making a cake for a group of vegans, it’s best to substitute all the animal products, right?  You need to use ingredients that suit the audience.

But that doesn’t mean you have to develop an entirely new cake structure – just adjust the ingredients.

So, in Ann’s case, she is developing a few ideas for ingredients #2, 3, and 4 that she can mix and match to better resonate with whomever she’s talking with.

Potential Ingredient Lists

During our discussion, it was clear that while Ann is focused on trauma as the core of the challenge, some women might not know it’s actually trauma that’s been the cause.  To some women, they might believe the core issue is:

  • Gone through more than their fair share of difficulties
  • Being raised in a home with substance use
  • Suffered some kind of abuse

See, she can just drop any one of those ingredients in the #2 slot and it just fits right in:

I help sensitive, mid-life women who have gone through more than their fair share of difficulties, who now have an underlying feeling of being flawed, which affects their life, relationships, etc.

Or

I help sensitive, mid-life women who have suffered abuse of some kind, and now have an underlying feeling of being flawed, which affects their life, relationships, etc.

See how you can just drop those new ingredients in to tailor your message specifically to the person you’re addressing?

You don’t have to memorize an entirely new recipe… just juggle the ingredients. So much easier, and gives you tons of flexibility.


For the “underlying feeling of being flawed” Experience of the Problem ingredient, Ann could substitute these ingredients:

  • challenge dealing with conflict
  • tremendous shame
  • get lost when trying to set boundaries

These substitutes could add further flexibility to her Resonant Recipe.  For example:

I help sensitive, mid-life women who have gone through more than their fair share of difficulties, who tend to get lost when trying to set boundaries, which affects their life, relationships, etc.

Or

I help sensitive, mid-life women who have suffered abuse of some kind, and now feel tremendous shame, which affects their life, relationships, etc.

For the “affects their relationships, life, etc.” Impact of the Experience part of the  recipe, she could substitute these impacts:

  • makes relationships really challenging
  • creating challenges in standing up for themselves in their career.
  • makes them feel really disconnected to their vibrance

Any of those could be dropped into ingredient #4, like this:

I help sensitive, mid-life women who have gone through more than their fair share of difficulties, who tend to get lost when trying to set boundaries, which is making their relationships really challenging.

Or

I help sensitive, mid-life women who have suffered abuse of some kind, and now feel tremendous shame, which is creating challenges for them standing up for themselves in their career.

It’s basically the same sentence (recipe) but can really get specific to your audience with these different ingredients.

The hat trick here is not to craft the perfect sentence… it’s to master the recipe.

What if you don’t know who you’re talking to?

It’s completely normal to not know who will see your message.  Part of the magic of cake-making is trusting that people who love your brand of cake will smell it and come running.

If you don’t know who you’re talking (or writing to, or creating for), then you decide who you want to talk to, write or create for.  Ultimately, it all ties back to your basic recipe of sensitive, mid-life women who have childhood trauma, underlying feelings of being flawed, and it’s affecting their life.  So, write to them.  Talk to them.  And in the larger context of what you talk about, write about, or create, share stories, examples, and metaphors that are inclusive of some of your other ingredients.

See, I could talk about my basic plain cake every day.  And, if you like cake, you might pay attention.  But people are multi-faceted and probably like and want to try different types of cake.  So, if I share a story about my basic cake, but I include a story about how one time I used some fresh vanilla bean in it and how that changed the flavor – if you love vanilla (like I do) then you’re mouth is probably already watering for some of my vanilla cake.  And don’t even get me started on buttercream icing.  Oh.  My.  Dear.  Baby.  Jesus.  In.  A.  Manger.

SIGN.   ME.    UP.

But, what if I don’t feel like my basic cake recipe conveys what I do fully?

Good. It shouldn’t.  It never will.

You can’t possibly encapsulate all your magic in a sentence.  It’s gonna feel imperfect.  Change the ingredients till it feels like something you can live with, and then practice the wazzoo out of it so you master it, and your alternate ingredients.

Oh… and have fun with it.  I’ve never heard anyone (including me) say the perfect sentence where it resulted in a client.

All your Resonant Recipe needs to do is to resonate enough to someone so that they are curious enough to say, “tell me more,” or, “how do you do that?”

(Much like a cake recipe will make me say, “Can I have a piece?”  Oh, and by the way… if you ice your cake with buttercream icing… I won’t ask… I’ll just dip my face in and start eating.  Sorry, not sorry. )

 

And please remember to go check out Ann’s amazing work at happybeingyou.com.

P.S.: Remember how I said there are other structures that can be used to create your recipe?  Here are a some of those other structures:

I help _____ to _____ so they can _____.

I work with ____ who need _____ and want _____.

When people are dealing with _____, I help them _____.

You know how you _____, and it feels _____?  I help people _____.

wishing you more love, not less – all-ways💜™,

Steve

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