249: Your Uniqueness, Your Authenticity, Your Superpower and Your Messaging with MaryJo Cranmore

Robert Plank 0:00 Robert Plank Show, episode 249, your uniqueness, your authenticity, your superpower and your messaging. With Mary Jo cran more, Hey everyone, and welcome back to the program. We're here today with Mary Jo cran more, and she's a journalist and a storyteller. She's a former Good Morning America. Producer and MJ now helps business owners help level up to more visibility by sharing their message via Web Video, Video Marketing and on local and national television news programming. So Mary Jo, welcome to the show.

Mary Jo Cranmore 0:34 Thank you so much. I'm so great. So glad to be here. I'm

Robert Plank 0:37 glad that you're here too. And so, you know, we read your bio, and you heard a little bit about what you're all about, but I mean, what makes you unique? What makes you different and special?

Mary Jo Cranmore 0:47 Wow. Well, I don't know that I am special, but I definitely am different. We really work with our clients to get at the core of their story. What is the thing that is their special what is the thing that is their unique capability? What's their superpower? And that speaks to be able to really speak to that, and to be able to use the language of that are the things that in a toolbox help you speak directly to those people who care. It is like a dog whistle. It is something that if you get it right, you are, you are golden. If you get it wrong, even if you're a click or two off that message, nothing really happens. It's kind of hit and miss. It's frustrating. So, you know, we we start with the message. Is the most important thing first, before you go out there doing video or doing any kind of content writing, or before, absolutely before getting on television, you really want to be clear about, you know, where you're coming from,

Robert Plank 1:50 okay? And so to make sure that we all kind of understand where you're coming from, can you kind of like, give us a case study or something like that, of like a client of yours, maybe that sort of had some good things to say, but maybe those things weren't like you said, they were like a click or two away, and you kind of got the message right, and all that sort of stuff.

Mary Jo Cranmore 2:09 Yes, absolutely. I work with a lot of different kinds of companies, mostly business to business service providers, financial, banking, let's see what's the word. I'm looking for, recruitment, healthcare, technology, just a wide range of those things. And there's one gentleman I'm thinking about who is fabulously talented. He's a financial advisor. But when he was 35 he had always had a dream to be an actor on the stage, and he was very successful at being a financial advisor. And he just he decided to try and spend the summers acting. And what happened with him was his business grew. And so 12 years of that his business, even though he took those three months off, his business kept growing. So we worked with him to be like, wow, you know, Charlie, you're really talking to people about living their passion. That's what you're doing. It's not necessarily, hey, I'm just a financial a great financial guy, you know, save for the long term all those boring things that you hear, you've got to be interesting. You've got to break through the fog of what people understand about your business to get them something new, tell them something they don't know. And so we started working with Charlie about using that kind of entertainment. His superpower is humor, for sure. He's done improv, you know, in New York and in LA so to use those things and then have that be part of your message too. So people are like, wow, you're different. You're standing out from the literally millions of financial advisors out there. And now today, in fact, he is going to be on national TV. We have him on as a guest expert on one of the shows on Fox Business. So he really has been able to level up with that message draw more clients to him and the right kind of clients. There's nothing more frustrating than working with the wrong client. And even though it looks like, Hey, I've got a full book of business at any given day, 30% of those people would just walk out of your life if they weren't the right client. So that's the most important thing to remember about this. Okay,

Robert Plank 4:27 so, so, lots of interesting stuff there, and so in that case, there with, with your client, Charlie, where you were trying to maybe figure out, like, how we can stand out or, or how we can, you know, get noticed and get on the news. I mean, what was the thought process there? Was it like a matter of, like, taking inventory of, like, his hobbies or or all these different things, or, like, how do you how do you look at someone and say, Well, you know, they're one of all these financial advisors. How do you sort of pick out those things that make them interesting? Well,

Mary Jo Cranmore 4:56 we have a really long, boring process. But. But the gist of it is, is that you're really taking a look not only at it's the combination of your skill set. What have you learned, right? What have you gone to school to learn? What have you accomplished? And then, what is the unique part of you that you're bringing what's the not only the experiences you've had with clients, but what is the unique piece of you that you're bringing to the table to shift people's perspective into such a way that they are highly successful working with you? So we look at a range of these things, yes, hobbies, absolutely. Charlie wanted to go to college. He went to Colgate. He wanted to go to college. And his dad said, Hey, what are you going to study? And he said, I'm going to be go to the theater. And his father said, Try again. And so Charlie said, Okay, I'm going to get a finance degree and I'm going to live in the theater, which is exactly what he did. And so that passion for communication really was able to be utilized. Boy, I couldn't really think of anything too disparate, two disparate things than financial advising and improv, but he is able to bring those two things together because he loves them both, and other people who resonate with that will love that back. And so all the language we use around Charlie, all the videos we create, the scripting, not scripting, the bullet points and things we put forward for what kind of guest he would be on TV. That is all informed by that very initial process. And when you get it, when you understand it, and when you're living that you really are, it seems effortless once you finally figure that out

Robert Plank 6:37 and is, and that, um, that part of it where, like, there's those two disparate things, is that something that's like, important, or is that something you go looking for when you're trying to find the magic stuff with with these clients? Or is this just sort of unique to Charlie's case?

Mary Jo Cranmore 6:52 No, it's actually not. I mean, you know, with a lot of the other clients I work with, we're really talking about, there's a like, I just said a couple of things about like your education and you know what you love to do, right? Your your skill set. But then there's a thing called the superpower. And the superpower is something that you have. You have not necessarily cultivated it cultivated. You've used it your whole life, though. And people, when people talk about you when you're not in the room, that's generally the thing they say, you know, my superpower is that I'm able to communicate a level of trust with people, and they immediately trust me back. I don't know where that came from. I haven't cultivated it over my lifetime, but that's just there. Charlie's innate sense of humor is just there. He has built on that, but he still has it, no matter, even if he didn't do acting training. When I work with other clients who are very different, maybe they're a recruiting company or a healthcare company, it is right now. We are in the age in 2017 and I you know, this is a way overused word, but the authenticity movement is real. That's a funny sentence, and it is about not being afraid as a company or as a an entrepreneur or as a small business owner to allow yourself to be part of the offering, even if I have a client who builds very high end beautiful pools, and Brian, his real superpower is 100 laser like, attention to detail. He's always been like that, and every client he works with, he picks up another little thing. When I work with women, they really like us to clean up at the end of the day and have garbage cans with garbage bags in them, and all these little silly things you think are silly, but they mean so much to those clients. And what that facilitates is word of mouth, good, PR and good. I always say to them, what do you want people to say about you when you're not in the room? That's what we're going for, and that's what this whole process informs,

Robert Plank 9:01 okay, and so sort of along those lines, like, so there's that. So you mentioned that, you know, there's what do you want people to say when you're not in the room. And then a few minutes ago, you mentioned, you know, what do people actually say when you're not in the room? So how do you go about finding that for a client, you have the client, like, ask people, or do you observe them? Or how do you how do you figure out what someone's saying about them when they're not in the room, when they're not in the room, to hear it. If that makes

Mary Jo Cranmore 9:26 sense, they feel totally makes sense. Most of the clients I have, I don't I've only worked with a few startups, and that's a challenge, because when you're starting up, you know what you want people to say, but you have no real capability of measuring or tracking or researching what people actually are saying, and when you're a you know established business, or when you've been around for a while, it's a heck of a lot easier to find that. It's a lot harder to change it, obviously, than it is to find it out. But what we use. Actually do is I do a lot of testimonial I really ask every single client I work with, how can I how can I capture testimonials for you? Because I personally know that in the beginning of the internet, in the beginning of all social media, what people find important, I would rather get an get a recommendation from a woman in Toledo, then pay attention to what Madison Avenue is telling me. And I know that to be true. 10 years ago, I worked for a large agency, and we our sister agency was Ogilvy and Mather, so we were in New York a lot, and a couple of the clients were smart enough to be like, That's awesome. We really want to start putting a lot of money into social media, because we believe in the word of mouth so much. We believe in listening to what people are saying to us. We believe in immediately go when people have problems or whatever. That is the value that is the most important part of the day. And so it's a philosophy to find out what people are saying about you. It's an ongoing process. We help the businesses sort of make that a top three priority, to really understand that it's not just about doing a good job. It's how you're doing the good job that also counts.

Robert Plank 11:19 That makes a lot of sense. So you talk to those people and get, like, the get the the language and the wording along with what, what people are saying about the person. And so if you figure out, you know if the person, if the person strength, is that, you know that they trust someone trusts them, or they have the attention to detail, or whatever that that superpower is, what's the next step? Is that a matter of then, like, go and make some press releases or some content marketing or a book, or, like, what? What do you do for your clients? Once you figure out the superpower, right,

Mary Jo Cranmore 11:52 we go through the messaging and superpower stuff as a matter of course. I, I don't even really, I don't really set that aside as even a product that we offer, a service that we offer, because we do it with everybody. We just naturally do it. And so once that's done, the roadmap becomes pretty clear, you know, if we need to work on the messaging piece, then that's the project we need to do. And then typically, I will follow on into a, you know, a video I would I'm a journalist and a documentary producer, by by, you know, my degree, and so what I'll do is I'll work with them to get on camera. We'll make a bunch of videos. We'll elevate them in terms of their social media and what they're saying out there, and simultaneously go out and shoot a lot of testimonials for them so that it supports what they're saying. And once that all happens, you know, not every client wants to be on national TV. Okay, there are quite a few who would like to be on local TV, and it's the really the same process. But I have found that there are two kinds of clients in this world, the kind of clients who want to be on TV and the clients who don't. And so it's certainly not a necessity. I really believe that social media, I mean, my main thing right now is, everything is a screen. Everything is a television, right? Your your phone, your iPad, the actual TV, it is all coming together. And even right now, everything is a tele a screen. Everything's a TV screen. So we can utilize whatever level of impact you want. I believe the On Air piece, when you're interviewed by journalists, or when you're interviewed for a segment on, you know, CNBC, or whatever, those things have powerful impact, because we as a culture, believe that's a stamp of approval. It is the end. It is because the level of credibility people have to have to get to that place is substantial. They won't interview just anybody. They won't and so it's up to us to really build that credibility for our clients to get them there. So does that answer your question? Yeah,

Robert Plank 14:06 yeah, I think so. So there. So basically, there's so once you once people figure out that, or you figure out that that superpower with them, then you kind of get them on one of those two tracks, either, if they don't want to be on TV, they but they still need to, sort of, you know, have that social media make the video stuff, but if they do want to be on TV, then that's a whole next level for them,

Mary Jo Cranmore 14:27 right? And press releases. I gotta say that. I think the most important thing to know about that is, I mean, I worked in PR, an agency a long, long time ago. I did PR for Ross Perot, if you can believe it, this was after the presidential run, and at that time, it was about making the news and putting out press releases. And now, since the news cycle is so much more like a fire hose, what clients, what we encourage clients to do is to watch television and take in information. In and then, how is it related to what you're doing in the world? How are you able, how are we able to hook you on to a story? So the jobs report comes out. What's your perception of that? Is it connected as a financial advisor? It certainly is people who work in the academic world. What is going on there. So press release, you don't need to make the news. Making the news is a lot harder to do than just hooking on to stories in the news already, and that's the primary secret of getting yourself out there in media and understanding that that's what social social media also is demanding of you. What's your take? Just like in sports, right sports radio, I listen a lot Pat's fan ready for the Super Bowl realized, and it's about what is your fresh take on what's happening. That's all anybody cares about right now. And if you can remember that as a business owner, then you're able to really be ahead of the game. Because I don't think most business owners or entrepreneurs even really understand that process awesome

Robert Plank 16:09 so and that that's really great to hear, too. Because, like, if people are, like you said, if someone's just an academic or a financial advisor, and, you know, some news item happens, they might be thinking, well, you know what? What what do I have to say about it? What is, what does little old me have to say about it? But if it's a matter of, well, what's your fresh take as this kind of person, then that makes that, that seems a lot more helpful as as far as getting someone to, to get their confidence be enough to to go out and do these things,

Mary Jo Cranmore 16:37 right? I mean, you don't have to, you know? I, when I work with businesses and they and I talk about, I don't really talk about PR, I talk about visibility. And I just say, Look, you don't, you know, they say, well, What? What? What news story can I make? You know, hey, we opened up a new branch, or we hired a new person. No, that is not it. What you're doing is you're putting out into the world a fresh perspective. That's what you have to offer. So

Robert Plank 17:02 when people are making these fresh perspectives, or they're, you know, making these media appearances and things to, you know, to talk and promote themselves, are you seeing like, any kind of, like, huge mistakes people are making when they're they're trying to be visible. It sounds like you have since there's some,

Mary Jo Cranmore 17:18 oh god, it's just, yeah, that wakes me up in the middle of night. Free to say that, but I'll tell you it is. I see more what the good? Okay, so the good thing about this is what people need to understand. Like, we just spent an entire morning, four hours, preparing for a hit this afternoon, one of the national cable channels, and I told the client, I said, here's the most important thing to remember, that at 355 when you're on the air, none of this may matter. None of anything that we prepared for may happen, and you need to the best thing you can do is just let go and just be yourself. Listen to the question and answer thoughtfully, and don't get all in. This works for video too. You know, when we, when I interview clients, they're like, do I need to, you know, memorize a script or anything? No, you know this stuff. This is not it's not like you're coming into class on the first day and you don't know anything. You know this stuff. So trust yourself. Trust and breathe. You want to get a lot out there. Just stay within your swim lane, stay within the bounds of the question. What have they asked you? You're trying to help the people on the other side of that camera. If you remember that and just be yourself, you'll be fine. Otherwise, people make mistakes because they want to. They thought they had a really good line about something and they can't remember it, or something like that. It screws them up. You know, there's no this is not the last time you'll be on TV. So just let it go.

Robert Plank 18:53 Awesome that that sounds like good advice. So don't necessarily try to be catchy or clever. Just keep it simple. Answer the question stay in your question lane.

Mary Jo Cranmore 19:02 You can't. I mean, eventually, like, once you get used to it, like my partner used to be a part, used to be an anchor on CNBC, and one he was on bulls and bears every week, and he was also, you know, doing a lot of video interviewing of clients, and same the things as I've been doing. Once you get used to it and comfortable, then you're going to be able to remember those snappy little phrases. But the best thing you can do when you're first getting on camera for television or for video, work to get your perspective out there, is put yourself 100% in the place of helping that person on the other side. If you can stay there, then no matter what you say, is going to be awesome,

Robert Plank 19:44 great. So, so it sounds sort of like it's a matter of like crawling before you run. If you, if you can be helpful, then that's, that's the bulk of it. And then if you want to be clever or have your your sound bites later, that's like the icing on the cake. Yeah,

Mary Jo Cranmore 19:57 and you'll get there. I mean, I see guy. I see. Folks on MSNBC and on CNN and Fox and stuff who have been on week after week after week, and after a while, it becomes like they're sitting around having lunch with their friends. You know, like they get it. They're used to it. It takes a while for people to get there, but that's why, you know, some of the clients we work with have had on stage experience, or have had some kind of thing like that, because that's really a treasure,

Robert Plank 20:23 awesome. And you know what I like about our discussion today is that a lot of what it seems like there, it's been a recurring theme of, like, it's okay to screw up. It's okay. It's okay if you're not perfect, because you're not going to have just your one media appearance. You're not just going to have your one, you know, radio or TV thing. Like you're gonna do these over and over again and get slightly better over time. So that sounds really encouraging. And so I don't want to keep you here for too long, but I want to make sure that everyone knows you know all about who Mary Jo is and what you're up to. So can you tell us about your websites, or where you want listeners today to head to right now?

Mary Jo Cranmore 20:58 Absolutely. I have a couple of websites like I said, I do a lot of video work with clients and a lot of consulting work on this messaging process. And so, Mary Jo cran more calm, very simple, I am the only one. And I said that to my business coach. Mary Jo Cramer, I'm the only one under that name. She said, I don't believe you, and it's true. I am the only one. And so M, A, R, Y, J, O, if you can just remember not to put an E on it, you'll be fine. And that's that's where to go. The other website, we have my partner, Bob sellers, the former CNBC anchor. I'm former Good Morning America. Together, we have something called message to media. Message to the number two media.com is our website, where people can go and understand, you know, what we're sort of up to, and how that all works. And we are very, very happy to have people call us and ask us questions, because, you know what? Sometimes people just want to get on local TV, and that's fine, and it's the same exact process, and it's also a lot less scary sometimes to be on local TV, and we can certainly be of assistance in that way too. Awesome,

Robert Plank 22:06 great stuff. So everyone should go right now to Mary Jo cran more calm and message number two, media.com and what I also like about, you know, we talked about today, Mary Jo, is that, you know, you mentioned that people are in all kinds of different walks of life, like people who, you know, make make pools or financial advisors or whoever. So anyone listening, no matter what niche industry you're in, whatever your specialty is, you need to get yourself out there more, whether it's, you know, national TV, local TV, whatever. So go and check out marriages websites, because you need your business to grow. And so getting on TV and getting more exposure can and will do that so Mary Jo cran more calm and message to media.com and Mary Jo, thanks for stopping by.

Mary Jo Cranmore 22:49 Thank you. Thanks for having me. Want to listen

Robert Plank 22:53 to more fantastic episodes of the Robert Plank show. Subscribe to us at Robert plank.com/itunes and browse past episodes at Robert plank.com you.