Have a personality, for godsake.

If you saw your brand from across the room, would you buy yourself a drink?

If you met your marketing at a party, would the conversation be interesting?

If answering those makes you feel uncomfortable, then your brand doesn’t have a personality that sets you apart or pulls people in.

Businesses trying to be attractive to customers are often unattractive to humans.

Our growth goals almost always require us to improve customer acquisition and relationship metrics. And customer growth always require that we build real relationships with real people.

Put differently, our growth is only as strong as the relationships we form and build with our customers. But we typically don’t market ourselves so real-deal people can like and trust us enough to want to work with us.

Without meaning to, we give off boring and confusing vibes.

To outsiders, our businesses comes across like this, albeit unintentionally.

Every sale has a human behind it. Being human helps us sell.

When humans have a need and look for someone to a partner with, they want to feel like they can know who they’re dealing with.

It’s simple, but it is how change and decisions will always happen. It’s how we’re wired. 

We know that engaging, interesting, memorable people are attractive because they have personality, show interest in others, and have enthusiasm for things they care about. 

When a business comes through as genuinely helpful and human at the first and foundational touch-points, then people will naturally want to engage with us and believe what we say.

Remember, your customers have problems they want to fix — that you help them with! You meet a real need in their life. They want like you, be seen by you, and have a reason to let you in and make their life better. 

No one feels trust when we feel like we’re being fed a line or sold to. Yet most of the marketing language we use to connect with customers feels salesly and vapid.

We like people when we like their personality. If we don’t like someone’s personality, it’s hard to like them.

Feeling even a little manipulated will stop most intelligent people from feeling real connection and warmth toward something. We cannot take the next step with someone when our subconscious doesn’t quite trust them. But we often market in manipulating or pandering ways.

People who need a partner for their problems must believe in someone enough to take that leap of faith with them. We need to feel trust at the gut-level to let ourselves step forward and allow someone new help us in their lives. 

Customers need to feel that gut-yes to take the next step. The gut-yes is how we take a risk on something new or invest in a new relationship. 

• When we stop selling ourselves, we leave room for people to get what we’re actually about.

• When we stop trying to play it cool, we leave room for people to see the enthusiasm we have for what we do.

• When we stop trying to prove we know it all, we can show interest and empathy for the people who need to know we care. 

No matter what you do as a business, you can have a personality that people can connect to, shows enthusiasm for what you do, and that provides an interesting point of view on what matters to your work.

If you’re a good partner and have a real personality, then the people you want to partner with will naturally be attracted to that. 

If you are able to attract the right people, right from the start, everything in your business gets easier and simpler. 

When people get you and say yes faster, you don’t need so much tech, so many touch points — so much BS — to improve and grow.

Develop a brand with a personality. Intentionally be enthusiastic, interesting and helpful to people.

You’ll notice a difference in how people engage with you.