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A Podcast for Coaches shines a light on one of the most elegant, underrated business models in the world: one-on-one coaching. Mark Butler hosts the show, and he's been a coach and advisor to every kind of online business you can think of, having helped businesses earning everything from $0 to $25,000,000+. Although Mark believes every online business model has merit, he worries one-on-one coaching is viewed as a stepping-stone business for people who aren't ready or able to scale. But it's not true, and A Podcast for Coaches sets out to show people--through clear teaching and rich, current stories of successful coaches who love their business--that one-on-one coaching is one of the most gratifying and lowest "hassle-per-dollar" businesses in the world.
Speaker: Hey, this is Mark Butler
and you're listening to a podcast for
coaches This is kind of a meta episode.
Here's what's going on.
Over the last week or so, I've been
working on another podcast episode
in which I use an extended metaphor
that I like, to propose what I
think is my strongest hypothesis
for how to grow, fill, and sustain
a one-on-one coaching practice.
I've worked really hard on the episode.
I've got quite a few hours into it.
It's now sitting at over 3,000 words,
which is probably a 30 to 40-minute
episode, but in my opinion, it is
substantial and, and dense and useful.
However, when I sat down today to
record and to publish it, I had
this sense that before I did that,
I wanted to give it a closer look.
The reason I wanna give it a
closer look is I want this episode
to become foundational to what
I share with my fellow coaches.
And because I want it to be
foundational, I want it to be
useful, I want it to be reliable.
I want a person who buys into, the
hypothesis that I present in that episode
to make good use of their time and
their energy and their money as they go
to fill or to sustain their practice.
And I know how close I am to my own
theories and philosophy, so I don't know
where my blind spots are As I reviewed
the episode myself, it occurred to me
that a person who already agrees with
me in principle would probably nod along
happily to the metaphor I present, the
stories I share, the arguments I make,
and the way I defend those arguments.
But a more adversarial reader, a
person who fundamentally disagrees
with me in principle, might find big
holes in the case I'm trying to make.
So I paused on publishing that episode.
I set it aside.
It's good, it's strong, and I look
forward to publishing it, but it needs
some cleanup and some strengthening.
What I did is I took the script
that I'd written, I went over to
Claude, which is my favorite large
language model, and I said, "I want
you to be an adversarial reader.
I don't want you to evaluate this
script for content or flow or style.
I want you to evaluate it for
strength and defensibility.
Poke holes in my arguments,
challenge my assumptions."
And of course, AI being what it is,
it took about thirty seconds, and it
didn't completely shred the episode,
but it did point out some gaping
holes in my arguments As I talked
with it about its concerns and its
challenges, I realized that what was
emerging was quite a powerful tool.
It's a discernment tool.
It's an evaluation tool.
And so I paused on that episode, and
I'm creating this episode, and in
this episode, I wanna give you what
I think is a pretty simple but pretty
powerful coaching tool, and it's one
that you can apply to conversations
that you have with yourself, with
your loved ones, with your friends.
It applies to content
that you consume online.
It applies to persuasive material that you
read, like sales pages and emails, and I
think it even applies to interactions that
you have with your clients because you'll
be able to run claims that your clients
are making, the stories that they're
telling through this little tool, not to
put them on trial but to help them see
more clearly the claims they're making and
the potential consequences of those claims
So this is the tool.
It's three questions Question
one: What is the claim being made?
Two, what happens if the claim is wrong?
Three, can we find out if it's wrong?
I wanna show you this tool in
practice, and we're going to apply
it to two different claims that I
made in the podcast episode that
I'm setting aside for the moment,
And it will show you sort of the weak
versions of the claims I made and the
strong versions of the claims I made.
But the way we're gonna do it is we're
gonna ask each of these questions and then
filter each story through the question.
As background, let me
give you the two stories.
Story number one, my high school best
friend texted me a few days ago, and
in spite of the fact that I haven't
talked to him in over five years, and
we haven't been in each other's lives in
any significant way for almost 30 years,
when I saw that text, I had this nice
surge of good feeling and good emotion.
That's the story
Second story.
The other day I was talking with a fellow
coach, and the coach was telling me that
her current strategy is to advertise on
Facebook in hopes of having people who
see those ads sign up for a consultation,
and then in that consultation, she
invites them to become a client.
She told me, as we talked about her
strategy, that she's currently spending
a lot more on ads than is ever coming
back in the form of client fees.
In other words, her current strategy is
not financially profitable Now let's take
those two stories and run them through our
little coaching tool, our three questions.
Question number one: What is the claim?
We'll start with my high
school best friend story.
I'll give you the actual claim that I
made and talk about its strength, and
then I'll give you examples of how that
claim could run away from me and become
weak and hard to defend and almost absurd.
First claim, relationships
persist in spite of long dormancy.
That was the claim I made in the episode.
My friend with whom I have not interacted
in a long time texts me, "I feel good."
So the claim I'm making is
relationships persist even
when we disconnect for a while.
It's fine.
It's easily confirmed against our
own life experience within about two
seconds But here's the next level
of that claim that you might make.
So this is why relationships you
haven't touched in five years or more
could become coaching engagements.
Yeah, I can confirm the original
warm feeling, but I can't confirm
that it's going to convert in
any consistent or reliable way.
So a claim about the affinity that I
feel for my friend and that he feels
for me gets substituted by a claim
about some potential transaction And
because of the way I'm presenting
it to you today, you might think,
"Well, yeah, of course that's silly."
But you'll find in podcasts and in
sales pages and in conversations
with your clients that people make
this kind of claim all the time.
Another claim I could have made is,
"He referred me a client two weeks
later, therefore dormant relationships
are your best lead source."
That didn't happen, by the way,
but we're just giving examples.
Well, that's a case where if he had given
me a referral, now we would have a sample
size of one, and that sample size of
one would be driving our strategy, and
there's no acknowledgment of the fact
that I might have 50 of these dormant
relationships and that the other 49
of them wouldn't give me a referral.
So claiming that dormant relationships
are,, the best lead source is silly.
But it's the kind of claim that you will
run across in the coaching industry.
It can even get to the absurd, where
I could tell that story about the good
feelings between me and my friend,
and then I could say, "So stop wasting
your time with any content creation.
Stop wasting your time with
networking or anything like that.
Make a list of all your best
friends from high school and
ask them to become your
client it's absurd.
So we start with a story that feels
good and is easy to confirm, and
we're just a few short steps away
from tipping over into something
where you think that's ridiculous.
But sometimes when the ridiculous claim
is paired with a totally relatable
story and a totally relatable emotion
Suddenly we find ourselves believing
it and questioning ourselves in spite
of the absurdity Now, I'm happy to
say in the episode that I will be
publishing soon, the only claim I
made is that the good feelings that
exist in our relationships can persist
through long periods of dormancy
The thing to be aware of with
this type of claim is that each of
the claims I made could be true.
So the failure here
isn't strict dishonesty.
It's the fit between the actual
facts of the story as I presented
them and the claims I'm making about
those facts there's a therefore
in each case that starts to break
down quickly as it gets away from
the basic facts of the experience
Let's talk about my other story,
and let's ask ourselves, what
is the claim that was made?
Well, this is where I got on the
shaky ground, and I got onto shaky
ground because I tell the story of
this coach who is running ads on
Facebook, generating consultations
through those ads, having those
consultations, and then getting clients.
I did not, at any point in this
episode, make the claim that-
You can't grow a coaching
practice through paid ads.
What I did instead was imply that,
and this is where the ethics gets
stickier This was a tough moment
for me as I had to admit to myself
that I had made an unstated claim,
meaning I was asking the listener to
state my claim for me And believe it.
A few weeks ago, I did an episode about
earnings claims, and in that episode,
I said something like, "It's ethically
questionable to ask someone to pay you
$30,000 for a training program, and
then to put a testimonial alongside that
request where it says something like,
'I participated in this program, and I
made hundreds of thousands of dollars.'"
Because it's the same unstated claim
that's being made It just happens to
be the sort of mathematical reverse,
meaning I'm claiming that what the
person is doing won't make money,
but I'm asking you to state it.
The other coach is claiming that if
you pay them $30,000, you'll make
hundreds of thousands, but they aren't
stating it, they're implying it.
There's an old sales adage.
When I was in sales over 20 years ago,
we had this thing that we said, and it
was, "If you say it as the salesperson,
then the prospect can challenge it.
But if they say it, it's true."
So one of your best strategies for selling
people is to get them to say the thing
that they might otherwise object to.
And I was completely guilty
of that in this story.
"Well, you know, she's paying
for ads and it's not profitable."
"So?
You tell me."
And this other coach is saying, "Well,
they paid me 30 grand for coaching,
and they made hundreds of thousands."
"So?
You tell me."
Ethically dubious.
The way to make that ethical is
to say She told me this story, and
I drew the conclusion that running
paid ads to a consultation flow is
an unprofitable approach to growing
a one-on-one coaching practice.
If I had stated my claim, then
I would have to defend my claim
So the takeaway here is sometimes
Stating the claim is the whole job
Much of what can go wrong in our
decision-making processes is when we
are working from an implied claim and
trusting it without actually asking the
person who's making the implication to
state it clearly and then to present
their evidence and to defend it.
Now, in my case, I could do that, and
we'll talk about that in a second.
So let's go to question number two,
and let's run each of my claims
through question number two, which is:
What happens if the claim is wrong?
With my first claim that the good feelings
of relationships persist through periods
of dormancy, what happens if it's wrong?
Well, nothing really
happens if it's wrong.
If my friend's story were completely
fabricated, if I just made it up,
then the implications for you and
for me are essentially nothing.
I mean, almost all of us would hear
that story and say, "Yeah, I have
a relationship where we've been
disconnected for a while, but I bet
if we talked again, I bet we would
both be happy to be talking, and,
we still care about each other."
So even if the claim I made were
a total fabrication, who cares?
It doesn't really matter.
But what about the other story?
I've implied that running paid ads to a
consultation process is an unprofitable
way to grow a coaching practice.
Well, if I'm wrong, then many of
you, my listeners, would discard a
potentially profitable growth strategy.
So the stakes are much higher.
Not only was I a little bit ethically
loose and weak by implying the claim
instead of stating it outright, the stakes
are higher because if you were to fill in
the gaps for me and say, "Well, obviously
Mark believes that it's unprofitable to
run paid ads to consultations, therefore
I'm not going to do it because I trust him
And that's potentially costly to you
And in this case
I'm asking my listener to eat
the cost of my being wrong
In the case of good feelings persisting
through periods of relationship
dormancy, doesn't matter who eats the
cost because there's basically no cost.
Doesn't really matter.
But in the case where I'm claiming
that advertising on Facebook is
fundamentally unprofitable If you buy
into that and I'm wrong, then you eat
the cost, and I don't feel good about
that, so I've gotta clean up my claim
Now let's look at question three.
Question three is can we find
out if the claim is wrong?
My first claim being that affinity
and trust can persist through periods
of dormancy in a relationship,
can we find out if it's wrong?
Well, yeah It's pretty trivial to
find out whether or not it's wrong, so
it doesn't really need much support.
The audience, you
yourselves, are the evidence.
And you're thinking to yourself right
now like, "Oh, yeah, that former coworker
I had, I should reach out to him.
He's such a good dude."
It, it's easy to find out whether
that's wrong or right But with my
other claim, the implied claim that
advertising on Facebook is fundamentally
unprofitable, you can also disprove that
You can find out if it's wrong or I
can find out if it's wrong Ethically,
I think my first job is to say, "By the
way, I don't know how representative
this person I talked to is."
She's one person who's at the moment
not finding her advertising campaigns
profitable, but she might figure
out how to make them profitable, and
there might be 100 or 1,000 other
coaches who have made advertising
campaigns on Facebook profitable in
their one-on-one coaching practice
It weakens my claim by acknowledging the
possibility that there are many who have
done the thing that I'm claiming won't
work, but it strengthens the ethics.
It pulls some of the cost of being wrong
off the listener back onto me, because
now I'm incurring some credibility cost
and some argument cost But reducing the
likely cost that the listener will face
if they say, "Well, I do trust Mark."
He's acknowledging that, in
fact, lots of people could be
profitably advertising on Facebook
So maybe I should do my own research.
Now, I realize you know to do your own
research anyway, but I think it's my job
as a person who wants to be an ethical
coach and an ethical content creator
to acknowledge, hey, this is one story.
And let me just state outright that
although I personally struggle to
believe that advertising is a profitable
way to grow a one-on-one coaching
practice, I don't have enough data
to really stand behind that claim
Now, if I wanted to go even further,
I could talk to a hundred coaches, or
I could find a way to survey a hundred
coaches, and I could find out of
those hundred coaches, how many have
attempted to generate consultations
and clients through paid ad strategies,
and then I could also find out to what
degree that's working or not working.
It would still be an imperfect
claim, but it would be a much
stronger claim if I could say, "I
gathered data from a hundred coaches.
Seventy-one of them have tried growing
their coaching practice through paid ads.
Of those seventy-one, sixty-three
told me they were never able to
make a paid ad strategy work in
their one-on-one coaching practice.
Or forty-nine of them reached
break even and profitability
in an average of X months or X
thousand dollars spent on ads."
The data is there, but if I wanna
make the claim, and if I wanna really
make it strong, I could go get the
data and present it in my argument
If I actually did the work
of gathering that data,
I might even be able to make the
case that even where it did work,
there were other significant
factors or costs or skills in play.
So I might be able to say, "Yeah, 49
people were able to profitably advertise
on Facebook, but as I did my research,
I found that 41 of those people
did X or Y or Z to make that work."
So this, so it is a case where
I could make the claim And I
could even probably find the data
that would support my opinion
But until I've done that, I have
to honestly disclaim the whole
thing and say, " This is my bias.
I have one story that supports my bias.
That is what it is.
You need to do your own research going
back to the earnings claim episode from
a few weeks ago, I wish that people who
are implying that paying 10 and 20 and
$30,000 will meaningfully contribute to
earning hundreds of thousands of dollars,
I wish that they would present robust
data sets that we could analyze, discuss,
and debate so we could decide how much
of a causal or a correlated relationship
there is between these high-ticket
coaching experiences and masterminds and
increased income in the participants.
But based on what I'm telling you today,
all I can present it as is an opinion with
a small handful of anecdotes that support
it You have to do your own research.
You have to find out whether that's true.
So that's our tool, folks.
Our tool when we're talking to a client
or a spouse or evaluating a sales page,
deciding whether to purchase something,
is to dig into these three questions.
What claim is being made?
What happens if it's wrong?
And could I find out if it's wrong?
It's actually not an extremely
tedious or time-consuming process
to apply those three questions to
almost any claim or idea or statement
that we encounter in the wild.
Takes 30 seconds usually.
At the very least, it takes 30 seconds
for us to discover what would be the next
step in really answering that question
But if nothing else, it should short
circuit any hasty actions or decisions
we might make based on weak claims
And with that, I will
talk to you next time