https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jY8cd2YMdI4

I don't think there's a hard-and-fast rule, since whatever definition we're applying to 'adoration' is dependent upon the nature of the business and expectations of the customer. A coffee shop could be "adored" because people go there daily and the stakes are low. A bank? Probably not. The nature of our own business is quite specific, so what works for us probably doesn't extrapolate. We certainly have our fans and followers. But I wouldn't say our clients adore us. To be honest, I'd be concerned if they did. In the past I've had feedback from clients who say one of the things they value about us that we're not afraid to argue with them! That's because we spend the time to outline and justify our process and reasoning for a particular recommendation, and aren't afraid to push back if a client wants to go in a direction that we think isn't right. Most of our competitors just do what they're told, even if it's not in the best interests of the client. I'd like to believe our client relationships last because they're based on competence, rather than us making people feel good. Adoration strikes me as an unstable metric. Someone might love their agency because they're super responsive and attentive and make them feel valued. But should budget get squeezed or leadership churn, any such affection vanishes pretty quickly. While we do get some referrals, they're more from the position of, "these people actually know what they're talking about" instead of "we love working with them." I much prefer it that way.

@Andrew Laws I agree (even while our agency pushes back hard on the term 'digital marketing' - but that's a conversation for another day 😆). Simply doing what the client asks isn't delivering value. There's no point buying a dog and barking yourself.

I look at this as less of “how much emotion” and more like “how much signal.” Projecting and integrating our authentic selves into business is no longer some "nice-to-have" marketing differentiator. Martech and AI have changed that. Today, giving something of ourselves into our value prop is a form of what evolutionary biologists call "costly signalling". By interjecting something about who we are into our customer-facing communication, buyers are reassured that there is a real human at work rather than a well-prompted facsimile. AI and martech has made any rational claim in a USP to be able to be copied instantly. But what can’t be cloned is the messy, specific, slightly idiosyncratic 'essence of human' behind it. How we express that will (and should) differ by type of business, category, customer expectation, and so on. The important point is not to bolt “personality” on as an afterthought, but to make it inseparable from the value we're seeking to create. If you're not sure whether your communication has enough 'you' in it, ask yourself: If a competitor could paste their name onto your USP, would the message still ring true? If yes, then it’s not personal enough. Sure, people buy from people. But more precisely: people use our personality as a shortcut to decide whether to trust our promises. (Sorry for the long answer. Once I get going, it's hard for me to STFU about these kinds of things!)

I think the issue isn’t jargon itself, but misaligned audience targeting. On LinkedIn we're always talking to (at least) two groups: techies who may expect domain-specific language, and a broader network who just want to understand the value we're trying to bring. If our ideal client is technical and would lose trust if we avoided their vocabulary, then I think an answer peppered with a few well-chosen acronyms or jargon can signal credibility and shared context. The problem is when jargon increases cognitive load without adding clarity. Whenever I get tempted to go 'into the weeds' I check 2 things: - Would my target reader naturally use this term in a meeting? - If they heard it from someone trying to sell them something, would they feel informed or intimidated? For me I’d say: use jargon intentionally if the situation expects it, rather than habitually. The reader should leave feeling smart, rather than stupid.

For me, my sense of self is definitely not separate from what I do for a living, as much as it's upstream of it. At the same time I also don’t let my job fully define who I am. My identity shapes how I approach business, how I choose to interact with clients, my ethics, etc. The work is just one expression of that, but it's not the entire narrative. I imagine that's how most founder/CEOs are. The more aligned my self-concept is with what I sell, the more coherent the value articulation becomes. The more sustainable and genuine my behaviour is, the more “authentic” I feel to both myself and the people I serve. At the end of the day people buy from people, and clients can smell someone talking BS from 50 paces.