If the Market Can’t Repeat Your Value, It Can’t Choose You
Sep 26, 2026How to make your value travel, repeat, and stick.
“I don’t know how to say this, but I’m kind of a big deal.”
— Ron Burgundy in Anchorman
Most of my clients hate that quote.
They aren’t the loud ones, the performers, or the people who already know how to work a room. They’re serious, accomplished leaders who believe, rightly, that their results should speak for themselves.
But results don’t speak. People do.
The $180 Million Sleeping Aid
About a decade ago, a Sci-Fi film called Valerian came out. It had a massive budget. Great trailer. Rihanna. It was visually stunning.
When a friend asked me about it later, I realized I couldn’t remember much besides Rihanna being in it. It wasn't a bad movie. It was worse. It was forgettable.
(Which is fitting, actually, since Valerian is an herb used since ancient times to induce sleep.)
In business, forgettable is the most expensive mistake you can make.
Clarity is the Fuel for Advocacy
Most decisions about your career or your business happen when you’re not in the room. They happen in leadership meetings, referral calls, and sidebar conversations you’ll never know about.
In those moments, the deciding factor isn’t your depth. It’s your repeatability. If your value can’t travel without you, it stalls. If a supporter struggles to explain what makes you the right choice, they’ll default to whoever is easier to summarize.
You don’t get passed over because you aren’t good. You get passed over because your value is too hard to hand off.
How Jerry and Kelley Stopped Being Hard to Explain
Jerry and Kelley Lujan of Elevation180 are the kind of people I fall a little in love with. Serious, accomplished, quietly confident. Jerry has a founding story that will stop your heart — one of those heart-wrenching moments that makes everything they’ve built feel earned twice over.
But when they came to us, their value took too long to explain. They were doing remarkable work and losing the room before the story landed.
We helped them redefine themselves as more than a coaching company. They are a Transformational Coaching and Mentoring organization that delivers exponential results in a fraction of the time. Six words anchored the promise:
Greater Freedom. Sustainable Results. Bigger Future.
Then we anchored it in their HeartStory®—the why that makes the listener trust you: “We understand where you are, because our backs were against the wall, too.”
Once their story was repeatable, their signal changed. They weren't just coaches anymore. They were unmistakable.
You can go from hard to explain to impossible to forget too. The first step is just knowing where you're losing the room.
One thing to try this week
Find your "Valerian Trap." Ask a trusted peer: "What is the hardest part of my value for you to explain to someone else?" Their answer will tell you exactly where your clarity breaks down.
Or you can try this: Explain what you do to a sharp 10-year-old. If they can’t repeat it back in 15 seconds, you’re still too complex. Not too deep — too tangled. There’s a difference, and it’s fixable.
When you bridge the gap between how good you are and how easy you are to choose, you stop getting overlooked. That’s not a branding exercise. That’s a revenue strategy.
Branding Changes Everything®
