Quite often, we jump straight into marketing our ideas.
Which makes sense. We are thinkers, after all. We want our audience to see the brilliance of our big idea and the thought process behind it.
But here’s the thing – without a foundation, that big idea can feel random and abrupt. It lacks context.
We need to build a bridge, starting from the audience’s challenges and leading them toward our big idea. The first pillar of that bridge is empathy.
We need to show we understand their problems, articulating them clearly so they feel seen and heard.
(And to be clear, this isn’t about false empathy. It’s not a tactic to move them through the customer journey faster. This is about genuinely caring and understanding where they’re at.)
Then, when the time is right, we introduce our big idea and the solution we’ve designed to solve their problems.