Comfy shoes, a comfy couch, a comfy pillow at night. The older we get, the more we are drawn to comfort.
Comfort makes life easy.
But when you are building a business and when you are creating clients, comfort is your enemy.
Effortless vs easy
The word easy means “involving minimal difficulty or discomfort.”
The word effortless means “involving minimal effort.”
Most people are looking for easy.
Many people will try to sell you easy.
I’m in my 16th year of business and I am yet to see a strategy that was “easy.” I’ve coached multi-millionaires and owners of companies making hundreds of millions of dollars a year. None of them filter for easy. But they often optimize for “effortless.”
Uncomfortable marketing is effortless. But it might be hard and it is definitely not comfortable…
Uncomfortable marketing vs comfortable marketing
Comfortable marketing involves minimal difficulty or discomfort.
It might be hard to create a Facebook ad but you do it from the comfort of your laptop. It might be hard to hire a social media marketer but you can do it from the comfort of a Zoom call or two. It might be hard to learn SEO keywords but you can do it with a few clicks on Google.
Uncomfortable marketing is when you wake up each morning and ask yourself, “Who can I serve, today?”
Uncomfortable marketing is when you reach out to one person at a time.
Uncomfortable marketing is when you look one person in the eyes and say “I’d love to work with you.”
Most coaches and consultants are people people. And coaching is a relationship business.
If you can go high touch in a world where everyone else is going high tech, you’ll create all the clients you ever need.
Here are 10 distinctions to help you go deeper into marketing than most coaches will ever go…
- Sell the experience of coaching vs sell the concept of coaching
When you’re trying to create clients your number one mission is to give people an experience of what you do. Stop talking about coaching and coach, coach, coach, instead.
If you’re a consultant who speaks on a stage, your content may be interesting but it’s far better to give people a valuable tool so they can experience what you do.
If you’re a coach who wants clients, stop interviewing interesting people on your podcast and coach them instead. Let people experience your coaching before they ever meet you.
- One vs many
It’s tempting to try to build an audience on social media. It’s far better to have one person experience what you do and pay you as a client than have 100,000 people who follow you on Instagram but who never pay you a penny.
There’s only one way high-performing, high-fee clients are created…
One powerful conversation at a time.
- Publish vs post
Posting on social media is easy. Memes of someone else’s quotes, photos of books you’ve read, or witty aphorisms take seconds to create.
There’s no barrier to entry but the competition is infinite.
Sharing deep thought and authentic, vulnerable reflection is hard. Creating valuable tools, distinctions and intellectual capital is challenging.
The barrier to success is high and the rewards are infinite.
[I amused myself by turning this into a meme. It took me 60 seconds. And it’s not likely to be shared widely but that’s the point.]
- Discontent vs content
Your job is to polarize people. Not to upset them but to provoke and challenge their thinking. If at least one client a day doesn’t say I hate you (with a slight smile on their face) you’re not stretching them deep enough.
If at least one person doesn’t unsubscribe from your email list every time you write to them, you’re not truly growing your community.
- Learning vs likes
I can get a few hundred likes on social media by posting a photo of my kids or a quote from Brené Brown. But likes are meaningless dopamine hits that scientists and psychologists at Facebook developed to keep you on the app for a few more moments until the next like pops up.
Likes are about instant gratification.
Helping people learn is about building a community and longevity.
When I help people learn—by challenging the way they see the world—they reach out to me. One person at a time.
- Weird vs wide
Let go of your need for validation by seeking likes or comparing the size of your list.
The size of your email list is a vanity metric. A huge audience means nothing if they are not really your people.
It’s far more important to build a smaller, engaged community of weird, idiosyncratic, unorthodox people—just like you. Because they are the ones who will pay you.
- Conversation vs email
A true competitive advantage in the 21st-century is your ability to pick up the phone, meet someone interesting, or get on a zoom call with a stranger.
- Quantity vs quality
Commit to sharing your ideas once a week for a year and your world will change. Don’t wait for perfection. It will never come.
Done is better than perfect.
- Quality vs quantity
It’s a paradox, I know. But commit to creating and sharing real depth.
I spend hours writing every single article I share with you.
- Social life vs social media
My one line business plan for 15 years has been, “Meet fun and interesting people.”
Before the pandemic, the best way to create clients was to get out from behind your computer and meet people.
After the pandemic, the best way to create clients will be to get out from behind your computer and meet people.
Until the pandemic is over, there are 3 things you need to do each day.
(1) Think of someone interesting.
(2) Connect with them.
(3) Find a way to serve them or create value for them.
Love. Rich