Online Business Coach – Atlanta, GA

Think back to when you were about nine years old, running around on the school playground. Who would you rather have played with? The kid who was piling up rocks to see how big a pile she could make or the kid who was inviting others to play kickball or offering you the other end of the jump rope so that you could swing it and chant for others to jump in?

Cinderella
Dressed in yella
Went upstairs to kiss her fella

As coaches increasingly use the internet to market services, it’s very tempting for us to try old school internet marketing techniques. You know the ones. They sound like magic because they promise that you can just grow your list, and money will rain down upon you. The techniques are all about targets, squeeze pages, and pop-ups, to name a few.

Ouch, please stop
If it all sounds pretty impersonal, cult-ish or even violent, well, it is. The human factor is missing. Where is the empathy? Where is the connection? Isn’t that what coaching is built upon?

To put it another way, here’s how I react when I’m subjected to the commonly used list building tactics:

If you call me a target, I think you want to hurt me.

If you put me through a squeeze page, I’m pretty sure you’re not about to kiss me like you mean it.

If you force me to get rid of a pop-up, you’ve just wasted my time and attention. And I can’t get that back. Ergo, I’m probably a little pissed right when you were about to show me something I would have cared to see.

My observation is that the people who push those tactics the hardest are ultimately selling you an impersonal product, including their own “make money fast” kinds of products. They may be helping you appeal to a desperate, hit-and-run market, but they are not helping you appeal to the kind of market that will want to work with you again and again.

Instead of piling up rocks…
Here’s where the “grow your list, first and foremost” strategy falls apart for coaches: it doesn’t recognize the most valuable part of what we offer. To successfully grow your practice, it’s vital that you understand what you are offering that is most valuable and why.

What is most valuable to you AND to your prospective clients?

• It’s not an ebook.
• It’s not an affiliate link to a product on Amazon or Clickbank.
• It’s not a coach-in-a-box commodity-style program.
• It’s not a set of mp3 recordings that make up a class.

Yet, those are the things that mega-list building strategies are intended to sell.

What is most valuable to growing your practice?

It’s your relationships. And, frankly, you can’t sell a relationship or assume a relationship is implied in being part of a list. Relationships are built on trust and respect, which are pretty hard to hang a price tag on.

I had to learn the hard way
Did I always eschew list building as a primary tactic? No, I drank the Kool-Aid at one point – for a very short while. But it quickly became clear to me that it didn’t work. I’m not saying the techniques to acquire names on a mailing list don’t technically work; they can. But they often come with a price of audience frustration, resentment, and lack of trust – and I didn’t like how I felt when I knew that I was putting my desire for a larger list ahead of my respect for readers and site visitors. Obsession with list building didn’t help me earn more money or build the practice I have now in which I put relationships far ahead of targets.

Take a deep breath: you don’t need a big list to earn a great living. You’re off the hook.

Want proof?
One coach I know built a $100,000+ per year businesses with fewer than 200 people on her list. How? She offered something people were desperate to learn more about, and her coaching was powerful. Her audience couldn’t wait for her to offer the next thing that was uniquely helpful for their particular problem. Personally, I have filled a class that generated over $8000 in revenue (more than once) with a mailing list of less than 400 names – and fewer than 200 people were typically opening the emails that I was sending. How? Credibility and referrals. I started it as a small pilot course, and I kept improving it over time. Now former students are eager to share their results with others and recommend that their colleagues try it, too.

Sidebar: Email marketing as a strategy is struggling in every market, not just coaching. Recipients have newsletter fatigue. Spam is rampant, and there is a good chance that the email you send to your list will be treated like spam, even if it’s not. Open rates are stagnant. Click-through rates are shockingly low. More and more people are filtering subscriptions out of their inboxes with systems filters or just by giving fake or infrequently-checked addresses when they opt in. Services like Gmail’s Priority Inbox are used more widely, and they are pushing broadcast email out of the main attention zone. If you like data, check out this metrics report.

I don’t share all of this to be a downer about email. In fact, I’m anything but. I do maintain an email list and I spend a significant amount of time on it each week to deliver subscriber-only content. I do offer a free guidebook as a bonus incentive for people to receive my newsletter, and nothing makes me happier than when someone says that guidebook helped her marketing feel easier than ever.

If you are a subscriber to my newsletter, I value you. The flesh and blood, never enough time for everything you want to do, just give me the helpful bits you. I am committed to always learning more about what you want and how to make my weekly newsletter more valuable for you. If you have feedback for me on this, please contact me. You’ll get a personal reply.

Ask a better question
I am not saying that having a large list is a bad thing. People who offer value often do have large lists because they have earned those subscribers. I just think “how to build a huge list” is the wrong focus. A better question is “How do I offer value to build an engaged audience based on trust?” Trust and engagement, while harder to measure, are so much more significant than the chiclet count of your list.

Trust tactics?
Is there such a thing as “tactics” for enriching trust and engagement? Yes, I believe so, even if they don’t feel particularly tactical. Most of them are about being generous. Giving way, way more than you are taking. Focused content. Valuable resources. Standing for something that your audience can relate to. Noticing what your people are struggling with and offering specific insight. Personal contact. Building relationships with others who share a similar audience and who share a generosity mindset. Sincere interaction. Helping people. Think “invite” not “get.”

I’m handing you the other end of that jump rope. I want to be part of a thriving playground where there is room for everyone to play, including those who will surely disagree strongly with what I believe about list building. Let’s swing and jump.

image credit: foxtongue

{ 43 comments }

About a year before I finished graduate school, my dissertation advisor, Dr. Barnsley, had his annual Spring Riemann Sheet Croquet Party at his house. For math geeks it was quite the event, whacking the croquet ball up and down the hills of his front yard with his own bizarrely configured spiral-ish croquet course, all with a backdrop of an English country-style buffet.

I was completely in the weeds, in the croquet match and on my dissertation about fractal geometry. I was stuck and struggling to write even the first chapter. I kept adding to the software that was the demonstration vehicle for my dissertation, but I was completely lost on committing to a theorem and a proof. A doctoral dissertation must make at least one original contribution to the body of knowledge, and my original idea well felt utterly dry. Writing software wasn’t going to get me a diploma; I simply had to work out that original idea and prove it in a mathematically rigorous way.

My advisor strolled up to me during the party and asked knowingly, “Laurie, what’s going on with your proof?” I felt sick, and I knew it wasn’t from the tomatoes in chervil cream. We had talked about the theorem a few weeks earlier, and I really hadn’t touched it since. Hanging out in the computer lab felt so much safer.

“Uh…” Then, wincing. I didn’t even have words for how stuck I was.

Dr. Barnsley said with complete conviction, “Laurie, you have got to stop sharpening your pencil.”

I was confused. I was a computer geek. I barely owned a pencil.

“Laurie, all of this coding and lab time is just pencil sharpening. You have plenty of code. The system works. It doesn’t need to be refined or polished anymore.

Sharpening your pencil will never add a word to your dissertation. THAT is what you need to graduate.”

He was right. I was sharpening my pencil. My beloved keyboard of a pencil. I worked in a computer lab with hundreds of thousands of dollars worth of state of the art computer graphics gear. All of it was an enormous, bright, shiny pencil.

I see lots and lots of pencil sharpening when people start new businesses, and sometimes my favorite topic, branding, just gives them a whole new pencil to go wild with. They tweak their logos, they change their web themes, they hire a new designer, they obsess over business cards, and on and on.

The implementation of branding can be a seductive – and expensive – pencil.

If you’re just getting started (or maybe you’re still in your first year or two), here’s what you need to know:

Quit sharpening your pencil.

Because…

You don’t need a fancier web site.

You don’t need a “badass” designer (truly, I loathe that word), especially if the designer’s goal is to show off design tricks and not your core strengths.

You don’t need another new logo.

You don’t need to rewrite your about page again.

You don’t have to have a “freebie” to start signing people up on your mailing list.

You don’t even have to have a mailing list!

And you sure as hell don’t need to hire an expensive marketing guru who is more interested in her bottom-line than yours. Her formula that will bring you six figures in six months? Forget it. It will alienate the people who truly need you – and those who might even like to help you. Just be you and build your business in a way that you can sustain it and create a reputation that is as solid as you are.

• Know who you are at your core so that you can build offers around your core strengths.
• Know what you have to offer that is so valuable that will people will joyfully spend their hard-earned money to get it and feel good about doing so.
• Know what the people you want to work with want. Not need, want. When you understand their desires, you can speak their language and offer them things that are transformative.

• A simple WordPress site that you can learn to manage on your own. At least know how to update the content on a page, add a photo, and create a blog post.
• A WordPress theme that can grow with you. Start with something from WooThemes or Studiopress if you’re looking for solid design that will help you simplify your stylistic decision making. (Those are affiliate links, by the way.)
• Two colors and one “pop” color that you use as your palette in a very disciplined way.
• A banner graphic for the top of your website. You can create your own in software you probably already have (even Powerpoint!) or take a run at it with someone on Fiverr for just five bucks.
• One social media platform that feels fun for you and is the place where your ideal clients are likely to hang out. Don’t worry about being everywhere. Being consistent and engaged in one space is way more valuable when you are getting started.

• A great photographer who will capture the essence of you in a photo that you can use all over the web. I recommend Clint Alexander. If you’re not in Atlanta, fly here to work with him or fly him to you. He’s that good.
• A graphic designer – but only after you’ve worked with at least ten clients, even if they are pro bono clients. I deeply believe that it takes at least that many engagements to start to get clarity on what you love doing and are meant to do . Then you can start to understand what the visual language of your brand should be. I love Shea McGuier and Rick Brozek but I urge you to consider holding off on this investment until you have substantial clarity about your strengths as a provider and your offers.
• A tech person who has got your back. Rob Granholm is the Baby Jesus in my book because he walks on water ever since he rescued my site from total meltdown. If you already have a site, consider his maintenance and backup plan (backup is essential!) – and he’s a wonderful, flexible developer. Dawud Miracle also has a new hosting service that includes all your WordPress updates and support. He’s got amazing package offers, too, if you’re just starting out with your development.

What’s also valuable?
Someone to hold you accountable and help you out of the weeds. Of course, I’m partial to coaching for this but you can absolutely do it with a buddy, a mentoring group or committed we’re-all-in-this-together mastermind partners. Who could be the equivalent of your dissertation advisor??

Back on the croquet course, Dr. Barnsley continued to ask me a few compassionately leading questions so that I could see how to move from theorem to proof.

I did finally put down my pencil in graduate school. I locked myself in a spare bedroom for about three months and wrote and rewrote until I was sick of myself and about to succumb from too much Diet Coke and Vietnamese pho takeout, because it was all my shredded stomach lining could tolerate. The theorem? It’s about an obscure algorithm for magnification of fractal objects. Not mind blowing but sufficiently original to earn the golden ring. Occasionally, I still get a postcard from a remote part of the world, asking for a copy of my dissertation. And I wonder if that person is working on something new and original or just pencil sharpening.

I keep my copy of my dissertation next to the big atomic clock in my office to remind me that, while time passes ever more quickly, I really do know how to finish things. I no longer treasure it for the years of research and work that went into it. Now it’s just a vital reminder that if I’ll just stop sharpening my pencil, significant work will come to life and move me along my path.

Are you ready to stop sharpening your pencil? How can I help? Bring it to the comments and let’s start scribbling the stuff that you need to grow your business.

{ 18 comments }