Welcome to One Thing Better. Each week, the editor in chief of Entrepreneur magazine (that's me) shares one way to achieve a breakthrough at work — and build a career or company you love.
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- Improve your connection with customers and clients
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Just take my totally free, 20-day email challenge — where I share the tactics of top-tier brands, how I applied them to my own work, and how you can apply them to yours.
In today's newsletter, I'm sharing a version of Day 11's email. I hope you love it, and that you sign up!
Here's the newsletter...
You're not connecting with people the way you want to.
Maybe you own a business, and your marketing isn't working. Or your content feels flat. Or your calls with clients aren't landing.
This could be the problem: You haven't reached the highest and most convincing level of communication — and that's knowingness.
There are three tiers of marketing and communication:
- Generalities: When you're broad and vague.
- Specifics: When you're clear and focused.
- Knowingness: When you say things that only your target audience would understand, displaying your deep knowledge of their needs.
Most people stop at specifics, thinking that's enough. But knowingness goes deeper — it's when you demonstrate that you don't just understand what your customers need, but why they need it and how it feels to need it.
When people see that, they trust you more.
Today, I'll show you how to infuse more knowingness into your marketing and communications — and let's start with how McDonald's mastered this technique in one of my all-time favorite ads.
What McDonald's knows
In 2010, McDonald's created an ad that had nothing to do with food, and everything to do with their customers' lives. You can watch it here. I'll break it down below:
We open on a guy driving a car, looking sleepy.
He pulls into a McDonald's drive-through but doesn't stop the car. He quickly loud-whispers his order into the speaker, but struggles to get everything out in time.
So he circles around, doing this repeatedly. We cut to the McDonald's staffer inside, who is very confused.
The guy keeps returning, saying his order. Eventually the McDonald's staffer gets it — there's a sleeping baby in the back seat, and this dad doesn't want to stop the car and risk waking the kid.
The whole McDonald's crew snaps into action, helping get his order and communicate the price. Then there's a quick handoff — food for money.
The dad drives away with a thumbs up, grateful for their help.
Adorable, right?
Why this worked so well
McDonald's didn't just show a hungry customer getting food. They captured a hyper-specific challenge that every parent understands — the delicate balance of caring for a child while managing your own needs.
This wasn't about convenience or speed. It was about knowingness. McDonald's demonstrated a nuanced understanding of their customers' lives.
In turn, parents felt heard — and were reminded that McDonald's is an easy solution for stressful lives.
Think about it: When you seen yourself truly reflected in ads, don't you take notice?
Here are a few other examples that really spoke to me…
I saw this at the airport recently. Again, it's an insight that parents will feel deeply:
And I loved this StreetEasy campaign, which ran in the New York City subway. It captured the anxiety of New Yorkers thinking about moving to the suburbs — and I instantly texted these pictures to some friends who made the move.
Notice what all these examples have in common: They don't just identify a problem — they capture the emotional experience of having that problem. That's the difference between specifics and knowingness.
So, how do you do this in your work?
How to show knowingness
You know who you're trying to reach. You know what they want. But before you try to speak to them, you must think: What are their shared experiences?
To find the answer, follow this two-step process:
Step 1: Hear their nuanced complaints
Talk to your customers or clients. Ask what bothers them the most. Ask how that makes them feel personally. How does it impact them at home? What does it stop them from doing?
Also, imagine this: If a bunch of your customers were drinking at a bar, what would they complain about — not immediately, but maybe two drinks in?
You're looking for a specific insight: It's personal, small, but also meaningful. It should make their peers say, "That happens to me too!!!"
That is the core of knowingness.
Step 2: Reflect their reality with specificity
Here's your goal: Whenever you speak (through content or conversations), you should infuse your language with well-earned knowingness.
Your words should scream: "I know your problems at a granular level!"
When people see their specific experience reflected back to them, it triggers what psychologists call "felt understanding." They don't just think this person gets it — they feel understood at a visceral level.
For example...
Instead of: "I help overwhelmed entrepreneurs"
Try: "I help founders who lie awake at 3 am wondering if they made the right decision about that product, while also feeling guilty for how tired they'll be with their kids the next morning."
Instead of: "Time management for busy professionals"
Try: "For the executive who feels guilty every time they leave the office before their team, even though they know they need boundaries to be effective"
Instead of: "LinkedIn training for consultants"
Try: "For the expert who knows they should be posting on LinkedIn but stares at the blank screen for 20 minutes before giving up, wondering if anyone actually cares what they have to say"
In each case, the language is specific and relatable. You want people to think: "Oh yeah, that's me."
How I applied this to my own work
I do corporate keynotes. To get these gigs, I often take sales calls from prospective clients. And when I do, I start by sharing this true story:
A few years ago, I spoke at a large company's staff retreat. During the Q&A session, a guy in the back raised his hand. His name was Gary — older man, giant beard. He said he'd retired a few years ago, but misses everyone and still comes to the retreats.
"I don't have a question," Gary told me. "I just want to tell you that, in the decades I've been going to these things, I've seen a lot of speakers do empty cheerleading — but you're the first one to give us practical, useful things to do. So thank you."
After telling that story, I tell my potential client: That's how I define success — when people like Gary are happy. Garys have seen it all, their time is valuable, and they deserve something that's unique, practical, and memorable.
Clients love when I say this. Why? Because it shows how well I know their needs, and it shows that I can deliver.
Knowingness closes the deal
Above all, everyone just wants to feel understood — not just intellectually, but emotionally.
They want someone who gets not just their problem, but their experience of the problem. The more deeply you understand that experience, the more they'll trust you to help them change it.
And frankly, I think this exercise makes us better humans too. It forces us to think carefully about the people we serve, and what matters to them. We should never want to just sell stuff. We should want to make lives better. Which means we must know those lives.
So listen closely. Dig deep, and communicate deeper. Live in nuance.
That's how to do one thing better.
P.S. Ready to improve your marketing and comms? I have 20 days of lessons like this — just sign up here, for free!
That's all for this week! See you next Tuesday.
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