Do you ever think about what drives you to buy a product or a service from a particular shop, brand or business? 

I’ve quoted this line before “people buy your why” and it’s one to remember. It was said by a man named Simon Sinek, who did a quite well-known TED talk on the subject. In the talk, he spoke about the one common trait that all inspiring leaders (whether politicians, CEOs, or influencers) share that makes them so successful and so enduring.

And that trait is that they all have a strong why and they all know how to express it.

In a business, you might spend a lot of your time talking about what you do: what you sell, what service you offer. You probably think that this is what you need to be focusing on – telling people what you offer them. You are likely able to very easily describe what it is that you do.

You may also be able to explain HOW you do what you do. So, for example, this would be your USP (your unique selling point), the thing that you think makes you different from your competition. 

But where people go wrong is that they don’t think about or attempt to express their why.

Your why is the thing that inspires YOU. It’s the thing you believe in, that drives you, that you’re passionate about, that keeps you going through the hard times, that keeps you excited and can’t sleep because you’ve just thought of a new service to offer.

Simon Sinek’s golden circle is the idea that instead of focusing on the what, the how, then the why, we should be focusing on the why, the how, the what. We should be working and communicating from the inside out.

Put together, that looks like explaining your why – what you believe in and stand for, why you do what you do –, then explaining your how – how you do this, how you carry out your why –, and then explaining your what – what you do that enables you to carry out your how and your why.

Your people will buy your why, they will buy from you and work with you because they see a kindred spirit in you. They see that you stand for what they stand for. 

Knowing your why and then being able to express it in your messaging on your website is how you get people to that place.

They can’t know what they don’t know. You need to tell them.

So the questions we are left facing are:

1. How do I figure out my why?

and

2. How do I express this to my ideal clients and audience on my website and in my messaging?

Let’s start with number 1.

I want you to think about why you are doing this, your business. Whatever it is you do (or want to do, if you’ve not taken the leap yet), I want you to dig into WHY you’re doing it?

Once you have this deep understanding of your why, you need to share it with your ideal clients.

And that looks like, being able to sum it up into one or two sentences and presenting this on your website. You want your why to be present throughout your website – a good place for it to be quite explicitly laid out is on your about me page.

Remembering that ‘people buy your why’ is an important thing. I also think we should remember that, as a service-based business, or even just a small business, people buy us, too.

Our ideal clients buy into who we are. We aren’t an anonymous conglomerate. We are real people, just like them. And if you can connect with your ideal client and audience on this personal level and make a real connection with them so that they know, like and trust you, that’s when your ideal clients will convert into real clients.

For more on this, listen to the full Episode 7 of the Copy Coach podcast.