With so many businesses and individuals out there, how can you make your message stand out? Hayler Foster's guest, Tollisha Joseph, says, by making your message stick! Tollisha is a keynote speaker and networking strategist who teaches small and midsize corporations effective networking strategies to increase their audience and revenue. In this episode, they talk about sticky messaging, the idea of making your message so compelling that they stick to other people and those that they will talk to. Tollisha shares why you need to clearly understand your goals, customers, and blueprint and then dives deep into presenting yourself in networking opportunities. Join this conversation and discover some strategies to make your message stick and boost your company's growth.
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Sticky Messaging: How To Make Your Message Unforgettable With Tollisha Joseph
Networking Strategies For Business Growth
Welcome to this content, where we are talking with the amazing Tollisha about all things sticky messaging, which is super important when you are trying to network, launch, or grow your business. I’m excited that she has agreed to contribute some content to this program with her amazing Make Your Message Sticky from The Official Glue, Ms. Tollisha.
Thank you so much. Thank you for the invitation to be a part of your program, because it's always good to have this in the mix.
We're at the beginning and people are just working through their goals. It allows us a chance to reflect back on what we're putting out there to the world in terms of when you're thinking through your goals. For some people, it might be like, “I need to do better content. I need a better content strategy. I need to reach out to more people. I need to promote my next program.” Your expertise comes in to so many different aspects of our business, which is why I'm super excited that you're going to take us through the sticky messaging concept. How'd you get into the whole messaging side of the business?
I am a networking strategist. That is what I do. That is how I make my money and my living. The messaging thing came about because of the Clubhouse room. The Clubhouse room provoked me to say, “This is something that I have to go through with my clients.” Every time I get a client, we are talking about the message first, and going through that system and process about building out your messaging and your marketing, because we can't do any networking if we don't know what we're saying and who we're saying it to. That's important with networking.
In order to alleviate me having this regurgitated conversation, I said, “Talk to my publicist. What can we do?” We went through our pillars. The pillars are messaging, networking, and negotiation. We decided what we're going to do is we're going to make a course that fills in all three gaps. You're going to get a messaging course because we can't do networking without messaging.
We can talk about the networking piece and then we can talk about how to negotiate your deals so that you can close some deals at the end of all of this work. That is how the messaging course came about as much as networking is its own entity as it is its own leg. It is the second part of the process. Nothing happens if we don't know what we're saying.
What I love is the spin that you put on it. It needs to be sticky, which is 100% correct. We spend so much time in those Clubhouse rooms. You spend a lot of time with people helping them to nail down what that message is and what it should be so that people remember it. That's the whole idea behind the sticky. You got to remember what the message is you're putting out there, or the people have to remember what it is you're saying, because I'd be like, “She's the one that does the blah, blah, blah.” I don't want them to be like, “What is it she does again?”
The more information that we can retain, the better it is for us. For me, networking is all about how are people working your business for you so you can stop working and get to the plane. We all want to have so much fun in our businesses and we want to make money, but we don't want to continue doing the same thing over and over again.
At some point, your business should be its own generation. It should create its own spin and its own cycle. It should start working. The how, everything works together, we can have all the great operations, we're going to have amazing systems, but if we don't have people cycling that information through, it's dead in the water. We have to make sure that what we're saying is sticking to people so that they can stick to other people, and that could stick with other people, so that it keeps going.
We're all stuck to each other.
We can't do any networking if we don't know what we're saying and who we're saying it to.
We need to be in contact. How are we creating contacts? We all are generating email lists. We want to have business cards in our phone, which is great. We're all generating contacts. Why the messaging piece is very important is because we have all these contacts, but we haven't told them what to tell other people. We haven't even told them what we're doing.
They are oblivious to what we do until they drop into our programs and our systems, and then have the experience. How hard is it to get somebody to experience something that you can't explain? It’s very hard. We have to learn how to explain what we are doing in a simple way that creates memory, so that they can share it with someone else.
How do we do that? What's the first place to start?
The first place to start is understanding who you are, what you do, and what results in your offer brings to the person that you're going to offer it to. Many times, we hear, “What are the pain points?” Everybody's not bleeding. We're all not in a painful situation, and all of our businesses are not creating tourniquets for the bleed. Some things are just leisure. Me getting lipstick is not a life-or-death situation.
It's a leisure item that I maybe want or I don’t. When I can say that the results are, “Your lips are going to be plumper. They're going to reduce the dry cracking feeling. It's probably going to add some glow to your face,” whatever the results are, that is what I'm making my decision based. Not the pain, because I'm not in pain. My lips are not hurting. Nothing's happening. I just want more lipstick.
If I know that I buy the lipstick and it's going to create a result for me, I'm more interested in that. We have to focus on results. What results are we going to bring? The second piece that's always missing from the messaging is the introduction. The introduction of who you are and what business do you work in. For me it's, “I'm Tollisha Joseph. I am the Founder and CEO of The Official Glue.” Why do we want to give people that information? We want to give them the searchable information.
People can search you from your name or your business name. We just jump into the what we do, and nobody knows who we are. They can't find it, so we've given them information that they can't back. They cannot go and get our credit. They can't see what we're doing. They are lost. We've given them information that is never going to move anywhere, because they can't back it with anything.
Always make sure you give your introduction. Tell people your name and your position in your business. Are you the founder? Are you the owner? You want to name the company. Your message is supposed to be transferable. If you hire someone to work for you, they should just be able to fill in their name and their position, and continue your message. That's step one.
How many steps are there?
Probably about four. In the course that I give, we go through each step individually. The step two would be to decide what type of message you are giving. Are you giving a fact-focused message or a vision-focused message? People get a little bit confused about this. If you are an independent and you’re a creator and you've created this amazing idea, you are just sharing your vision with your audience. If you're in an MLM or you're working underneath a company, you are now sharing that company's vision based on facts. If I have a lipstick company like Maybelline or L’Oréal, where they've had 1,000,000 customers, they have facts to support their products. When we're sharing their message, we're sharing the facts. Facts are that you can find their products in Walgreens. They live in Walgreens.
Facts are that their department store brands. That's a fact. They are not luxury. When we share their message, we're sharing that information. The facts that they produced throughout the production of their business. If we're in a vision state, which is like my business. Until we produce some facts like if I've helped 1,000,000 clients. I haven't gotten there yet, but when I do, that will be one of my facts.
I'm sharing my vision. My vision is to get people to the yes side of their business. I'm sharing that part in my message. We want to keep it simple. We don't want to share everything. We don't want to go into an explanation about what we're doing. We want to share the facts or the vision and leave it at that. I don't want to share this whole, “I started my business when I was fifteen, then we lose it.” The message is not sticking because we're giving too much information.
Keep the information very concise, to the point, sharing those three points, and you will have a sticky result. Step three is about how the message is coming across, like your vocals. How are we giving enough space in our messaging so that people can understand what it is that we're saying? I've experienced a couple of people who have great messages, but they're going too fast. We can't hear anything. Everything is lost because it's given to us at such a rapid pace. Half of the messaging idea is what you're saying. The other half is how you're saying.
If you're not giving space so that you can process what I'm saying, then you're lacking the stickiness. The adhesion is not there, because it's gone too fast before I could process the what idea, the who you are and what you do, or the who you are and already giving me what you do. Before I could finish understanding what you do, you're giving me the results. Everything needs faith so that I can process. Your brain is a computer. If you gave your computer time to get you to the next webpage, next site, or the next something, then I need time to process as well.
Also, the intonation in your voice and not just the speed. It's how you say it.
We need to have energy when we're talking. We can't come in exhausted. All the extra breaths are debilitating to the audience. Your energy, even though you are not on face-to-face, it can pass through the telephone. While we're on Clubhouse, even we never see anyone's face, but one thing I always get in Clubhouse is I get messages, “I love your energy.” Even if you don't understand what I do, you are attracted to the fact that I am very excited about it. Even if you don't understand it, you're still like, “I want to know, because she's so excited about this thing.”
Excitement is something that elevates your stickiness. Be excited about your business. What I realized as well is that people are getting trained to say things that they don't feel good saying. This is why we have the course, because we want to get you to your feel-good word. The ones that light you up. The ones that make you smile.
If you're saying the things that are making you happy, then you are going to say them happily, which then makes it a little stickier. People will remember, “She felt good when she was saying, I remember what she said, because she made a little diddy about it.” There are different things that people will remember, and we're all focused on the words like, “Make sure I save these words. Make sure I squeeze all of these words into my message” It's more like, “It's a grape, but when you press it, it can become wine. We got to make our message, wine.”
Networking should create its own spin and cycle. It should start working.
That's a great analogy for me, my friend. It's not just what's on the outside. It's how you get it out of you and into the world. I have a cousin who is a voiceover artist, and we were doing rooms on Clubhouse, called Give a Great Bio. Give a Great Voice. Give a Great Headshot. She was all about the intonation, how you put yourself out there, and how you say things. I can say it like this can be super smooth and relaxing, or I can be full of energy and super excited. It does make a huge difference.
I can say something to you with a straight look on my face, or I can smile and I can see the same thing. It just sounds different. I love that you walk people through that because it's super important. I'm like a super smiley person. I'm very rarely frowny. It is important, especially on a program like Clubhouse, where the only thing people are seeing is your little head shot of you smiling. There's a disconnect if you're super smiley in your head shot, and then you come on, and you have no energy in your voice.
It makes a huge difference. People will not purchase because of the way you sound. It is so true. They could love everything you say, but if you sound tired, exhausted, annoyed, and confused. They will not buy from you. The sound of your voice is the block between you and your next sale. I don't care if you don't care, but you got to make it sound good. It all has to come out. I realized throughout this course and listening on Clubhouse, that a lot of people are saying things that they don't want to say.
They're using words that they don't even understand, and because they don't understand it, they found confused, and because they don't want to say it, they sound annoyed. It's getting back to the basic, by saying a little bit. You don't need to say a lot. You only need to say a little bit, and the little bit that you are saying, you need to believe it. You need to believe what you were saying, because if you believe it, you could sell it.
The step four is practice. Practicing your pitch makes a difference. We get to a lot of people who haven't practiced. They come and they're speaking off the cuff. This is where the consistency lives. If you practice repeating the same words over and over, getting that flow going, making sure that it comes out with good character, it will create a sticky vibe. When we hear it, it's consistent. When we read it, it's consistent. The consistency is not in how many times. It’s how many places are we seeing the same exact thing.
I remember that old saying where, “It takes seven touches to convert a client,” which is a lie. It's so not true. We have seven portals. We got Instagram, LinkedIn, website, YouTube, Facebook, Pinterest, and email. We got more than seven ways to reach somebody in one day. The problem lives in the message. Is it the same in every place? It's a different message every single place. Every time I moved from one place in the next place, there's a disconnect happening. We're not sticking. We're disconnecting. I go to another place, the pictures, the words, and everything's different.
I'm like, “What is going on?” It's taking me a lot more time to decide, because your credibility isn't there. It's that know, like, and trust factor that everybody's talking about. I trust somebody who's saying the same thing all the time. I trust somebody that I can do research on and find the same information. I like somebody who sounds like they like what they're doing. These concepts have been misconstrued a little bit on the how.
Consistency is, are you being consistent in all the places? When you post, are you posting about the same topics, or are your topics all over the place? One week you're doing this, then the next week you're doing this. We got to stay consistent. Creating your pillars, the who you are, what you do, and what results you offer will help you be more consistent, because you can make content and stretch each category. You can stretch out to who you are. Personal content, what you do, stretch that out. Informational content, the results that you bring, stretch that out, call to actions. It's always consistent. It's always having the same message. That is what makes your message stick.
There will be a worksheet that goes along with this in the toolkit section. Go check out that worksheet. This was super helpful. The week that everybody views this, they can do a Q&A with Tollisha in the Q&A channel of Slack. You'll be in there answering any questions people might have. We talked about in the beginning, so important. I do a worksheet, like find your why’s so that you can talk about what you do from a position of why you do it. Some people will talk about the pain points and the results. Where do you feel the why fits in there in terms of why you do what you do?
I have a love-hate relationship with the question of why. For me, why is too broad. You will be searching for a lifetime to figure out why you do something, but when you ask yourself questions, then you come to a more concise answer. For me, it's the what. What can I do? What can I do without a shadow of a doubt? What can I do without the assistance of someone else? What can I learn? I want to know what I can learn while doing that thing that I could do without help. I need to be in a learning position all the time in order to make the best decisions.
What can I offer? Based on what I can do and what I've learned, what can I offer someone else? Because I produced these two results. I've realized I'm great at talking. I realized I could learn. I can expand my vocabulary. I love to talk, but I need to expand my vocabulary, and because I've expanded my vocabulary, I'm able to create people's messaging and help them expand on how they're articulating themselves. That's the offer. Why do I do what I'm doing? I do it because I'm great at communicating.
I want to learn how to expand my language and my vocabulary. I want to offer this service so that everybody can get connected. Networking. I want you to be able to connect in an articulate way where people can understand you, and make a decision instantly without having to go back and research all of the complicated words that you've used to express yourself.
I always asked myself those questions. The why comes down to the what, like, “What are you doing? What can you do?” You have to be able to do what you're doing, not doing what everybody else is doing. It's important for you to have unassisted help, because you're the creator of your business. If you need help to create, you're not creating. You are leaning on someone else to get the thing done.
I came to that conclusion when I started being an entrepreneur, I had a t-shirt line. I was nineteen. I thought I wanted this, but later on in life, I was like, “I could do this. Now I have money, so I can do it.” I realized I'm a creator. I have great ideas. I'm not a designer. I need support. I need someone else to help me design t-shirts in order to make my vision a reality, which is complicated because if I'm always depending on the designer to get the designs out, my business is in the designer's hands. It's not in my brain.
It was important for me to understand what I can do to generate for myself as an entrepreneur. I need to be the generator. I need to be the one that's consistently flowing things out of me to make myself profitable. It’s what I can do without help from someone else. In order for me to perfect that crap, I do need to learn things. People can assist me in the knowledge capacity. I can always learn more things to add to my own personal value. What can I learn?
Once I add to my own personal value, my offers become greater. I can add more value to what I'm selling and giving. I become more valuable. My offers are better, because I understand what I can do, what I can learn, and now I have great offers, which makes me sticky. That's my why. That's how it rolls into, asking yourself. You said that, too. Ask yourself why, seven times. The seven times of asking yourself why is what drives you back to the what. If you keep asking yourself why and can never determine what it is, you're still going to keep asking.
My why question that works out that we did was a little bit different. It’s like, “Why do you feel successful when this happens?” That was the leading up to the why. Interestingly, I'll have to look back and see if it does come back to the what. I love the combination of the two of those. When I do talk to people and tell them what I do, I don't necessarily start with the what. I do start with why I do it. That seems to work for me in terms of getting people to turn on that emotional side of their brain instantly. The reason why I do it is because I don't want women to have to go through the rollercoaster ride that I went through without support, accountability, and guidance. I want to be able to give that to them.
I agree with what you're saying, because the why then turns into the message. In order for you to get to your why, you got to know what. I could come up with a million things that I can do. You witnessed I'm good in the kitchen. I could cook, so I could be a chef. I had to determine, and that was something like, “I could cook in the kitchen. I need to open up a small little restaurant,” but I'm like, “I don't want that, because I don't want people critiquing my food, sending it back and complaining. I don't want to deal with that.” That's something I don't want to deal with. I could do it, but I don't want to deal with it.
I can do my face, my makeup, but I don't want to be doing other people's makeup. I don't want to deal with the allergies, breakouts, and all of the results that could happen from me playing in someone else's face. That's not something I want to do. I can do my own hair, but I don't want to stand up for twelve hours bringing in people’s hair. That is not something I want to do. We all have a lot of things that we can do, but we have to get back to what do we really want to do.
You need to believe what you are saying because if you believe it, you could sell it.
What is it that we really want to do? What is the thing that we can do if we had to do it for free every single day, never got a return on it? What is the one thing or maybe two that we could do without feeling like it's a drag, or there's going to be these complications where, “I'm not going to want to do this anymore?” We know that this run of entrepreneurship is a hard run. If you are not grounded, if you are up in the clouds and in dreamland, you will fall hard. It’s important for you to know what is it that you want to do.
Why we want to do things is an alluded thing. It's like up in the clouds. “I want to be a millionaire because I want to take care of my family and live on a boat. That's my what. I want to live on a boat. I want to travel the world. I want to see everything, but why? Why would I work so hard? What am I going to do to get that money? What am I going to do to make that thing come true? What am I willing to do to make that thing come true?” Drive it down even more. What are you willing to do?
You have to be willing to do a ton of things in order to be a successful entrepreneur. Your will and drive are the only thing that moves your mission. If your message supports that will and drive, you will get everything that you want, but your message has to support that will and drive. You, Hayley, are a driven woman. I know that your message supports your will and drive.
If anybody comes into your circumference, and they are contesting that will and drive, it is an absolute no for you. Also, it creates boundaries, because you know what you're willing to do. If someone asks you to stretch beyond that will, it's a no. You are driven to get the things that you want, but if I have to do anything outside of my will to get that thing, I'm not doing it.
It's a boundary, and we could put that information into a message to help other people respect your boundaries. It has to be more than a why. It has to be what are you willing to do. We could create a message that will get you all the results, but then you're tasked with the doing of what you wanted. You're like, “I'm not willing to. I'm not willing to stay up all day to meet with clients. I'm not willing to be on Instagram four hours a day.”
The message is creating that. It's generating all of these tasks for you. If you're putting out a message to do things that you're not willing to do and you're attracting all of that energy to yourself to say, “I'm going to do all this stuff,” you're going to be dissatisfied with the results. The key is to create results that are satisfactory based on the what.
This was super helpful. Hopefully, everybody got all of those amazing four-step process of creating your message. Hopefully, everyone is sitting there with pen and paper and writing down their stickiness.
I'll go through the four again so you can get them in order. First step is to know you're who you are, what you do, and what results you bring. Step two is to decide what type of message you are going to give out. Is it going to be a fact-based message or a vision-based message? Step three, articulate that message. Make it clear. Make it precise. Give space for processing. Step four is practice. Make sure you practice your message and keep it consistent across all platforms.
Consistency is key. I talk about that all the time. That's the way to get you where you want to go.
If you want to do it quickly, be consistent. Not only activity. If you do one workout every single day, your body says, “We're doing that.” Muscle memory. It's like your body becomes comfortable with that activity. It doesn't generate a result because it's comfortable. If you're trying to build muscle in your arms and you're working out your arms consistently every single day, at some point, doing it in that repetition every single day without giving it rest. You will create muscle memory and nothing will happen, because your muscle is remembering that movement. It becomes normal.
You want to make sure that you're not creating that type of consistency. Consistency and action might turn into comfort, where consistency in places showing up every day is important. Putting your words out there consistently is important, not the action of consistency, having the same information all the time. You have to make it different, but it needs to show up in the same phase. Have the consistency of the message. What are we saying? That's the consistent, not the action. I love to say that, because posting every single day, it will get you a result, but make sure that your posts match your mission, that will get you a better result.
I agree with the working out the same muscles every day. That's why I do a HIIT workout, which is different every day. Also, I like the whole Clubhouse thing, you got to mix it up. You got to diversify. You keep showing up in the same rooms. You want to put yourself out there and other rooms, too.
That's a whole other conversation.
I know. We need to do a sticky room.
We can. I'm totally game for that. I love that you said that, because that's my Clubhouse strategy. I was never intended to be in one space. I'm a networker. What is it going to be for me to be in one spot? I got to drop my message in multiple spaces, but strategy. We can't just go around and dropping information in irrelevant spaces. You got to drop the information in the spaces where it's going to make a difference. Start building a strategy about where you're going to drop your message, which is why I had to create the messaging course, in order to get people to set up and network effectively.
Thank you. This is awesome. I appreciate you and your time. I hope everybody appreciated all of that amazing information that you just gave them for being part of this course.
This is how you help your friends. Support your friends.
Women supporting women. That’s the way it rolls. Thank you so much.
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About Tollisha Joseph
Working with Founders & CEOs to develop networking and revenue strategies is Tollisha's passion. Through making a personal connection, having meaningful conversations, and challenging perspectives they can build successful business networking strategies that lead to an increase in revenue for their Founders & CEOs. Due to her 10 years of experience as a Networking Strategist, Tollisha has created a simple yet affordable way to get your company to send out the right message that will stick.