EPISODE 256 OF THE HINT OF HUSTLE PODCAST
Part 2 of the Yap Challenge Breakdown
This is Part 2 of my Jessi Jean Yap Challenge breakdown and this week it’s about YOU (if you missed Part 1, check it out here)
You’re not trying to become social media famous, but you would like to be known for your work, and for your reputation to do the heavy lifting for your brand. This week we’re digging into the three gears that create TRACTION when you’re an expert sharing your ideas.
I also get into the time I lost all my confidence after maternity leave even though the skill never left me, why your second launch is more likely to flop than your first, and why I refuse to let clients batch their content if they want to get better at talking.
If you’re doing genuinely good work and still feel invisible (or that your work isn’t getting the spotlight it deserves) this episode is going to tell you exactly which piece you’re skipping.
Episode Nuggets
- The thing I see experts do constantly that puts more work on their audience
- Why I made myself hand-correct my own Facebook Live captions for months (and what it exposed about how I talk)
- The unpopular opinion I have about “being more of yourself” online
- Why I won’t let clients batch their content if they’re serious about getting better
LISTEN TO THE FULL EPISODE:
🔥 Grab my Profitable Speaking Guide to get more traction and tangible outcomes from your visibility efforts.
Why a Great Message Isn’t Enough on Its Own
You can have a genuinely great take, deliver it well, and have it land with someone in the exact right moment. But if that’s the only thing they ever hear from you, or they don’t hear from you often, they’re going to forget you. Even a good idea isn’t a brand on its own.
This is the thing I kept coming back to while I watched Jesse Jean’s Yap Challenge launch play out. She didn’t just have a good message. She had something underneath it that made that message actually stick, get repeated, and travel beyond her own following. I’ve used a framework with my private clients for years that explains exactly why some messages build real traction and others just disappear into the feed, and watching Jesse’s launch gave us a very public, real-world example of it in action.
I call it the Three Gears: Reps, Reach, and Resonance. Think of them as gears in a machine. They have to be turning together, not just one of them spinning while the other two sit idle. Most experts I work with have built one of these gears really well and barely touched the other two, without ever realizing that’s the actual gap.
Let’s break down each one.
Gear One: Reps
Reps are the repetitions of your work, showing up consistently, practicing your craft, putting in the work over and over again.
Jesse was, in her own words, willing to “eat shit for a year.” Her premise was simple: show up again and again, get a little better each time, and trust that the reps will compound.
Here’s where most people get reps wrong, though. They assume doing something more often automatically makes them better at it, but reps without reflection are the definition of insanity (doing the same thing over and over again and expecting a different result).
The thing that builds skill is doing the work and then having the courage to look at it honestly.
I learned this the hard way back in 2018. When I started doing Facebook Lives, captions had to be manually corrected, so I’d go back after every single one and hand-key the transcription myself, which was tedious and uncomfortable, but it’s how I discovered that nearly every sentence I spoke was connected to the next one with “and so.” I had no idea I was doing it until I saw it in writing. Once I saw it, I started catching myself before I said the next sentence, and that’s where the real pause training happened, not from someone telling me to pause more, but from the discomfort of watching my own pattern back.
This is also why I don’t work with private clients who aren’t actively using their voice somewhere right now. If there’s too much time between reps, the lessons just don’t stick, the wisdom evaporates. This is the entire premise behind something I call the Daily Ramble: five minutes a day of saying things out loud, on purpose, so the muscle stays warm.
Reps alone won’t save you. Add reflection to start getting traction.
Gear Two: Reach
Reach means making sure your message gets in front of people, and there are two audiences to think about here: the people who already know you, and the people who don’t.
A lot of experts spend all their time talking to the same warm audience over and over, which is great for trust but does very little for growth. If you want to make a real impact, at some point it becomes your responsibility to get your message in front of new people.
This is also where a lot of second launches flop. The first launch works because you’re speaking to people who already trust you. The second launch, when you bring in cold traffic, fails because you’re using that same warm-audience language on people who’ve never heard of you before. Speaking to a stranger requires a different kind of conviction than speaking to someone who already believes in you.
There’s no single right way to grow reach. Guest speaking, podcasting, social media, local networking, collaborations, all of them work, depending on you and your goals. What matters is that you’re intentional about it, and that you understand reach alone won’t carry you, it has to pair with repetition. Someone has to see your message multiple times, somewhere between six and eight times by most marketing estimates, before they start to notice and remember it.
So repeating yourself might annoy you, it’s necessary for your audience. The discomfort you feel saying the same thing again isn’t a sign you’re doing something right building recognition.
Gear Three: Resonance
This is the one I geek out on the most, because resonance is where reach and reps pay off. You can have all the reps and all the reach in the world, but if your message doesn’t resonate with the right person, none of it converts into anything.
Resonance comes down to five levers: what, how, who, why, and when.
What – the substance of your message. Is it relevant to the person you’re talking to right now? This is where the curse of the expert shows up: sometimes we’re so deep into our own expertise that we’re answering questions our audience isn’t even asking yet.
How – the way you deliver it. Your tone, pace, personality, energy. There’s no universal right way to sound. There’s only the way that creates chemistry with the right person. Being more of yourself doesn’t mean being more or less formal. Formality and charisma are two different dials, and confusing them is one of the most common mistakes I see.
Who – the specific person you’re speaking to. Not “you guys,” not “everybody.” One person. The clearer you get on exactly who that person is, the more your content starts to feel like you’re inside their head.
Why – your intention behind sharing. People can sense it whether you say it out loud or not. If you claim you’re “just here to serve” while quietly needing to hit a revenue goal, that incongruence comes through in your voice and your energy. Being transparent about your why, even the parts that involve making money, builds more trust than pretending you don’t have one.
When – it’s all about timing. The same message can be irrelevant to someone today and exactly what they need six months from now. Anchoring your content to a specific moment, problem, or phase in someone’s journey is what makes the difference between “huh, interesting” and “holy crap, this is for me right now.”
This Is More Than Tactics
It’s tempting to think the answer to a stalled message is a better hook, a smarter funnel, or a new platform, and sometimes those things do help. But the real engine behind a message that gets remembered, recognized, and referred is these three gears working together, not any single tactic.
So put in the reps and reflect on them. Take responsibility for reach instead of waiting for the right people to stumble onto your work. And get relentlessly clear on the five levers of resonance so the right person feels like you’re speaking directly to them.
None of this requires you to go viral. It just requires you to be intentional, consistent, and honest about who you’re talking to and why.
🎧 Listen to the full episode, where I get into the maternity leave story that taught me skill and confidence are not the same thing, why I won’t let clients batch their content, and the unpopular opinion I have about “being more of yourself” online.
And if you haven’t caught Part 1 yet, where I unpack my own jealousy watching Jesse’s launch and what it taught me about the curse of the expert, that one sets the stage for everything here.
Go to PART 1 of the Yap Challenge breakdown here.
And come tell me on Instagram @theheathersager what came up for you with this one. I’m building more content based on exactly where people get stuck.
LINKS & RESOURCES MENTIONED IN EPISODE
🎧 Part 1 of this series, “A Speaking Expert’s Take on the $1.2M Yap Challenge Launch”: heathersager.com/episode255
🎧 The “Bitter B Trap” episode: heathersager.com/episode250
🎧 The Articulate Your Thoughts episode: heathersager.com/episode2
🎧 The Critic, the Coach, and the Cheerleader episode: heathersager.com/episode253
🔥 Get more traction with your message by implementing these strategies for your next visibility opportunity → Click here to grab my Profitable Speaking Guide
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