Sometimes It *Is* About The Money
You can tell experts “no.”
I spend a lot of time reminding my ✨🛼🌻 Marketing Confidence Cheerleading 🌻🛼✨ clients of this. Because my brilliant, Straight-A, Type A, I-wanna-get-this-right-the-first-time clients have already mastered following the rules, acing the template, and overachieving on the formulas they’ve been given.
But that’s not working for them anymore. Because being a “good girl” is NOT growing their business and getting them paid.
We work a lot on finding our own center, getting clear on what we think, we want, what processes work for our unique brains to produce effective marketing, and determining what is right for our business.
The hard part is when our truth puts us in direct opposition to what we’re being told… Especially when we’re being told by folks we are trusting to guide and support us.
But both things can be true at once. We can respect and admire the experts we hire and look up to, and we can also call B.S. or simply decline the advice, the belief system, or the prescription when it doesn’t fit.
You should be able to tell your coach “no.”
Where the coaching industry can lean perilously close to culty territory is when coaches demand complete acceptance & allegiance to whatever belief system they’re selling. And I don’t think I have to tell you how dangerous that is.
Let me give you an example of a popular business coaching belief that I reject. There's a rampant phrase among guru-y business coaches that gives me MAJOR ick:
"When someone doesn’t buy, it's never about the money."
The reasoning is something like: "If they really wanted to, they would." They'd find a way to come up with the money if they saw enough value in the offer.
Meanwhile, these guru-y business coaches are charging $12k+ for their program.
Your Ideal Client Doesn’t Have To Be in the $10K+ Club
The pool of people who can snap their fingers and come up with $12k "if they really wanted to" is an exclusive club. There are obvious historical and systemic barriers to entry to this club. To be honest, it *pisses me off* that these guru-y business coaches blissfully pretend these barriers don't exist and then somehow fail to notice why all their impressive case studies look like the exact same person.
I don't charge $12K for my business coaching programs. *NOT* because my "belief isn't strong enough" that the results I get people are worth it, but because the people who I most want to help often aren't (yet) in the club that can just snap their fingers and pull $12K out of thin air. (Though I want to help them get there.)
They deserve help too. They deserve support too. And from a coach who doesn't accidentally or intentionally shame them for not having access to incredibly privileged sums of money. Or not having an ideal client avatar who does.
Sometimes it really do be about the money.
You are allowed to have an ideal client who has access to fewer resources. There are still ways to make sure you’re getting paid handsomely.
Make sure you’re investing in coaches and mentors who respect your vision and help you to find the right strategy to realize it - rather than trying to get you to conform to their vision for you and their one-size-fits-all formula.
Let’s stop pretending like there is only one right way to do things in business and marketing.