Hey {{first_name | there}},

A client recently came to me with a messaging issue. She was updating the structure and cadence of her group program and was struggling to articulate the impact of the program and the logistics of how it worked.

“Who are your buyers?” I asked.

She was a bit resistant to talking about her audience, because, after all, she paid me to help her with messaging, dang it! I explained that the two are deeply interconnected, and she responded, “This is like pulling a thread on a sweater… I’m worried the whole thing is going to unravel.”

It might! And that’s one of the reasons any shift in your business feels uncomfortable.

Because once you start to pull the thread, you can’t simply Ctrl-Z your way back. You’ve got to commit to pulling the thread and thus unravel the whole thing to create something new, or you can mend the loose thread and call it a day.

In this week’s issue of Brand Burnout, I’m talking about the threads you may be itching to pull, and how they impact the rest of your business.

My clients are experienced service providers building toward more stable, predictable businesses. The work has gotten more complex, the clients they want have gotten more sophisticated, and the audience they've been speaking to feels like a mismatch.

When that happens, they usually start by pulling one of three threads: pricing, offer, or audience. And pulling any one of them starts to create instability in the others.

First, I need you to sit with the fact that some of your existing audience is not going to come with you. Moving toward something new means moving away from something else. That’s kind of the point.

The question you’ve got to ask before pulling the pricing thread is this: Does my offer support a new rate? A price change will only work if it does. Sometimes, you’re just catching up with the market (Hell yes, you deserve a raise!). But if you’re raising your prices because you want a different client, ask whether the offer has evolved to reflect that. Does it solve a problem that your new client actually has? And is the way you’re talking about the problem the offer solves resonating with them (or reaching them!) at all?

TL;DR: Price is almost always connected to other threads. Pulling it without being attuned to what it’s connected to will create some big holes in your beautiful business sweater.

Changing your offer may add simplicity to your business, but it creates significant complexity in the work ahead. Once you start to pull the offer thread, you’ll want to futz with the price thread (and in turn, the audience thread), because a restructured offer rarely fits the old number. And then come the systems—how you deliver the thing is going to change, and you’ve got to know what happens to your own capacity within the offer itself. And now we’re back at the price thread, adjusting for this capacity shift!.

Whew! Unravelling is a lot of work!

Messaging comes next—shout out to my client who just wanted to answer this one “simple” question! The language you’ve been using might not demonstrate the value of your work. It may not resonate with the clients who will actually buy this offer. And about those tactics you’re using to find those clients…are they even reaching the right people?

TL;DR: Changing the way you work will always have bigger consequences. You might look up after pulling the offer thread and think, “Why does this sweater have 3 arms?!”

If you want to pull the audience thread, be prepared to knit something new! Shifting who you serve means everything moves with it.

Positioning comes first: Working with a different person likely means solving a new or more specific problem, and the frame for your work has to change entirely. Messaging will follow, because the language that resonated with your old audience is probably not the language that will resonate with the new one. Of course, tactics will shift too, since your old audience lives somewhere different than the new one. And depending on what the new audience actually needs, offer and price will probably shift as well.

TL;DR: If you’re changing your audience, you’re changing your business. And you’ve got to get really clear on your audience. Because, as one commenter on a recent LinkedIn post of mine shared, “Anything else is just narcissism.”

The problem with pulling any thread on the beautiful sweater that is your business is that most people love to pick and pull, but ignore the root cause of the blemish in the first place.

If you know you snagged your sweater on a cabinet knob while reaching for a jar on a high shelf, you know exactly what thread to pull and are likely to mend it and move on pretty quickly. But if you’ve got moths in your closet…that’s a different story. You pull the thread, mend the hole, hang the sweater back up, and three weeks later, there’s another hole.

Pulling the symptom thread does the same thing. You increase your rates to $10k, and nothing sells. You update the offer, and your audience stares back with confusion on their faces. The change doesn’t take because there’s a bigger issue lingering in your closet.

So before you pull that thread, ask yourself—what really happened here?

Sometimes you pull the thread and create unintended consequences…but you might not hate what you find. You just hate that it was a sweater to begin with.

The client I mentioned earlier did, in fact, pull the thread on her group program and realized the problem wasn’t messaging—it was the model. The work it took to sell was the part of her business she liked the least. One thread and the whole thing unraveled. But what's coming out on the other side is a completely different structure—let’s call it a blanket!—made with the same yarn.

That’s the gift of pulling the thread: you don’t just get a new sweater, you get to decide what you’re making.

Thanks for reading,

I’ve got 4 spots for Calibration Sessions in July! These one-hour, structured strategy session designed to align your (limited!) energy with your best opportunities.

My books are currently open for brand-led strategic advisory engagements. These engagements help you identify the true leverage points in your business while turning abstract ideas into a plan of action.