If there’s anything that has changed the quality of the results I produce in the market place as a coach and consultant, it’s the realization that my success is no longer just about educating my market place or target audience.
Today our success as coaches is tied more to our ability to create, leverage and monetize influence than to our ability to promote our products and services.
[thrive_headline_focus title=”Leadership essentially is the new marketing.” orientation=”left”]
And in order for us to really succeed and thrive, to fully take advantage of all the opportunities available to us as coaches today, we need to change our thinking about what it actually takes to get clients and build a formidable reputation in our industry or space as the case may be.
We need to make the transition from thinking about ourselves as just coaches to thinking ourselves more as what I refer to as:
Tribemasters – market place leaders who facilitate change and/or transformation for a community of people interested in a specific future or creating a specific reality whatever that might be.
Think about it.
The difference between the biggest names in the coaching industry and the coaches who are struggling is just one thing:
A Tribe: a community of people who have bought into the thinking, ideas and philosophy of these big names and are invested in creating the future that those ideas and philosophies represent.
Once you have a tribe of people interested in the future that you are interested in promoting or the ideas that you represent, it’s pretty easy to create buying environments that support whatever lifestyle that you choose.
In spite of what the “gurus” say…I do not believe that true entrepreneurship is NOT about “the hustle”.
Jean-Baptiste Say, the French economist who actually coined the word entrepreneur round about the 1800s, definitely didn’t have “the hustle” in mind when he said an entrepreneur is one who shifts economic resources from areas of lower productivity to areas of higher productivity and greater yield.
The most valuable resource available to us as coaches is the mind of our market.
We succeed to the extent that we are able to shift their thinking from low productivity thinking to higher productivity thinking concerning the future that we can help them create.
The key to actually doing that is leadership.
It goes way beyond just educating the market and writing great copy.
It’s about scaling your ability to connect deeply with people.
It’s about effectively positioning yourself as the one person they can trust to help them shape their thinking, behavior and character.
It’s about ethically gaining trust en masse and having your market accept your paradigms as the basic programming for their lives.
[pullquote align=”normal”]The most valuable resource available to us as coaches is the mind of our market. [/pullquote]
The big question is how do you do this?
Well I’m so glad you asked.
There are basically 5 things to focus on in order to make this happen.
These five things make up the framework for Community Mastery: a methodology for creating, leveraging and monetizing your influence as a coach in the market place.
#1 Get Good
This is basically where it starts.
You’ve got to be the real deal if you’re to have half a chance of creating the kind of influence I’m talking about.
But being good isn’t just about knowing your stuff, it’s also about being able to communicate it in ways that are meaningful relevant and engaging to the market that you are focused on serving.
And that starts with being clear on who you are and what you’re actually about.
Too many times we get lost in that whole conversation about niches that we actually forget that for most of us…coaching isn’t primarily about cashing in on the next money opportunity.
Literary any “greedy-opportunity-seeking-information marketer” can do that.
I’m sure you can agree that that’s definitely not you.
What we do as coaches is a whole lot more elegant than just looking for opportunity to sell information.
Marketing is great and all…but I believe if you really want to make a difference whilst also being commercially smart…the starting point is knowing yourself.
Knowing yourself is important because it helps you shape your perspective and your overall message to your market.
But beyond that, it helps you fashion out your own methodology for creating or facilitating the transformation your market is interested in.
Your own uniquely named methodology is your ticket to the big time.
It’s the essence of your message organized into a framework that produces a specific result.
[pullquote align=”normal”]Knowing yourself is important because it helps you shape your perspective and your overall message to your market. [/pullquote]
Think about the 7 habits of Highly Effective People or GTD (Getting Things Done) or The 12 Week Year…
These are all frameworks in the productivity and performance space.
But they provide their creators with multiple opportunities that go beyond just coaching.
They also provide a foundation for the next critical step in the community mastery method.
#2 Get Known
So now you’re not only the real deal, but you know how to communicate your ideas in ways that are meaningful, relevant and engaging.
You also have a clear message and a methodology for giving full expression to that message.
The next step is primarily to get the word out and build a following.
The key here is not to be the shark in the ocean but rather the big fish in a small pool.
Having a message and a methodology gives you a basis for launching a movement and building a tribe of committed followers who are interested in the future you are promising them for implementing your ideas.
The first step in doing that is to be reasonable clear about who exactly your specific message is for.
What’s their pain?
What keeps them up at night?
What are their hopes and desires?
Who’s the enemy and what’s standing in the way of their success?
How does your message and methodology create a brand new future and possibility for them?
Here’s why this last bit is very important.
People don’t invest in improvement. They invest in radical change and transformation.
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Whatever you’re offering has to be a departure from everything else they have tried up until they met you or came in contact with your work.
That’s pretty much how you get their attention long enough to start the process of getting them to buy into your process.
And it really doesn’t have to be something super creative.
[pullquote align=”normal”]People don’t invest in improvement. They invest in radical change and transformation. [/pullquote]
The 7 habits of highly effective people is based on the idea that our productivity actually multiplies when we focus on the important stuff rather than the unimportant stuff…
Not a radical idea…but it was articulated so powerfully with the 7 habits that it kept Stephen Covey’s book on the best seller list for over twenty years.
There were many experts on productivity but none of them had articulated that little piece of wisdom and built a frame work for implementing it like Stephen did.
The 12-week year is built on the premise that the world is changing so fast that it makes more sense to plan in 12-week cycles than in multi-year cycles in order for you to be able to quickly and easily adapt the furious speed of change.
Again a simple idea… a message and a frame work for giving it life.
So now you have a message, a clear methodology and a clear idea of who your movement is for.
Next thing you need is a platform for engaging with your followers and facilitating connections between them.
There are many options for doing this but my favorite basic combination is always this:
- Daily email
- Facebook group
- Podcast/vlog
Daily email gives you the opportunity to really build trust with your followers and establish your authority.
Facebook groups give you the opportunity to scale your ability to scale connection and intimacy without spending a lot on ads.
Podcasts and vlogs give you the ability to create connection and intimacy.
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Now when you add to this the power of regular offline events that give your followers the opportunity to connect with you in person off line…
That sets you up perfectly to..
#3 Get Paid
When it comes to getting paid, when you set things up like I’ve suggested so far a number of things start to happen…
First you build an audience of people who to a large extent know, like and trust you.
Second based on feed back you can literally get a sense for the kind of issues that your market will willing invest in to overcome.
This is very good because you don’t necessarily work blind or by guess work.
There are tons of information out there about how to create products so I wouldn’t bore you with that…
But I will say this…
If you’re starting out, the goal to keep in mind as far as your finances are concerned is $10,000 a month.
And in order to create that you need at the very minimum a $2000 offer to your followers.
I would especially recommend either a VIP day with you, with a follow up 30 mins consultation that you can leverage to help them create their next breakthrough when they invest in their next VIP Day with you.
I like VIP Days because they enable you to help your clients make big shifts in a very short period of time and they’re pretty easy to set up.
All you really need is:
- A clear result for the day
- A break down of how specifically you will spend the day in order to actually create that result
- The ability to have a sales conversation.
For the last bit, DJ Sobanjo’s book Discovery Call Magic and the resources that come with the book is perfect for helping you develop the skills you need to make get good at having sales/enrolling conversations.
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The beauty of the framework I’m sharing with you is the fact that opportunities for actually having a consistent flow of leads to have sales conversations with is built into the very process of leading your movement.
Why?
If you’re doing this right, people will naturally have questions..which lead to conversations which in turn lead to sales.
So now the sales are coming in…you’ve got clients that you’re working with..
The next step is to…
#4 Get Scale
VIP days are great from quickly bringing in the money…
But you only have just so many hours in a day to sell.
In order to scale and create a business that is fun and that empowers you to grow as fast and as much as you like…
You need to make another shift in your thinking.
You need to realize that income doesn’t follow sales and marketing.
[pullquote align=”normal”]Income always follows advantage. An advantage in this case is any asset that you have that can be leveraged to give you an edge in the market place. [/pullquote]
The more advantages you have fully developed and working in your business as a coach, the better able you are to create a business that you can scale to any level you want.
There are very many assets that we have in our business but all those assets can be categorized in to seven primary advantages:
- The Thinking Advantage: this is about the intellectual property that sits behind your entire business. Whether we like it or not, we are not in the coaching business, we are actually in the intellectual property business. We need to learn to capture and package our best ideas for commercial distribution.
- The KLT Advantage: The KLT advantage is about the extent to which you own the relationship with your followers. This is beyond just how many people you have in your community but actually about the depth of connection you have with them.
- The Distribution Advantage: This is about your ability to get your products, offers and ideas in the right hands at the right time as fast as possible.
- The Delivery Advantage: This is about your ability to create a wow experience for your market place and clients each and every time.
- The Predictability Advantage: This is about the systems you have in play to ensure the smooth running of your business
- The Team Advantage: This is about your people. Vendors, suppliers, staff, volunteers and your ability to consistently attract high quality support and help when you need it.
- The Capital Advantage: This is about your business’s capacity to raise the funds it needs when it needs it to grow and expand.
The income and revenue you generate in your business as a coach is very limited to how much of these advantages you currently have in play.
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And that leads us finally to the most important business asset of all…you
#5 Get Growing
You are your most important business asset.
The more you work on the asset called you, the more it can yield for you.
And as far as I am concerned the most important work you can do on yourself is essentially to work on your capability to influence not just yourself but also others.
When it comes to working on your ability to influence yourself, the starting point is your mindset and beliefs.
Your mindset and beliefs about what’s possible for you and for your business as a coach sets the boundaries for what you will ever achieve.
Fortunately mindsets and beliefs are not set in stone.
[pullquote align=”normal”]Your mindset and beliefs about what’s possible for you and for your business as a coach sets the boundaries for what you will ever achieve. [/pullquote]
One of the most empowering things I do on a month by month basis is catalog my current beliefs about myself and my business and simply ask:
Does this belief still serve me or does it actually stop me from achieving my full potential?
But it’s not enough to just conduct a regular assessment of my beliefs…
It’s also important to distill and understand the mindset and beliefs of people operating at the level of influence that I want to operate on and actively go to work installing those mindsets and beliefs in myself.
When it comes to being able to influence others, the starting point is knowing how to build a sense of connection and intimacy.
When there’s connection and intimacy between you and your market place, all kinds of things are possible.
When there’s no connection and intimacy, all the marketing budgets in the world will not help you.
Building connection and intimacy is about being relatable.
It’s about modeling your market and to a large extent being a role model in their eyes.
You literally have to be their vision of possibility.
Does that mean lying and renting fancy cars and pretending to be something that you’re not?
No.
But it does mean showing how you live your principles, sharing parts of your life with your community and generally being authentic and honest.
Obviously there’s a lot more to this than I have space to write about in this already longer than panned article.
But essentially if you want to grow in your ability to create, leverage and monetize influence, make a definite investment in developing your ability to lead yourself and others.
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Like I said in the beginning…
Leadership is the new marketing.
The sooner we adapt to that, the sooner we create a whole new level of possibility and success.
