Choosing The "Right" Marketing For Your Coaching Business

 Have you ever hopped from one marketing strategy to another, hoping to find “the right” one?

Or went all the way through executing something, only to find that the shoe didn’t fit, even after you thought you finally found that “Cinderalla shoe” of a marketing strategy?

This used to happen to me over and over again, and it led me to spending literally hundreds of thousands of dollars on courses, programs, and coaching to try to figure out what I was doing “wrong” until I realized that the marketing wasn’t the problem…

Tune into this special episode of the show where I talk about why it’s so hard for us to find the “right fit” and what I had to do instead, and why this might lead to superior coaching in your own clients as they struggle to seek that “silver bullet” in their own transformations as well…

Come learn more in this week’s episode of The Coach’s Plaza Show.
Join the CEO Coach Community at The Coach’s Plaza at www.thecoachesplaza.com 

Get the full vlog, transcript, and mp3 at https://bit.ly/3tdT2vS 

Choosing The "Right" Marketing For Your Coaching Business

Transcript of Podcast - June 03, 2022

Well, hello, Amanda here and welcome back to the coaches Plaza and my blog. Wow. Another week. And I'm a little dressed up because I was just recording some Tech-Talk ads. Yep. We've been advertising on a new platform, tic talks. So I have experience with advertising on Facebook and Instagram over the last four years. And this year I decided to expand my horizons.

And I have to tell you that for years, I thought it would be YouTube would be the next place I would go. But I decided to start with tick-tock as the next place that I would go. And I have no regrets so far, I'm enjoying it. But you know, we're going to talk about a lot of things today. We're going to actually be talking about,

yes, the tech talk, but also more, more, really about your permission to try new things and the courage to stop doing things that are not working for you, but also knowing the difference between when you should start, when you should stop, when you should keep going. And just some like lessons learned along the way. I have my coffee here.

I'm ready to go. Let's get into it. Okay. So I am, you know, I've been a coach for, okay. So I think there's two timelines for coaching. You know, there's like, I'm officially telling everyone publicly that I'm a coach. And then there was all those years that you were coaching. Oops, one second. And we turned on,

do not disturb. Okay. So there's two timelines for coaching, right? There was the timeline when you started declaring it to everybody. And then there was that early days. And I am just like so many coaches. I had that long tail period of the early days when I was the water cooler coach. And I was coaching people in my day job for years before I ever got a certification officially and officially went on the website and the internet and said,

I'm, bapapapapa a coach. So, you know, I've been official publicly, a coach for five years and, you know, coach for many years before that. And I mean, I was a figure skating coach and a girl guide leader back in Canada for, you know, since I was knee-high to a grasshopper. So I guess technically I've done it forever.

Okay. So, you know, right now, most of my coaching I do through my mastermind, I have in a mastermind called advantage and you know, that mastermind, I get to work really intimately with people. And then I have my accelerator signature program where I teach the system where I show people how I use social media to build community and then build relationships to have consistent lead flow.

And then I have my intro program leap where I show coaches how they can earn a profit with their coaching skill. And so that's basically like the beginning stages of turning your genius into a profitable business. So I coach all the time and it's not even just those programs because now I've expanded my company to have team members. You know, we have a total of seven people on our team right now and F like,

Amanda is coaching all the time. And here's, here's one of the biggest things that I will share with you coach is that when it comes to coaching other people, the crossroads is very rarely, should I do this good thing or bad thing? It's, it's almost never the, the fairy tale of good versus evil. You know, that's easy for our brain to figure out.

We generally know the difference between good and bad. It's always usually between good and also good. The really sticky stuff is good versus also good. But here's where it gets really sticky. Icky is when you've got a challenge or an area of growth, our human mind wants to simplify. And so we take a good path compared to another also good path and to simplify it in our brain,

we often will take the past and try to make it good versus evil, or try to vilify the paths. And, you know, lately I've been thinking more in stoic terms. So if you've, if you've done any kind of research into stoicism, it's basically more of a philosophy of it is what it is. So it's not good. It's not bad.

It's just an option. And if you start looking your challenge or your path, rather than it's a good option or a bad option, and everything's assigned as good and bad, and instead start looking at your options as option a or option one. So it's not even a, or B, it's just, I could do this or that and take it more from a neutral perspective,

the evaluation is not so much good or bad or good or great. Even it's more about objectively reviewing what is good for you. So I'm kind of babbling and rambling a little bit this week, but here's why it is so important. The reason it's so important is because when we get caught in a false paradigm of good versus evil, when the truth is it's neutral versus neutral,

we often sabotage ourselves into stalling out in overwhelm. I'm going to say it again louder for those in the back. When we get stuck in a false dichotomy of good versus evil, as in we're saying like, that must be bad because it doesn't feel good because I am overwhelmed and overwhelming anxiety is a sensation on its own because I'm not feeling good in this moment.

And I'm evaluating different pathways. And this overwhelm feeling doesn't feel good. And my pathways are not feeling good in the moment. I don't feel good. I'm evaluating the whole thing as bad. And therefore I am stuck. This happens all of the time. This happened to me so many times and you know, it still happens to me when we can realize that when it comes to making options for ourselves,

for moving forward, very often, it's a good choice versus a good choice, not a bad choice versus a good choice. There is cost to moving forward, no matter what you do, there's going to be cost. And there is costs associated with staying still life is expensive. Okay. There's going to be a cost no matter what you do choose your heart.

So how is this coming up? Well, in a lot of the coaching that I've been doing lately, I've noticed this real theme of, I try something. I do something, I, I push myself down a path and I let's say I like launch a campaign, or I launch a process. I start doing a thing, whether it's reaching out to my network or it's starting a new marketing system,

or, you know, it's maybe tick-tock ads, right? Just for example. And the attitude is that I need to put all this courage into the launch. I need to put all this courage into reaching out to my network. I need to put all this courage into launching tick-tock ads, or I need to put all this courage into hosting my very first event or workshop or something like that.

You know? And then what ends up happening is we put all this courage into that very first one time event. And the mindset is if I put all this courage into this basket, I will get this outcome. And then we form outcome attachment. And it's like, the inner dialogue goes something like, I'm going to do this thing. And it's my last ditch effort.

And if I get a return, you can just hear the negotiation. If I get a return on this investment, then I will make a further future investment. But if it doesn't pay off, then I'm done. And I have to tell you that when it comes to building a personal brand, building a coaching company, consulting company, building a friggin plumbing company,

oh my gosh. If you happened to be a plumber and you're watching this high, most of my followers are building a coaching company or consulting business, or they're wanting to share their knowledge or something like that. But literally any kind of thing that's worth pursuing my goodness. This is marriage advice, friendship advice. All right. If you are saying like,

think about this, if you put in a relationship and ultimatum like that, I'm going to do one more time. And if this one more time thing happens, I'm out. You're already out Think about that. Like, if you're in a relationship with somebody, a friendship, a marriage or something, and it's come to that, it's come to this point where you are putting an ultimatum on yourself that I'm going to do this one more time.

And if it does not give me a payback, if it does not give me the indicator that it is that it is all in, or it's going to give me what I'm looking for. I'm out, you're already out. You're already out. Why make the ultimatum? You've already decided that it's not going to work out. Why put all that pressure and stress on the system.

If you are in, then you need to be in and you need to be patient to turn the tide. You know, I think about, for example, you know, when I was a kid, I was always really fascinated by the Titanic. And you know, what happened with sinking the unsinkable ship. And one of the reasons why the Titanic sank is because it was designed to be able to crash head on into an iceberg.

But the people that were in control of the ship didn't know that. And what they tried to do is they tried to veer away from the iceberg and in, so doing, they ended up puncturing the whole down, the entire side of the hall and the ship was, was moving so fast. And it was such a large mass. They were not able to turn the ship in time to avoid the iceberg because it was such a it's momentum.

It's Newton's second law of motion. There was so much momentum in the ship. They weren't able to turn the ship fast enough. The rudder wasn't large enough to turn the ship that quickly through the water. When I think about somebody doing something like changing their entire career path from being an employee, to being an entrepreneur or being somebody who is painfully introverted and has no friends on social media to being somebody who has a community and a following with thousands of people and has,

you know, clients that are coming on demand and, and like a list of people and, you know, a following and has habits around connection and all of that kind of thing. And I think about like all of the identity shift that happens with becoming a successful leader in a space and all of the identity shift that happens with becoming a business owner,

you're doing a Titanic shift of your identity and to put on a tiny breader of one single workshop, one single launch, one single Facebook group, or one single email list, one single email blast, one single webinar, one single five day challenge, one single event. That's the equivalent of cranking the wheel on your ship and saying, this is my ultimatum.

I am turning this giant ship. And I'm expecting everything to change on this one move. And I'm not saying that it's going to be a disastrous sink, but I am saying that it is the same kind of thing. You've got all this momentum in your life. And people forget that. They forget you have the momentum of all of your preexisting habits,

all of your pre-existing relationships, all of your pre-existing expectations. The biggest thing that people do not appreciate about becoming an entrepreneur, becoming a personal brand. You know, you don't becoming a personal brand, but building a personal brand, building a business, building audience, building relationships, building programs, building all of these things is that it can happen very quickly.

And it still takes time. My programs, for example, I designed them with intention to be right-sized to the results that you're going to get, you know, leap, for example, it's two months to make like one sale and people have this expectation that it's like, oh no, I'm going to make a sale. Like within days of doing the thing.

And it's like, you need to show up and do the work you need to actually go out and have conversations with people. And the people that do that, get the result, the people that are like, oh no, I'm not going to talk to anybody about this. They don't get, the result is magical to get the result, but it's not magic.

You know, you still have to do the thing. And if your identity is still, I don't talk to people, I don't connect to people. I am a homebody and I stay at home and I don't connect with anyone. Then it's going to be very challenging to shift that identity. You're going to need to take more time and do more work than someone who's already open to.

Oh, I can go talk to people. No problem. I'm going to go talk to people and take it from an introvert who was that person that was like, you want me to, what? You want me to go talk to people? Oh, no, I don't think I can talk to people. Right. I have to do that. I was the Titanic,

you know, that had to, with a tiny rudder, when it came to changing and turning my habits around, connecting with people and building confidence and being able to speak into this camera right now and, and, you know, prepare a podcast for you and putting it on the internet for the entire world to be able to see, you know, I had to be willing to write emails and say,

Hey, everybody, there's a new podcast out that I still remember the heebie-jeebies of being so stinking scared of doing that. And I didn't want to do it. I did not want to do it. And I knew that in order to meet and reach new people and connect with the people that I had met and reached, I would need to do this.

This would become something that I would absolutely have to do. If I was going to create the lifestyle that I wanted to have while at the same time, having the impact that I desired. If I knew, like I knew for me, for my path, that I was going to have to overcome the fears and the limitations that I had at that time,

in order to realize the dreams that I had for myself, the dreams that I had for myself were of becoming someone who was confident. I couldn't have what I wanted and remain someone who was definitely afraid of having a photo taken. I'm now in a place, you know, I've had enough distance, I've had enough work and intention. I meet with a private coach every single week.

I'm enrolled in a mastermind. I'm enrolled in coaching programs. I do the work I journal every day. I have cultivated friendships with very amazing people. I continue to do the work because I know my next level is in my future identity. And that there's this momentum of who I was and who I am that I need to overcome in order to become who I wish to become.

And yes, there's still more tactics to learn. There's still more strategies to learn and to implement, but I'm, I've learned that, you know, no strategy will ever work for you. No path is ever going to be good. If your person who you are is always going to evaluate everything is being bad, is not going to work. It's never going to work.

That's actually who challenge, who challenge of like, I approach things with fear. I approach things with, it's not going to work attitude. I approach things with the attitude of, Hmm, I don't think so. The other thing that I want to share is that most, everything does actually work when it comes to business processes, marketing processes, most things work,

but they require energy being put into the system consistently over time. So when, what, what that really means is, is that we put all this courage right into launching the thing with a one-time attitude, with a one-time like, I'm going to put like this ultimatum on it. But the thing that's going to really set you free is if you say it's the first time,

and I'm going to put energy into this, that I'm going to consistently do this over and over again. Or I'm going to have a system where there's constantly people being added to this, either through hustle and through time investment or partnership and connection with people who have platforms already that are aligned to what I'm doing. And I'm inviting more people into the system.

Or I am, you know, I have discipline around this system that is always going to perpetually be running or I'm investing in advertising and I'm paying for advertising so that people know about my stuff. But either way, I'm going to tap into making this an ongoing perpetual machine, whether it is your marketing. I was kind of thinking and envisioning about marketing.

If you host a workshop for it, for example, and you were like, okay, instead of thinking like, it's my one-time workshop. What if you had the expectation, you're going to run that workshop every week. And it's the first time you run your weekly workshop, what would be different in your business and your life? If you had 52 workshops a year,

that's what we do in the coaches Plaza. We host 52 virtual workshops a year. How many more opportunities do we have versus somebody who works up the courage. Once, twice, three times a year to run a workshop, how many more consult opportunities are we creating versus the coach who is thinking in one time, one had wonders and it takes them 6, 8, 9, 10, 12 weeks to work up that courage and that energy to do that one hit wonder.

And then if that one hit wonder, doesn't pay off, they get sad. And then they have to recover for three to six weeks or months before they do the next thing. Meanwhile, in that same period of time, we've done 1824 workshops because we do one every week. Same thing with emails. If you're sporadically sending emails and you do it 12 times in a six month period,

and you know, somebody else is sending it every single day, right? And everything math in public. So 36, that's 180 emails versus your 12. Who's likely to have more success. So many times we think that success goes to people that are prettier than us smarter than us, more lucky than us in love and, you know, live in a better part of the world or,

you know, whatever explanation we have for their success. But if you seriously are only producing 12 units of work, when somebody else is producing 180 units of work, that is a very explainable difference in performance. I think the other thing is, think about how much someone who's producing 180 units of work is learning about their audience and learning about the reaction that people have to them versus what you're learning from 12.

This is huge. This is massive, right? I think we get so wrapped up in what if I fail that we don't realize how much we're missing out on from the learning of failure. I mean, if you take two people, side-by-side right, let's just say you that at the end of six months, one person sent 12 emails, got no clients.

Another person sent 180 emails got no clients. So the score is the same, but the data is different. Who has a more reliable understanding of their open rate and their click-through rate, who has a more reliable understanding of how much their email list has grown or shrunk, who has a more reliable understanding of which, which subject lines are resonating with their lists and not who has more data to run with on being able to make that next big move,

to create that next outcome. Stop looking at whether the strategy you're pursuing is the right one or the wrong one, start looking at how can you more aggressively go after your goals? And if you're not feeling that confidence, my biggest encouragement to you is start working on your support system, you know, surround yourself by people that really believe in you and your cause.

And you know, one of the things that we can do for you for free join the coaches Plaza, it's totally free. Every week we have live training, we're going to hang out with you every single week, like clockwork. We will be there with you. And, you know, we do have additional programs and stuff, but you can just start with joining us for free.

So I hope you will. And with that, I will see you next time.