One of my favorite parts of growing up in the Americas after having grown up first in Korea was… Costco. In particular, I loved Costco’s food sampling. I was a chubby kid who loved indulging in gluttony so a mart that gives me free hot pockets and mac & cheese? Sign me up twice.
When I have such great food for free, I can’t believe it. Especially having grown up in Korea where stores of this scale don’t even exist in the first place, now you’re telling me they’re giving me something for free? Again, I’m in awe.
The allure of these samples don’t just apply to food. Practically everything has a trial period and I’m reminded of that every time I do my daily Duolingo for French. I’m sure many people convert to the paid version of Duolingo because 1) the free tier has a LOT of ads, and 2) every once in a while they FORCE you to try the paid version for a few days and it’s a night and day difference.
But every once in a while I get some things I have no interest in for free. For example a local law firm wants me to call them for a free consultation about a potential class settlement that I might or might not qualify for. I’m sure their legal services are fine, but I’m just not interested.
I work with many life coaches or people interested in becoming one. Many have zero clients and the issue seems to be that nobody is purchasing their coaching product. What would happen if the price was reduced to zero? Many people have their justifications around why they don’t want to work for free, and I respect that. But for the purposes of our discussion today, it is important to consider that possibility.
IS IT actually the price that’s preventing people from accessing my services? Or is it that my services aren’t good? Or am I bad at selling? There are so many variables working concurrently it’s difficult to pinpoint exactly what to work on. So we get overwhelmed and keep postponing development of our business.
The key insight that we seem to miss is this: attention is currency. In every career I’ve had in my life, I’ve had people come to something they paid for and didn’t pay attention. This happened in SAT tutoring, software engineering conferences, and life coaching as well. For things they PAID FOR!
Sure, not selling isn’t great — but speaking to a bunch of people who have 0 interest in what you’re saying to the point of falling asleep, I’d argue that feels a lot worse. What we first have to learn is, HOW TO SELL FOR ATTENTION.
Some people solve this by introducing gambling or nudity, they’re basically selling dopamine. But as life coaches, how do we sell dopamine when our resource isn’t exactly as exciting as a hit of cocaine? How can we utilize our understanding of the human mind to generate this thing called attention and desire?
And most importantly, from what perspective should we employ these skills?
These are exactly the topics you will learn in my class happening on June 21, 2025 at 7AM Pacific. Register now and get started with the guidebook. Join the call and ask questions. Watch the recording afterwards. Make sure you solve this problem of selling, for good. Sign up here.