The “Messy Middle” of Expert Brand Growth

Happy Sunday! It’s Mother’s Day!

Today’s topic: If you’re feeling STUCK in the “Commodity Services Provider” stage, then chances are, you’re doing things to keep you there. I tell you exactly what to do in this video.

And if you want to escape the “Solo Consultancy” stage and get a team and a budget to really grow and have a great life, then you’ll do what I suggest, too.

The Context:

There are three early stages of the “Expert Brand Journey”. You fall into one of them. They are:

• Commodity Services Provider
• Solo Consultantcy
• Expert Business

I wrote a little bit about these yesterday

How to Escape the ‘Messy Middle’

So this messy middle of you’re either what I call the Commodity Services Provider and you need to get to solo consultancy, or maybe you’re in the solo consultancy and you’re like, ugh I can’t keep doing this all myself. And so what do you do? Like what do you do? I mean, ultimately you need to make more sales, right? So Ii you’re in the Commodity Services Provider , the first step you gotta do is you need to stop doing what it is you’re doing.

Because what you’re doing is making it really hard for people to refer to you. You’re making it really hard to close sales. You’re making it really hard to have a good life and have fun running an expert brand.

Because you’re either an expert or you’re a commodity. You must pick which one you want to be. And don’t get me wrong: there’s a game to be played being a commodity. Doing volume, faceless brands, low price. There’s a time and a place for that. And probably with AI, frankly.

But for everybody else and especially you, if you’re here, if you don’t want to be a commodity, if you want to be respected, if you want to be a leader, you want to be the authority in the room, you want people to go, what does Lynn say? I want that. And I think you want that. So if you are a Commodity Services Provider, stop it. If you don’t want that, stop it. So here’s what you do.

As I said, the Expert Brand Journey is the application of what I call the Sophistication Spectrum. And the Sophistication Spectrum says that brands move in Sophistication, or maturation, from left to right. So they go from less sophisticated to more sophisticated, less mature to more mature factor by factor.

And those factors are things like having foundational marketing assets, having proof, having proven offers, running ads, direct mail, email list, a book, having a finance team, doing HR properly, getting a CRM, etc. On down this goes, and this varies by the brand what these factors are. But as you mature each of these factors, if you mature enough of them, especially in our sales motion, you can pull your brand to the next level. Because when you have more money, now you can hire people and you can do more of those things. You can do some advertising, do some marketing, try direct mail, put a book out, get a course out, optimize your sales flow or customer/ client experience. Now you’ve pushed yourself forward and then the challenge becomes, “Can I keep moving forward so that I don’t regress backwards?”

What You Need to Focus on in 2026

So ultimately what I’m going to say is you need cash. If you are in the early stages of a solo consultancy and you want to become an expert business, what I call an expert business, where you’ve got staff to help, you you are really starting to making good and consistent revenue. The fastest, the one factor to mature first is going to be your sales. And again, marketing is a function of sales.

I believe marketing exists to empower sales. But again, I’m direct response. So as much as I like well-designed things, as much as I like content marketing that is purely educational, ultimately at end of the day, we need to make sales. Marketing exists to make sales. And there are certain ways we do that. So I would say that you need to mature your sales function.

And how I would help you do that is I would help you get really, really clear

on the exact avatar, the most sophisticated avatar that you serve. The one that is going to buy today that’s gonna be a breeze to work with that if they knew what you offered, if they knew the outcome you could bring them, they’d be like, oh my God, there’s somebody who offers this. What? Oh, and they’ll go, yes, yes, I want that, I need that. Because most of you are probably not anywhere in your messaging saying what it is that you do.

Like if I told you that I’m an expert copywriter and I help “Expert Brands” you might be like,

“Okay, well, I don’t have any ads right now. I’m not running a webinar. I think my webinars are okay. I don’t need Lynn or someone like Lynn.”

But if I told you:

“I help you get to the point where you know exactly how to pitch your services and how to shift that pitch in each of your social posts. How to basically make that pitch in your sales calls. How to make that pitch in your case studies, in your emails. So even when it doesn’t look like you’re pitching, you’re pitching. So your stories, everything that you’re doing fits into this framework. And you’re gonna get faster sales. The sales are gonna come easier and you’re gonna make more money because you’re gonna be able raise your fees. And then when you raise your fees, you are going to grow your business and get to that next stage of sophistication and maturation where you can get a team, and you can finally do things the way you want to.

You can finally get that brand up, get that nice website up, finally buy the CRM, can finally do what you need to do.”

And then you start thinking about how your sales is not feeling very easy right now.

You’re thinking, “Maybe if we knew how to do that, we’d make more money this year.”

Can you feel how that’s very, very different from, “I’m a copywriter who works for extra brands and maybe I’ve written ads before and I can do anything. I can write for anybody because I have training.”

Do you feel the difference? Do you get it?

You need to have something like that in your business, and your sales team can’t be the only people who know it. You need to be that sure in the value you provide because when you are that sure, now you can price like you’re sure. Now you can start talking about outcomes in your marketing in a way that actually drives sales.

What Happens When You Have This in Place

When you have this kind of clarity in place, now you can start to have real conversations about price, about timelines, about deliverables. Now you can design a service. Now you know what you need to say in your intake call.

Now you can design a discovery experience that gets you the information you need. Now you know how to design the customer journey, the client journey, so that they feel like they are held and supported and having the greatest experience ever to solve this really painful problem. Now you know how to price it. Now you know what objections to address beforehand. Now you know what questions to answer before they know to ask the questions. Now you know how to craft your testimonials to support the outcome you say you provide.

It’s pretty cool. So that’s what I want you to do. And if you get stuck, email me and let’s get you unstuck.

— Lynn