You ARE The Strategy

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Welcome to Write This Down with Maddie Bird Cage.
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As a global marketing advisory founder, a business educator and psychology-informed strategist with a full family life and an addiction to luxury travel, I'm here to let you into the inner working of my businesses, my family life, and my mind to show you how to live the good life.
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Each episode, I promise to give you practical takeaways you can take action on right away to get you closer to being that calmed, growth-focused CEO in control of your business, your marketing, and your life.
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So make sure you write this down.
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Welcome back to Write This Down.
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And today I want to talk to you about something that every marketing coach should be telling you, but they won't because it's bad for business.
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So here it is: there is no magic marketing strategy.
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There never was.
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There's just you as the founder, the reason why you started to build your business, and the secret source that no one else has but you.
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And this can be a tough pill to swallow because, especially if you've been in business for a number of years, the reason why you're not where you want to be is because you have failed to honor yourself as the strategy.
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You've been looking for answers in the wrong places, outsourcing your authority, outsourcing your secret source.
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And I know this because I have done it in the past as well.
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The answer is not outside of you, the answer is within you.
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And if you're listening to me, it's clear that you are so beyond the five hooks you need for Instagram, or this is the latest TikTok update, or this is the one ad strategy that's going to solve all your fucking problems.
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You are smarter than that.
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You are beyond that, and you know that that isn't the answer.
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And it tells me everything I need to know about where you are at right now in your business and the type of founder that you are.
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You already know it's not a tactics or a platform issue because you would have figured that out by now.
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You are clever enough to have already figured that out three courses ago.
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Walk you through the exact steps of figuring out what your secret source is as the founder and how you can inject that into everything you do in your business, in your marketing.
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And of course, if you want to go deeper with this work, I will show you the three solutions we have created at Bird Cage that meets you where you are right now, whether you're brand new, whether you've been in business for years and it's just not where you want to be, or whether you're that creator that has an audience, but you're not getting paid what you should be.
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I've been in business for 11 years, been marketing for almost 20 symptoms that I see of the types of clients and students that we work with.
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So you'll possibly identify with at least one of these, or usually multiple.
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You've probably taken multiple marketing courses.
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They have promised you the world, testimonials and that other people have achieved great results, the success that you want to achieve.
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And yet when you've taken that course, they end up as resources and files on your Google Drive, or you get in there and you're like, this is nothing new.
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I have learned all of this before.
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The same shit that you get in other programs.
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Now, why aren't these courses working for you when they're working for other people?
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Most testimonials from courses are like 1% of their actual students.
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And they just pedal that over and over and over.
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But number two, you want something more.
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You want something deeper than just going viral on Instagram or even building a big email list.
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You want people to actually purchase from your business.
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You want to scale your business meaningfully.
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But number two, you actually want impact.
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You actually want people to get results from working with you, satisfied with the products that you're selling.
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And superficial marketing leads to superficial audiences, leads to superficial results.
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And that's not good enough for you.
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So then you get frustrated, stop the course, and move on.
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Fair enough.
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Okay, the second symptom.
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Every Sunday, you write yourself a list of all the things that you're going to achieve, all the content that you're going to film in your AI, and it's spat out a heap of great content ideas that on the surface, sure, they look fine.
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But when it comes time to actually sit down and film that content, it feels empty.
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It feels meaningless.
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Just the same old superficial garble, the AI slop, that the intelligence that you have, the passion that you have, the drive and the knowledge that you have, it is not you.
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And so by Wednesday, it's fallen apart.
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You still haven't posted that content.
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And then by Friday, you're frustrated again that you haven't taken the actions that you know you need to take.
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Number three, you are very good at identifying the secret source within other businesses.
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And you are probably the person that people come to if they're thinking of starting a business or they're thinking of a new venture or they need some advice.
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You are very good at helping them.
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And yet you cannot help yourself in the same way.
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This is probably because number one, you are too close to your business to see things clearly.
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And I get this as well.
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And that's why I need my team to help me with my strategy.
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And this is where AI tools can come into play to mirror back to us and really cleanly cut through things.
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But you still cannot just find that one sentence that clearly articulates who you are, why you're good at what you do and who you're for.
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And every sentence you do write, it just doesn't feel like it's enough.
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The fourth symptom, you are currently frustrated with where you're at.
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You feel as though you should be further along.
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What you do is so much deeper than what anyone else is doing around you.
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You're frustrated because you're being seen in the same light as someone who started a drop shipping company or going viral on TikTok.
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And yet you have so much more knowledge, so much more depth, so much more value that you can give your audiences and your clients and your customers.
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But it's just not being seen.
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I'd really love you to send me a DM right now, in fact, and tell me which symptoms or if it's all of them that you are currently feeling.
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Because at one point or another in my business, I have felt all of these.
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And you try and get the right advice to try and figure out that one thing that's going to be that silver bullet to get you through to that next level, to break through where you are currently stuck, which is sell a platform, sell a tactic, sell a funnel.
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Because it doesn't require the agency or the coach to really go deeper and extract the eunus of your brand.
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That is hard work.
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And the only reason that I've been able to land here is an intuitive ability to pull out the essence of a founder and their brand.
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But also studying my master's in communication management plus the diploma in positive psychology has given me this really unique ability to see more than just the special little flavors, the special little spices that is very difficult to articulate in a marketing campaign.
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It is a lot easier for marketers to sell you on an idea that your marketing is separate to you.
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But from my own experiences, from my studies, from working with clients, everything in your business, your brand isn't your logo.
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Your brand is the version of you that built that logo.
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About the messages that you want to share, how you want to make people feel, and even the pricing.
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If you don't think as a founder, you are worth charging premium prices, you won't be able to sell premium prices.
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Taking control of the narrative of how people see you, how people perceive you, and how you make people feel and think differently about something that you are very good at.
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You essentially, through your content, you need to help people borrow your eyes so they see the world the way you do.
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And that is why you need to know how it is that you see the world, a way that resonates.
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The decisions that you make, how you show up as a leader, the energy that you walk into your office with, whether or not you believe you are worthy of the life that you are trying to build, and what life and what business are you trying to build.
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All of that matters.
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Last week's episode, I covered a lot about the subconscious mind and how 96% of our decisions are actually driven on autopilot.
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If you haven't listened to that, I highly recommend that you do before we go into this next step.
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Because in that episode, I also dig very deeply on the importance of knowing what your current stories are and who you are as a founder.
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Because in 2026, you are the strategy.
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And a personal brand as a founder is no longer optional.
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This isn't some future prediction.
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This is what's happening right now.
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This is where we have seen results for ourselves and for our clients.
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And if you are afraid of putting your face to camera and being on camera, then I need you to very quickly put that aside on the shelf for a second so you can listen to what I have to say.
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What's changed is five years ago you could start a business without a face behind it.
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You could hide behind a logo, you could write some copy that sounded really professional, and you could run ads that converted on tactics and hooks and flashy lights alone, smoke and mirrors.
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And that's what the category leaders looked like at the time.
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Back in 2019, faceless, professional, and polished.
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And AI showed up and just ate that entire game.
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Every founder, every business has exactly the same tools that you do.
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I hear all the time from small and even brand new founders that they say, I don't want to be the face of my business because I want to be able to sell my business, or I don't want to look like a hack getting on camera.
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Look at the people running the world with their content.
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Alex Hormosy and his businessacquisition.com, Stephen Bartlett, Diary of a CEO, and Mel Robbins.
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You don't believe that it's important to follow what these masters are doing.
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Let's take a step back even further and make this feel more realistic.
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You don't need to be at that level in order to have a successful business.
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The majority of my work comes from my personal brand.
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That is what people connect with.
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It's important to have business-facing content as well, but that's not what attracts amongst our customers, amongst our audiences.
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It is me showing up on camera, even when I don't really feel like it.
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AI exists and has leveled the playing field, is you and your secret source.
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That is your advantage that nobody else can take from you.
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When we work with our clients to figure out what their secret source is, there are four levers that we look at pulling.
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First, who is it that you have decided to be?
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And let me give you a hint.
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This is often very much based in childhood.
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And I like you to dig deep and think about what are the things that you love to do as a kid?
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How did you do things differently?
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Even if people told you that's not the right way to do it, how did you like to do specific things?
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That is a secret piece right there.
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The next lever to pull is who you decide to call yours.
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Who do you decide to call your people?
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This is your audience.
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And this is where our five audience lenses come into play, where we understand how your audience sees the world to make sure it matches how you see the world.
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That is the connection piece right there.
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The third lever, what do you decide is your truth?
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This is your positioning.
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This is all of your messaging, all of your content, all of your landing pages, even the results that you deliver for your customers.
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And the fourth lever, what is it that you decide you want to make easier for people?
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Your heart and soul into what do you know better than anybody else?
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Or what are you passionate about fixing for people?
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That is what becomes your offers and what you sell.
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So do you see how all four of these levers are decisions that you have to make as a founder?
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Gone are the days of saying it's never gonna work, but solution to getting stains out or DIY dry cleaning in your home or finding a way to make laundry easier for people or laundry or an ironing service.
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If you actually really care about that stuff, laundry can make you a millionaire.
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So I want you to really be honest with yourself and figure out why aren't you leaning into your eunus?
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Why are you still afraid to get on camera?
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Why are you still afraid to say what you actually think?
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Is it because you're going to get negative comments?
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That is actually a good sign if you're getting negative comments because it shows me that you're not just trying to people please for the masses.
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You're actually saying something that might aggravate a group of people who are actually your anti-audience?
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Or why is it that you don't want to commit to content?
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Is it because you were afraid of what other people will think?
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If that is the case, then why are you letting strangers or even friends and family who were never doing that stuff themselves?
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Otherwise, they would never criticize you.
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Why are you putting those opinions ahead of your own business success?
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What are the stories in your head that told you that you can't, is it because you don't think you'll be able to sell your business later?
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That's bullshit.
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Is it because you don't want it to be completely reliant on you as a founder?
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Let me tell you that creating content and marketing and building connection, that should actually be your first priority in your business.
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Without customers, you don't have a business.
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I heard it only yesterday.
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Sometimes you just have to do the crap things to keep the wheels turning, to keep the income coming in.
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And yet there is an element of the fact that we all have to do things we don't want to do.
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But I truly, truly believe that you can get rich if that's what you want.
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You can help millions of people doing a very fucking niche thing that you love, whether that's laundry, whether that's walking dogs, whether that's garbage removal, whether that's marketing in an oversaturated industry, the spiritual practice.
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You don't have to do things the way that the business world has been telling you how to do them.
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If you can combine the special skills, the talents, the passions, the interests that you had as a child that you still have today, if you can combine that in what you are skilled at and what you are good at, that is the secret source.
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That is the difference between you and every other person out there.
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And it's why, whenever we work with our clients, whether that's in Hatch, self-paced program for new businesses, whether it is in Flight School, which is the 12-pace guided build that we do with you, whether that's built by Birdcage, where we take website funnels, ads, social media, everything, whether it's any of those things, the first thing starts with the founder purpose.
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Understanding who you are as a founder, where you're hiding, understanding what lights you up and what makes you you and what AI cannot replicate, what your competitors cannot replicate, because you are beyond superficial tactics.
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You are beyond running ads, and that is your entire strategy.
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Where you're all just being fed that this is what creative is working well this week.
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Focus on what works for you.
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Number one, what lights you up.
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Number two, what connects with your audiences.
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And number three, doing something fucking different.
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I want this to be a wake-up call and light a match under your ass to go and do something that lights you up, that makes you feel good, that makes you want to connect with your audiences and that allows you people because that is the quickest way to build that connection.
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A business that is built on purpose, impact, and that's not gonna fall over with the next AI update, the next algorithm update.