Hey, this is Mark Butler and you are listening to a podcast for coaches.
I want to start today's episode with a quote from a philosopher kind of guy.
He's a Silicon Valley philosopher.
If you can tolerate that definition or that label, his name is Naval
Ravikant and among tech nerds and tech bros and venture capital types and
San Francisco nerdy types, a group of people, by the way, that I can
appreciate, and I consume their work.
And I love Naval Ravikant.
I think this is a very interesting guy.
I want to share this quote that I think relates to us as coaches,
although it may not be immediately obvious why here's this quote.
And he's addressing this to technology founders.
You're doing sales because you failed at marketing.
You're doing marketing because you failed at product.
This is classic Naval.
Naval is reductive and pithy and very quotable.
You're doing sales because you failed at marketing.
You're doing marketing because you failed at product.
I just went and perused Reddit to see what people thought of this quote.
And there's a whole subreddit of people who heard this quote from
Naval and they're very angry about it.
Of course you have to do sales and marketing.
It's so naive and ridiculous to think that your product would ever
be so good that you don't have to promote it in order for it to succeed.
And I agree with them.
But that doesn't make the quote less compelling.
It's this caricature of an idea that especially for us as coaches can be
so powerful because now consider this.
My hypothesis is that as coaches, we are the product.
You are the product.
The product is you.
When someone signs up for coaching with you, sessions may be the vehicle
through which the product is delivered.
You may have a specific modality that you believe in a specific
model or framework that you use, but those are all delivery mechanisms.
They're not the product.
The thing, the person is actually purchasing is you.
And what Neval is teaching me is if I have to sell myself, it's because I
wasn't good enough at marketing myself.
And if I have to market myself, it's because I haven't been good enough
at developing myself as a product.
I completely understand that this framing could be off putting to people.
I totally get it.
I'm not talking about commoditizing ourselves.
I'm talking about developing ourselves into such a compelling person that that
person as a product doesn't have to be aggressively marketed and it definitely
doesn't have to be aggressively sold.
My thesis for the episode is success as a coach is less about being very good
at sales and less about being very good at marketing and more about developing
ourselves as individuals such that we become so appealing, attractive,
and magnetic to other human beings that we don't really have to think in
terms of marketing and sales anymore.
Now, whether or not that's absolutely practically true to me is not important.
What's important is the way it anchors me to the idea that if I work on myself,
if I develop my character, if I develop my positive attributes, and if I do
that over an extended period of time.
that my own personal development will do the job of keeping
my coaching practice full,
this is kind of a good news, bad news scenario.
The good news is it puts my emphasis on who I am becoming
as opposed to what I am doing.
And I think that's a great plan for becoming a happier and happier person.
It takes my focus and my energy off of what I know and what I do, and it puts
it onto who I am and who I am becoming.
It's good news.
It should be a relief to think it's not about the next marketing tactic.
It's not about the perfect way to overcome objections.
It's not about the structure of my sales calls.
It's not about how often I post on social media or don't.
Or how many newsletters I send or don't, it's not about
the length of my newsletters.
It's not about the number of emails in my launch sequence.
It's not about the modality that I use, the certifications I have, except
in the way those things reflect and express my character, my way of being,
that's the good news.
The bad news is that even as I say that, even as I talk about.
Wanting my character and my way of being to be the thing that drive the
business forward that attract coaching clients to me the little voice in my
head Does start to talk into a megaphone and say what do you think you are?
Who are you to actually get up in front of the audience and say it's character
that counts As though my character is in some way complete or faultless the
scary thing about a character driven perspective on filling a coaching practice
is that it will turn the focus Toward ourselves and then the question becomes
can we bear the weight of that focus?
Are we comfortable there?
Are we comfortable taking a look and saying, where is my character
relative to where I want it to be?
I have a new year's resolution this year.
We're a quarter of the way through the year.
I still have this resolution in my mind every day.
And the resolution is to tell the truth or at least not lie.
Which I lifted directly from a book called 12 rules for life
by a guy named Jordan Peterson.
I want to become an honest person.
I want to tell myself the truth.
I want to tell other people the truth.
And it turns out that when you give yourself that goal, if you spend time
with it, you will start to see How much deception is, well, maybe not you.
I'll just speak for myself.
I have seen that there are a lot of untruths in my life.
The big pieces are there.
Of course.
I think I'm good to my family.
I have integrity in the way that I interact with my coaching clients.
But when you run things through the lens of, am I being honest?
Am I telling the whole truth above all to myself about this situation?
You will find yourself having some uncomfortable discoveries.
Well I did.
I have made some uncomfortable discoveries.
But that's part of a character focused perspective on
filling a coaching practice.
It's not then that we have to be perfect.
It's not then that we can't start until we've completely evolved as human beings.
It's that we make that the trajectory of our lives and of our
coaching practices where we are trying to become better people.
And as we become better people, we of course, reap all the rewards of
that improvement in our character.
The least exciting of which is a full and thriving coaching practice.
But we also end up with a full and thriving coaching practice
Our way of being makes our character evident.
And I think that is a harder path to choose.
And I think that's the bad news.
At the very least, I think it's short term harder, long term easier, but
the short term difficulty can be significant because it's more fun and
more interesting to buy courses about marketing and sales tactics, to have
conversations about business models.
To discuss whether 24 sessions is the right number or 18
sessions is the right number.
And what should my hourly rate be?
And what's my niche and et cetera, and et cetera.
It's not that I don't want to have any of those conversations.
This podcast is those conversations, but I want the foundation of every other
conversation to be, who am I becoming?
And as I am becoming that thing, whatever that is, whatever, whatever character
I aspire to, Does that aspiration and that pursuit make me more appealing,
more attractive and more useful to my current and future coaching clients?
So I'm starting there, I'm starting with what is the nature of my character and how
can I improve that character in service of above all family, friends, community,
and secondarily, Coaching practice.
If that's my goal, what are the downstream consequences?
Well, I think one of the downstream consequences is that you'll
see working on yourself as your fundamental business strategy
This means I'm not looking at myself negatively and critically.
I'm looking at myself and saying, what can I do to develop and
improve my character today?
It includes an acknowledgment of how I've already developed my character
It's built I hope on an acknowledgment that you're a good person You've
done great things you make a good faith effort in your relationships
I'm taking all of that as given.
Now if that isn't given, great, you've got a starting point for that too.
You can course correct.
We can all course correct, but this self analysis, the self reflection can
be built on first and acknowledgement that, you know what, I'm a good person.
I'm a good person who wants to grow, who wants to find my character
flaws and heal and work them out.
Another downstream effect will be that you'll look at training
opportunities and training experiences and communities and memberships.
And instead of looking at them for their tactical benefit, which I've
done a lot, by the way, I'll look at a community and I'll say, I'm
only going to join that community.
If I think that there are clients for me in there, I'm basically client
hunting by joining that community.
Um, I now want to take a different perspective on community and on training.
If I'm looking at a training or I'm looking at some sort of mastermind or
membership, whatever it is, I want to look at it as something that can help me
develop my character, improve my way of being, not give me some new tactic that
will have temporary benefit at best.
This is a much stronger lens through which to consider any and every
opportunity we have as coaches,
another downstream effect of this.
And the one that I think I'm most excited about for my fellow coaches who
want to fill a coaching practice and be of service and make a great living
is that as we move from a tactical view to a character view, or from a
knowledge view to a character view.
It sets us up to have everything we do in marketing and in sales Become more
congruent with what we do in coaching Because if my my whole strategy if
my whole approach to business is based more around Who I am and how
I am Then specifically what I do in any given context Then I don't have
to reorient the client to my way of being at each successive step.
That's a mouthful.
Here's what I mean.
If I view myself as the product, then I know that all my marketing
and my sales have to do is give the person I'm trying to serve an
opportunity to experience the product.
And I want them to experience it in a way that feels smooth
and congruent at every step.
I don't want them to ever have the thought, oh, he's very different
in his content than he is in his quote unquote sales interactions.
And he's very different in his coaching.
Then he is in his sales interactions or in his content.
I think it's very dysregulating for coaches to have the sense that they're
being one way in their marketing and sales and a different way in their
coaching, or that they think they need to, that sales and marketing
are such a different activity that I have to be one way over there.
And then when I actually get into coaching, oh, now I get
to be who I want to be because coaching is a different thing.
No, it's not.
If you are the product and your primary focus is raising
your character to another level
and then all you're doing in your marketing and your content and your sales
processes are expressing that character and allowing people to experience it.
Then they will feel the same way consuming your newsletter or podcast or social
media post that they do in whatever conversation you have before you start
the official coaching relationship that they do in the actual coaching experience.
It makes it so instead of having to wear multiple hats, you just take
off all the hats and you just be you.
I don't know if this is too philosophical.
I don't know if it's too abstract.
But it certainly sounds more appealing and easier to me to say my job is to
become a better person and to trust that as I become a better person
and as I develop my character, as I improve my ability in sharing myself,
that the coaching transactions will take care of themselves and that the business
will feel completely congruent With my way of being my preferred way of being,
Give that some thought as you listen to podcasts, as you read sales copy,
as you look at programs and courses, as you consider how your coaching practice
fits in with the rest of your life, just consider the possibility that if you
make your own character development, your primary business strategy,
you'll be happier.
You'll be healthier.
Your business will be more enjoyable and easier.
That's the hypothesis that I'm very curious about today.
And I'll talk to you next time.