Why Explaining The Outcome Of Your Work Feels So Hard — and How to Make It Land
If you feel like you’ve spent years trying to get your messaging “right”… only to feel like it still hasn’t quite landed, you’re not alone in this. For many sensitive, values-led coaches and creatives, explaining what you do feels almost beside the point. You just want to do the work — the real work — and have it speak for itself.
And yet, most of your ideal clients aren’t walking around thinking about your tools or your process. They’re thinking about the things they want to feel or change or move through. When you talk only about your service delivery, you're missing the very language that helps them see themselves in your work.
This pivotal junction can reshape the trajectory of your business, but only if you’re willing to let go of what hasn't been working and shift how you approach your messaging, so you can shift your results.
In this article, I’ll explore how to recognise the deeper messaging gap at play, how to move from talking about your tools to speaking to your clients' real desires, and how to begin shaping a message that both honours what you want to say and resonates with the people it’s meant to reach.
— In this article —
The Penny that Need to Drop
While working with a client on her messaging foundation, she said to me with frustration in her voice, "I don’t care about the outcome — I just want to do the work with them." I understood that frustration deeply — the fatigue of trying to shape language, the desire to just offer what feels true. But there was something she couldn’t quite see yet. I asked her to pause for a moment and consider: when she chose to invest in working with me, did the outcome matter then? Of course it did.
Her decision to buy was anchored in a quiet, unspoken hope — that something would shift. That something would work. And when she sat with that, something softened. The contradiction revealed itself.
Because the truth is, as buyers, we care deeply about outcomes. We’re always trying to solve something — a pain, a desire, a question. But when we step into the role of the practitioner or the guide, we often resist speaking to those things. We focus on our tools, our lineage, our process. And we simply hope the right people will just get it.
Messaging Is the Foundation of Effortless Marketing
Messaging requires you to think differently than you are used to. Instead of focusing on how you do what you do, messaging asks you to deepen into the 'why' behind why people would want to work with you — and to translate that into words they already recognise as their own.
Your clients aren’t usually searching for your modality — they’re searching for answers to the tension they’re feeling right now. That might sound like: “Why am I so exhausted all the time?” or “How do I stop second-guessing myself in meetings?”
Your work may offer deep healing or powerful tools, but your message is the bridge between that depth and the moment your client finds themselves in. It allows them to recognise that what you offer is for them — not someday, but now.
When your messaging is clear, marketing becomes an extension of your presence. It feels less like reaching and more like resonance. That’s the shift that changes everything.
My Lived Moment: When “Spiritual Healing” Didn’t Land
When I first built my website, the homepage said "Spiritual Healing" in big, welcoming letters. That phrase meant everything to me. It felt aligned, intuitive, honest.
But it didn’t take long to realise that it wasn’t quite landing. My people weren’t connecting with those words. Not because they weren’t sincere — but because they weren’t walking around thinking, “I need spiritual healing.”
They were navigating burnout. Struggling with boundaries. Carrying quiet grief or unspoken discontent at work. “Spiritual Healing” might have been the tool — but their desire was something else. And if I couldn’t speak to that desire, they’d never find me.
From Tools to Outcomes
Most of us were trained to talk about our work through the lens of what we do. We say: “I offer breathwork,” or “I use a trauma-informed approach,” or “I guide people through inner child healing.”
But the client isn’t usually looking for a tool. They’re looking for relief, for change, for understanding. They want to feel less insecure in their relationship, more confident in their boundaries, or finally able to exhale in their own body.
Your message isn’t about disowning your tools — it’s about translating them into language your people recognise as themselves.
What They’re Really Buying
When someone chooses to work with you, they’re not buying your modality — they’re responding to a sense that something in their life needs to shift. You’ve named the tension they want to move through, the outcome they’re hoping for, or the thing they’ve quietly been carrying that’s now become too heavy.
Often, they’re already describing these things in plain, grounded language: “I want to stop second-guessing myself at work,” “I need to figure out how to say no without guilt,” or “I just want to feel like myself again.”
Messaging need not be as hard as we make it. We just need to raise our heads and pay attention to what our ideal buyer is saying, before they do the work with someone like us.
Because what they’re buying is the possibility that this work will help them feel more free, more at peace, more like themselves. And your message is what helps them see that possibility clearly — and choose to move toward it.
Your Marketing Becomes Ministry
Once your messaging is rooted, your marketing stops feeling like performance. It becomes part of your personal ministry — a way of offering presence, possibility, or perspective to the people who are already quietly seeking someone who feels like a fit.
From a Quiet Marketing perspective, your marketing should feel like an act of art. Not in a polished, performative way — but in a way that expresses something true. If it doesn’t feel that way right now, it’s a signal to change how you're doing it.
When your messaging foundation is clear, even your most creative expressions — poetry, storytelling, modern-day philosophy — can serve as invitations. It all becomes part of your ecosystem of resonance.
Your podcast becomes a space for attunement. Your blog becomes a wayfinder. Your email list becomes a soft landing place.
And you stop feeling like you have to convince anyone. Because the people who land on your words already feel it: you see them.
A Gentle Reframe
If you’re in that in-between space where your message still feels frustratingly fuzzy or flat — know that this is a natural part of the process. It’s not a problem to solve, but an invitation to slow down and tune in.
Tuning your message is like tuning an instrument. The melody is already there — it just needs refining so your people can hear it clearly. This isn’t about changing your truth. It’s about making your message resonate in a way that lands.
You don’t need to rush it. Messaging clarity arrives through attention, experimentation, and care — not perfection.
Here are some journaling prompts to sit with:
What are your people really trying to shift when they come to you?
What are they living through that your work touches or transforms?
What words might they use to describe that — before they’ve learned your language?
Let your answers percolate and be incomplete. Clarity emerges when it's not being forced.
And if you'd love my eyes on your messaging, you're warmly invited to join the Quiet Marketing Mastermind, a space where I support you to build an ecosystem that brings you consistent clients and income — without burnout or being chained to the social media treadmill
I'd love to know what this stirred for you — let’s chat in the comments.
Danielle Gardner
The Quiet Marketer
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