podcast

The reason experienced business owners sound confusing online has nothing to do with how smart they are. It's because they assume everyone else knows what they know. And if you want to know how to simplify your message so it actually lands, this is the post for you.

I see this all the time. You've been in your industry for 10, 15, 20 years. You know your stuff cold. You sit down to make content, and you skip the basics. You drop the lingo. You explain things the way you'd explain them to a colleague. And the person watching, the one you actually want as a client, has no clue what you're on about.

The truth is, your audience isn't your colleague. They're scrolling. They're tired. They've got about 12 seconds to figure out whether you're worth following. And right now, the technical jargon is making it impossible for them to tell.

In this post, I'm walking you through the four ways you're accidentally confusing the people you most want to work with. And how learning to simplify your message is going to be the boldest move you make in your business this year.

You've forgotten what it was like before you knew

This is the curse of knowledge. It just means you've been in your industry so long you can't remember not knowing the basics. So you skip them. You use the acronyms. You drop the frameworks.

If you've come out of corporate, things like SLAs, KPIs, EBITDA all roll off your tongue. In the right room, everyone gets it. But in front of a client who's trying to learn something new? It's the biggest turnoff.

I often say to my clients, “Speak to me like I'm a 15-year-old. How would you explain that to me in the most basic way?” Because if your audience can't follow it, they assume it's not for them. And the worst part is, most of the time we don't even realise we're doing it.

This is why the research piece matters so much. Inside Amplify, we do deep work on voice of the customer. What are people saying before they come to you? What are they saying while they're working with you? What are they saying after? Because you can't speak their language if you don't know what it is.

Someone once said, “If you can't explain something simply, you don't understand it well enough.” That's the standard. Get into your audience's headspace. Use their words. And remember, you can always go more complex once they're in the room. But on social, you've got to keep it simple.

You're trying to say everything at once

I call this firehosing. It's when you try to cram everything you know about a topic into one piece of content. One reel. One post. One email. You've got 20 years of value and you're trying to give it all away in 90 seconds.

The platform matters here. If you're on YouTube or a podcast or writing a Substack, go deep. People came for the long form. They can pause, replay, come back. But if you're making 30, 60, 90 second content, you don't get to share the kitchen sink. You get one idea. One concept. One answer to one question.

This is why a content bank of client questions is one of the most useful things you can build. I coach clients under $100k in Brand Builders Academy and clients over $100k to $250k inside Amplify. I take the questions they ask me on calls and put them into my content bank. So I always know exactly what my dream client wants to know.

A quick tip on that, I drop my coaching call transcripts into Claude inside my client project and get it to pull out the questions, then push them straight into my content library in Notion. That's how you get [If you want to learn how to use AI in your content workflow] to do the heavy lifting.

The other piece is having a method. Every coach, consultant or expert I work with has a step by step process they take clients through. When you brand your content through your method, your audience gets to know your framework. They start associating you with the way you do things. That's how authority gets built.

You're hiding behind big words

This is the jargon trap. We use the fancy terms to sound like an expert. The acronyms. The industry language. The phrases only insiders understand. It feels smart. It actually makes you harder to choose.

The clients you want, the experienced women running real businesses, aren't impressed by jargon. They've seen it for 20 years. What they want is someone who can cut through the noise and tell them the truth in plain words. As a result, every time you reach for a big word instead of a simple one, you're blending in instead of standing out.

This is also where defining your terms matters. When I talk about branding, someone might think I mean photography or a logo. But I'm talking about the emotional connection you create with your audience. When I talk about personal branding, I mean your reputation in the market and what you're known for. Defining what you mean makes you more memorable and easier to follow.

When you strip the jargon back, you open the door to the dream clients who really need your help. They feel seen. They feel safe to ask questions. Because if your content feels too complex to engage with, no one's going to slide into your DMs. Approachability is a strategy.

You're skipping the start of the story

This one's a trap I have to remind myself about too. You launch into a post like everyone watching has been following you for months. They know your story. They know your offers. They know your frameworks. They don't.

Most people watching are meeting you for the first time on a random Tuesday while they're making coffee. Therefore, every piece of content needs to be able to stand on its own. Re-introduce yourself. Re-anchor your big idea. Re-explain what you do.

When you assume people already know, you're making content for the insiders. And the insiders are already in your world. Your growth comes from the new eyeballs, the new audience, the new community. So bring the start of the story back. Tell people who you are, what you believe, who you help. Every. Single. Time.

It might feel repetitive to you. It's brand new to half the people watching. And that's exactly how you become known for one clear thing.

Simplifying your message is the strategy

If you're nodding through all of this, this is exactly what we work on with experienced business owners inside Amplify. We simplify your expertise so you can grow your business and brand and attract more of the clients you actually want.

The women I work with aren't short on expertise. They're short on translation. And the second we fix that, everything starts to flow. The content lands. The engagement comes back. The right people start sliding into the DMs.

If you're ready to do the work properly, come and join us inside Amplify.