How do I connect with my audience?
Missing the mark when you’ve put so much effort into your marketing is frustrating.
Eager to expand your reach to build your business, you may feel disappointed, especially if you’ve used valuable resources. Learning to connect with your audience is an important part of the journey because it’s the first step to developing deep and lasting partnerships with your ideal clients.
We spoke to editor, producer and voice-over artist turned master storyteller and coach, Jeff Bartsch. In particular, he talks about what elevates a message from ordinary to extraordinary and how to do it. He tells us about his life and work along with the very simple but powerful truths he found about communication along the way.
Elevating message
Jeff was a piano virtuoso at a young age. Showing the same commitment to excellence his career has taken him to Hollywood and major TV outlets including Disney and CNN. The founder of Story Greenlight, these days he’s behind a team of coaches who bring confidence, communication and thought leadership skills to executives in the accounting world.
His story starts with playing the piano at church. By allowing the meaning of the lyrics to infuse into the music, he discovered he could lift both to a new level. “It was super powerful,” he says.
By going beyond the fundamentals, he was able to bring new meaning and greater connection. In other words, he discovered it’s not what’s said (or played) that matters, it’s the soul we put into it. These ideas would come up time and again throughout his career.
What if we don’t feel like we have the guts to do this?
There’s a thought leader in all of us
Do you have the confidence to speak your message with conviction? According to Jeff, there’s a thought leader in all of us.
‘We are all thought leaders in one form or another anytime we engage with another human being for the purpose of moving a project, an ideal or a cause forward. Whenever we have influence over others.’
This inner authority comes when we’re brave enough to lift ideas off the page and make them our own. By bringing them to life, we make the strong connection with others we’re looking for.
The importance of where your story lands
So we’ve built the emotion and the conviction, what’s next?
‘You can have the most incredible story in the world but if you tell it to the wrong person in the wrong way at the wrong time, then the power goes poof!’ Jeff states.
The power of our communication comes from the knowledge of our audience in particular getting to grips with the specifics of:
- Who they are.
- What they want.
- What’s getting in their way.
- What’s the change they want to see.
Jeff draws on his time in Hollywood when he says that most stories work within a basic framework: a character wants something, overcomes obstacles and experiences a transformation as a result. It’s a simple but compelling approach.
Making the ordinary into magic
Jeff’s final tip is transformative. ‘Learn to do what you do in such a way that the skills feel like magic’ he says, taking us back to his childhood piano-playing days. ‘Learn to make the fundamentals of what you do vanish so that you can concentrate on what happens.’
He explains that communication skills can be learned but we have to put in the work. When you have mastered them, they will seem like magic to others.
This is confidence building too because it means this level of excellence is accessible to anyone committed enough. ‘So get to the woodshed’ he laughs.
So what does this mean for us?
The power of storytelling winds through Jeff’s journey from the piano in church to executive coaching today. It’s a useful message for anyone reaching out to new clients, markets or networks, particularly if authentic thought leadership and genuine human connection are important.
3 things we gleaned from our conversation with Jeff:
- We can all create something out of the building blocks of our lives. No experiences are wasted because they weave together and teach us along the way.
- What is normal to us is extraordinary to someone else, Jeff calls it the “curse of expertise”. No one will understand your spectacularity unless you understand it first and bring it to life in a way that’s relevant to others.
- The power of your message comes from the emotional connection you create with your audience. It’s the difference between playing the notes on the page and moving your listeners to tears.
Catch the full conversation with Jeff Bartsch on the Sparks by Ignium podcast. Click here to go to the Spark Tank or search Sparks by Ignium on your favourite platform.
We’re Kerry and Phil and helping you with your confidence, message and authority is just one of the things we do here at Ignium. We have just the coach you need to clear what’s in the way of building your business with purpose. Contact us for a chat.