587. Stop Offering Coaching & Offer This Instead

I charge X number of dollars per hour for coaching. You know why? People don’t want to buy coaching. That is not what people buy, except coaches, right? I’m a coach. I understand the value of coaching. I might hire someone and say, “Can I pay you to coach me?” because I have an idea of what that means. But we’re unusual, okay? What the average everyday person wants is not coaching.

Welcome to Better Than Happy, the podcast where we apply all the tools of psychology, human behavior, and mindfulness to live our best lives, navigate challenges, and achieve our goals. I’m Jody Moore and I’ll be your coach today. Let’s do it.

Hey there, everybody. Welcome to the podcast. I want to offer a quick apology to all of you who do not have coaching businesses or don’t have businesses at all and don’t like hearing about business. I love you, and I promise I’m not abandoning you. In fact, we have some really fun things coming in the new year that are going to take care of everybody, entrepreneurs and non-entrepreneurs.

But until then, and stay tuned, by the way, for some fun announcements coming, but until then, I am peppering in some business episodes here as a big part of the work that I do is supporting other coaches to go and help their clients in the world. And today is one such episode. And I also know that a lot of you who are not entrepreneurs tell me that you actually love these episodes as well. So with that, I want to talk to all of you today who are trying to sell or offer coaching, okay?

A lot of times when I meet coaches and I ask them what they do, or I ask them how their program works or how they structure it or who they help or whatever, they’ll start with things like, “Well, I charge X number of dollars per hour.” And these are people who usually are struggling to hit certain benchmarks. They’re not getting consistent clients or they’re not making the kind of revenue or impact that they want to, okay? When I talk to people who are succeeding on the levels that they want to and who are scaling to next levels, they don’t ever say, “I charge X number of dollars per hour for coaching.” You know why? People don’t want to buy coaching. That is not what people buy, except coaches, right?

I’m a coach. I understand the value of coaching. I might hire someone and say, “Can I pay you to coach me?” because I have an idea what that means. And certainly if I’m going to hire a coach, I’m going to have checked them out and think that I have an idea what they’re going to provide for me. But we’re unusual, okay? What the average everyday person wants is not coaching. They don’t want coaching. They want some kind of a transformation. They want the result that we know we can provide through coaching. They want a problem solved or they want some kind of an experience. And coaching just may be the tool that you’re going to use to provide that experience.

So when you’re talking to your potential customer or just the average everyday person out in the world, and you say that you offer coaching, that you’re a coach, it’s like somebody has scissors and they’re running around saying, “I cut things. I have scissors and I cut things.” Okay? Coaching is a tool, just like scissors are a tool. But if somebody walked around saying, “I have scissors, they’re very sharp, and they cut things,” we would go, “That’s weird,” right? And they might say, “Would you like me to cut anything for you?” And we’d probably say, “No, I think I’m good. Thanks anyway, right?”

This is how it kind of sounds to people when you say, “I’m a coach. I have her coaching.” They’re confused as to what that means. They’re not really sure why someone would need or want that, or maybe they have a guess as to why someone would need or want that, but it may or may not be anything near what you do. And it just sounds kind of odd, right? If I have scissors and I can cut things, I’m going to have a much easier time getting business if I decide what I’m going to cut with those scissors.

Now, when I ask coaches, “Who do you coach? What kind of transformation do you provide or what kind of problem do you solve or what experience do you create?” They often struggle to tell me, and they say things like, “I mean, I can help anyone. My tools can help anyone.” Now, this might be that you’re a coach and you call it coaching. It might be that you’re an energy worker or a breath worker or maybe you call it something different, okay? But the point is still the same.

People don’t want you to cut things. They want something like for you to make their hair look amazing. Okay? So maybe you specialize in doing hair, and maybe scissors are a tool you’re going to use to make their hair look amazing. You still don’t lead with, “I have hair scissors and I can cut things. I can cut hair.” You still lead with, “I will make you look gorgeous. I will make your hair look exactly how you want it to look. Come and see me. Come to my chair. I’ll take good care of you,” right? Or maybe you’re going to use those scissors to make clothes instead and cut fabric and cut things thread and whatever else would be involved in making clothes, right? Then you would say, “I can create a custom dress for you, or I can alter your clothing, or whatever it is that you do.” You wouldn’t even need to mention that you’re going to use scissors to do it, right? That would be implied or irrelevant. We just want to know that you have the skills and the tools and the training and the ability to make my clothes or tailor or modify or alter my clothes, right? So this is how you need to think about your offer as a coach.

Stop offering coaching. People don’t want that. Stop offering your time. People don’t want an hour of your time. They don’t want to pay you to sit and talk to you for an hour. What do they want? That’s the question you have to answer. What is a transformation that people want that I think I could use coaching or breath work or meditation or hypnosis or whatever it is that you do to provide for them? What is a problem that they want to solve? Not a problem you think they should want to solve because it was the problem that you solved through coaching, unless that’s a common problem, but the problem that other people, ideally a lot of people, want to solve. The more specific you can get, the better.

Now, that’s just the first thing I want to offer you today. I have five additional things I want you to stop saying, stop trying to sell or offer, and five things I want you to offer instead that will just make your job as an entrepreneur so much easier. It will allow you to coach more people, make more of an impact, and create what you want.

Now, if after the first one, you are thinking, okay, I get what you’re saying, Jody, but I’m still not exactly sure how to do that. I got you. This is why in a couple of weeks, we’re going to be teaching Pro Coach Camp. I should say I’m going to be teaching Pro Coach Camp virtually live online, and I want you to come and join me for it because we’re going to flush this out in a lot more detail. But we’re going to spend two hours a day, four days together doing some interactive hands-on work to get your offer right at Pro Coach Camp. So go to ProCoachCamp.com and sign up for it. Make sure you get in because I only offer this a couple of times a year and it will transform your business for sure if you come and join me.

Okay, let’s talk about the next thing though. The next thing that I want you to stop doing, that I hear coaches do this all the time, and it makes me cringe a little bit and go, “No, please don’t do that,” is they talk about or offer what they know people need instead of what people want. Now, this is a tricky one. I get it because you do know probably. You’re probably an expert in whatever area you work in. If you’re a health coach, for example, then you know that what people need is not the same as what they think they want. And why do they want it? Because they think it’s what they need to get the transformation.

So for example, when I go to work with a health coach, I’m tempted to say, “Hey, just tell me exactly what to eat. That’s all I need. If you could just write down exactly what to eat and tell me, then I’m pretty sure I can execute that and create the results that I want in the end.” And what good health coaches know is that there’s nothing wrong with writing down exactly what I should eat, but that’s not actually what I need. What I actually need is somebody to help me figure out why I don’t follow through on my eating plan when I’ve had one or if they were to give me one even why I’d likely wouldn’t. I wouldn’t consistently, anyway.

I need a lot of other work in addition to just somebody telling me what to eat. I need somebody to be there and check in with me. Maybe I need accountability. Maybe I need somebody to get in my head and help me clean up my thoughts about my body and about food and about missing out and about even hunger, etc. Maybe I need some kind of nutritional mix-up. Maybe I need some vitamins or some supplements. Maybe I like, there can be so many things that I need. And even just telling me exactly what to eat isn’t that simple, right? Because my body is unique. Everybody is unique.

So health coaches often, and not just health coaches, all coaches, but I’m using health coaching as the example here, right? They want to talk about what people need. Like, “I’m going to help you make peace with your body. I’m going to help you love yourself. I’m going to help you make peace with food.” I’ve done this too, right? And that’s okay, as long as you connect the dots with so that you can have the body of your dreams. What people want is to lose weight or gain muscle or get stronger or have more energy. That’s what people want. So you have to talk about what they want.

I’m not saying you have to hide the fact that you’re going to give them what they need. There might be an appropriate time and place to share that in your messaging. But if you’re leading with that and you’re not connecting the dots to so that you can have this thing that you want, you’re leaving a lot of business on the table. You are losing a lot of people. Okay? How do we know what people want? It’s the things that they search for on Google. Good news, you can go to the internet and go to AI and find out what are people searching in this area. That’s what they want. Now, if you don’t believe you can provide what they want, I don’t want you to lie and be dishonest, but most likely, you can. And the way that you’re going to get them there doesn’t really matter. Okay?

So I want you to imagine that I have terrible headaches and I go to the doctor. Okay? What do I want? I want to get rid of these headaches. I want to be headache free. I want to have less pain in my head. The doctor, as soon as the doctor says, “I’m going to give you what you need,” which is, and then they start naming medications that have big complicated names, or they start talking about hydration or whatever, you lost me, right? I’m like, “Can you just fix my headache?” I don’t know what any of those terminology, any of those medications mean. I know what hydration means, but if they start talking about treatment, my husband and I were trying to watch the show The Pit the other night because we heard it was really good, but I haven’t been able to get into it because they’re just throwing around medical jargon and terminology that I have no idea what they’re talking about, right? And that is what the patient needs, but that isn’t how the patient would describe it. What does the patient want? To be free from pain.

So you have to talk about what they want and offer them what you want. I’m not saying you have to over-promise something. I’m not saying that you should over-promise anything. Please don’t do that. I’m just saying what you know they need. And here’s the clincher. As coaches, many of us have been through a transformation like this ourselves, or we’ve helped a lot of other people go through the transformation. And so we know that what they’re going to get, the thing that they actually need that they’re going to get if they work with us is actually so much better than the thing they think they want.

For example, back to my health coach example, people think that they want to lose weight, but we know that what they’re going to get if they work with a great coach, like I’m sure you are, is, yes, they can get weight loss, but it’s so much more than that. They’re going to leave with happiness, with joy, with self-trust, and self-confidence, with body love and self-love, no matter what happens, independent of the weight loss, right? They’re going to leave with those things, and that’s so much better than just losing weight.

So we’re tempted to talk about what they need and what they’re going to get. The problem is you’re ahead of your client. Your client doesn’t want to feel better about the body they have. They want a different body. So you need to talk about that and you need to offer that in a way that feels ethical and totally in integrity to you. All right? Again, if you want help messaging that, thinking through that, make sure you join me at Pro Coach Camp. Okay, let’s go to the next one.

The next thing that I want you to offer for your clients is a clear system or process that will get them there. Stop saying, and not all of you say this, this isn’t as common, but I do see this especially as I’ve hired people, as I’ve been on the receiving end of people’s programs, there are people who come at it with this whole, “I’m going to customize it to you” approach that I find unless you’re very skilled and experienced doesn’t work. What it turns into is the client having to figure out a process or the two of you making it up as you go. And it feels very disjointed and it feels very unprofessional.

Okay, so for example, I hired several people to help me with my YouTube channel before I realized I need to stick to somebody that has a set process, okay? Because these other people who were very successful on YouTube and great people did not have a clear process. And so it was very all over the place, and they were trying to be respectful of my time and accommodate me, but I don’t know what I need. I need someone to manage me. I need someone to tell me, “This is how often we’re going to meet. This is what you’re going to do and these are the timelines by which I need them. This is what I’m going to do, and this is what you can expect of me.” And I want as a busy person or as somebody who has a full plate, anyway, I want someone to manage me and give me a process. I don’t want them to say what works for you. How often do you think you want to meet? What do you think we should try next? I don’t know what we should try next. That’s why I’ve hired you as an expert. Okay?

And that’s true for your clients as well. They don’t know what they need. You should know. You’re the expert. Again, just like if I went to the doctor and the doctor says, “Okay, well, we’ve determined that you have a broken arm. We need to fix your broken arm.” The doctor doesn’t say to me then, “How long would you like to wear this cast for?” No. The doctor says, “We’re going to put a cast on your arm. We need to put this cast on in the next couple of days because we need to set the bone, and then you’re going to wear this cast for six weeks or whatever the treatment plan is, right?” The doctor tells me what I need to get the result that I want. And once again, the doctor is not talking about what I need. The doctor isn’t like, “Come on in and I’ll give you a cast.” The doctor says, “Come on in and we’ll fix your broken arm.” Okay?

So have a clear system. That means you determine how frequently the two of you are going to talk. And when you do talk, how long are those sessions? And are they on Zoom? Are they on the phone? Are they in person? If you’re a marriage coach, do you meet with the husband and wife together? Do you meet with them individually? Do you do some of both? Now, again, if you decide you want to customize it based on what the couple needs, that’s fine. But I want you to be the expert who says, “This is what I recommend for you, or this is what I want us to do for next week’s session.” You need to guide it. You need to manage that. We all want to be managed. It makes our lives so much easier than us having to figure it out. So have a clear system, also known as a coaching program in many cases.

All right. Next, let’s talk about the fourth thing that you need to stop doing and start doing instead. I want you to stop selling your program to the wrong people. I want you to stop talking to the wrong people when you put out content, when you create marketing, when you create social media content or YouTube videos or podcasts like I’m doing here, stop talking to the wrong people. Who are the wrong people?

Well, there’s actually three groups of people, the way I think about it, okay? When it comes to your offer and what you do. There are yes people. Those are people who are your fans or followers. We love these people. It’s great to have yes people, people who, for the most part, whatever you put out, they want it because they resonate with your approach. Maybe they’ve been your clients before. Hopefully, a lot of them have, right? And they’re going to be clients again because they get a lot of benefit. The two of you connect well. They like your style.

You don’t need to sell to them. So it’s not that we don’t care about them. We love them. It’s just that they’re going to already benefit from what we’re putting out. So I don’t really need to be thinking about them a lot when I’m creating content or writing emails or putting out offers. I don’t have to think about them. They already are converted to what I’m doing. They already see the light. In fact, they’re part of helping me on this cause, right? They’re trying to get their friends and family to understand it too, or anybody else who wants the same transformation. They’re like, I’ve pictured them as like behind me. They’re like part of my team. They’re coming with me. They’re encouraging me. So I don’t need to put a lot of thought into how am I going to explain to them the value of this. They already get it. They’re super smart. We love these people, right? Those are our yes people.

Next, we have our no people. These are people who don’t like you. They don’t like the sound of you, the looks of you. They think what you’re doing is fake. They think it’s silly. They think it’s dumb. They think that you’re a fraud, whatever, okay? They’re out to prove you wrong. They’re the ones leaving really bizarre hater comments on your feed. They just want to start a fight. Or maybe they’re not grumpy and unhappy like that, but they just don’t believe in what you do for some reason. It doesn’t line up with their value system in some way. It doesn’t line up with the identity of who they want to be. Whatever the reason, it’s okay. You’re not for everyone. I’m not for everyone. Feel free to scroll right on by if I’m not for you. That’s okay. I’m not trying to be for everyone. I couldn’t possibly be for everyone. Neither can you. That’s okay.

I’m not trying to convince anyone that my methods, that my program, that my offers, that I myself am the right fit for anyone who just doesn’t think I am. That’s no problem at all. There are many people out there who have styles and approaches and programs that are not for me. And I’m a pretty positive, upbeat person. I don’t take a lot of time to write negative comments online or anything like that, but I just am not interested in what they’re doing. It’s just not for me. And that’s okay. You don’t need to convince those people. Don’t talk to them when you’re creating content, when you’re writing emails, when you’re putting out posts online. Those are the wrong people.

Who are the right people then? These are the maybe people. The maybe people, those are the ones I want you talking to when you’re creating offers, when you’re talking about your offer, when you’re messaging it, when you’re promoting it. The maybe people are the ones who want the transformation that you provide. They’re open to getting it through you and your program. They like some of what they’ve heard you say. They may not agree with all of it. They may have some questions. They may be uncertain about certain parts of it. Maybe they’re uncertain about you or your offer. Maybe they’re uncertain about themselves and whether or not they’re really going to be able to get the transformation because they have some self-doubt or some limiting beliefs. This is okay.

There’s nothing wrong with people having questions, needing a little hand holding, needing some further explanation. Those are the people you need to think about when you are making your offer. How do we describe the offer in such a way that it will resonate with the right people? How do we help the people who are kind of on the fence to either become a clear yes or a clear no? I don’t even need to convince them all to become a clear yes. I just need to make it very obvious whether or not what I offer is for them. If they are on the fence, then I have work to do. I need to talk about it more clearly. I need to simplify how I present it. It should be a very obvious yes or no. Otherwise, I’ve got work to do.

All right, number five. Stop creating offers or making offers or talking about your offer to the people who need it. Instead, start creating offers and talking about it to the people who most want it. Ooh, the first time I heard somebody mention it this way, I felt like, oh, I needed to hear that, right? Like there are so many people in the world who I know need what I offer. I see them struggling needlessly. I see them spinning in negativity and self-doubt. I see them spinning in drama. I see people who think that their thoughts are just reflections of what’s true in the world. I see people who think it’s not optional to feel how they want to feel. I see people who are disempowered. I also see, again, coaches who are struggling, who are not positioning their offers well, who are not doing the things that they need to be doing consistently to make it easy to have an constant inflow of clients.

So in all the programs I offer, I see people who desperately need it, but guess what? Sometimes the people who most need what we offer don’t want it. Have you noticed? Do you try to slip it in sometimes, like many of us are tempted to do as coaches? Like in everyday conversation to try to slip a little coaching in there or slip a little something in there to the person that you know is just really negative and really needs to turn their head around? How does that go? Usually, it backfires on us. Usually, they don’t want it, right? They’re just stuck in a place of being unhappy right now, or they’re in the thick of needing to just go through the storm, and that’s okay. Maybe they need to for a while. Maybe there’s some takeaways they’re going to get that they couldn’t get if you took that part away from them by just telling them quickly the answer.

This is why we let our kids do their own homework. Why don’t we just jump in and give them all the answers? Because sometimes they need to struggle. They need to wrestle. That’s how they’re going to learn it, right? And that’s true of people in the world too. Not everybody wants the relief yet. Sometimes they don’t want it because they’re unhappy or they don’t think it’s possible. Sometimes they don’t want it because they don’t want to spend the money on it or they can’t afford it. There can be all kinds of reasons.

My point is, if you just make offers for the people who want it, right? And you talk to in your messaging, the people who want it, not the people who you know most need it, you will have a much easier time making the impact you want to make in the world. Now, the good news is sometimes some of those people who need it will come around and become people who want it, but it’s got to be on their timeline and it’s got to be in their way. And so I don’t spend a lot of time trying to convince anyone to want what I offer. I just talk to the people who already want it and invite them to come and learn more.

All right, number six, the final thing I want you to do to make filling your coaching practice easier is to create some urgency or scarcity. I want you to imagine walking into a clothing store to get the pair of jeans that you saw somebody wearing and you thought that they were the coolest looking jeans you’ve ever seen. And you asked the person, where did you get those jeans? And they told you what store to go to, or they told you what website to go to. I we’re going to have to make it a store because with a website, you can’t always see inventory, right? Let’s say you walk in the store and they have the jeans there and they have thousands of this pair of jeans, so many in fact that they’re falling off the shelves. Okay? How quick are you to buy the jeans?

Now, imagine the same scenario, but you walk in the store and you go to pick up the jeans and they only have three pair and none of them are your size. And you’re super disappointed because you wanted these jeans, right? And the salesperson says to you, “Hold on, let me go look in the back and see if we have any more.” And he goes in the back of the store and he comes back out and he says, “Okay, you’re in luck. Somebody bought a pair online and returned them. The tags are still on and everything, but I have this one pair left in your size.” How quick are you to buy those jeans? Night and day difference, right? This is just the basics of how our brain works. When things are in scarce supply, we want them more. We’re not going to wait around.

So think NeeDohs. I don’t know what NeeDohs are. I just know that my youngest daughter is always on the lookout for them. And we go in toy stores and she looks for them and they don’t have them. And then I see lines outside of stores, and I sometimes ask people what are they there for, and they either say Pokémon cards or NeeDohs. I’m not sure what the obsession is with any of these things. All I know is they’re in limited supply, so people will wait in lines outside stores and go to great lengths to get them.

This is on purpose, is my guess. This is strategic. It’s not that Pokémon couldn’t print more cards or whoever makes NeeDohs couldn’t make more of that whatever it is. They could, I bet. They’re purposely making limited quantities or releasing limited supplies of them to increase the urgency, to make it easier to buy. Think Trader Joe’s mini totes or lunch boxes. I don’t know when this became a thing, but sometime in the last year, my mom friends started sending texts saying, “Trader Joe’s is getting more. I’m going to go wait in line. Does anybody want me to try to get them one?” I’m seriously confused by this. Like, what are we talking about? Trader Joe’s has had tote bags for a long time, and they’ve had insulated cooler bags, but now they’re making mini-sized ones that are kids can use or whatever, and they’re creating them limited quantities, and it’s making them hard to get. It’s making them sell out. Okay? This is strategic.

Now, you don’t have to do anything too drastic. You don’t have to become NeeDohs or Trader Joe’s tote bags or whatever the thing is that’s hot, Pokémon cards, okay? I’m just saying, if people know they can work with you anytime and you’re going to be available anytime, then human nature says, “Let’s put it off till later.” You know why? You’re not a Taylor Swift concert. Your program, your offer is hard work that people are going to have to do. They’re going to sacrifice money, sacrifice time, and then they’re going to have to be vulnerable and introspective, and they’re going to have to make some sacrifices and maybe experience some hard emotions. And that’s the kind of thing the brain says, “Yeah, we get why we’re doing it. It might be good for us, but maybe later. Not today. Too busy right now. Too much going on right now.” And so they’re waiting for the perfect time.

So with urgency or scarcity, it doesn’t always have to be like that this is in limited supply. There are limited seats. It could just be a reason to do it now. A reason would be a bonus that’s going to expire, or it might be some kind of consequence that is going to happen if they don’t take action soon. So create some kind of urgency or scarcity.

All right, by quick review, number one, stop offering coaching, offer the transformation instead. Be as specific as you can. Number two, offer people what they want, not what you know they need. Number three, offer them a clear system or process that you’re going to manage them through. Don’t make them do all the work. Number four, stop selling to the wrong people. You don’t need to sell to your yeses and you don’t need to sell to your nos. You need to sell to your maybes. Number five, stop making offers for and to the people who most need it. Make offers for and to the people who most want it. And then finally, number six, create some kind of urgency or scarcity and give people a reason to do it now.

All right, my friends, don’t forget to go to ProCoachCamp.com if you want help with all of this. I can’t wait to work with you and see what’s going on in your business. I’ll see you next time. Take care. Bye.

Hey everybody, thanks for listening today. Please do me a favor and make sure you’re following or subscribed to the show if you got a lot out of this and share it with a friend. Make sure you never miss an episode and help me spread the message of mental and emotional health and creating your best life. I’ll see you next time.