If you’ve ever gone to a networking event, business after-hours mixer, or opened up any Facebook group for women in business, and asked people to introduce themselves and what they do, after twenty minutes, you get a mix that sounds something like this:

• I help women step into their power and live the life they deserve. 
• I help women heal their relationship with food and their bodies. 
• I help women take control of their financial future. 
• I help women show up consistently and grow their online presence.

On their face, these sound like perfectly acceptable answers. You’ve probably even written something that sounds similar, maybe not those exact words, but something in that neighborhood. And I’m not here to embarrass you. I’m sure it felt right when you wrote it, something you workshopped, asked AI to help you with and revised, and maybe even paid someone to help you with. It technically describes what you do, but it doesn’t sound like something that would naturally come out of your mouth or speak to anyone specific enough to get them to notice and think she’s talking to me with any regularity.

And the worst part is you’ve been building your marketing on top of it ever since.

The problem isn’t your creativity, your writing, or really even your marketing. It’s your foundation, and it’s the reason no one is engaging with your content, and your income stays inconsistent, no matter what you do.

I want you to pull up a chair because we need to talk about it. More importantly, how to fix it. 

How Getting Specific Changed Everything

Before I was a brand message strategist and copywriter, I was a massage therapist.

As a new grad, I had no idea how to run a business. I had approximately 12 weeks of “business classes” (if you could call them that) and was forced to learn as I went. 

Let’s just say it wasn’t pretty. 

If someone had handed me a book and said, “This is what not to do if you want your practice to be successful,” I opened that puppy up to chapter one and proceeded to make every mistake in the book. 

• I gave away my services for free or at a discount to “build my client list.”
• I worked on anyone who would lie on my table
• I did free chair massage events
• I even bought an ad on the back of a grocery store receipt. 

Seriously?! Who even looks at the back of their receipt?

I spent about 3 years struggling to make a living and told myself it was all just part of the process, knowing deep down that I was lying to myself.

I knew something had to change, and I made a commitment to learn everything I could about marketing.

Fast forward a few years, and I decided to turn my generalist practice into a more specialized practice focusing on lower back and hip pain. This helped, but it also brought in anyone with these issues.

You’re probably thinking, so what’s the problem? You’re getting people on your table and money in your pockets.

The problem was that while I liked working on these particular areas of the body, clients weren’t always a good fit, and it often drained my energy.

At the encouragement of a friend, I decided to niche my practice to attract runners and rebranded my business from SK Massage to Knead to Run.

But I didn’t stop there; I knew the types of runners I really liked working with were half- and full-marathon runners who were struggling to break a PR due to injury or pain during runs. 

Sounds pretty specific, right?

That was intentional. I had learned that getting super specific about what I was good at and who I helped was what took me from a massage therapist who struggled to make ends meet, to a massage therapist with a variable income, to a massage therapist who was booked out 2-3 weeks in advance with a waitlist.   

I want to be clear: the rebrand alone didn’t fix it overnight. It took a few months to go from rebranded to fully booked. But that’s a few months compared to the seven years I spent struggling before I understood what specificity actually meant. The foundation didn’t slow me down. The absence of one did.

I started getting new clients who would constantly compliment me on how easy my website made it for them to understand I was the massage therapist they were looking for. I would get calls from prospective clients that would start, I’m not a runner, but I play tennis 3-5 times a week, I do crossfit, I play soccer on the weekends, will you still work with me? 

My answer was always, of course. Because while my marketing specifically spoke to runners, there are many other sports that result in low back and hip pain. 

I became the go-to therapist in town and started getting referrals from physical therapists and other wellness and medical professionals I had never met.  

I loved being a massage therapist, and I spent 17 years doing it. But like many, during the Covid-19 pandemic, I found myself needing to pivot when forced shutdowns and social distancing requirements made practicing massage impossible. 

Because I already knew a lot about marketing, my pivot felt like a natural next step in my career evolution. I started writing social media copy and I fell in love with brand messaging and strategy.  

And while I’ve learned a ton from others, I started to realize something was missing from almost everything I was learning. And that was how, even when business owners did the work, their marketing still wasn’t getting them the results they were looking for. 

That’s why I created the DIBS Method. I knew that, in order for brands to consistently attract the right-fit clients, they needed to dig deep until they hit pay dirt (more on that in a bit).

I Knew the Work Went Deeper Than the Tools Allowed

Before Quirk & Quill existed, I spent nearly two years building my method by filling someone else’s bucket. I started to feel confined because I had to follow their business model, knowing full well it needed more, but unable to do anything about it. I had a lot of influence on the early development of the process, but didn’t have the final say on what it would fully look like.

The tools I was using weren’t bad. Hell, if I’m being honest, they’re better than most. It asked about purchase behavior, decision influencers, and self-perception. Questions that looked like depth on paper, and they can go deep, theoretically, if the person answering them already knows how to excavate their own thinking.

But most people don’t. Which meant I was the one doing the digging, inside a framework that wasn’t built for it. I would give them an opportunity to answer in their own words, but would inevitably get back “I don’t know” or “I guess…” I’d try to stimulate their thinking by asking, “Are they scared?“ Embarrassed? Frustrated? And whichever word landed closest to what they were thinking was what came out. I was leading them toward agreement, not discovery. I was handing people the vocabulary to describe their own experience instead of helping them find it themselves.

Then the work would get cut short due to a lack of budget or an unclear scope, and we’d have to stop before we got to the bottom layer, and I’d watch the client walk away with a document that was better than what she had,  but built on my approximation of her voice instead of hers.

The difference between that and what DIBS does is the difference between asking how she feels about her problem and asking how she explains it to her best friend over a glass of wine after a really bad day. 

How she feels about her problem sounds like this: She feels frustrated that she can’t seem to find new clients

How she explains her problem sounds like this: She’s pissed off because she knows she’s dancing around the edges of the answer, but can’t seem to find the middle, and she doesn’t know what to do to fix it.

One produces a label. The other produces a picture. And her specific, unfiltered, this-is-exactly-how-I’d-say-it language was the only way we were ever going to build a message that sounded like her and attracted the attention of the exact person she wanted to work with.

That’s what I kept trying to get to and what the existing tools kept stopping short of.

So I built the thing that went all the way.

I started Quirk & Quill because I was tired of watching skilled, established women running service-based businesses almost get it right, but not quite. Women who couldn’t figure out why their marketing wasn’t working. Despite following the instructions, buying the courses, downloading the templates, and doing everything they were told to do, the income stayed inconsistent. Their content had no central message, the right clients weren’t finding it, and the ones who did were hit-or-miss.

Not because they were doing what they learned wrong, but because they were pretending to be a version of themselves inside someone else’s sandbox. 

The Problem With Performed Authenticity

Authenticity is having its moment thanks to Gen Z. This isn’t a knock on Gen Z, by the way. I may not fully understand “no cap,” but something they are doing right is making brands earn their trust rather than assuming it’s implied. And that thinking is causing a shift that is trending upward and affecting older generations.

This is why you are seeing so many marketers talk about authenticity and “just be yourself.” They’re reacting to the market dictating the terms of the relationship, not the other way around.

They’re correct that being yourself makes you stand out, but then they place qualifiers on what authenticity looks like. 

• You’re told to be real, but not messy, awkward, rambling, unattractive, uncertain, or badly lit.
• Be authentic as long as the story remains useful to the brand.
• Be yourself as long as you can tie it back to takeaways that sell your offer 
• Be vulnerable but not “too much.”
• Be yourself unless “yourself” is not what your audience responds to 

So authenticity becomes “curated imperfection,” and the rule becomes: share the parts of what’s true as long as it makes the business easier to understand, trust, desire, or buy from.

What Years of Blending In Taught Me About Standing Out

I wasn’t diagnosed with ADHD until I was 30. 

Growing up, I was called “weird” and learned to blend in and not call attention to myself. I also learned to study the room and try to mask my weirdness so that I could fit in, but never fully feeling like I did. 

Here’s what happens when you own a business and are told your whole life to take up less space: It keeps you cycling through tactics, chasing the next framework, trying to craft a brand message that makes you sound professional, smart, and competent instead of like you because it confirms every fear you already have. What if I’m not good enough? You think the problem is your website design, offer, or decision making. So you fix those things one at a time, and it does nothing to help because what you think is the root cause is just a symptom.

Today, I am very open about my ADHD, and understanding it has been a huge part of how and why I’ve been able to create a brand that is 100% me. But it still feels super uncomfortable to talk about. Not because I’m embarrassed, but because I still fear being judged. Will people try to convince me it’s my hidden superpower? (I hate that, btw). Or will they look at me as someone who’s flighty, unorganized, chronically either 30 minutes early or 15 minutes late with no in between, and easily distractible? Depends on the day and whether I’ve taken my meds. 

That last sentence is exactly the thing that most people would tell me to edit out. Not because it’s not true or irrelevant or too personal, but because it makes others uncomfortable. And you want to know something? I don’t care. Because if you’re going to do brand messaging right, knowing who you’re not trying to attract is just as important as who you are.

If someone is going to judge me because I’m a little too open, or I take meds that they think are poisoning my body, or 75 other reasons why my way of doing things isn’t right in their eyes, they’re not my people. And I want you to be as comfortable saying that as I am. 

Other people’s judgment, or perceived judgment, is exactly what’s keeping you from fully owning the imperfections that make you distinct from those of every other woman who does what you do. 

You’re told you have to be perfect. Don’t make a mistake. Don’t ruffle too many feathers. 

It’s no wonder you bury your brand message behind safety and social acceptability, and then can’t figure out why you have a hard time answering questions about who you are, who you best serve, and what you think. 

Remember: people don’t hire your offer. They hire you.

Even when someone comes to you as a referral, already warmed up and already told you’re excellent at what you do, the deal doesn’t close itself. She still needs to find the common thread. She needs to read or hear something that makes her think, “That’s me.“ That’s exactly what I’ve been trying to say. Until that moment happens, you’re still just a name on a list of people she’s considering.

Your version of weird is not a liability. For the right client, it’s the whole reason she chooses you.

I Didn’t Invent This Work But I Finally Defined My Version

I wasn’t trying to build a methodology. Not at first. I was trying to figure out how to explain what I was already doing.

As a massage therapist, people would ask me how I got to be so good, and my answer usually consisted of some version of “intuition”.

But it wasn’t really intuition at all. It was 17 years of combined experience that I knew how to do with my eyes closed. I didn’t have to think about it, let alone explain it to people. I just did it. 

It’s the same concept that makes it difficult to figure out how to create a defined brand message. You’re too close to the source. And that’s what was happening in my own marketing.

There’s a particular type of painful irony that doesn’t escape me here. For someone who does this for a living, I couldn’t figure out my own brand message because I wasn’t applying my methods to my own business.

I listen to people give me their circular, frustrated explanations about how much they struggle to talk about what they do and how difficult it is to attract more right-fit clients. I pull their word salad apart to find the common threads beneath what they’re saying, and hand them back a vivid brand identity and message in their exact word because they are their exact words. They just needed someone outside the circle to objectively find what they’ve been looking for. 

Clients give me feedback like “I can’t believe how much this sounds like me,” and “You really captured my thinking.”

I knew what to do, I just hadn’t named it yet.

One afternoon, completely frustrated, I was deep in conversation with Claude (yes, the AI and no, I will not apologize for this). I was ranting about why my own marketing still wasn’t working despite everything I knew. So I decided to take myself through my own process and asked Claude to help me document it. 

The further we dug, the more clearly I could see what was developing. It felt like hitting a water main. Everything started coming out at once, clearer and easier to explain than it had been. Ever.

Claude asked me how I know when I’ve gone as deep as someone needs, and as I was describing it, the word that surfaced was paydirt.

That moment when you’ve been digging and your shovel finally hits the top of something real. Not a magic key (I’m not fully convinced those exist) but the closest thing to one I’d found. In my clients’ work, my own, and in every framework I’d watched the industry sell to people who deserved better.

So, I called dibs on that idea immediately.

Here’s What Changes When You Start With Your Foundation

DIBS stands for: Discovery. Identity. Broadcast. Scaffold. It’s a system that doesn’t just help you develop a brand message and find your ideal client persona. It also gives you a strategy to get that message out into the world and the support to make sure you’re staying on-brand with as much help as you need for as long as you need it.

DIBS has 4 phases. Each phase builds on the next.

D — Discovery is where we use cognitive mapping and deep psychology to build a picture of who you actually are and who you’re genuinely trying to reach. Way beyond demographics, and beyond the psychographics underneath the purchase decision. We answer questions like: What gets your ideal client to trust you? What is she afraid will happen if she commits and gets it wrong? What she’s secretly afraid will happen if she commits and gets it right? You leave Discovery with your ICP Master Document, the foundation on which everything else is built.

I — Identity turns the words that would actually come out of your mouth into a brand message, a point of view, and a USP written only for you and not created from borrowed phrasing or a fill-in-the-blank template. You’ll have a way to say what you do and who you do it for without the internal cringe of I hope that lands or stumbling over your answer.

B — Broadcast puts it all to work. A content blueprint — not a calendar of random topics, but a strategy where every piece of content builds on the last and moves your ideal client closer to yes. The right message, to the right person, in the right place, in the right order.

S — Scaffold is the long game. A strategic partnership that stays as long as it’s useful and not a day longer. Three tiers depending on how much support you want as you put the work into practice.

• Go Your Own Way
• I Wanna Dance With Somebody
• Get Outta My Dreams (Get Into My Car)

Yes, these are all 80s song titles, another one of the ways I inject personality into my brand, unapologetically.

I want to pause for a second because I need you to understand that DIBS isn’t a Hail Mary for a business that’s falling apart at the seams. It’s my experience that if multiple factors are causing your business difficulties, that’s a deeper problem than messaging. It’s structural and not what DIBS is designed for. It’s for the woman whose business is established enough to prove the offer can sell, but inconsistent enough that she’s started to wonder what the hell she’s missing.

Ashley’s Reaction Confirmed Everything

I was reviewing funnel copy with my client, Ashley. We were going through the copy I wrote. When I asked her what her first reaction was, she said: “Wow. I can’t believe how much this sounds like me.”

Not this is polished, or I love the writing.

This sounds like me.

That’s paydirt. 

Your birds-of-a-feather person. The ones who don’t need convincing, who read your words and immediately think she gets it, she gets me, she can’t flock to you if your marketing sounds like everyone else’s. She’s scanning for her specific version of weird reflected back at her, so she sees the common thread between your story and hers.

Give her that thread, and she won’t just hire you. She’ll send you everyone she knows.

Marketing Advice Leaves You Stuck By Design

Here’s something nobody in the marketing space wants to admit: the industry doesn’t actually benefit from you figuring this out.

Every course, every framework, every here’s the system that finally worked for me, offer is built on gaslighting you into believing you don’t have what it takes yet, but you could, if you just bought this. It sells you confidence while feeding on the lack of it. It tells you imposter syndrome is the enemy and then manufactures more of it with every launch, every comparison, every metric that reminds you how far you still have to go.

That’s not an accident. That’s a business model.

I’m not trying to burn it down from the inside. Some of those courses are genuinely good. Some of those frameworks work—for the right person, with the right foundation underneath them. That’s the part nobody mentions in the sales page: they work best when you already know who you are, who you’re talking to, and what you actually sound like.

DIBS is that prerequisite. It doesn’t compete with anything you’ve already invested in. It’s what makes those investments finally deliver on their promises. The course that didn’t quite click, the framework that got you 80% of the way there, the content strategy that felt right but you couldn’t fully figure out how to implement. DIBS is what lies beneath it all and makes it work.

What I want to see is a woman who no longer needs the next secret because she’s finally found what works for her, and that’s going to be different for everyone. I want to see a woman who markets from a foundation so specifically hers that confidence isn’t something she has to manufacture or purchase. Who feels like a business owner in the way that actually means something more than a title. She has a business that supports her life, her family, and her community. Clients find her because her message speaks directly to them and their desires. Your work finally feels like it compounds, not restarts.

You can’t borrow that feeling from someone else’s confidence. You have to find your own.

Get an Outside Read on Your Message

A strategy will give you consistency. A content calendar will make you more organized. Tactics will tell you what kind of content to create.

But without knowing your brand message and understanding your ICP, none of it matters. You’ll implement all of it and still end up in the same place — frustrated, stuck, and no closer to figuring out why it’s not working.

If you’re done circling the drain on that particular hamster wheel, the DIBS application is below. It takes a few minutes to fill out, and it’s how we figure out if we’re the right fit for each other.

[Apply for DIBS →]