Part 1: How I Was Approaching Client Attraction All Wrong

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Welcome back. I'm super stoked that you're tuning into this week's episode. And I cannot wait to dive into today's topic, because if you've listened to the last two episodes, you heard me share on one of them the biggest mistake that I made when I went into my brick and mortar as well as my online business. And that had to do with making decisions that were in full alignment with the life I ultimately wanted to create, but the business I wanted to create as well. And the underlying piece of that which I think can resonate with most entrepreneurs is freedom, time and financial freedom, the ability to do what I want, when I want how I want. And if you're an entrepreneur, this is probably resonating with you because most entrepreneurs go into business for this reason. And if you listen to last week's episode, I shared with you how to get into offer alignment, because that was the biggest pain point in my brick and mortar, I jumped feet first into entrepreneurship after ditching my 15 year corporate career. And I realized pretty quickly on that the business model, and the product that we offered, wasn't going to give me the freedom or lease have me experiencing that freedom, time or financial. And time for me, carries a lot more weight than the financial peace, I think you can make money anywhere doing whatever. It's the timepiece that I am after right as being able to spend my time doing what I want, when I want how I want. But I transitioned into the online space, as you all know, now, and I started my online business helping online Coaches and Consultants market and sell their offers. And that was a natural transition. Because I had 20 years of experience in marketing communications, it was what my background was in. And I thought that the online business model was going to give me that time freedom. What I wasn't prepared for was

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whether or not I would attract clients that were in alignment with me and an energetic match for me. And what I see happening in the online space, if you're a coach, a consultant, a thought leader, and you do one to one services, or you have a group coaching program, or you're thinking of doing any of this, this is another big place where I feel like there's a big mistake that happens. And that is we look outside of ourselves at the type of client we want to attract, I did this, you know you do your traditional niching down exercise or your ideal avatar or whatever it is, and you come up with who you think these people are. And maybe if you've done it another way where you are the client avatar and you're building and coaching based on that, that can happen too. And why this can wreak havoc in your businesses is because there's one key element that gets overlooked in this and that has to do with the fact that you are the coach, you are the conduit, you are the activator, you're the person that's going to help these people ultimately get the goal they want, whether it's going from 10k months to 20k months, or it's helping a mother get their newborn to sleep through the night. Whatever you do as a coach or consultant, you ultimately are the conduit to helping them do that. And what I know to be true about coaching, because I played varsity sports and competitive sports my whole life is is that certain style of coaching works with certain styles of people. Some people resonate really well with like the hard ass the you know, the tough love the No excuses, the no bullshit, I'm gonna call you out on everything you're doing wrong to help motivate you to do it, right? That works for people. Then you've got the positive affirmation and the positive positive reinforcement and the rah rah rah and the cheerleader, and that works really well for people too.

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And then you have the type of coaching that is more of like, I'm going to just lead by example, right, I'm going to show up, I'm going to provide you with what you need based on what you're asking me, right, it's a two way street, where equals here, and I'm not going to, you know, beat you over the head with stuff and I'm not going to rah, rah cheerleader, you but I'm going to be the role model that you need in order to get to where you want to go. And there might be other styles of coaching, but those are sort of like the three styles of coaching that I've experienced in my competitive soccer years, but also in my corporate years, having mentors of my own, and I know what resonates with me, but what ended up happening when I went into the online space was is that I looked outside of myself first and I was like, I'm gonna, you know, speak to people in this way. I'm gonna use these marketing strategies, and I'm going to attract people into my communities, and I'm gonna coach them and everything's gonna be great and it's gonna be amazing. And as a heart centered business owner, I want my clients to get results like I don't just want to sell stuff

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have two people for the sake of selling stuff to people. That's not what I'm here to do. So time and impact outweigh the whole financial piece, right, I want people to ultimately get results. And what I started to realize was that some people got epic results, and others did not. And I couldn't really figure out how to hack this. And as someone, like I said, was a heart centered, I wanted to hack the shit out of this, and I was, you know, revamping my client avatar, I was, you know, rejigging my messaging, I was looking at my offer, again, and I was looking at how I was communicating this outwardly to people. But what I wasn't realizing was is that some of the marketing and sales strategies that were taught, are naturally going to attract a certain type of person. And I'm going to, on the next episode, highlight who these types of people are, because I've kind of distilled it down into four different types of people, and how your language and your marketing impact that. But on today's episode, I want to talk about the biggest piece, which is you, if you're a coach and a consultant, and you're here to help guide and mentor people, it starts with you and the style of coach that you want to be, and the style of coach that you're ultimately are, because that's going to impact the type of people that you attract. And where there gets to be static in the system is, when you are a certain way, or a certain style of coach, whether you're the rah rah or the hard ass, or you're, you know more of the role model, I'm going to lead by example, just follow what I'm doing. There's more of

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a stoic or subtle presence there, there's not a lot of like performative energy, so to speak, that if you if you are employing strategies that don't match with you, and the style of coach that you are, you're gonna get a mismatch of people coming into your programs. And there's nothing wrong with the people, I just want to preface this because I think there's a lot of rhetoric on the market that's like, I don't want these type of clients. And you know, they're needy or whatever. It's just, there are people that resonate with certain styles of coaching, and there are people that need certain things put into place in order to get what they want. But what I've realized is, after having a conversation with a good friend of mine, who went further in soccer than I did, she ended up playing for Team Canada, we were having a conversation because she does coaching for a living now as well and has for years. And I was asking her, I was just saying, you know, how do you coach for accountability and motivation, let's just say because I said, I've, I noticed that I have clients that, you know, they need this accountability, or they need these checkpoints, or they're needing this sort of like motivation, rah rah rah momentum in their business. And I just, I'm not that person. And so I was saying to her, like, how do you get your team to just be like, super excited to show up and play a game or, you know, to win ultimately, right? And she said, she has a hard line in the sand that she's not teaching people how to be motivated that internally, we have to be motivated ourselves. And that's, that goes back to intrinsic motivation. And why I'm sharing that with you is because that's when something really dropped for me. And I realized that when we use things like hype marketing, or we use this like hard ass, tough love, like, I'm gonna call it as it is, and there's no bullshit and no excuses. What ends up happening is we attract people that might need more accountability or might need put things in place for motivation. And there's nothing wrong with that, if that's how you want to coach. But what dropped for me was is that that's not my style of coaching. And that's how I was showing up. I was either being the tough love, no excuses, I'm going to tell you how it is. And what ends up happening is that it doesn't really land with my people, because my people aren't motivated, or they don't move in that capacity. Right? And the rah rah cheerleader is just so outside of my energy, right? I'm not this. I'm not somebody who needs to go to an aerobics class or gets riled up in aerobics class. In fact, I hate aerobics classes, and there's nothing against it. But honestly, like, I can't be in a room where it's like, rah rah, Yeah, woohoo, we're awesome. You're awesome. We're all awesome. Like, that just does not motivate me. I have this intrinsic motivation within me to go after what I want. But I also lead in that capacity. And that was one of the things that really dropped for me because she was like, I refuse to stand on the sidelines and literally be this like cheerleader for them. They have to motivate themselves. They have to be accountable to themselves and to the team. And that is one of the things that I think, in all of this, that I want you to sort of take away is whether or not

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You want to be someone's accountability partner, there's nothing wrong with it. If you do, if you feel like being someone's accountability partner is a really great thing and coaching and all of it do that. But here's where some of the marketing that you use in your business, I'll just give you an example. And I'm gonna elaborate more on this when on next episode is marketing that is, you know, requires like 15 reminder emails and deadlines. And, you know, you know, this urgency, this sense of urgency, this FOMO, what that does is, it calls people into your space that ultimately in your container, are going to need this accountability and this motivation. And if that is not something you want to teach, or an energy that you want to bring into your containers,

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then you have to understand that the marketing that you're using height, marketing, deadlines, fast acting bonuses, all of these things that get people really juiced up in the moment, is going to ultimately impact the people that come into your space. And I'm going to share the four types of buyers and you know, kind of where they are, when it comes to the decision making and how they make decisions. And why you might be getting people in your containers that aren't maybe progressing as much as or as well as you want and hope for them. Or they're not reaching that level of performance that you ultimately know that they can, because I believe that everybody can get to this level of performance, it just might be that your style of coaching is the thing that's can't activate them, right. It's like, it just doesn't resonate. It's like a high level team, right? It's like, some really great, I mean, teams lose all the time, right? There has to be a winner and a loser unless there's a tie in the game. But I mean, there are premiership soccer teams that lose, it's just that they were not in the best performance that day, or they might have a coach that they don't resonate with. And I use Team Canada, women's soccer because we've seen that program transform, right. And it starts with the coaching and the recruiting, and it starts with all of that, and how to get the best out of your team and how to cultivate a really amazing unit right that operates. So so well. Well, the same is for your group coaching programs or your one to one, right, I mean, it comes down to coaching doesn't mean you're a bad coach, or a good coach or whatever. It has nothing to do with that, like you suck. And that's not what I'm trying to articulate here. What I'm trying to share with you is is that your style of coaching, it has to start with you, and what your style of coaching is, and the type of experience with your clients you ultimately want to cultivate. Because when you do that, and you pause for a moment and go this is what I'm this is what I stand for. And this is ultimately what I'm willing to do in terms of a coaching relationship. And what I expect of my people when they come to me, right, I don't want to be their cheerleader are there Firestarter. Because if I'm there Firestarter then what happens when I'm not there anymore, right? At some point, you have to develop that intrinsic motivation for what you're doing. I believe that to be true. And most high level athletes will tell you that is like within themselves. They got out of bed every morning, they went to the two day or three day training camps. They, you know, they competed on weekends, they sacrifice time with family or whatever it is because there's this intrinsic motivation to get on the court or on the field or whatever. And that's what got me out of bed to train to play soccer, right. I had a lot of friends that loved soccer. And they looked at me, you know, saying that, Oh, you're crazy for for doing this, right? You would go away on weekends and train this much. And they loved soccer, but they weren't motivated to take it to the next level. They weren't motivated to perform at that high level. And that's cool, right? And, and that's an again, that's an internal thing from a client perspective, you equally have to have that intrinsic motivation within yourself to ultimately go after the thing that you want. And no coach, whether the rah rah or the hard ass or the more sort of stoic that's more of that role model and leader and they're the silent leaders, right? They're the ones that are like, silently leading you based on their presence and their essence and neither one of them is right. I just want to say this again. Because I think sometimes we can paint this picture of like, well, that's a right and a wrong either one is right. I mean, there's a robic teachers and fitness programs that you know, just sell out and people lose weight and all those sorts of things. But at the end of the day, it's ultimately going to come down to intrinsic motivation within you. If you want it to be sustainable and long lasting, right? If you're looking for a coach that is going to light a fire and be the person that's going to motivate you to do the work. When you walk away from that coach or you step away from a coaching call or a one-to-one session that's going

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to Wayne, and you're going to not move forward in your business for whatever reason or move forward and what it is that you want to achieve, because that motivation isn't there. And as a online business owner, now, I feel like that was one of the biggest pieces that I mean, it's not that I didn't have intrinsic motivation to do what I wanted to do. But what I was doing was employing marketing strategies, and copy and language that ultimately was putting static out into the system, because I'm not the style of coach that is the rah rah. But I'm also not the style of coach that's going to beat you over the head, and tough love you into changing. That's not my energy, I'm that role model, I'm the lead by example, I'm going to make decisions that are in integrity with me. And when I do that, and I live my most authentic life, then my clients and the people that come into my orbit, find the permission to do it for themselves, not that I needed to give it to them. But they also feel liberated and fully seen in my presence. And that's the thing that ultimately gets them to the next level because they finally let go of what they think they needed to do and should do. But I don't need to hype Mart, I don't need to hype them up or rally them and those that need that hyping and those that need that tough love and fire and beaten over the head and call it as it is and all of that. Those often end up being clients that will mean they experience results in my presence, because the stuff that I teach works, but they ultimately aren't getting as far along as they probably could, if they had a different style of coach, this goes two ways, right? I mean, if you're looking at it from Who do I want to invest in, it's the style of coach and how they coach and what they do. Because I think sometimes we can judge the coach, oh, well, you're not doing enough for me, right? You're not You're not being hard ass with me enough, you're not calling me out on my bullshit, you're not lighting a fire under me, you're not motivating me, you're not giving me positive affirmations are all of that. And we can point and blame the coach. But in reality, it has nothing really to do with a coach and whether they're a good coach or not, has to do with the fact that their coaching style just might not be for you. And it goes two ways in that, you know, as you're investing, those are the things you want to look for. But also, if you're a coach and consultant, then you equally want to take the time to go okay, what style of coach MI and ultimately what type of community do I want to cultivate. And then we can start to think about the type of buyer and the ideal avatar and all those sorts of things. But you can't do that until you've thought about you. And it starts with you. And it ends with you ultimately, as a coach when you're giving that energetic exchange. And that will ultimately alter how you market and how you connect and how you communicate with your people. And I'm going to share with you on the next episode, what that looks like for the for various types of buyers, but also the type of coaching that resonates and works really well within that so that you can sit here and go, Yeah, I want to be the rah rah cheerleader. And again, for some people that works. Again, it's proven that that energy can be contagious.

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And then there's the hard ass and direct and tell it as it is. And that works, too. We've seen it in competitive sport, it works. And then you've got the coaches that are more of, you know, you guys got to motivate yourself. Ultimately, I'm here to guide you, I'm here to sort of help you maybe shift perspective or change perspective or whatever. But ultimately, when we walk away from this call, you've got to go and you've got to do what you need to do. And you've got to show up in your highest level and highest performance in order to get what you ultimately want. And again, none of this is right or wrong. And none of these styles of coaching is right or wrong. It's just ultimately going to impact the type of clients you want to work with and impact their progress and success within the containers that you have, whether it's one-to-one or a group coaching container, and the style of marketing and stretch marketing strategies. And the way in which you communicate also will impact that and we see a lot of hype marketing on the market, right of like my stuff's amazing rah, rah rah, I'm epic. This is epic. My clients results are epic, and bye, bye-bye. And then we also see the same like the heart asked him to tell you how it is and the content, you're doing this wrong. And this is how you need to solve it. And you attract a certain style of person that's going to need that in your coaching container to make a change and make a difference in their life or in their business. And so if your marketing and your sales doesn't match the style of coaching that you ultimately want to cultivate in your containers, you're going to get a mismatch and a misaligned group of people or misaligned clients that come to you

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And the downfall of that, as you may be aware right now is that when you're energetically mismatched with clients, there's a bunch of things that can happen. One, you can feel depleted as a coach, and can feel drained energetically as a coach, if you're heart centered, you're probably going to internalize it to some capacity and start to question whether you're a good coach or not a good coach, right, you're gonna start to go, maybe I'm not cut out for this, maybe I'm better suited to be a consultant that delivers project and finished things like copywriting or a strategy or something like that, you can start to really internalize this, or you can have clients that aren't necessarily getting the results that you want. And again, if you're heart centered, and you care about your clients, which most of the people in my orbit do, then it can be really hard to not see them making progress. And you're not really certain why they're not making it, because you haven't stopped for a moment to be like, Oh, it's my style of coaching, which doesn't make it right or wrong just is not the thing that's going to activate them to change. And that doesn't make anything, any you have any less person or not enough or anything like that. It just has to do with the style of coaching. And when you know that, it can be easy to either recommend them to somebody else, to refer them to somebody else, or to bring in experts into your space that you can give them access to, if you know that that's the style of coaching that they need. And even before that you can prequalify them, there are questions and ways in which you can prequalify people to listen to the language that they're using to make sure that

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that they're the right type of people for you before they ever even sign up so that you can then refer them before they ever get into your containers, which will help you avoid all of the havoc that will happen as a result of attracting misaligned clients. And again, I use the word misaligned because I think that there, we need coaches for all types of people. And there are people out there that need support more than ever now. And it like I said, it's not a right or wrong way. But it ultimately starts and ends with you and the style of coaching that you're here to do and what you are willing to do as a coach and what you're not willing to do as a coach, and the type of experience you want to cultivate more than anything. So I hope this has been helpful for you. I am really excited to continue to share a bunch of the lessons that I've learned over the last four years in the online space. And I've tried a lot of things, y'all. So I've tried launch styles, messaging, copy, I've rewritten things, I've cultivated my own way of doing things. And I am revealing all of the different ways that alignment and being out of alignment can really wreak havoc on your business. And as a service provider, when you are in an energetic exchange with clients. It's really, really important that your clients and the people that you're attracting are number one match for who you are. But two are people that you can ultimately help and help in a way that doesn't have you turning yourself inside out to accommodate

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a way in which you're not here to do. And so that's getting really clear on the style of coaching that you're wanting to ultimately have the style of coaching, that is who you are at the core of who you are. And yeah, so I hope that that has been really helpful. on next week's episode, we're going to dive into, like I said, the four different styles of buyers, and how your marketing and sales strategies are ultimately impacting the type of people you attract. And so that you can then go this is the style of this is the offer that I want. This is the type of offer business model. This is the style of coaching or consulting that I'm here to do. Or if you're a product based business, right, like, what is your what are your values as a business, right, as a business owner? And then ultimately, what are the type of clients I want to attract? And how do I need to market and communicate to them in order to attract those people. And when you create this beautiful alignment within your business, things start to move effortlessly and within flow, right that flow state that so many of us want. But what I'm going to tell you is is that this is a human experience that you're living in this world. And just because you're in alignment does not mean that you'll never experience any turbulence in your life. This is a human experience that we're living. And so one of the other key things that I'm going to be talking about in the coming episodes is how to really cultivate that core stability within you so that if anything happens, you are kind of unshakable and I don't mean from like, you know if a client gives you a bad review or what I

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I'm talking about you could be in a room with a bunch of narcissists. And they could be spewing shit at you and it doesn't even faze you, or you could be standing in Times Square in a hurricane. And you're not your core stability and that peace and calm is unwavering, right, that's integrity at its root. That is, what I know I'm here to do for leaders is to really help them be unwavering and really grounded in their inner purpose so that nothing in the outside world shakes them or deters them or has them going, I need to market in this way or I need to build my business in this way. Not either. So that's what the next couple episodes are going to be. So be sure to tune in subscribe so you don't miss when they drop.

Cheers.