—by Gwendolyn Kuhlmann
To play any role as an actor, the most important work I had to do was to understand a few things about the character:
Where did they come from?
What experiences – good and bad – shaped them?
Where did they struggle? Where did they excel?
From the answers to all of that, I could understand the most important information that would shape the entire performance: What is driving them? What is their truest, deepest desire? What is their truth?
Once I truly got this — once I could feel it in my bones — I could allow myself to submit to the character. Because through this information, they were now real to me. Now I could be in a relationship with them. I could fall in love, and I could slip on their skin and speak their words.
This kind of knowing is the context that takes characters off the page and into our reality. It’s what makes them interesting and compelling. It’s what makes any of us sit on the edge of our seats in a theater to lean in and hear what’s next, to turn the page to the next chapter even though we know we should be going to sleep, or skip past the credits to get to the next episode as soon as possible.
It’s our own connection with their desire. With the truth that they are seeking.
We want to know what’s next because we have signed on. We’re invested. We want what they want. We connect.
From Character Acting to Client Copy
When I went into online business as a copywriter, I approached my role the same way. If I was going to slip into the voice of someone else, I needed to really GET them. This was, I found, another form of acting, and I wanted my performance to be honest and compelling.
So I sat my clients down and interviewed them with a lot of questions. To perform as them (in a sense), I needed to do my homework — to understand their story, what they’ve been through, what they’ve learned. And I needed to know what they wanted: for their business, for themselves. What was driving them?
It’s not often that an actor can have an actual conversation with the person they are portraying, and the effect of those conversations were revelatory.
Not only did they produce effective, engaging, authentic copy that got potential clients into conversation online and offline, but it did something much more profound that I couldn’t have predicted:
It helped my clients see themselves.
And by seeing themselves, I mean in the kind of light that most people don’t take the time to see anyone in. They got to see themselves and their business in the light of their purpose. To have that universal truth that is driving them reflected back with clarity.
When I saw what that information does for a business, I knew I was on to something.
How Your Truth Will Help You Grow
In my collaboration with Rootstock, we have now distilled the early work I did with my first clients into a powerful offer called the Kernel of Truth. In a two-hour interview, our objective is to help you see yourself in your truth: in that drive that is lighting your fire and getting you out of bed in the morning to create — or be part of creating — this business, this vision, this dream that you’ve been charged with.
This truth is the cornerstone of your business.
And once that cornerstone is in place, there are several ways it sets you and your business up to flourish. I thought I’d start with the six I find most fundamental to growth:
1. You Have Something to Say
Notice how I said the cornerstone of your business is not your offers. That’s because you’re not saying anything with your offers. You’re saying something with your truth.
We all know we no longer live in a world where you can just put up a sign and expect people to pop by. We’re on the internet, people! No matter what field you’re in, there are a couple hundred brands out there doing the same thing you’re doing, or something like it.
So why should we listen to you? Why should we consume or follow your content? Why should we consider hiring you, when we have a whole world of people to choose from?
Attention is our most precious commodity, and if you spend my precious attention giving me your product without your context, the best you can expect is for me to Google it and see where I can get it for cheap.
But when you’re showing up with your truth, you’re showing up with something of value from the start.
You have a point of view: a voice, a story, a truth that you believe in, and you’re showing up with it every day. By sharing this truth, you are already of service to me, and all I had to do was read, watch, or listen to you.
And yes, your point of view IS a service. Never discount it. You may think everything you have to say has already been said, but I can guarantee you that they haven’t said it the way you would say it, and in the vast expanses of the Internet, there are people who need to hear it the way only you can say it.
Put your spin on it. Play with your take. Find out what conversation you’re part of, and jump in with both feet.
When I see you showing up this way, I’m not encountering a lifeless representation of what you think I want; I’m encountering YOU. And you’re compelling. You are interesting. And you have something to offer that you believe in!
Attention is our most precious commodity, and if you spend my precious attention giving me your product without your context, the best you can expect is for me to Google it and see where I can get it for cheap.
2. You Go From Selling to Developing Business
I’m going to let you in on a little secret: Good sales copy is never about the offer. It’s about the truth — the spark of inspiration and desire that created the offer.
Yes, I know you offer an incredible service, and you’ve made an exceptional product, but you did not develop it in a vacuum! As a writer, I cannot write any copy that sells your offer if I don’t know the truth it was based on. Maybe ChatGPT can, but it will be bland formulaic fluff because, again, it’s not SAYING anything!
It’s your truth that sells because it’s your truth that people connect with.
That goes for artists, lawyers, accountants, butchers, bakers, and candlestick makers. Humans connect through shared experiences, through stories, through universal truths. Not through things.
As a visionary with little interest in selling and absolutely no interest in feeling like an icky self-promoter, this should take a huge weight off your shoulders.
Instead of showing up thinking you have to sell your offer, you now show up sharing the truth of your offer. Changing our perspectives with your point of view, blowing our minds, and putting out your offer as another manifestation of that truth.
Every time you share your truth, you’re connecting, you’re serving, and you’re showing people who you are. That is the very essence of sales.
3. You Become More Than A Commodity
Yes, it’s important that people know what you’re selling, but if they know what you’re selling without knowing what you’re about, you become interchangeable. You’re one of many lined up down the street, all asking for the same job, without providing any knowledge of why you’re here and what your significance is.
Take it from a woman who stood in lines just like that over and over for gigs as an opera singer: it just leaves you feeling empty.
Fill yourself up with your purpose, and your value will rise to match it. You’ll walk into any conversation looking for collaborators, instead of permission. Permission is small. It’s draining to both ask for and give it, and it immediately puts you on the defensive, trying to prove your worth and validate your work’s value.
Collaboration, meanwhile, is empowering. It’s about a larger mission. It’s invigorating to be part of something.
People want to get behind a mission. They enjoy it, they are looking for it, and they are willing to pay for it. Be a person people can get behind.
“As people get on board your train and start fueling your fire with their recognition, opportunities, and — yes indeed, sales — your train will go faster. But they are getting on in the first place because the train was going somewhere. It’s not sitting at the station, hoping for passengers.”
4. You’re LEADING with something rather than HOPING for something
So now you’re a person that people can get behind. That, inherently, means you’re a leader. Which means you have to start approaching your communication as a creator, rather than a consumer. You’re not waiting for the recognition; you’re not waiting for the opportunities; you’re not even *dare I say it* waiting for the sales. You’re on a mission to make things happen, and you are about your work. You have your truth, and you know where you’re driving.
As people get on board your train and start fueling your fire with their recognition, opportunities, and — yes indeed, sales — your train will go faster. But they are getting on in the first place because the train was going somewhere. It’s not sitting at the station, hoping for passengers.
Your truth gives you that control, that semblance of order, and that foundational element that grounds and guides you. You are leading yourself from within, and that attracts both people who are also leaders (like attracts like), and people who are still finding themselves and therefore need direction from outside for a little while.
I cannot stress this enough: if you don’t know where you’re going, people cannot follow.
5. You Are Open For Growth
Something I’ve run into with myself and many other wildly creative business owners is getting lost in a sea of ideas, not understanding how they all connect, and not being able to identify which ideas are important and worth pursuing, or which are a shiny distraction.
It can be paralyzing — either because it keeps you stuck in inaction, or it has you burning out, running your business in circles, working so hard to reach the next shiny goal, only to find yourself in the same place next year.
Knowing your truth puts it all into focus.
Which means that when you decide to branch out and write a book or start a podcast or get paid to speak onstage, you are looking at the intersection of that truth and the new property you’re creating. There is a through-line that anchors your communication and that ties things together.
When you develop your business around your truth, you are constantly drawing lines in your own understanding and in your communication from that truth to your offers, the way you do business, the people you choose to hire, and the people you choose to partner with. Everything you build has something to line up around. Everything has intention and purpose. Nothing is just “because that’s just how people do it.” It’s because that’s how YOU do it, and you can stand behind it 100%.
6. If You Don’t Do It Now, You’ll Be Forced To Do It Later
I’ll be bold enough to come out and say it: this is the most important work you can do for your business. It’s the kind of work that, if you don’t do it now, you will have to do it at some point, and everything you’ve built until that point will be up for questioning if it wasn’t built on that truth.
While the Kernel of Truth as an offer is rather new, I have done something like it for the past two years and I can tell you that the majority of my clients have looked at me after our two hours were over with some amount of dark humor, telling me of all the money they could have saved on contractors, programs, and business coaches if they had done this work first. Or how they now have to go back and redo their entire website and rethink their offers because they finally know what they are trying to say, and they can’t stand another minute of communicating out of alignment.
I smile and tell them it’s okay. You’re ready for this work when you’re ready, and everything leading up to that is some sort of education you had to go through. It’s all a process. When I talk to people who don’t see the value in this, I know they just haven’t been around the block enough times. We’ll catch them on the next pass.
So, what now?
If this article has resonated with you, I invite you to spend some time thinking about who you are, what you value, and how it connects to your business. Study yourself and your business as if you are characters in a play you’re about to perform.
Then I want you to get into conversation about it. Navel gazing will only get you so far. This work dies in isolation because we need conversation to sharpen our thoughts – we need someone reflecting our best thinking back to us so we can hear it.
I’ll be honest with you — at Rootstock, we walk the walk, as well. This very article, which in itself is a fleshing-out of my truth that every voice and every story matters, is the product of multiple conversations between me, Ryan, and Terra to tease out ideas and get them into focus. Thoughts only become leadership, which only becomes growth, when you share them and allow them to be refined in that sharing.
The Kernel of Truth is a distillation of everything the team at Rootstock has learned about the fundamental core of thought leadership. It’s two hours of the kind of questioning, listening, space holding, and reflection you need to find that truth and start running with it.
This is the beginning of a beautiful journey of alignment and empowerment in your business, and I can’t wait to help you take your first steps.
