Today was the final group support day for my business training program May You Offer (omg, it’s the end of May!). This program was probably my most specifically guided program yet and all the participants got something out of working in this program. The premise was simple: make 108 offers. Now that I’m thinking back, I could have clarified it a little bit more; perhaps in the next rendition of this program it will be clearer and more specific, what people actually have to do.
As a part of the last day ritual I took last questions and one of the questions was, making offers and all are great but when does the money actually come in? We can get ourselves to make offers, think creatively and all that, but when we go through an extended period of no results we feel pressured and that kills all the creativity. I think as a business training program it’s important to produce results. So I gave a bit of an unexpected short answer in the call: “I think the thing to do is, pretend that this will never make money. Then you won’t feel the pressure to make money”.
With that said, I think it’s also important for me to elaborate a little on this answer because while my short answer provides a way to not feel that pressure, what do we do when we actually need to make money with our coaching business? Or make money at all, regardless of what we do in terms of job/business?
Why the no money pretending is so important is, you need to understand that coaching is not an easy, efficient way to make money. Let me elaborate on that.
When we think of money, it’s important to understand that it’s not guaranteed to us. In fact a lot of things in life aren’t guaranteed to us. So how do we think about the probability of money? Let’s consider that in terms of probability in relation to the transactional world.
When we have two parties, you and me, it is the best for me if you can do something that benefits me regardless of whether it benefits or costs you. But if you’re not a fool, you won’t be exploited by me so you’ll want something out of doing something for me. So we will bargain and negotiate to reach an agreeable point, which tends to be a 50:50 exchange.
Put in concrete examples, it’s the best for me if you just give me money whenever I ask for it. I have everything to gain and you have nothing to gain. But realistically you won’t give me money for free. What is a case where you would be actually eager to give me money? Well, if you were a loan shark and gave me a loan with 400% interest then wouldn’t it be a great idea for you to give me money?
So what’s a step less extreme than that? Well, we can agree on some kind of a less predatory loan. Or I can give you something in exchange for money, like goods and services. This is where sales happen. Or I can give you my expertise, and this is a job basically.
On the other end where it’s least likely to give me money is, if I give you nothing of value but you give me money. We came back to this situation. The unfortunate thing is, when new coaches think about marketing their services they often feel exactly like this: they don’t truly believe that their services are good, nor is it worth the price tag (especially if they charge high ticket prices). So of course they aren’t likely to make offers from a congruent place.
Selling coaching requires you to be not only good at coaching, but also good at selling. It has such a high entry barrier, and yet the perceived value of coaching is very, very low. It will require a great amount of investment into skill and experimentation to get a legitimate paying client.
The interest for life coaching is so low, it’s effectively the x-axis itself. Coaching is NOT easy money. The more you try and make money with life coaching without a serious commitment to it, even at the cost of potentially making 0 dollars with it (even worse: minus tens of thousands of dollars), the worse of a time you are going to have.
So suppose you ARE someone who is willing to make that serious commitment. Ironically, when you’re this serious about it what actually helps is letting go of the urge to do your best and grind through the work. Stress helps nothing, and building a coaching business is no exception. Just build your business earnestly, day by day, committing to things you can do to help people.
The commitment is like the bare minimum requirement you need to start making money. Without the commitment, even if you do make money it will be a further burden on your shoulder because you will try to match or improve from the last sale. Assuming you have the commitment, what do you need in order to make money? I retraced my steps back and thought about how I learned to make money.
I actually watched my sister do one of her great fundraising activities. She raised so much money for great humanitarian causes and I thought that was an amazing skill to have, because I happened to be working with some nonprofits and I wanted to channel a lot of money to them.
How do I get someone to donate for a cause that’s outside of me? The more I tried to solve for that problem, the more I realized something: if I can’t even get people to change their minds about something that’s unrelated to my benefit, how can I expect to get people to change their minds about something that’s related to my benefit? Because the more I sell things I offer, the more the implicit assumption of “this Billy guy has something to get out of me” I have to deal with. Especially on a vague product like life coaching!
There ARE people who make big bucks with life coaching. But in my opinion, they tend to be selling their presence and personality. You know how celebrities have all these side gigs, like hot sauces or perfumes? People aren’t necessarily buying them for the high quality spiciness or luxurious scents, people are buying them for the person who’s selling them. Once YOU also reach that point of people seeing you and equating it to value, you can play that game as well. But even that is not sustainable, because in this climate you’re one cancel away from losing everything you had.
When I can constantly yet casually talk to points that have people change their indifference towards me to a curiosity towards me, then I’m on my way to making a sale. But when exactly will that be? I have no influence over it. People warm up to me in different speeds, so who knows? Someone might buy tomorrow, someone might buy next year, and so on. I’ve created the conditions for people to warm up to the idea of buying from me, so it can happen any time in the future.
But there’s something I can do to have a bit of influence on that timeline. That is telling them the reason to buy NOW, instead of later. Why should they buy today, instead of tomorrow? Why should they buy tomorrow, instead of a week from now? If the humanitarian aid camp closes next week and I can’t rally people to support by next week, my entire mission fails to serve its purpose.
So this question must be engaged with curiosity: “What benefit can I give people right now? How can I help them get the benefits that can help them right now?”. Too many people consider this question to be, “How can I get them to buy from me right now?”. While the questions are similar, the former is oriented towards serving THEM and the latter is oriented towards serving ME.
With a great fluency in talking to and providing desirable and immediate services, you can be in somewhat of a charge of when the money comes in to you. But again, if you don’t engage in this with ease, and you’re not clear on why you’re doing this ridiculously inefficient way of making money, it is highly likely that you are going to have a bad time.
May You Offer is a core curriculum of July Business Coaching. 108 offers later, your business will definitely feel different to you. If you’re going to make 108 offers ANYWAY, why not get started on them today, right now? Join me and a great community of humans in serving the world in a path-oriented way.
