PP 254: Speaking Your Client’s Secret Language with Jeffrey Shaw

From humble beginnings, Jeffrey Shaw became one of the most preeminent portrait photographers in the United States. His on-location style and fine craftsmanship made him the go-to photographer for families of C-suite executives of Anheuser-Busch, Twitter, and many others, Supermodel Stephanie Seymour, news anchors Jim Nantz and David Bloom, sports icons Tom Seaver, Pat Riley, and Wall Street executives too many to mention. His portraits appeared on The Oprah Show, CBS News, in People and O Magazine and hang at Harvard University and The Norman Vincent Peale Center. After 35 years of exceptional service to his exclusive clientele, Jeffrey decided to share his knowledge of business, branding, and marketing to support self-employed and small business owners as well as progressive-minded companies. He’s an in-demand keynote speaker at conferences such as HOW Design, Growth Marketing, corporations the likes of Verizon and BMW, and institutions such as Florida Atlantic University and the Adams Center for Entrepreneurship. Jeffrey is also the author of two books, LINGO and The Self-Employed Life, a LinkedIn Learning instructor, and a regular contributor to various publications. In 2014, Jeffrey started a podcast, Creative Warriors, later rebranded as The Self-Employed Life which is amongst the top 15% of all podcasts. His TEDx LincolnSquare talk was later moved to TED.com which is so rare it’s been said you have a better chance of getting hurt at home by your toilet.

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Kim Sutton:  Welcome to the Positive Productivity Podcast, Episode 254. I have a challenge for you. Do you want to help me help the community around us? Well, that’s exactly what I’m doing in Keep Kim accountable a new weekly challenge I’ve set for myself in the Positive Productivity Facebook group. Every week, I post three goals that I have for myself for that week. And if you, a listener, post a screenshot of your review of this podcast in the thread below that week’s goals, then for every goal that I don’t meet, I will donate $25 to a charity of your choice. By the way, if I reach all my goals this week, but don’t reach them next week, your name will be carried forward for all of eternities so your charity could benefit multiple times. To get involved, visit thekimsutton.com/group and join the positive productivity Facebook group. I hope to see you there. The Positive Productivity Podcast was created to empower entrepreneurs to achieve and appreciate personal and professional success. I’m your host Kim Sutton. And if you’re ready, let’s jump in to today’s episode.  Welcome back to another episode of the positive productivity podcast. This is your host Kim Sutton, and I’m so happy that you are here to join us today. I’m also thrilled to introduce our guest, Jeffrey Shaw. Jeffrey is a podcaster, photographer, author and speaker and the host of the Creative Warriors Podcast. Jeffrey, welcome.

Jeffrey Shaw: Well, thanks.

Kim Sutton: I have a blooper in the first second.

Jeffrey Shaw: I’m thrilled to be here with you.

Kim Sutton: I was going through and I just had to jump here for a second, because you gave me podcaster envy. I was going through your list of guests that you had. And I already shared this with you in the pre chat. But I was just drooling. And you have big names you have not so big names and I love seeing that I know personally some of the not so big names. I would love to journey to how you started the podcast at some point. But can you take us back even further to how you got on this part of your journey of life?

Jeffrey Shaw: Gosh. It is quite the journey. So I’ve been a portrait photographer for affluent families for 33 years now. So I photograph their families, their children on location. And I’ve been doing this since the age of 20. And I loved it. And like a lot of us, I felt like I was run on purpose. This is what I meant to do. And I gave it my all and truly loved it. And still do I just do photography in a very limited amount now. In 1999, this idea of a business coach crossed my mind. And Kim in 1999, nobody was talking about business coaches, like it was just not really a known industry. But I hired a business coach and loved every moment of it. And I stayed with that coach for seven years speaking to him three times a month. So when he retired, it just inspired me to try to do for others what he did for me, which as an entrepreneur, I felt I found really grounding. Like I was like therapy for business. So not only were we being productive and coming up with business strategies, but I needed that person to talk to because being an entrepreneur is a really lonely experience in a lot of ways. So I loved it. I wanted to do that for others. So I went to coach training, and I’ve never stopped being in training. I mean, I started I think in 2008, I did my first training program as a coach, and I’ve never stopped. And of course, once you’re a coach, next thing you know, people are inviting you to speak on stage. And the podcast, I started in July of 2014. It was really a personal challenge. Somebody had mentioned the idea to me two years earlier, and I poo pooed the idea of like podcasts? Isn’t that like outdated? And that was in 2012. But in 2014, I took it upon myself as a personal challenge. I’m like, hmm, I’ve always chased my dreams. I’ve always earned every dollar. I wonder what would happen if I had a podcast? I wonder if anybody would show up. I wonder if guests would say yes, I wonder if I would have listeners. And I wanted to challenge myself because again, I had always been a chaser. And I wondered, am I worthy of coming too. I always said as a photographer, I always felt like a professional guests because I was the one always asking for the bathroom. And so that’s why I started the podcast and lo and behold, it was crazy. Like major people said, yes. People show up in droves. It’s a really popular show and way beyond whatever could expected but and now I’ve written my first book. And part of what I talk about in the book, the concept of the book lingo, kind of wrap it up and with this part of the conversation is the idea of lingo is to only work with your ideal customers. And one of the unseen advantages of working with your ideal customers is they bring out the best in you. This is what a lot of people don’t realize, you know, people we talk about ideal customers, because they’re going to spend the most amount of money or what have you, but they also bring out the best in us. And often people can see more in us than we can see in ourselves. And that to me is what happened with the podcast. Like when I started that podcast and big names were showing up as guest, 10s of 1000s of people listen to the show weekly, monthly, I just wanted to get better at it. And then it just kept growing. So I think that’s an important part of entrepreneurship. And you know, the whole idea of productivity, how to be productive, is to work with your ideal customers who bring out the best in you so that you can be better and more productive. So that’s a little bit about my journey. So here we are today. I’ve just released my first book. And that’s been the scariest leap I think I’ve taken thus far. So we’ll see.

Kim Sutton: Oh, my gosh! Jeffrey, you bring up so much for me right here. And in our pre chat, I was sharing how I get so many questions and thoughts while guests are talking. Not that I’m thinking about it, but you just bring out so much. And then, listeners, listen to my most recent blooper reel. I don’t know if it will be released before just after this episode with Jeffrey but I’m sure I’ll say brain fart at least once because I have so many of these awesome questions. But I had to tell you, when I started my podcasting journey in 2016, I was sending inquiries to who would be my dream guests. And I nearly dropped to the floor when the first one said yes. I was like, Oh, my gosh, this really just happened. And my husband sees me like over jumping and that’s not something that I do. He’s like, what’s up? He said, Yes. And I felt like it was talking to a celebrity but the more I’ve gone on through this journey, I realize everybody’s just a person.

Jeffrey Shaw: Absolutely. Yeah. My first guest was Sally Hogshead, who, you know, author, branding experts. I mean, she’s huge. And she’s in the hall of the National Speakers Association Hall of Fame. She was my first guest. And Emil and I have been reading her books and taken her fascination advantage assessment. And she’s like one of the people I admire most of the world. And I decided I wanted her to be my first guest. So I tweeted her on a Sunday, because I figured even if she had a team who supported her on social media, and I don’t know if she does, she might be doing it all herself, but just in case, I figured they were less likely to be doing it on a Sunday. So maybe she would answer. And sure enough, she did. So I tweeted her on a Sunday and said, Hey, I’d love for you to be a guest on my show. And she was and then seven, I think seven, at least seven, eight time best selling author, Michael Port. He was my second guest, because I reached out to him and said, Hey, I have this new podcast. Would you be so generous to be a guest. Sure. I mean, it’s crazy. The level of generosity amongst some people out there in life that are just doing huge things that are willing to show up for you. It’s pretty amazing.

Kim Sutton: Absolutely. Listeners in our pre chat Jeffrey and I were talking about how our lives have crossed paths without us even knowing. We were both in Greenwich at the same time. And this has happened with previous guests, Chris Wirth, and I actually lived in this or not lived, we worked in the same building in Greenwich, Connecticut, of all places.

Jeffrey Shaw: Not a big town.

Kim Sutton: Right. So Chris Wirth of the No Quit Living Podcast. Jeffrey Shaw, and I all were in Greenwich, Connecticut, at the same time unknowingly working our own lives doing our own things, podcasts at that time. I mean, this is 2000, for a podcast wasn’t even on the horizon for any of us. Now, look, it’s just, it’s amazing. But I want to go back to ideal clients, because this is a journey that I have just realized that I needed to be more aware of, in the past two years, actually, I was taking on every single person who inquired if they were willing to pay me then I was saying yes, and it got me so anxious and so stressed, but I also realized I was working in scarcity mode. If I don’t take this person, where am I gonna get money? But I realized that just like you said, you know that it’s a higher quality relationship. It’s not just about the money, but they respect you as a person, they respect your ideas, they’re willing to pay more, yes, because it is that higher quality of relationship and the respect is just–

Jeffrey Shaw: Hey, the theme of your show, you know, how to be most productive, right? I mean, the way to be the most productive in your business is to work with your ideal customers. You know, one of the things I talk about in the book Lingo is busting up the Pareto Principle, which is the 80/20 rule. And, you know, hey, it’s it’s a well known theory, and it works on a lot of places in life, you know, that, that says, 80% of your income comes from 20% of your customers. But I don’t know about you, and I don’t know any entrepreneur that can actually afford for eight out of 10 customers to not work out. Like that’s basically what that saying, you know, the 80/20 rule is the means two out of 10 customers are actually worth your time. None of us can afford that. And to your point, like people get caught in this scarcity mode, because the only reason people work with non ideal customers is because they need the money, right? But to actually be at your most productive at some period of time you need to focus on only work with your ideal customers so that you can get to the point of not needing the money as quickly as possible, right. So if there’s a transition there at all, it’s pretty brief. It’s the transition of saying no if you need to say no so that you can leave the space available and make sure you’re only seen by your ideal customers. And really at the end of the day, that’s what Lingo is about. Lingo is a marketing and branding book with the sole goal for entrepreneurs and small businesses to only work with their ideal customers. And I lay out a five step strategy where you’re building a brand, that is only speaking the secret language of your ideal customers. So those people that are not your ideal customers that they don’t get you, they don’t understand your brand, they don’t get your branding message it doesn’t mean any to them. They don’t share your values, so they don’t show up. What I say is, if done well, the secret language strategy that I teach in the book and resulting in a brand that speaks the secret language of ideal customers done well, it’s both a magnet and a filter, it should absolutely magnetize your ideal customers filter out the rest. And Kim, there’s a quote I use often to drive this home, which is, people don’t hire you because you’re the best, they hire you because you’ve get them and they get you. And we have to remember we are consumers. And I’ve been around a long time and in business a long time. And I’ve seen this transition in the ’80s and even the ’90s people would hire you because you were prestigious, you were considered the best in your field. Nowadays, people don’t hire you because you’re the best. They hire you because they feel like you get them, like you understand them. We’re not willing to put up with, I don’t care if you’re the best in your field, if you’re horrible to get along with, I’m not going to hire you, or I’m not going to buy your service or I’m not going to come back to your business. We have such a little tolerance today, rightfully so, we have little tolerance for bad business practices in authenticity and immoral behavior in business.

Kim Sutton: Oh, absolutely.

Jeffrey Shaw: Right. I mean, look what happened to Uber, right? You know, Uber, you know, made a stance that was against the viewpoint of a lot of people and millions of people, myself included, abandon doing business with Uber and switched to Lift or some other car service, right? Because we won’t do business, many of us will not do business with somebody we don’t share their values with. That is far more powerful than being the “best in any industry”. Because Kim, the other way of looking at it is how do you even say you’re the best at what you do? I mean, it’s so subjective, you’re only the best to your ideal customer, you’re not the best to somebody who doesn’t get you in the first place. So it’s completely subjective.

Kim Sutton: Yeah. Something that I’ve even realized. So in the past two years, and this is part of my whole positive productivity journey is that I realized that a lot of what I was seeing on social media could be totally false. I mean, people, and I’m sort of laughing because you said you were taking family portraits of the effluent. A lot of the people in the communities that I was a part of, were taking pictures of themselves in front of fancy cars, or in their new “houses”. But who knows, if they rented it for a photoshoot, yu know? we don’t know that that’s actually yours. But what I found even more, bigger, more bigger. That was very eloquent, wasn’t it?

Jeffrey Shaw: I like it. Yeah. It’s good. It’s good. Just go with that more bigger.

Kim Sutton: More bigger and that is the bedside manner of the people that I’m working with, specifically people that I’m working with for my business, and this is how I want to be with my clients as well. The bedside manner has to be there. No, you’re not my doctor. But if I hire you to do something, and you are constantly pushed for time, and you can only give me two seconds, because that’s all that you have clocked in. I want people to respect my time, and I want to respect other people’s time. But don’t be having a meeting with me just because I paid for you to have a meeting with me and don’t not care about what’s actually going on behind the scenes, because I want people that have a bigger picture. So I love that you said that.

Jeffrey Shaw: Yeah. Here’s one of the things I think that makes the book Lingo unique, and actually fought for this, because I said to some another host that we need another category in book sales, like whether it’s Amazon or going to an old fashioned bookstore, those like business books and self help. Like we need a third category, because those two things should not be separate, honestly. I mean, entrepreneurship and being in business, is the journey of personal development. It is self help, like, there’s no way I wouldn’t be who I am today if it wasn’t for the journey of entrepreneurship, right? Because you’re out there in the world. I mean, nothing can challenge us more to push ourselves to get out of  our box or get out of our comfort zone. Nothing pushes us more important since on a limb more than being an entrepreneur. So it is the journey of personal development. So I’m eager for there to be a third category someday. But at the end of the day Lingo is a business book, what’s interesting about it, is that the whole, like the last third, two thirds of the book are business strategies, marketing and branding strategies. But the last third, one could definitely categorize it as self help. Because the point I make is like, hey, I’ve given you all these great strategies, I’ve given you these specific action steps on how to attract your ideal customers. And now, here’s the thing, and I kind of say this in the book, if you don’t change your mindset, your daily practices, all that hard work you’re putting in will have results but at the same time, it’s also what keeps people on the proverbial hamster wheel, right? Because you just keep applying more hours more effort, but until you unblock what’s in your way mentally, and until you have daily practices that create the positive flow that you want, you’re just going to keep applying more effort, but not really getting ahead. So the last part of the book on one of the things in that mindset, which is what made me think of this is one of the things I challenge people to look at is, what are their views of others. And I think this is so important in a world of social media, because, so many of us, we want to be successful, we want to be rich, we want success in our lives. And yet, when we see other people having that success, it causes anks for us, or we secretly hold the negative opinions. I know you, okay, I have ever worked with very affluent people, I heard all the negative stereotypes growing up about rich people none of which are true. You worked in Greenwich, I don’t know what your experience there was. But I’ve worked there for, you know, when working with affluent people for 33 years, and I will tell you, none of the stereotypes are true, their kids are not raised by nannies, their parents are so involved in their lives. They’re huge contributors to their towns and their communities. So to me, you know, you have to also look at what is your mindset and your viewpoint of that which you want to become. And I think social media plays a big part in this, we need to not let it cause us anxiety, we need to also not believe that it’s all true. And just say, hey, if it’s true for that person, good for them, because there’s more than enough to go around, I can achieve that too. And then just move on.

Kim Sutton: Jeffrey, I went through Amy Porterfield webinars that convert program, I have to say, I never created my webinar. As a result, I actually got more clients out of the program. So I never had a time. But one of the things that she talks about is, when you’re on a webinar, and introducing yourself, it’s so important to connect. And even telling the struggles that you’ve been through, just say that you can relate and that the people who are on your webinar have that connection with you. Because chances are the connection, if you’re sharing all your successes, just like you were just saying, they’re going to be envious, they’re gonna want to know how they can do it. But when you share that you were at that point once, and you understand what they’re going through, that gives the connection and it makes you more real and that’s actually us transition and how positive productivity came to be as well, because I realized I needed to stop trying to be more than I was, and just be real about who I am. And but I do have to share Jeffrey, amusingly, one of the biggest interactions that I had while I was in Greenwich was actually with a family who had a nanny for each of their kids. And I was sitting at a meeting one day where it was a married couple, the woman called one of her nannies and said, Hey, I was just walking by such and such a department store, I want you to go and buy the whole window. But there’s definitely, I mean, as we already discussed earlier, in this episode, there are the very affluent who are not like that and are still relatable, and are just incredible people.

Jeffrey Shaw: I want to play with that. Because the key is that that would not be my ideal customer. They would not have called a family photographer, right? I always said, I think I had one of the most naive viewpoints of the world, because people whose marriage is falling apart, if the home isn’t in harmony, and the family isn’t happy, they don’t call a family photographer to record it. So my ideal customer are actually those customers that whose family is their priority. So I’m not saying it doesn’t exist. But for what I did, and how I market myself and my brand, my brand was built around really a deep understanding of my clients, why I’ve had the same clients. I mean, right now, I only photograph past clients. I don’t even market myself. I don’t even take on new clients. I only work now with clients that I’ve many of them photographing every year for 30 years. And they stay with me because I have such a deep, deep understanding of them. So to your point, I’m not saying it doesn’t exist in the world, but they’re not my ideal client, they might do customer and that’s the point of Lingo. And, you know, let’s talk from about the name Lingo, like why came up with that. To understand every– well, in a practical sense, and what my discovery was, and to your point, I start Lingo off with a couple of stories that are very vulnerable. I mean, there’s things in there that I’ve not shared before as to how, you know, hey, the reason I even came up with this idea of speaking your customers secret language was because I had a failing business. I struggled for three years. I was failing miserably and realize I was trying to, I wasn’t aligned with the, it was my hometown, I was trying to start my business and I wasn’t aligned with the values of that hometown, even though it’s what I came from. I didn’t share the values. I was trying to sell the values of, you know, you needed to have portraits to hand down from generation to generation. And I’m trying to promote that value in a town that’s struggling to make the rent that month. So they’re not thinking long term, they didn’t value what I did. So that’s why I needed to find a clientele which happened to be the luxury market that had the money to value long term planning. But the bottom line is I was failing as a business. And what I came to realize is that there’s a way of connecting with people what I ultimately call their lingo. Like what’s inside somebody’s heart? What’s their essence? Because my big dream for lingo is that it becomes the new buzzword and marketing. The buzzwords in marketing for years now have been avatars and buyer personas. You know very and I’ve always been kind of fascinated by how all marketing words are like really negative, like it’s target markets and you know, marketing funnel, we’re gonna squeeze them through a small hole.

Kim Sutton: Hustle grind. Yeah

Jeffrey Shaw: Yeah. Very attacking type of words and they don’t work for me. And I don’t even use the word marketing our business, we refer to it as enrolling, like, what do we need to do to enroll people towards us, to invite people into our world, so we’re not marketing at them? We’re inviting people towards us, different shift in mentality. But this idea of Lingo and the reason why I want to get that message out there, I want to get people away from thinking about buyer personas and avatars which is so surface level, at best, it’s knowing people’s demographics, and maybe their behavior. But I think what’s more important for entrepreneurs and small businesses, do you know what’s in your ideal customers heart? Do you know what they’re thinking? Do you knowwhat they’re feeling? Do you understand their lifestyles? It’s step number one, and the five steps that I offer in creating the secret language strategy. The first step is perspective. Like with empathy, without judgment, it’s truly understanding someone’s perspective, how their life looks like from their perspective without judgment, you know, can you have empathy for that? Right, so that you can understand what you need to say, do what does your business and brand need to look like? What message do you need to speak? What’s their secret language, so that you’re actually speaking what’s on their inside. So you know more about them. I actually think this is going to be a requirement moving forward in business. I don’t think consumers will continue to tolerate surface level transactional relationships like, hey, great, you know, my demographics, you might know what websites I visited. So you’re targeting your ads at me, but you don’t know what I’m thinking you don’t know what I’m feeling. And until you figure that out, you don’t get my money.

Kim Sutton: Wow.

Jeffrey Shaw: And I think that’s fair. I think it’s fair. I think it’s very fair for consumers to demand that we know them, we get them before we earn their money.

Kim Sutton: Jeffrey, I am in the process. And this is not meant to be promotional. However, it’s going to come across that way. I’m actually in the process of launching my group coaching program, the Positive Productivity Pod. And when I was going through my launch, I had a set price for it monthly price. And, hey, I’m totally transparent on the show listeners, you know that, I didn’t sell any. So I was talking to somebody, I didn’t sell any memberships. And I was talking to somebody and he asked me, well, who’s your ideal client? And I knew who it was, but I hadn’t really thought that deeply about it. And I said, Well, it was me two years ago. And he says, Well, tell me more about that person. And I said, Well, they’re not sleeping. They are working more than they should. They don’t have any money. And at the time of this recording, listeners, were approaching the holiday season. I was like, they don’t know how they’re going to buy Christmas presents. They don’t know if they’re going to have Christmas. He said, so do they even have $97 to spend on your product right now. They might understand the value but are they willing to part with that right now if it means no Christmas? And I said, Wow, you’re right. I don’t want to give away my products for free. Nobody should have to give away their products for free. But by totally getting inside, I got a better understanding of their lingo. He’s like, so how long is it going to take for you to make a transformation for them? And I gave him a time period. And he said, Well, how about giving them a promotion $1 for the first 30 days. They can get in, they can try it out, they can kick the wheels, and then you turn to the monthly rate. Or I’ll give you an alternative, and not that that’s a bad strategy. You know, actually one of the five steps of building the secret language strategy, one of them is pricing. So actually talk a lot about pricing psychology, because it’s so powerful. But here’s the thing about pricing, people tend to think that pricing repels. Actually, pricing psychology done right, actually attracts, because pricing creates perception. I mean, you can give anybody, you know, we all had the experience where we won’t buy something because it’s so cheap. We think it’s not good enough, right? So pricing creates an immediate perception. My thought is without even having changed, you know, again, the $1 strategy is not a bad idea. But I like to always up the game, it’s what I love about entrepreneurship is I love the challenge, like, okay, the world is demanding more of me, which is what I love about this whole idea of lingo. Like I feel like the world is demanding that we know more of people than their demographics. So hey, let’s rise up to that. I always like to look at the challenge. If you kept the price the same? What would you need to do to get them over the fence? And what would get them over the fence are emotional triggers. You can’t get people over the fence of their own hurdles, through logic. You have to really get deep into their heart. My belief is that you probably could have maybe gotten them over the fence if you spoke to their heart more. So one of the strategies that I teach in lingo is what I call, it’s the most powerful thing, Kim and marketing I’ve ever come across, I call self identifying questions. Because you were your ideal customer two years ago and because you did the work to understand what’s in their heart, and you have a willingness to speak their lingo, my suggestion would be in marketing that program, you would pose questions, which your ideal customer would say, wow, that’s me. So you might say something like, Are you stressed, working really hard and still wondering whether you can afford Christmas presents? You know, something I’ll so often if I’m promoting something, a coaching program or something, I might say, Are you tired of working really hard, but hardly getting ahead? Because I’ll help I help people get more strategic and open up those mindsets. If I want to reach some high achievers in business, I might say something like, have you already reached a really high level in your business but you know there’s another level for you. Someone else I’ve coached, she is a what I refer to as a matchmaker for virtual assistants, right? So she finds the perfect virtual assistant for a business. And one of the things I’d said to her, I said, Man, what would be really powerful to me, you don’t want to run a billboard or an ad that says, You know, I can help you find a virtual assistant, what would be far more powerful is to have placed an ad that says, Are you overwhelmed and I want to get your life back? Because anybody that’s feeling that would be like, Oh, my gosh, that’s me, this person gets me. The solution to that is, Hey, I can help you find a virtual assistant. But I can help you find a virtual assistant isn’t interesting. It’s not appealing. And many people may not even know what that is or how that’s going to help me. But when you pose the question, Are you overwhelmed and want to get your life back? If that’s you, you’ll be like, Yes, tell me more. So, you know, again, self identifying questions, I think it’s the most powerful marketing tool because it’s your responsibility to figure out what’s in someone’s heart, what’s in your heart, the essence of your ideal customer, and then posing the question that addresses that thing that’s most heavy on their mind.

Kim Sutton: Wow. You just rewrote my sales page.

Jeffrey Shaw: Yeah, I mean, that’s, that’s exactly what it is. I mean, that’s a, you would use that in a landing page, sales page. Another client of mine who’s a photographer, she specializes in newborn photographs. Truth matters, she’s a fabulous photographer, continually voted number one in the city of Boston, I mean, considered always voted number one child photographer in Boston. And you know, honestly, she tended to promote herself that way, higher the number one photog child photographer in Boston. And I didn’t see it as compelling and she specialized in newborns. So what I’d suggested to her, which is far more powerful, because, you know, as a parent myself, I understand what those– when you photograph a newborn, you’re looking at the first two weeks after birth, that’s the sweet spot. So what I had suggested she posed as a self identifying question is, has your world stops yet time is going so quickly? Because that’s exactly you had children. Isn’t that exactly what it felt like after you had a baby like your world stopped? Like, you know, nothing’s more one. So my gosh, you know, this baby, it’s a miracle, your world has stopped. And yet, there’s that cliche. Wow, this is gonna go by so quickly. I better preserve it with photographs.

Kim Sutton: Yeah. And I got to share. I mean, when I had my twins, if I had seen your babies photographed by the city’s top photographer, the first thing that would have come through my brain is that’s gonna cost a lot. And I have a lot of diapers to pay, or to buy.

Jeffrey Shaw: Exactly. Yeah. Exactly. So I had said to her, I said, you know, it’s probably a lot of people are probably thinking, Oh, she’s the best I can’t afford her. And at the end of the day, it doesn’t matter, you know. So again, if they’re staying on the other side of the fence, they’re not getting over the fence, the emotions. The whole idea of– I’ll give you a little background. The entire concept of Lingo as a book actually started a few years ago when I wrote an E book, which is a free ebook. And I gave some webinars, and I give some speeches around it. And it was called Emotional Branding Blueprint, because I realized that the way I had always built my businesses and helped my coaching clients build your businesses was through emotional triggers. It happens to be something I’m really good at. I was at a cocktail party once and we weren’t on the table. Everybody named their superpower and I named my superpower is empathy. It’s something I’ve always felt. I’ve really had a very high level of like sensing and feeling what people are experiencing. So what has always been my most effective way of marketing and building businesses has been speaking to people’s emotions and having those emotional triggers. So I created this ebook called the Emotional Branding Blueprint, which was about how to speak to people’s emotional triggers. And then that developed years later into what I’m now calling Lingo, like just you know, knowing knowing a cultures lingo, the culture of your business and your ideal customer. You guys share a lingo just, like teenagers share a lingo right? Teenagers intentionally share a lingo that they don’t want their parents to understand. You have twins. I don’t know if you experienced this, but a lot of parents have twins, like twins will communicate with each other like they create their own Lingo? That’s how they relate.

 Kim Sutton: Yeah. My husband’s constantly saying to me, do you understand what there’s? But then on the flip side of the three year old twins, we also have teenagers, we have a 12 year old, 15 year old, an 18 year old. So we’re getting attacked by lingo, child wise, from multiple sides. No, I totally get it. That’s incredible.

 Jeffrey Shaw: Yeah. And what you had said before is really critical that we’re rare not always exactly in the same place our ideal customers is a really good chance what we’re doing in the world is solving a problem for our ideal customer that we encounter two years ago, five years ago, 10 years ago. We’re almost always offering something to the world that we would love to prevent other people from having to encounter. So we’re not exactly in the same place as our ideal customer but we have the empathy because we have the experience and as it’s tapping into, what did it feel like for me. One of the things I do with my coaching clients is I make them journal their experience from the moment we start working together, because our growth together is going to be so significant that six months of working together, they’re not going to remember that really difficult emotional state they were in for which they’re going to need that so they can relate and speak the lingo of the people they can serve.

 Kim Sutton: I’ve seen a lot of people asking, you know, what should I be doing? You know, I know what I do. And lately, it’s been just surrounding me, either by podcasts, or the books that I’m reading, or even my own thoughts, but hey, we’re inspired everywhere. It’s not necessarily what we’re doing but it’s what we’ve done. So I love that you brought up experience. I mean, sometimes the biggest value that we can offer clients, whether now or in the future is based on our experience, life experience. It doesn’t have to be some glamorous, whatever is a hot, marketable service on, you know, the hitting social media right now. But we can offer so much value just offering our experiences and our experience in life lessons to other people. Jeffrey, have you had a moment in your life that caused a big mind shift change for you?

 Jeffrey Shaw: Oh, my gosh! So many of them. You know, actually, I heard an article for Huffington Post a few years ago, life can turn on a dime. And I wrote that because it’s a cliche phrase, but what I’ve learned in the, especially I think, as we’ve become certain age of maturity, you know, that literally, our lives can change on a dime. Like we can have a change of mind, a mindset shift that we suddenly can look at the whole world differently. And I think one of the most powerful ones for me was, I was at a coaching group in LA and mind you, I had actually, what inspired me to go to this event was, I literally decided the night before, because I had received a rejection letter for a speaking engagement that I had been told I had in the bag. I felt I deserved, I felt that I was I had it as a shoo in and then suddenly got the letter that I wasn’t chosen as a speaker. And it just hit the final straw for me. It just hit every every emotional pain point of my life, of not being chosen, and being the last one to be chosen. And it brought up so much emotional stuff for me that I knew of this event taking place in LA and last minute decision, I decided I’m going to go, I need something so I went. And while we were there, the facilitator, the coach facilitator brought up this idea of playing a game, and apparently audibly grunted, and he’s like, well, what’s that all about? I said, I hate games. Like, I just hate games, because somebody’s going to win and somebody is going to lose. You know, I’m a competitive person but I’m competitive with myself. I’ve never enjoyed, I don’t play sports, I’ve never enjoyed, you know, hey, I admired those that do but you know, somebody wins and somebody loses. Like where’s the sport where both people win? Like, I like that. I love personal challenge sports. And so kind of long story short of this story is that through a series of exercises, I realized and this was a huge mindset shift for me that I realized that it wasn’t that I was always the last one chosen in life is that because I hated the game. I hated the win lose game. I stood last in line. Like I literally always I made sure I stood back. I mean, it brought up memories of grade school when they were pulling together the kickball team, and I would slowly escaped to the back of the line because I didn’t want to play the game, right? But here’s the thing. And this is my mindset shift. You can’t go around whining that you’re the last one chosen. You’re the last one in line, if in fact, you’re putting yourself last in line. That was an immediate mindset shift for me that I came out of that event, I contacted the organizers of the speaking group and said, You know, I just don’t accept that I wasn’t chosen. Let’s talk about this further. And you know what, I got the event. It was a national speaking engagement. Because I decided to finally to stand up for myself. I finally put myself in the front of the line and said, I don’t agree with this decision. I have the experience. I said something’s off here. And I put myself first. I put myself on the front of the line and I was chosen. And that’s still an ongoing struggle for me. I still tend to be the type of person very often to hide in the back of the line and then complain that I’m not seen. And for me, it’s a daily reminder. It’s like no, put yourself first, get yourself out there, be visible. And here’s the thing, Kim, it’s not about visibility, my ego doesn’t need the stroking, honestly, not that I have a huge ego, but it’s like I’m confident enough, I’m confident in who I am, I’m confident in my abilities, that doesn’t need stroking. I just want the visibility so I can do the work. I want the visibility so I can have the impact. I want the visibility so I can help others. That’s why I’m here. That’s why I wrote a book. It’s like this is about impact. So standing in the back of a line wasn’t helping me serve anybody. It wasn’t helping me serve myself and that’s my daily reminder. It’s like no, take your place in the front of the line and demand to be seen so that I can have the impact that I want to have.

 Kim Sutton: What you just said, I want to take the whole thing and put it on my website, because that’s exactly how I feel my ego doesn’t need a stroking. But I know I have a greater purpose. And if I’m not putting myself out there, then I’m not serving the people who really need the messages that I have to share.

 Jeffrey Shaw: Exactly. Yep. 100% We can tell those that are ego driven, right, and we stay away from them. But you know, one of the things I spoke about often with my clients that I coach and if they’re struggling with sales, which a lot of people do, you know, and again, this is largely lingo is an energetic feeling. You know, it’s when you get someone, it creates an energetic connection that goes beyond words. That’s the irony of it. I wrote a book called Lingo, but it’s actually about what you wind up by speaking someone’s lingo, you end up creating something that’s deeply profound that’s unspoken. And something I help people with sales is that instead of showing up sales or you’re showing up committed, because it’s very different. Like when you’re coming from a place of authenticity and service, and really desire of impact, you can actually be quite forward and the energy you’re creating is one that you’re fully committed to that person’s well being. And it doesn’t feel salesy, because we know what salesy feels like, right? We know when somebody feels salesy to us out, creeps us out, and we back away. And yet somebody else that can show up fully committed, saying, No, you need to hire me, you need to buy this product. And there’s a way of doing it that comes from such a place of authenticity, because you get that person, and you totally are committed to being able to serve them, you actually have a greater latitude to be a little more aggressive if you will, because it won’t feel that way. I mean, that’s partly again, when a practical standpoint is how I built my photography business. I understood my photography clients, deepest needs I understood that as parents, it was incredibly important to them to be responsible, and to be responsible equally to all their kids. Because when you have money, you can’t send to the kids to an Ivy League school and one of the kids to community college. Like when you have money, you have to treat your kids equally. And that’s a big burden for parents so much so that as their photographer, they knew they didn’t have to worry about any of their kids having more photographs of the other than the other kids. I knew the actual account in the home like every one of your children has an equal number of photographs on display. Every one of your children have been photographed at the same ages. So I would call them and say you know what we photographed Susie when she was five it’s time to photograph Johnny. He’s turning five next month. I was speaking their lingo. They didn’t have to ask, I just so understood what was important to them and their values. And you know, my clients paid me 10s of 1000s of dollars. So that simple phone call or email to say, Hey, we need to photograph you know, Johnny, resulting in a tremendous amount of income for me, but it never felt salesy to them. It felt committed. It felt like I was committed to their well being. It never felt like I was making a sales call.

 Kim Sutton: I am over here laughing because Jeffrey, I have 10 frames on my wall that had been empty for the four years that we’ve lived here. Because with six kids in these 10 frames, I was trying to figure out how to get them all an equal amount of pictures. So I’ve just left them all empty.

 Jeffrey Shaw: Well, it’s equal.

 Kim Sutton: Yeah, it is equal was zero. Jeffrey, this has been an incredible conversation. I want to thank you for all the value bombs that you’ve dropped. Listeners, you can go to thekimsutton.com/pp254 to tweet out any and all because there’s going to be a ton of tweetable in this chat. Jeffrey, I know you had a gift that you wanted to share with the audience. Would you mind sharing that?

 Jeffrey Shaw: Sure. And we’ve put together specifically for your your community, and it’s called the Lingo media kit. They can get it at Jeffreyshaw.com/positive makes sense, right? And inside the lingo media kit, there is a visual and infographic of the five steps of building the secret language strategy, and I love visuals and I think it’s important to have them so it’s a really easy way to take a look at Hey, what are the five strategies, the five steps that I need to speak the secret language of my ideal customer so that’s the secret language infographic. There’s a free chapter of the book, which is the chapter on Perspective, which I think ii’s the most important. It’s foundational to the entire book. And we also include an audio version of the free chapter, which, you know, as a fellow podcaster came, I know you’ll appreciate. It’s totally fun. It’s not your normal audio version, like those sound effects. And I’ve added more stories that I don’t tell in the book and totally fun, so the auto versions is a kicks all that’s together in the lingo media kit. Again, JeffreyShaw.com/positive.

 Kim Sutton: Awesome. Thank you so much. Jeffrey, where can listeners connect with you online?

 Jeffrey Shaw: Yeah. JeffreyShaw.com is you know, obviously if you get it, start with the media kit, the lingo media kit, because if you find me there, and you get a taste of what I do, and that’s kind of my thing, Kim is, I don’t go around giving out my website a lot. I try to give something that represents who I am, so that if you like it, and you get it, you’re more likely to buy my ideal customer. I don’t drive just all traffic to do what I do, that’s the whole point. I’m looking to call forward my ideal customers. So hey, if you feel like you get me and I’ve spoken your language at all, get the lingo media kit, because if you have that my contact information is all over and all my social media and I’m crazy on social media. I’m all over the place. So start with the lingo media kit. And if you like it, and you feel like you get me and I’m going to get you reach out.

 Kim Sutton: Awesome. Jeffrey, do you have a golden nugget that you can offer to listeners?

 Jeffrey Shaw: Yeah. I think my golden nugget is to not go through your life trying to prove yourself. That’s one of the greatest advantages of working with your ideal customer is they already get you they already value what you do and it is life changing. In life and business to realize that if you work with the right people, your ideal customers, you don’t have to prove yourself. You don’t have to you’re already working with people who like who you are. When when I start working, I do a lot of coaching around lingo coaching, and we start with well, who is your ideal customer? Defining who your ideal customer is actually begins with defining who you are. What are your values? Who do you want to be in the world? What do you stand for, and then building a brand where who you are and what you’re doing what you have to offer is highly recognizable to your ideal customer, so that you end up working only with your ideal customers. When you work with your ideal customers, you don’t have to go through your life proving yourself, they already like who you are, they already value what they do, they already want what you have to offer. It’s an easier way to live. It is highly productive.