Let's go. If you've been here since the early days, I just want to first say thank you. Genuinely, from the bottom of my heart, it really means something to me. We've done 40 episodes already, and we've got a whole plan ahead of us. It's been the busiest, craziest year of my life. Bottom line is, I've been away for the last bit, but I'm back. And the reality is that I'm pretty much now solid to be back forever. And I genuinely just wanted to say thank you. You've been showing up with this just a voice and some ideas and nothing else going out there. And that matters to me. And I don't take that for granted one bit whatsoever. And if you're new here, hey, look, it's perfect timing because episode 41 is here. And it's also in every way that counts. Episode one. I'm Steve Lichtman. And this show is unfiltered and unshakable. And it's back. Not with a tweak. Not with a new intro. Probably never going to do a jingle or an intro. That's not me. But back with a different level of purpose in many ways, because we're going to step away beyond just becoming unshakable in our personalities, in the way that we handle ourselves, in the way that we handle our business. But it's also about imparting all the knowledge that I've gained over the years of my career, both in community building, in technologies, leading all the way from back in the day up to now with AI, which I'm very involved in, and marketing that I've done for over three decades now. Now, it's really about helping people that don't have that person in their corner and they're running their business by themselves and they're running themselves down at all ends. And they really just need somewhere to go and someone to listen to that's going to give it to them with no bullshit and just hit the ground running. So look, what's the thing that I've been kept doing in the shadows my whole career, right? It's for me, it's something. And I wanted to tell you a little something. And I probably should have said this out loud ages ago, right? And I talked about it a little here and there in the last 40 episodes, but probably not enough. For decades, when I say decades, man, I really mean decades. Going all the way back to the BBS days, bulletin board systems. You remember that, like the movie War Games with Matthew Broderick, where you would see the dial-up modem go down into the coupler? Yeah, that was when I started, on the early internet, when building a community meant maintaining a bulletin board and knowing every single person by their handle, right? I've been building communities, building systems, and building content infrastructure and a marketing architecture that makes other people's businesses run for decades, always behind the scenes. And that was kind of by design. I really enjoyed it. I'm not going to lie. I enjoy just being behind the curtain and just doing things my way and rocking it out.

And look, it's little details, right? Not everybody always needs to be the face of something to help other people be the face of something. I kind of enjoyed the vibe of being a secret weapon for people. And the guy that nobody knew about, right? They're just lurking, doing things my way, living my way, enjoying my life my way. And at the end of the day, it really kind of made me the CMO that nobody could see. I'd walk into a business. Look, back in the day when we were hustling and going in places and doing meetings, shaking hands, kissing babies, I'd walk into a business. I'd figure it out faster than most of the people were understanding their own business, just watching, paying attention. I used to go to offices and literally watch for a half a day. I then talked to the business owners and the people that mattered in the second half after a lunch break. And I would give them a breakdown of what I saw, looking at all the different materials, looking at all their content, looking at all their products, just going like, just literally being like that mole in their business for a day to see where the mistake is. Where's the gap? Where's the part people are missing? And I love breaking stuff down like that. But the reality is in the world that we live in now, people aren't going in places every day. We are still doing that to a degree, of course, but the Internet has made it so much easier to help reach so many more people with so much more scale and quickness and agility than ever before. So what used to become a meeting that was scheduled eight weeks out now could become something that happens eight minutes later because of the amazingness of the world of digital that we live in this day and age, right?

So, look, for a long time, that was fine. I enjoyed the work. I didn't need the spotlight. The last decade, I've been doing it digitally, working with other people, other coaches, where I'm their secret weapon, both for themselves and for their client base, where I take on client calls for other people's businesses. And help them with their marketing and help them with their branding and help them getting themselves out of their shell and understanding it's okay to turn a camera on and look at it and talk about what matters to you. That's just going to get people to enjoy your content, your personality, see if there's a fit and go from there. I kept having these conversations with coaches, consultants, business owners who were good, really good at what they did. Some of them absolute killers, but completely reactive when it came to their marketing, right? They had no systems. They had no community, no content that actually compounded any interest, just putting up random things. And now with AI and ChatGPT and everything else and Claude, it's gotten far worse, as you've all seen on the Internet, on LinkedIn, especially. Wow, what an AI slop show that's been lately. And I know they're trying to make it better. But between that and the politics, LinkedIn is becoming pretty insufferable. And spending time within communities that matter is far more valuable than spending times on the big fish social medias where you're either going to get drowned out in it or you're going to have to pay your way to find any success and all these folks just kept hustling and burning themselves out trying to do it all manually hoping for the best.

I always kept saying the same things, the same ideas, the same frameworks that I've been using behind the scenes for years. And I'd watch that light go on. I love the light bulb moment. Oh, my Lord. If there's a moment I love when I talk to somebody, it's when they get it. When they finally get it. And you could see that light bulb go on and connect where they're like, oh, shit. This is what I've been missing. And this is what I need to start doing moving forward. That's the greatest feeling ever because you know you're affecting a positive change in somebody's universe, right? And it's not just, I don't say life. I say universe because it's more than just their life. It's their employees, if they have employees. It's their family. It's themselves. It's their business. It's everything. Having a positive change in a business can cascade in such an amazing way for everybody surrounding. It can literally turn into raises for people. It could turn into a great example. When COVID hit, one of my biggest clients, who I've had for over a decade, and I work with him daily, clients were leaving. So we built a community. We retained every single employee of his company in a world where everybody was getting fired. Let's be honest. The coaching market pretty much was bottoming out during COVID. But we were able to keep every single person, every single employee and contractor paid. To me, that's more important than any marketing campaign. That's more important than any bullshit, any circus that you're going to create digitally, whatever. Keeping people where they belonged, keeping people working well. It was great.

And look, I've been literally building communities for other people, making them work, watching them grow. I know exactly why they work. It's not, I wasn't ever really doing it for myself, right? The only few times I did were maybe in the car communities. I've helped build a lot of car communities over the years in the automotive industry. And they're great fun since I'm a guy who used to race. That's a blast, but I don't anymore. And I'm pivoting all that. And I have been pivoting all that for the last decade plus into the business world. And it was, I don't even know really. It was just that moment where I had my own fuck it moment or I flipped my own fuck it switch on something. It wasn't a crisis. I'm not having a breakdown. I'm already crazy. I don't need a breakdown. Just that moment where, and I know everybody says a moment of clarity and it's kind of bullshit, but it's also kind of true. It's that moment. It's not even a moment of clarity like people say. It's a moment of realization that I've been spending maybe the past 15 to 20 plus years making other people always look brilliant. And I never do it for myself. I have more gear. I use it for my kid. I use it for her music and her social medias. I have more cameras and equipment and just crap everywhere to make it happen for other people. I could grab a handful of stuff, throw it in a backpack, hit the streets right now, find a random person and just go do a full day with them. Content creation, shooting it, getting there, who they are and what they're all about and who they help. We could do all that just randomly out of nowhere, just load a backpack, grab a juice box and hit the streets. Right. But it's time I have to do it for me. And this podcast in many ways, starting at last year was a big step in me doing that for me.

I get it. It started to rattle me. And that was the intent was to get me to come out of my own shell of being comfortable being behind the scenes, being comfortable being that guy that people don't necessarily know even exists, which I'm cool with. And by the way, guys, this episode is longer than usual. So I apologize in advance. This is going to be an actual podcast episode kind of explaining to you the universe as I see it and how and what really my own universe has been. Because it's important people understand who the person behind the voice is. Because it's all too often that people are just reading something off of some AI-generated script. And they're just like, fuck it. And then they just read it and they don't care. And man, it sounds terrible. And I'm literally just sitting here pulling on my ponytail while talking and pulling it to the side. So I'm keeping this stuff really real. And I wish I turned the camera on for this, but I didn't because this is just a podcast and I'm just recording it to my microphone.

But yeah, look, what unshakable, let's talk about this. What is unshakable AF, to me, right? Because it's what I'm building. And why is it different? In my perspective, because look, we all build something and think our stuff's the best. That's normal. We should be that way. If you don't think what you're creating is the best, then fuck, you got to recreate it. And I've told people that a lot of times when they don't own the magic of their own content, like fuck, you got to really be in. If you're not really delivering it for yourself, then how the hell are you delivering it for anybody else? Right? So what's unshakable AF to me? Why am I building it? And man, that's, it's interesting because the intent is, if I'm going to say like that top level line or your one line or whatever you want to call it, it's a community, obviously. It's, I work with coaches, consultants, and business owners. Those are the three main people I work with in different fields. It really doesn't matter, but it's typically people, a lot of times solopreneurs, that are always reactive in their life and they really need help just having a plan in place where they're able to say, okay, this is what I'm going to do every week for my business. This is what I'm going to do every week for my marketing. I'm not going to overthink it. I'm going to make a map. I'm going to draw it out on a piece of paper or a bunch of sticky notes. I'm just going to go boom, and I'm going to do this every week. And this is something I'm going to do to build my business up in a positive, honest, ethical, people-first way. I'm a human-first kind of guy. As much as I enjoy messing around in AI, at the end of the day, if I had to be told humanity or automation, I'm taking humanity every time. And I know we live in a society where a lot of people pick automation first. I'm just not that cat, right?

So what else is Unshakable AF? Who's it for? It's for those people, right? It's for those coaches, consultants, and business owners, but it's people that are really good at what they do. You've already got clients and you've already got results. So you know what you do works. But at the end of the day, your marketing is a bit of a disaster. You're posting, like I said, with no system, no plan. You're using AI tools, just because you saw a video or just because you saw an X post or a LinkedIn post or what have you, and you're trying to replicate it. You're copying and pasting the same prompts everybody else is using. You don't really have a compounding content engine, which is important in this day and age where you're just, you're sitting there, you're doing it all yourself. You have no real sounding board. Nobody's talked to. And a lot of times it really is just that simple that you don't have somebody to bounce ideas off of that's been there, done that for 100 people in 100 industries and can actually give you some real feedback of what's right, what's wrong, what your next steps should be. And that's where I come in. That's where I've always come in for people. The only difference is I've never done it like this outward and publicly. Even when I first made Unfiltered and Unshakeable this podcast, the whole idea was just to kind of be motivation. But I realized quickly, like that's a dime a dozen. It really is more important for me to dig in with what I'm good at. And that's helping people get away from themselves and build this community around that virtual CMO model, where you're going to get access to me and to my frameworks and the actual systems I've been running behind the scenes for 20 years. And keep in mind, 99% of them are custom per person. So I build a lot of custom stuff all the time because every situation is different. So even though I have a specific framework in mind that I use, it is never the same for two people. And I think that's one of the realities of why people do so well when I work with them. I don't force square pegs into round holes because too many people are already doing that. And you get commoditized and then nobody knows who the fuck you are. You just disappear, right? You just go into that vast wasteland.

We're going to have other people there. Obviously, the whole goal is there's going to be people in this community. So we're all going to be here together helping each other. It's the whole point of it. And there's going to be two tiers. I've thought about this a lot of how I'm going to plan this community out for people where I'm able to give back. But look, it's community. I plan on putting a lot of work into this. This is something where I've already put a lot of work into this. And I intend on putting a lot more work into this. And I intend on having weekly events and a lot of ongoing things to help people, content, ongoing courses getting added on a regular basis. I have a plan right now that is, man, it's 100 hours of work when I look at it and I think to myself, how the fuck am I going to get through all this? But the greatest thing about a community is it's a plan. And the plan is something where there's going to be different months with different themes to help people start just really picking a topic and attacking it in a blitz type of mode where you really just make a big change in your existence for a specific thing. And then you lock that in, you move forward, then you go to the next thing that you're going to fix.

So I'm going to have a free tier. At first, I wasn't going to. I really originally planned on having two paid tiers only. I'm going to do one free tier to get people in the door. It's going to have the message boards. It's going to have some community content. The fuck it switch philosophy in that course, the eight day challenge is going to be there for free. I always wanted to give that away. That was always my intent. I think too many people charge for that similar type of get out from under yourself course that to charge for that would be unfair for people. I think a lot of people just need to hear those words sometimes to empower themselves. And it's something I would say to somebody on the street to help them empower. So why wouldn't I just give that away, right? And look, after that, there's going to be so much. I've got a community course that I've just finished recording. I've got courses on AI that I've recorded that I still have to edit. And all of those are going to be in the paid tier. The paid tier is going to be $99 a month. And it's where the work actually takes place. It's where we're actually going to have back and forth conversations, the full course library, weekly lives with me, the systems, the AI tools broken down one by one, things like LinkedIn and social strategy, which people just don't have these days. All of that stuff, all the deeper virtual CMO stuff will be taking place in the paid side. But I certainly plan on giving things into the free community as well, because to me, it's about people just taking this opportunity to do better for themselves. And I want to be a part of helping that narrative no matter what. So if you're just a free member, you're still an amazing person. I love you just as much for being a member of my community. And to me, that's the gateway. That's like the gateway drug.

And look, at the end of the day, I'm not here to just build a course and vanish. I'm here. This is what I'm building. I'm building Unshakable AF to be that thing where this is where I'm going to step through the door myself finally and tell the world, yeah, man, I'm here and I'm available now to help people and to be a part of this once again. So, yeah, that's just so the podcast here. This is the front door. This is that moment where people get to learn a little bit about me, learn a little bit about how I help people. Every episode is always a real conversation. I talk to a microphone like to somebody in the room, maybe a little too casual. But hey, if you want something super polished, there's a lot of bullshit artists out there. By all means, go jump in and listen. Some of it's great, too. But at the end of the day, for me personally, I feel more connected when somebody's just shooting me straight. And yeah, it is a little bit of a longer run conversation. It's a little bit more drawn out. But at the end of the day, when we think about the things we do for ourselves, is 80 bullet points in five minutes going to fix you? Probably not. It's taking the time to let things just absorb, right? Absorption is everything.

So look, if you're really into this, and you really want to move forward in your life and in your business and just start taking or tackling one thing at a time and saying, fuck it, man, I'm going to make this happen for myself, then come join me at Unshakeable AF. You can get to it right at stevelichtman.com. There's a button right on the top, join the community. It's not going to be up for another week because I'm finishing editing everything. I'm going to put a launch date, but the link is already on the website and you could join the waitlist there. So it's going to be run through school and you could join the waitlist. I've run a million communities through a million different systems. Me personally, for my needs, school kind of fits it because it's one of the most manageable ones mobily. And I'm able to do video mobile, which is awesome. And it's something I want to be able to do more of. So I'm making it where it's the easiest way for me to give things back to people. So I find that's the platform that's going to work for me. I literally built this community four different times already on four different platforms. And I came back to the one that I built it on first. So what does that tell you sometimes? Sometimes your first decision is the right decision, right? Just go with your gut, as they say.

So look, I just want to welcome you to the new Unshakable AF. I'm super amped to have you here. I'm super amped that you're here on the Unfiltered and Unshakable podcast. And look, we're going to keep rocking more episodes. I got a ton more episodes that we're going to be doing. And I absolutely look forward to seeing you in the community and seeing you on the boards. So until then, guys, I'm Steve Lichtman. This was Unfiltered and Unshakable. And have an amazing day.

[0:00]All right, folks, this one, episode 35, and we’re going to up the ante. I had done a podcast a while back about the five-minute content plan or something. I don’t remember the exact term, but what I realized was that’s for people that are super efficient and work at a breakneck pace. So instead, I want to give you something today that you can literally use this afternoon because I know you’re busy, and I know that content feels like a grind, and I know most of the quote-unquote content strategy advice out there is you’re built for people with marketing teams. And in fairness, maybe my last post about a five-minute content plan was a little bit more geared towards people like myself who can kind of do every step of the phase, right, just boom, boom, boom. I could have three or four apps loaded and just go from thing to thing to thing in a matter of minutes. And that wasn’t fair. So let’s do this instead. Let’s think of this as the 20-minute content system for a business owner who has real work to do, which should be everybody listening for the most part, except for my dog.

[1:06]I make my dog listen to the podcast every single time it comes out, so I get an extra listener. I have a burner phone just for the dog. She sits there, she stares at it, she eats her treats. She doesn’t seem to be a fan. But, you know, hey, even she could do this in 20 minutes. So here’s what we’re going to do. The problem most people face, you sit down and create content, you stare at a blank screen. And that blank screen wins every damn time because you’re trying to write from nothing. And writing from nothing is brutal as hell. It’s the worst. When you just sit there and go, oh, what am I going to do? Or you go, even if you look up a trending topic or something, it’s tough because people don’t know where to start from. So we’re going to stop starting from nothing. We’re going to start leveraging some tools that are out there. So here’s what you’re going to do. You’re going to set a 10-minute timer. You’re going to open up a Word doc or a voice memo on your phone. Then you’re going to answer three questions out loud or in writing. What’s the number one mistake you see your clients make?

[2:07]What question do you get asked most often? And finally, what’s something you believed five years ago about your industry that you now know is completely wrong? I don’t want you to edit it. I don’t want you to format it. Just dump it out, raw, messy, and real. Just like, you know, it’s what they call prog mess, right? Prog mess, messy progress. Just drop that into something. When a timer stops, you have your material. You’re now going to take that raw material. And like what we talked about a couple episodes ago, you’re going to drop that raw material into your AI tool, whether it’s your ChatGPT, your Gemini, your Claude. It doesn’t matter. You’re going to ask it to turn that content into LinkedIn posts, into a three-post series even, depending on how much you give it. With each one focused on a single idea from what you submitted, short, punchy, controversial, or conversational, I guess. I’m controversial. More conversational, I guess. Brain fart, you know, boring, controversial. So it kind of makes sense that

[3:10]I would say that instead of conversational. So just short, punchy, going back and forth, getting the person engaged. You spend five minutes now cleaning up the one post that sounds most like you. So out of those three, if there’s one where you’re like, whoa, that is like, that really hit it good. Spend five more minutes now and edit that post. Don’t take it right from the AI. I never take something direct from AI. I mean, I’m a huge believer of AI gets you there, but you have to be the one that drives that run in. So it might load the bases for you, but you still have to be Aaron Judge of the Yankees and go up to the plate and knock those runs in. So that’s you editing. You’re knocking those runs in. That’s your content for today. Go post it. It’s that simple. The content’s done, right? Now you got two other pieces that you can either give more context to, work it a little further. And that one chat, now you’ve turned it to three solid pieces of content, not just slop, not just give me three posts about insurance. You know, for my marketing, no. You’re giving it real question and answer content

[4:14]that it can now use those three questions to build three great posts. And here’s the thing. It’s not about you being coming some amazing content creator, right? This isn’t the plan. it’s about you not being invisible right just like the last episode talking about you know building in secret it’s about not being invisible because your clients are on linkedin right now and they’re looking for somebody who knows what you know so be the person they find why be another just name on a list that they don’t see that likes one of their posts down the road bring the heat bring it like spend the 15 20 minutes you need to get this knocked out today yeah look if you’re efficient you could do this in 10 honestly honestly you could you could i could talk those three answers out loud in five minutes max it’ll be hundreds and hundreds of words in five minutes then have the ai pump it out then another five ten minutes to edit i’m out in 10 15 minutes easy you don’t need a graphic every time just post the text content doesn’t always need

[5:16]a graphic, especially if your graphics are always AI. If your graphics are always shit slop, then you don’t need that every time. Post a graphic when it matters. Take a real picture. Go walk outside with your dog. I’ll take a picture of my same podcast hating dog out in the backyard and I’ll post her. She’s going to be mad at me now that I’m saying this, but it is what it is. She’s not a fan. I can’t help it. It’s a dog. So the riff of the episode is this. Stop starting from nothing. Your expertise is the content. And AI can be the assembly line. So let it manufacture for you from your original IP the base content that you can then go in and edit, right? That’s the end of the story here. It’s what it all comes down to. Let things help you. But let things help you in a smart way where you’re actually giving it content and context. All right, guys, that’s it. 20 minute content system. Yeah, really, man. It’s there. I’m Steve Lichtman. This is unfiltered and unshakable men. Yeah. Have a wonderful day.

[0:01]All right this next episode gang is something that heck i’m i’m probably guilty of more than, anybody right so we’re at episode 34 and we’re gonna get keep it real and this one it might sting a little bit i mean sometimes they do but that’s kind of the point is to say something where you’re like shoot that’s me so you can have that moment where you’re like you know it’s time to change and i’m somebody who’s been there with this right so this is this is gonna be a topic that hits home with me. I’ve been there, done that. And it’s this, you’re building in secret. Think about it. Stop building in secret, really. That’s going to be the title of this episode, probably stop building in secret. That seems to make sense. You know, you’re building in secret. What I mean by that is this, you’re working on the offer. You’re tweaking your website. You’re refining your program and what you deliver. You’re getting everything just perfectly right before you tell anybody. Like you keep it all in. You’re just doing it all. You’re doing all the background work and nobody knows. And I get it.

[1:01]It feels like the responsible thing to do. It feels like the professional thing to do, not to half-ass it, right, with something that’s not finished. It feels safer than putting something out there and having it be imperfect. And look, for me personally, I have that problem. I’m one of those people where I can look at something over and over and over again and just ride that perception of imperfection in my head to not release things. Honestly, it’s why I made the entire F*ck It Switch challenge in my community. The whole reason I built that challenge was a personal challenge to myself to get this done because I have so many ideas, man. And if I just did nothing but content production for the next year, I could be busy every single day. That’s how much I’ve got written down. That’s how much content I’ve created. That’s how many pages of stuff that I’ve written.

[2:04]And we’re not talking about AI stuff. We’re talking about me writing it over decades now. Just content, just stuff, things I do with people. I do keep records of my conversations with folks and the main things I build, the structures I build, so I can have it for reference. Fed all that stuff into the old GPT there, into the old Claude. And man, oh man, it can turn itself into a manifesto. But look, here’s what’s really happening. You’re hiding, right? And every day you stay in build mode and you’re not putting something into the world, you’re paying a price. And it’s not just about missed revenue. It’s also missed feedback, missed momentum and the slow erosion of your own belief that it’s actually going to work. The market doesn’t reward perfection. It rewards presence, consistent, visible, honest presence.

[3:08]If you’re around all the time, you start getting seen. If you’re around once in a blue moon and nobody has a clue when it happens, guess what? Nobody knows you exist. It’s not the worst thing for some people. They have enough referral business and they’re happy with it. But for people that want to put themselves out there in the universe, you actually have to do it. I remember when I launched my first real program, I spent weeks polishing it. I spent three more weeks finding reasons not to announce it. Meanwhile, I got a DM asking if I had anything like that. They didn’t care that it wasn’t perfect. They were just asking, hey, do you have a course like this? And I’m like, yeah, kind of, but it’s not up yet. That’s a struggle a lot of us fall into.

[4:09]We want to do something, we have a passion for something, but when it gets to the brass tacks of putting it out there and letting people react, we get afraid and we turtle up. How stupid is it to hold back because you’re afraid of what some random person on the internet is going to say? Build for you. Build for who you want to help and how you want to help them. Don’t build for critics. What you need to understand is this: you don’t need a perfect offer, a perfect website, a perfect solution to start the conversation. You need a real one. As long as what you’re building is legit, that’s all that matters. Today we’re on the Execute side of RISE. I want you to tell one person today what you’ve been building.

[5:09]Not to sell them. Just say it out loud. I’ve been doing a lot with Claude Code — coding a tool using their agentic coding features mixed with my own abilities. I’ve completely re-fallen in love with technology and coding after about 15 years of walking away from it. I had a daughter who was born and I wanted to spend time with her and not late nights at the CLI hacking away. But I’m obsessed again, and it’s a better time in life to be obsessed with this technology. So look, today: tell one person what you’re building. Don’t sell them, just say it out loud. Because once you say it out loud to another human being, it stops being an idea and it becomes something real.

[6:11]Now you have to wonder, if that person sees you again, are they going to say, hey, Steve, how’s Project X working out? Oh, it’s still in my mind. Or, oh yeah, it’s live now, here’s a link. That’s what I wanted to tell you today. Stop building in secret. The world can’t hire what they can’t see. The world can’t benefit from what they don’t hear. You can’t reach people if they don’t know you’re out there. You have to put yourself out there, no matter how scary it is. Today’s riff: The market doesn’t reward perfection. It rewards presence. Write it in the comments, on social media, wherever you want. Put it out there. Let people know what you’re doing.

[7:13]Show people what you’re building in the background. Because if you don’t tell us, nobody’s going to know. Thanks so much, guys. This was another episode of Unfiltered and Unshakeable with yours truly, Steve Lichtman. Take it easy, guys.

[0:01]All right, everybody, today, episode 33, and today we’re going to get into something that just absolutely drives me nuts, man. And it might be the thing that’s quietly costing you more business. Maybe more than anything else you’re doing wrong. Yeah? It’s your marketing sentence. It’s the thing that you say when somebody comes up to you at a networking event or just anywhere and goes, hey, man, what do you do? Every time I ask somebody that, I go, what do you do? They say the same thing to me, right? And look, I know we’ve touched on messaging before, but today I really want to be surgical and tactical about this, this one thing, because I see so many smart, capable people, just completely blowing it in this one moment. Like freaking legends that because they stumble and fall over themselves on the, what do you do? Response that I wanted to make this to help people. So here’s the test.

[1:04]If somebody asks you, what do you do? Can you answer in one sentence that makes them feel something? Like, can you feel energy from it? Do you feel somebody’s vibe from it? Not understand everything about your business because nobody will in one line. Like, that’s impossible unless you’re like, I’m a heart surgeon. Okay, great. But that’s not typically what in the world of corporate business doing business with business, that’s not typically what you’re going to hear somebody say. Just feel one thing, whether it’s curiosity, relief, recognition, something, man, right? Just something. You got to feel something when somebody asks you, what do you do? Your response has got to give them energy. Most people give what I would call the LinkedIn bio answer. Yeah, they rattle off their title, maybe the industry, maybe years of experience. And the person’s nodding in front of them, they’re already checked out. They’re like, oh, fuck this, right? That’s just, you know, that’s what they’re thinking. They’re just looking around the room for the next place to walk to.

[2:06]And it’s not because they don’t care. They might actually like you a lot. You’re just boring the hell out of them and nothing landed, right? Because you’re sitting there going, well, I’m a financial analyst with 23 years experience. First, I worked at Wells Fargo. Then I worked at New York Life Insurance. And then I worked out, like, nobody cares. It’s nothing personal. If they get to know you down the road, they’ll care. But they’re not going to care now meeting you in a room with a bunch of other strangers. You need to make them feel something. The sentence that’s going to work, it’s not about what you do. It’s about what changes for someone when they work with you. Think about that for a minute. Think about it this way. Don’t say, I help companies with strategic marketing solutions. I might do that. Hell, I’ve been doing that for 20 years. Maybe more. Definitely more. I’m old now. Instead, I would say something along the lines of, I help consultants go from

[3:09]invisible to booked out in 90 days. Now, I’m not a lead gen guy per se. I do a lot of lead gen work, but don’t get me wrong. That’s not me personally, but that is a better version of instead of walking up and saying, hi, I help companies with strategic marketing solutions. Okay, another marketing guy. I help consultants go from invisible to booked out in 90 days. Now somebody’s got their attention up they’re going wait you get something done in a time frame right there’s a difference you can feel it one describes the service and the other is describing the destination the destination is all people care about nobody cares about what you do let’s be honest with ourselves what we all do is commoditize there’s a million other people doing it unless you’re truly you know even when people say you’re a category of one you’re a category of one of many. That’s just the way that goes. If you truly believe you are a sole single category

[4:10]in anything, that is called delusion. Yeah, unless you’re on stage as an artist or something, and you’re the only one doing that song that way, that time, that how, then yeah, you know, we’re pretty much all in the world of business. Everybody’s kind of doing the same thing, just different versions of it for different people in different ways. So let’s use rise in this situation. The move here is identify. Identify what your people actually want. Not what you offer, what they want to experience on the other side of it. And then simplify your message and distill it down to that one thing. And your homework for this episode is going to be write your one sentence right now while you’re listening. What changes for someone when they work with you? Try to keep it under 15 words, give or take. Read it out loud a bunch of times. If it sounds like a PowerPoint slide, do it again, man. Just do it again. If it sounds like, if it sounds all herky-jerky, Just be like, screw it and start off again. I believe in you. I know that you’ve got this. Look, one sentence. It’s all I’m asking for today. That’s the move.

[5:11]One sentence of what changes for someone when they work with you. And the riff of the episode is going to be this. It’s the one thing I write down for all these. So I’m always going to read it at the end. People don’t buy what you do. They buy where you can take them. And now you guys understand how when I write down one riff for an episode, I could turn it into an eight-minute piece. Thank you so much. I’m Steve Lichtman. This is Unfiltered and Unshakeable, and I will see you on the next episode.