53. Why your excited copy isn't working

If you’ve ever written copy that felt amazing — full of passion, fire, excitement — only to have it land with a dull thud… this episode is for you.

Today Simone breaks down why “I’m so excited!” energy often repels rather than connects, and what to do instead.

You’ll learn:

• The hidden flaw inside passion-driven copy (and why it disconnects you from the person reading)
• How to shift out of your emotional enthusiasm and into your client’s lived experience
• Why your passion is fuel — but not the message
• Real examples of how to transform “I’m passionate about helping ___” into grounded, client-centered language
• The 5-question checklist Simone uses to audit her own copy before publishing
• The simplest form of “market research” (that isn’t corporate, gross, or extractive)
• How to let your passion shine through your work, not through over-excited marketing that confuses your audience

If your writing feels heartfelt but isn’t converting… if people say your posts are “beautiful” but don’t actually buy… this episode will shift the way you think about communication forever.

In this episode, Simone covers:

• The trap of self-centric excitement
• How passion can distort clarity
• The difference between information and value
• Why people hire expertise before enthusiasm
• How to write copy that speaks to their problem, in their language
• When passion becomes a bonus — not the hook

Your passion is sacred and necessary — but your copy needs to center them, not you. When you do, everything becomes clearer, stronger, and more effective.

Transcript

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Welcome to another episode of Liberatory Business, and I am your host, Simone Sol. Thank you so much for listening. Today, I wanna talk about when it might be a good time to check your passion, when it's time to leave your passion at the door, when passion might hurt your business more than it helps, and it sounds kind of counterintuitive, right? And honestly, I'm probably one of the biggest, most. Pro passions people that you'll ever meet. Um, I bubble up with enthusiasm for the things I love to do. You know, I have an A DHD brain that, you know, makes me only care about things that I'm passionate about. And I'm a big fan of passion in general, and so many of you listening might be too, however. When it hurts our business is when we're too wrapped up in our passion to see things clearly and to consider the perspective of the client in a thoughtful and rigorous way. I get a lot of questions from clients who want feedback on their copy, who want feedback on their offers, and they all say, I'm so passionate about my offer. I'm so passionate about what I've written about these ideas and what I have here. It captures my passion. And when they say that, um, even when I ask people like, why do you do the work you do? A lot of people who have big challenges in their business will tell me, well, I'm so passionate about helping people. I'm so passionate about this. Usually over the years I've collected a lot of data, and what I've observed is that usually when the word comes up, what that tells me is, oh, this person is still thinking about their business from their own personal point of view. They're thinking about their own emotions, their own emotional response to the offering, to the extent that they may not be sufficiently thinking about their client's perspective Are you so absorbed in your own feelings about your work that you can't actually see the people in front of you? Because when you lead with, I'm so passionate about this, you're just kind of broadcasting your emotions at people instead of being present to what's actually happening for them. Real connection requires you to be present to somebody else's experience, not just your own. So let me give you some examples of what I mean. Let's say you have a beloved dog. And your dog unfortunately can be a little bit aggressive and bites people sometimes, and that's not okay. So you're gonna hire a dog train trainer who has demonstrated expertise and hopefully experience in helping dogs with this exact problem, aggression and biting, right? You're gonna be like, okay, who's a dog trainer? Who knows how to deal with this? Same thing if, say, your car's not gonna start mysteriously and you need to get to work. You are gonna look for mechanics, who you're gonna look for one mechanic. You don't need more than one. Um, hopefully one who has the expertise to diagnose the issue and fix it. Now, I'm not saying that passion never matters. Maybe once you found that mechanic who can actually fix your car. You appreciate if you see that they genuinely love what they do. Right. That's a nice, uh, inter interaction. And with the experience, uh, the example of the dog trainer, once you know someone has the track record of really successfully helping dogs with their aggression and stopping biting behaviors, you might feel extra safe with them to know that. They're genuinely passionate about dogs and you might choose them over a competitor seeing that they're so genuine. So passion can help. I'm not saying there's no, uh, no place for passion, but when you have a problem, you are looking first for someone who can solve the problem, Okay, so how do you actually fix this? How do you shift from leading with your passion to leading with what actually serves people First, let's talk about your copy. If you're writing something and it's full of like, I'm so excited, or I love helping people with this, or, this work means so much to me, stop. Take all that out and replace it with what the person reading it actually gets. Instead of, I'm so passionate about helping women find their voice. Try instead. You'll learn how to speak up in meetings without your voice quivering. Instead of, I'm so passionate about helping writers break through their creative blocks. You can try saying, you'll stop rewriting the same first paragraph again and again, and actually finish the piece in the first week. See the difference. One is about you, the other is about them. This is actually a huge percentage of the work that I do with my clients in helping them with their copy to help them spot and fix this, um, self-centric excitement centric. Passion centric language, and it usually shows up most at the very beginning of the copy in those opening lines. And you know what, in my first drafts, like, listen, I've been teaching this shit for years and when I write my first drafts of my own, you know, sales pages, marketing stuff, it comes out of me too. Like it's natural for. Us human beings to like start with by relating to other people about our experience. So I do it too. Totally natural. No shame in it, but it's like the first draft, right? When you see it, just cut it. And if you know how to look out for this kind of copy and cut it, you are way ahead of most people. So here's a simple checklist to run your copy through before you publish anything. One, does this talk more about my feelings or their situation? Two, have I named the specific problem that they're dealing with in the words that they would use? Three, have I described the concrete outcome they're gonna get. Four. Am I using words that they would actually use, or am I using my own jargon? Five. Would someone reading this know exactly what they're getting and why it matters to them? And you gotta be honest with yourself, right? And if you feel like, honestly, the answer to these questions is no, then you got work to do. And I'm gonna tell you how making this shift from your passion focused to customer focused. It's not just about changing words, it's about actually getting curious, like genuinely curious. You have to spend time learning what's actually happening for the people that you wanna serve. What are they struggling with? What have they already tried? What are they afraid of? What are they hoping for? So here's what you do. Talk to people, not to pitch them, but to actually learn. You know, some people call this market research. I don't like to call it market research, just because when I hear the words market research, it makes me want to run very far and fast in the other direction. It just sounds like corporate shit. So for me, I just call it being curious about people, which I naturally am and I bet. So are you. Unless you really invest the time and emotional energy into being able to step into someone else's shoes, you'll always be limited in how effectively you can communicate. So ask them what's hard about this for you right now? What have you tried already? What would make this easier? What would success look like? And then this is key. You shut up and listen. Don't jump in with your assumptions. Don't jump in with your solution. Don't you know, take up all the oxygen talking about your passion. Listen to how they describe their world. Write down the exact words they use.'cause those words, that's your copy, that's your marketing. That's how you speak to them in a way that act actually lands. And look, I'm not saying your passion doesn't matter. Like I said, I as a big fan of passion, it absolutely matters, but here's where I think it belongs, rather than all over your copy, your passion is what keeps you going. It's what makes you wanna show up for the work day after day. It's what helps you to show up with energy and care. Your passion is for you. It's supposed to fuel you. It's supposed to be the thing that makes you wanna get up after you've had a face flop. It's the kind, it's the thing that makes you, um, take risks to get out of your comfort zone and learn new skills and have new experiences so that you can grow for the sake of your goal. That's what your passion is for, but your marketing is not supposed to be the place. For broadcasting it necessarily, especially at the cost of speaking to the wor, to your people's worldview as they see it speaking to their needs in their language. Your passion can also come through in how you do the work, right? In the quality of the care that you bring and the attention to detail in going the extra mile. Like if you do that. Because you're passionate, people will feel it. Um, and you have to earn their trust by demonstrating that, Hey, I understand where you are and I can help you. And you say it in a language that that's gonna click with them, right? The passion is the bonus, not the hook. And look, if this feels hard, that's totally normal. We're taught to lead with our passion, you know, to talk about what lights us up. So shifting your focus outward to like get into the heads of other people, takes practice. But you can do this. Start small, fix one post, one email, one part of a sales page. Just notice when you're broadcasting your feelings instead of addressing their reality. Change it. And even if it feels awkward or hard or it feels like you're doing it wrong, the more, the more you practice, the easier it gets. Okay? I believe in you. You've got this. I hope that was helpful and I, I'll talk to you next week. Bye.