Hi, this is Mark Butler and you are listening to a podcast for coaches.
This is one of those podcast episodes, which is really for one person, but you
assume and you can trust that if you make a podcast that is for one person,
it will benefit many other people,
which is a good reminder for all of us who attempt to publish content in the world.
If we find ourselves struggling with ideas, or direction for our content.
Sometimes it's because we're trying to create something for everyone.
And creating something for everyone is really hard, but creating something
for one person is much easier.
And it's very reliable that if you create something that is compelling
to one person, it will be compelling to many other people because.
So much of our experience is shared experience, similar experience.
So anyway, this is an episode for one person.
She will maybe listen to this and if she does, then she will know that
it's for her because we just spoke yesterday in my office hours thing
that I do a couple of times per month.
The scenario is she told me that she's been publishing her podcast for over
three years or around three years.
And after having published 150 plus episodes, she currently
has one paid coaching client.
I don't know if that's the only paid coaching client you've ever had,
but you told me that at this point you have one paid coaching client.
And you told me that that coaching client is actually not so much the fruit of the
podcast, it is the fruit of a long term friendship where she saw your evolution
as a person and wanted what you have.
And so hired you as a coach,
which is a beautiful story, a great example of how coaching practices so
often work and something that you can rely on and can repeat, but that's not
so much what we're talking about today.
What we're talking about today is.
Your podcast, we did talk about this briefly yesterday, but now
I've had 24 hours to think about it.
And I think there are so many important lessons for so many other
coaches who are in a similar boat because in case you don't already
know this, you are not alone.
In fact, I know personally.
a handful of coaches who are in a similar situation.
And if I know a handful of those personally, That tells me there are
many, many, many others that I don't know personally who are in the same boat.
It's an impossibility that I would happen to know the small handful of
coaches in the world who are trying hard and not getting the results they want.
Meanwhile, everybody else is crushing.
Math does not allow for that.
So you're not alone., I have so much admiration for you and people.
Like you, who in a very gritty and determined way, continue to invest
time and energy and emotion above all into their business long after other
people would have quit because the results aren't coming with the speed
or in the quantity that you would hope.
I have more confidence that a person who has that grit and determination
will figure it out and succeed.
Than I do in a person who has a lot of apparent natural ability.
Or a built in network and doesn't have a lot of grit and determination.
So everything I'm saying to you today, I'm saying, because I believe you are
going to figure it out and you are going to get the result that you want.
If I didn't believe that I actually would be very avoidant
of this whole topic because.
To be honest, it's upsetting to me if I observe a person and I think, I
don't think they can figure it out.
I don't think they're going to make it.
, I tend to hide from that possibility because I don't like it.
But in your case, and in the case of people who are working in the way
that you're working, but not getting the result that they want, I do still
find it easy to be optimistic about their possibilities because they
are gritty and determined like you.
But we, we do need to talk about 150 plus episodes and
very few or no paying clients.
As a foundation for this whole conversation, I want to remind you,
me and everyone else in business, there's no correct or incorrect.
There's just results and no results.
So business isn't about knowing the answer.
Business is about knowing how to continue running experiments until
we arrive at the result that we want.
Businesses about better questions.
It's not about discovering secret answers.
The issue with me saying there's just results and no results is that too many
business owners and especially people who don't have a background in a low
certainty environment like sales or entrepreneurship or self employment.
They tend to want high certainty in a low certainty environment.
So high certainty in entrepreneurship, in business, in a coaching practice is money.
It's the validation that we seek.
It's the result that we want.
So we work inside this paradigm.
I'm going to put effort in and money and time and energy, et cetera.
And I want money out.
So effort in money out.
And of course I want that too.
The problem is the money is usually the last result to arrive.
There are results along the way that indicate that we're on the path to money.
It's those signs of life along the way that tell us that we're headed in a
direction that probably leads to Money probably leads to the result that we want.
There are two big dangers To making money the only result that we pay attention to
the two big dangers are number one That we will quit
and number two that we won't quit
Let's talk about each
if I have not tuned myself to the signs of life that come before money
Then when the money is not arriving my discouragement May start to grow and
get to a level where I'm not able to work past the discouragement anymore.
And so I give up and I quit.
This is the more common scenario where the obsessive focus on money as a result
causes people who would have otherwise succeeded to quit because they're not
recognizing the strong valid signs of life that are already present.
That would indicate to them that they should keep going, that they're on
the right path, that they're headed in the direction they need to head.
And because they don't recognize those signs of life, they quit.
This is tragic.
The second one is sneakier, less common, harder to recognize.
But I think still very painful and it is this, the person who views money
as the only result, who is not attuned to signs of life, continues to work
in the absence of those signs of life.
Because they're saying, if I just keep putting in this effort, the
money will come, but there are no signs of life indicating that
they're going in the right direction.
And the truth is they should stop.
And I'll talk about what I mean by stop in a second,
but because of their grit and their determination, and because
probably the activity itself soothes them in some way, gives them some
sense of safety and security.
That disconnects them from the potential discouragement that other
people feel that causes them to quit.
They keep going without the signs of life that need to be there.
And the years can go by without any result.
And at some point that person is going to finally have to acknowledge
I'm putting an effort and I've been putting an effort for years,
but no money is resulting from it.
So either I have to decide that my compensation came in other ways, Intrinsic
compensation like my own personal development and the joy of creation
and these things are valid but if a person was relying heavily on money as
a result It's going to be much harder for them Years into this effort to
persuade themselves that the intrinsic benefits were worthwhile on their own.
It sets them up for this moment of reckoning where they have to
say, well, what happened here?
And tragically they very often make that about them and make themselves a failure.
I'm not as good as other people.
I must not be good at this.
I must not be very smart or whatever.
It can take a crushing toll on their self image.
And I don't want that.
I don't want any of that for this person.
So what I want for everyone, and including you, the person for whom I'm
making this podcast, is the ability to recognize signs of life or their absence
and adjust your approach accordingly.
For the people who are prone to quitting.
I want them to recognize signs of life.
So they keep going for the people who are prone not to quit.
I want them to recognize the absence of signs of life.
So they course correct, adjust, take a new approach.
Now, in your case, we've got 150 plus podcast episodes and.
Unless I'm missing something.
No paying clients as a result of all that effort.
So now what?
Well, first things first, we don't make this a comment on you or your smartness
or your coolness or your Ability or your capacity or any of that because
none of those things are true we know that off the bat because human beings
are inherently good and brilliant and Capable and smart and so are you and so
are the rest of us We all have it in us.
Okay.
So an effort that's not producing results is not in any way a comment
on our value or our character.
It's just an effort that's not producing results.
So instead what I want to direct you to is if you want to keep doing a podcast
and it's optional, you don't have to, if you want to keep doing a podcast,
the question becomes, how do I create a podcast?
Whose episodes are more resonant with the people that I hope to serve.
And that is a skill and a practice issue.
And everyone can increase skill through practice.
It turns out though, it's not just the reps that matter.
It's the quality of the reps that matter in practice.
So you have all these amazing reps, they are not yet teaching you what
you need to know about having those individual podcast episodes resonate
with an audience such that that audience reaches out to you and says,
do you have availability for coaching
with podcasts and with other types of content?
It is too easy to go into our caves to produce our work, to publish
it in the world, and then to tell ourselves, I did it, I'm done, I don't
have to think about that anymore.
It's too easy to deceive ourselves and say, well, coach XYZ told me that
if I just show up and do the work.
That I'll get the results.
It's a true, but incomplete principle.
The more complete principle is if I show up and do the work and then
iterate the way I'm doing that work based on feedback or lack of feedback
based on results or lack of results, then I eventually will succeed.
So what I would encourage you to do as a person who wants to podcast is I've
got to get that podcast out of the cave and I've got to get it into the world.
I think you'd be wise to continue podcasting, but I would encourage you
instead of just talking to that microphone and pushing publish, I would figure out
what you want to say on that podcast, and then I would get it into the.
hands of people in real life.
I would invite five people to your house and I would teach the
principles that I was going to share on that podcast episode.
And I would watch their faces and their shoulders.
And I would watch, listen to their tone of voice when they respond to me.
And I would listen to the questions that they asked me about that content,
or don't ask me about that content.
And I would refine the content so that it became more resonant
because If I've got those people in the room,
and none of them ever laugh, and none of them ever cry, and none of them ever
argue with me, and none of them ever ask questions that challenge me, and none of
them ever sort of gush about what's Oh, this is really transformational for me.
I had never thought of this this way before.
If none of those things are happening, then it means there's no resonance.
The good news and bad news about resonance.
Is that resonance always produces action,
not just the action of the consumer of my content asks if
they can hire me as a coach, but resonance always produces action.
Even if that action is introspection, if it's conversation with the spouse,
if it's them sending an email to say, I agree with you or disagree with you.
Resonance always produces action.
The bad news is Where there is no resonance, there will be no action.
So, however much work it is to become the person who can say things and
do things that produce resonance in the people they're interacting
with, however much work and time that requires, that is the job.
There is actually no other job.
I don't claim it's easy.
I don't have a course about how to do it.
I probably never will because I'm not sure I know.
But where there is resonance, there will be action.
And where there is no resonance, there will be no action taken.
So for a person like you, who has been so persistent in doing the thing,
publishing the podcast episodes, you now know beyond a shadow of a doubt that
the act of only publishing the podcast episode does not guarantee a particular
result, but you can build on that habit.
And you can say, I know that I can trust myself to produce a podcast episode.
So the next question I'm going to ask , in my journey is, can I trust myself to
do the hard work of creating resonance,
Which will require more work per episode for you for a while.
It will probably mean getting into the offline world.
It will mean inviting a friend to lunch.
And saying, I gotta run through these ideas with you.
And then again, watching their face, watching their shoulders,
listening to their tone of voice
and hunting for resonance.
And then when they start to laugh or they start to cry or they start
to argue or they start to,, agree, or they start to thank you profusely.
Then you tell yourself, this is now a podcast episode.
Will every single podcast episode be like that?
No, nor does it need to be, but the average needs to increase.
The very, very good news about this is this is a skill.
You can develop it.
It will be like any other skill where it's slow going and hard in the beginning.
And it becomes easier with time,
this will feel like stumbling forward in the dark for a while, because if
I'm in your head at all, you may find yourself saying, well, I don't know
what that guy's even talking about.
So, okay, now I've got this podcast episode.
Is it resonant?
I don't know.
What am I supposed to do?
Do I have permission to publish it?
Should I not publish it?
Do I need to go rework it again?
And I don't have a perfect answer to those questions.
This is the stumbling forward in the dark part,
The strong signals you're looking for are emotions in
others and emotions in yourself.
There is a scenario where if I'm writing something.
or I'm saying something into this microphone and it makes me laugh or
me cry or me angry or me ecstatic.
That's resonance too.
We can't be as assured that that will resonate with other people,
but if it resonates with us, that's a good starting point.
When in doubt, I would encourage you to go ahead and publish.
Do not let me complicate your process to the point where you stop being the
consistent person you've always been.
That would be a tragedy.
If this is of use to you, continue to be the consistent person you've always been
and now work harder on each episode to get some belief that the thing you're saying
will move people in some emotional way.
As a final thought, I will tell you this is harder to do in content.
Then it is to do in conversation, which is why if a person comes to me
and says, I'd like to have a full and thriving one on one coaching practice,
I do not tell them the first thing you need to do is create a compelling,
emotionally resonant podcast because they don't need to do that.
They never need to do that.
If that's what they want, I tell them to go get into conversation
and in those conversations, become a person who asks questions and
shares ideas in a way that over time, more and more reliably moves
the other person emotionally.
It does not take tons and tons of emotionally resonant
interactions with other human beings to fill a coaching practice.
So you don't have to podcast.
None of us has to podcast,
but we might want to,
it probably needs to be something like a hundred or two hundred people
who are really resonating with us.
Then that can also contribute to keeping our practice full and thriving.
But it's not necessary.
The principle is, as coaches, whatever we do, it needs to be in
pursuit of emotional connection.
And when it succeeds at emotional connection, then it builds the practice.
And when it doesn't, it doesn't.
So I hope you'll keep going.
I think you're doing great work.
I think you've transformed yourself.
You indicated that when we talked yesterday, I think there are
plenty of clients out there who are ready for you to serve them.
They need to have an emotionally resonant experience with you so that
the like and the trust and the desire is there, and then they will hire
you and then you will serve them.
And then they will give you referrals and then they will renew coaching with you.
And you're going to have a great time.
And with that, I'll talk to you next time.