Creating Deep Connections with your Audience Through Two-Way Conversations

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In entrepreneurship, it's easy to think we know what our clients need. but what if we actually asked them what they're looking for? In today's episode, brand and business strategist Brittany Barnhart shares how to have those two-way conversations so you can create content that resonates and move your business forward.

Brittany is a brand & business strategist, and founder of Powerhouse Brand Studio. She works with impact-driven entrepreneurs to attract and convert their audiences through thoughtful & strategic branding.

Website // Instagram // LinkedIn // Identify, Attract and Convert Your Audience Free Course

The episode:

Katrina Widener: Hi everyone and welcome back to the Badass Business Squad podcast. It's your host Katrina Widener, and today I am here with Brittany Barnhart. I'm very excited because we're gonna be talking about really creating connections with your audience and having those two-way conversations so that you can move your business forward in a way that feels good to everyone involved. So I'm really excited to have you here today. If you wouldn't mind getting us started by maybe introducing yourself, that would be great.

Brittany Barnhart: Yeah, thank you so much for having me on the podcast. I started listening some time ago, and I just absolutely adored all of your guests and everything like that.

So I'm excited to be here. I'm Brittany or I go by B. I'm a brand business strategist that helps impact driven entrepreneurs to attract and convert their audiences and I do that through branded business strategy. So I've been doing it for about four years now and have had the amazing opportunity to work with over 35 clients to develop my own method called the power method. So a lot of that is really helping business owners align their purpose and their audience to create workflows that actually work for their business, executing on it, and then refining it over time. So that the business that they're building actually works for them. They feel fulfilled, they feel like they're actually able to thrive and not be stuck in this endless amount of, "I need to hustle, hustle, hustle to get things done." Cause it's not the case. You don't need to do that if you don't want to. So yeah, that's what I do!

Katrina Widener: That's one of the things where I'm like, "You already know I'm already aligned with all of that kinda stuff. I'm already on the anti hustle team." So yes I 100% agree. So I wanted to first start off by asking you, when we talked about you coming on we had a couple topics we were going back and forth on. And the one that stood out to both of us was having these two-way conversations. So I really want to just kick things off by saying, how did you get to the place where this felt like something that's so exciting to talk about and so empowering for people to bring into their businesses? What really sparked that?

Brittany Barnhart: A common question that my clients come to me with is, "I feel like I'm just talking to Instagram and nobody's interacting with me. I feel like I'm saying these things and nobody's really responding or resonating with it. I just feel like I'm talking to a wall sometimes." So that's where the initial idea came from. Because such a essential part of the work that I do with my clients is developing those two-way conversations and really identifying what your audience is actually asking for. And as silly or as simple as it might feel, I find that a lot of people don't actually engage with it that often. I think that there are a lot of assumptions that come up when we're thinking about what services or what people need to hear from us," but there's often just our biases and assumptions of what we assume people need from us when that's not actually what they're asking for.

So this question came from the work that I do with my clients and working through that with them and helping them clarify, "What is your audience actually asking for right now?" You think that they might be at this high level, but really we need to kind of take five steps back and start here and nurture them to this service or thing that you're trying to launch. Cuz they're not quite ready for it yet. It's been pretty amazing to work through that with my clients, cuz the clearer you are in your messaging, the easier it's to show up online, the easier it is to have conversations and really be empathetic to people and understand where they're coming from. This is a really important topic, and then it just filters into every other aspect of your business.

Katrina Widener: I really appreciate that because I feel that so many people don't actually even think about "I can just ask my audience", right? I feel like entrepreneurship is so much of this guessing game where we're trying to be like, "Is this gonna work? Is that gonna work? Is this the right decision? Is that the right decision?" Really it's like you could just ask. It's that simple. You could just ask.

Brittany Barnhart: Yep.

Katrina Widener: And oftentimes it feels like this revolutionary idea to just ask your audience what they're looking for.

Brittany Barnhart: Yeah, absolutely.

Katrina Widener: Yeah! Okay. So for people who are like, "Oh my gosh, why have I never thought about this beforehand? Or why have I never actually just started having conversations with my clients about what they need?"... How would you recommend people get started? Like I know for me I've done everything from polled past clients to interviews with potential clients, to polls on Instagram, right? Like all the different options.

Brittany Barnhart: Yeah.

Katrina Widener: But where would you say that oftentimes with your clients, you will get started?

Brittany Barnhart: A couple ways that I love to get started is, often with a lot of my clients we have intake forms, questionnaires, feedback forms, testimonial forms. All that good stuff kind of set up in our business so that we can make sure our services are good and better, and that we're providing like a good quality service or product. But those are also sources for really great insight into how people are actually reacting and responding to your business. I tell my clients sometimes I'm like, "Verbatim, what did they say? What was their problem that they're experiencing? What about you attracted them to you?"

Using those internal forms that you likely already have set up and just using that to start revising your messaging and using that in your content. Oftentimes it's really easy just to kind of summarize and kind of encapsulate a lot of different points into one thing, but don't do that. Take verbatim, maybe clean it up a little bit. Take that, and then start using that in your content and see how people resonate. And so that would be my first step for if somebody's trying to get started with this two way conversation to just look at your internal forms, how people are talking about it.

Then I would also say number two, if there are people in your life maybe on social media that you connect with on a regular basis, that you have a relationship with them, don't be afraid to ask. I think that there might be this fear of asking for help sometimes as an entrepreneur, because we start on our own so we just wanna be able to do all the things and feel completely confident in our abilities. That's great, and we're multifaceted human beings. We all have really a lot of strengths. But there is a benefit to asking people for help in that insight. And so if you find that you have people that you're close with or have had relationships with, don't be afraid to be like, "Hey, can we hop on like a 20 minute call? I'd love to buy you coffee. Can I just ask you a couple questions about my business?"

I always recommend to my clients to make sure that there's something kind of in it for that person to say, "Thank you for your time." Cause I think that's really important. You know, we all have such busy lives right now, especially people who have families or who are sick. There's so many things that are happening that I always just wanna make sure that in that two-way conversation that it's helpful for you and also helpful for them. So those are two ways that I would recommend to somebody who's like, just getting started with this conversation of how to actually do that.

Katrina Widener: Definitely. I think that also makes it feel so achievable for people, right?

Brittany Barnhart: Mm-hmm.

Katrina Widener: This isn't something that we're saying, "Go do this really long form marketing thing, or go do this thing where it's gonna take you so much time, so much energy, so much effort, et cetera, et cetera." It's really just saying, "Can I have a quick phone call with you or a zoom call or something like that?"

I know for me, for my one-on-one clients, they get access to audio messaging with me and I've even beforehand just said like, "Hey quick curiosity, working on my website right now. What attracted me to you as opposed to the other coaches you were looking at?" and I was able to take that information and yes, use it as copy on my website, as marketing materials as how I speak in sales conversations to other people. But also just information for like, "Oh, I acted this way with you. I now know to act this way with other people as well."

Brittany Barnhart: Mm-hmm.

Katrina Widener: It really is that spider web you were talking about. They sent me a three minute audio clip. But that was enough information for me to just go off and have it affect all of these different aspects of my business. And we don't think about that when we're thinking about writing our website copy. I know with my clients, we have an exercise where they always have to fill out this long questionnaire about their clients. And I always recommend: Actually talk to some of your past clients, talk to these people who have worked with you as you're filling this out. Because we can take this language and pick it up and pop it right on your website. We can have that be an Instagram caption or idea behind a reel. Oftentimes people don't think about how that can influence literally everything else.

Brittany Barnhart: Everything. Yeah last summer I had a client who was already doing amazing. She had everything in her business, and it was almost to the point where I was like, "Are you... I feel like we would obviously work well together, but are you sure you want to?" But we worked through her goals and we're like "Cool. This is where we're at. Let's help kind of scale you to the next level." And so even with people who might seem or feel like they have everything kind of together in business, there's always an opportunity for improvement. There's always an opportunity for better messaging, better communication.

And so at this particular client when we started working together, she wanted to take her business full time. She had a okay grasp on who she wanted to work with, and through my workshops we developed a super clear ideal client persona and are like, "Cool. This is who this person is. Here are the emotional benefits to working with you."

Katrina Widener: Mm-hmm.

Brittany Barnhart: "Here are the functional benefits of working with you." And really dug into their audience as humans. And so that's kind of an area in which I see people kind of lacking in. We relate to people in regards to, "How can I sell them something?" Versus like, "Who are they as real people? How can we support them versus just constantly selling to them?" Cuz I'm in the business of helping people as much as possible and making sure that they feel fully supported and know that they don't necessarily need me. I'm just kind of a benefit to helping them in their business, you know? And so if we can approach our messaging in that way from abundance versus, "You absolutely need my service or everything's gonna fall apart." You know, there's just that like simple difference that can really make such a difference in your messaging and communication.

So we did that with this client and a month or two after she was like, "I literally 6x my revenue by clarifying my messaging." It was literally just the smallest tweaks of getting super clear on who her audience was, gathering that data from feedback forms, and really just tweaking the things that she had that made such an impact in her business growth and obviously her income. It's an amazing tool to actually use in business.

Katrina Widener: Yeah I really appreciate you laying out exactly an example of how that works, because I think that's gonna be super helpful for people listening to. To be like, "Oh that makes so much sense. It impacts this area, it impacts this area." I even will say for me, a lot of people who follow me know, I recently updated my website, did new website copy, new headshots, et cetera, et cetera. All of that was sparked because I did a client consult with someone who was like, "Just so you know, you're way cooler than your website makes you look." She's like, "You look so like nice and buttoned up." And she's like, "Not that you're not nice."

Brittany Barnhart: Yep.

Katrina Widener: "But the term Badass business Squad, and then I went to your website and I was like, 'Oh she looks wholesome maybe is the better word to use.'" And she's like, "When I hopped on a zoom call with you there was just this mismatch. I was like, 'Oh I wanna hire you more now than I did when I was on your website, because there was just this disconnect.'"

So I was like, "Okay that is great feedback. I can fix that. That's easy." Let's do a really aligned photo shoot. Let's do a really aligned update of the website, which I've been planning to do anyway. So it can be so impactful even to just get two sentences of feedback from someone where you can then see how much over the course of six months, that really changed my brand. And I love it. It feels so much more me. It feels so aligned with who I am. I mean, here we both are wearing black today. And like I wear black every day!

Brittany Barnhart: Yeah!

Katrina Widener: And so have just the teeniest amount of feedback from people can just completely change the whole game and make everything feel so much easier, which is really what we're going for. And it's like, why wouldn't you just ask for feedback instead of like throwing spaghetti at the wall to see what works? And being like, "I'm gonna try this, I'm gonna try this, I'm gonna try this. Hopefully this copy's working, hopefully this is gonna work. I know that this works, but then I'm gonna try these other things too. Or I don't know what works at all and I'm just gonna try it all."

Brittany Barnhart: Yep. I feel like that's kind of why it's so important to be talking to your audience on a regular basis. Not being afraid to reiterate and revise. Cause you know, reiteration doesn't always mean you have to go back to the drawing board. It might just be adding in a super clear statement, you know? So when you're starting your website of like, "I work with so and so." It's just like, "How can we clarify that even more? So your audience can self qualify, so you can get better leads to get more income." You know it's just kind of, again that spider web of like, it's this one simple thing that you can do to make everything better. Either communicate with your audience, have those trusted folks that you run stuff by. Don't be afraid to test and revise and just ask people, "What do you think about this?"

And then my other favorite thing is kind of having those trusted people who knows stuff about me, but don't know everything about me. I kind of love those industry folks who can really give me that harsh feedback. And I say harsh because I just want them to be completely honest. I'm like, "I'm not gonna tell you anything about what I'm doing. Sometimes I will if it's important for context. But if you could provide feedback on what you're seeing, what flows, what doesn't and everything." I mean I still refine my messaging to this day, you know?

So I just recently launched a new offer and I was like, "You know what? I think that this is gonna work, but let me write down what I think would work for people and why this was important and run by people in my Instagram stories." And then through DM conversation they were like, "Oh yeah this is what I need help with. This is what I'm struggling with." And I'm like, cool. I have this basis idea and now it's even better and now I'm booking those days with people, you know?

Katrina Widener: Mm-hmm.

Brittany Barnhart: It's just always so important to ask for feedback. There's absolutely nothing wrong with getting outside feedback on your business. It's always so helpful.

Katrina Widener: As you were saying all that, I'm just sitting here like nodding along nodding along. I feel like I say this on every podcast episode, but I wish people could sometimes see our faces too cause I'm just like "Uh huh, uh huh, uh huh, uh huh." But for anyone else who's out there, who's like me and who has a podcast or a blog or creates content, right? I feel like that's just one more area where it is so obvious that you can just ask for outside opinions of like, "What do you wanna learn from me right now? What are the topics that you're interested in? What's keeping you up at night and how can I help you?"

I'll even say when I'm working with outside contractors? It's even helpful at that point of time to get feedback from somebody else. Because say I brought someone on to write my copy, and we're sitting down and we're having these back and forth conversations and they're doing their thing. I'm in this process with them. So I'm involved in this, "Okay here's your thought process. Here's why you made these choices." But if I brought in a client to look at something? They're gonna have completely different feelings than I would around how I'm talking to people, what I'm saying, what my takeaways are. So much so that the last person who did my copy, I actually had be a client.

Brittany Barnhart: Wow.

Katrina Widener: Because I was like, "You know what I do. You know what the takeaways are. You know how this process works, what works really well, what doesn't work really well. So if you are the person who's writing the copy, you're gonna have such a unique take on how to describe my services and what you can get from it and all that kind of stuff that I wouldn't be able to have. Or that like an independent contractor outside of my business, wouldn't be able to have."

It ended up being the most aligned copy I've ever had on my website, and I'm saying this as a former writer and editor, right? Like I can write copy, but also if it's coming from the person who has gone through this process with me, getting that outside feedback is gonna even be that much more effective because they're gonna know. They know, right? They know from the point of view of someone I will never be able to be, which is the client in this relationship as opposed to the coach. So It's so easy. It's so simple to just ask for someone's opinion and it can make then your business feel so much easier.

Brittany Barnhart: Yeah, I love that. I feel like that's often why a lot of people end up working with me. Cuz you're so in it day to day and you're like, "Of course I provide this value. This is why my work matters." But the projects that I've been pulled into and helping the businesses that I've helped, they just needed that little extra alignment. Or these small little tweaks to kind of align their services or communicate better, and it really just makes a world of difference. Like you said, you know, it resonates with people better. So oftentimes I'll have my clients walk me through. I'm like, "All right. Pretend I'm a client. What is this process like? How are you gonna direct this conversation so that I can better help you? Cause I'm a complete outsider. I don't know anything about what you think your value is. Let's run through this, see what it's like so that I can help you better understand what your actual value is and how to communicate it."

Investing in your business and if you're just starting, obviously having those conversations and DMS or reaching out to your audience. Or if you're ready to scale, investing in that person who can come into your business and help you really clarify those things so that you're not so in it yourself. Cuz like you said, it can really help align your online persona with like who you actually are.

Katrina Widener: 100%. Yes, yes, yes, yes, yes, yes. I'm also like, "People this is why you hire business coaches!" It's because you get this outside perspective on your business. If nothing else that you walk away with, you get that spider web of like, "Oh my gosh I have someone else with eyes on this. I have someone else with eyes on this. They're offering me new ideas, new perspectives, et cetera, etcetera."

Well thank you Brittany so much for coming on, this has been amazing.

Brittany Barnhart: Of course!

Katrina Widener: Before we officially jump off, will you tell everyone where they can find you afterward?

Brittany Barnhart: Yeah, so you can find me on Instagram @powerhousebrandstudio. I also have a free course that if you wanna sign up for, it's on my Instagram and my links or on my website. It's called Identify, Attract, and Convert Your Audience. It's five days, five modules, and you'll go through and get a really solid understanding of who your audience actually is, so that you can actually start creating that content that resonates.

So if you're feeling a little bit stuck trying to have these two way conversations, this would be a really great opportunity for you to get started and have that guided feedback. So you can find me there and... yeah!

Katrina Widener: Awesome! Thank you so much, this has been great.

Brittany Barnhart: Yeah. Thank you!