In such uncertain times, where people are scared and suffering, how can we stay true to ourselves and our purpose?
There’s this fine line between feeling like we’re taking advatage of people in their time of need, but at the same time we need to honor ourselves and still make ends meet.
Now more than ever, people need coaching. Tough times always showcase the need for guidance.
But how do we do this?
How do we offer coaching after lockdown?
Coaching After Lockdown from a Place of Love, not Fear.
I’m sure like me, you feel very strongly about not wanting to take advantage of people.
You don’t want to play on people’s suffering right now, because there’s so much of that already, isn’t there?
We have this feeling of wanting to serve in some way.
We want to do what feels natural and true.
I find myself sitting recording videos, working very hard on my online business because that’s something I can do.
My first suggestion is to tune in to that which comes from love and inspiration instead of tuning in to fear.
We all acknowledge that fear is a part of reality right now, but tuning into fear and moving from fear is going to likely cause us to step outside of our integrity in some way.
Whereas if we tune in to love and inspiration and to that which naturally wants to serve, then instead of operating from a place of fear, we operate with integrity and something that is uniquely you – something that is uniquely your apple tree.
Every unique expression of life must honor its own unique way of being in the world.
An apple tree must honor being an apple tree, a pear tree must honor being a pear tree.
Love knows how to move in that way.
And our intuition combined with that can really help us to feel for the flow of that.
And I know this might sound abstract, but it really can be quite tangibly felt in the body.
What helps is to feel for what opens instead of what closes.
Now fear and all of its offspring are going to produce contractions and heaviness and distortion.
Whereas love is going to bring clarity.
No matter what it is that you’re doing marketing-wise, how you put yourself out there – always keep sincerity, humanity, love and authenticity in mind and keep tuning into that.
Set your intention to speak from that. And that’s going to be a principal guiding factor.
Be Comfortable with an Online World.
With that in place, let’s look at some of the practical things that I recommend.
Being online is the preference right now.
And it is probably going to be that way for a long time.
So wrapping your mind around that, getting equal to it – not feeling superior and dominant and overcompensating, and neither feeling smaller and frightened, – get yourself equal to it.
Experiment with technology.
(And in fact, I like that as a general philosophy, instead of feeling like you’re having to do something and it’s unbreakable and it’s gotta be done perfectly – take an attitude of experimenting, trying things out on a small scale and testing the waters and then learning, learn, learn, learn, and learn some more, then apply yourself.)
There’s so much good knowledge.
Yes, you have to sift through all the rubbish and all the scams; there’s a lot of con artists out there right now, but sift through it to find valuable, good knowledge so that you can experiment and take the best of the practices of online marketing.
But always make sure it’s coming from a place of love and service.
Sticky Coaching Conversations.
No matter what market you serve as a coach or a consultant, now’s the time to do what I call ‘have sticky conversations‘.
You might be sitting at home trying to guess what offer you should bring people – what you should build, what kind of websites you should create, what headlines you should make.
And unfortunately, I’ve seen so many coaches make mistakes with this because you’re actually guessing – you might not think you’re guessing, but you’re guessing.
So please take this into consideration – I call them sticky conversations.
The word sticky comes from website language.
A website is actually sticky if you stay on it.
Why do we stay on a website?
We stay on a website because it’s relevant and it’s solving a problem.
So here are a couple of keywords, important ones.
(You might’ve heard me teach this before, but let this be a reminder.)
We’re looking for the specific, significant, searched-for solutions that our clients and our markets are needing help with.
And the only way I know how to do that is to actually find real people in your niche markets – the markets that you like to serve.
How you find a niche market is a combination of thinking about your expertise, the topics that you love, and you care about, validating those topics by checking out whether they’re topics that are popular and that they are people gathering around those topics.
Then looking for examples of people, don’t think about demographics; think about actual human beings that are looking for specific, significant, searched-for solutions.
Then you need to build coaching, training, consulting services to meet those needs and to address them.
And the more you can customize, the better.
So instead of building a big website and brochures that cost time and money – have conversations with people.
And customize – because you’ve got competencies and skills as a coach- now you just need to meet your clients’ needs with customized solutions.
As a coach, you know what’s in your toolbox of competencies and processes.
So for example, I teach InnerLifeSkills – that’s my coaching methodology. So our coaches know they have these 55 plus processes. They talk to the potential client. They find their specific, significant searched for solutions and they think, ‘Hmm, which of my solutions could actually address that person’s specific problems?’ They go back and they don’t go back with a brochure – they go back with another conversation, which says, ‘you know, based on what you’ve said, I’ve thought about it. And what I’d like to offer you is a combination of [xyz]. I’m thinking we should start with a Disney strategy, then do some possible kite work. These are all InnerLifeSkills’ processes. You know, maybe we should also look at your Enneagram. Those are the first things.’
You outline it. You explain the possible benefits, your client says, ‘oh yes, I like that.’ Or ‘no, thanks. I’ve done that before. I’m not interested.’ Or, ‘oh no, my budget can’t afford all of that. But yes, I’d like to start with this.’
And you custom build a coaching solution until you’re both happy.
You make an amazing service for the person so that they really are helped and deliver on that service and solution.
But what if your client is struggling financially?
You’re most welcome to offer discounts, but that cutback could hurt you.
Instead, we suggest you increase the value of your service – offer more solutions at a similar price.
But remember to customize sticky coaching solutions that meet the very specific, significant searched-for solutions.
It has to be specific – not vague.
Focus on a person’s most important urgent (significant) problems that are searched for.
Because they’re actually looking for a solution – not one that you think they have – one that they know they have and that they’re looking for a solution.
And that’s what you meet.
Finally, when you’re delivering these sticky conversations, you need to remember your clients or potential clients are humans – not robots.
Use the language (wording) they’re using, not the language that sounds academic and corporate, or like a brochure, put it in human language.
And that way people are going to start saying yes.
So your job right now is to have as many sticky conversations as you can.
I hope that helps.
Offering coaching is now more than ever about serving from a place of love and authenticity.
It’s about meeting your clients at their place of need.
And you can do this by customizing your coaching service on a sticky conversation – offering specific, significant searched-for solutions to your clients’ needs.
If you would like to consider, I have built an ‘apple tree client attracting‘ video-based course that I’m offering right now as my way to help.
There are more than 10 hours of videos and examples to help you to take these sticky conversations and to translate them into a simple online landing page, instead of having to build a whole website.
It’s everything I could think of to help you right now to attract clients in an authentic, beautiful way so that you can go do your work and be of service.
If you’re interested, check out innerlifeskillscourses.com where I have a number of free courses, as well as my paid-for courses and this self-study course that I’m recommending.
