There’s an old joke that a lawyer who represents himself has a fool for a client. Why? Because you need perspective beyond yourself to meet legal challenges effectively. The same is often true of messaging.

We think we know ourselves, our company, our brand best. That’s certainly true on one level—no one has more familiarity with your business than you. But the challenge of messaging is how to communicate that your brand is the best choice to audiences that don’t know you.

Being familiar with what you do and how you do is only part of the equation. The other part, and often the more challenging one, is how to convey that value to those that aren’t familiar with you. Especially when most competitors are already making the claims you want to make.

It can be hard to step back and look at your offering from the point of view of your audiences. You know how great you are, why don’t they just “get” it?

Don’t feel bad about this. Everyone faces this challenge. I recently had an exchange with a very good marketing company about their messaging, in which I explained to them how they were missing the mark for themselves.

So there’s no shame in needing help with messaging. It’s not because you don’t know your own business. You may, in fact, know it too well. This very familiarity can make it difficult to communicate your excellence.