3 Marketing & Sales Tactics Causing Skepticism in the Coaching Industry

Kathryn Thompson: [00:00:00] After generating over a million dollars in sales and selling one of her businesses with a single email, your host Katherine Thompson, takes an unconventional approach to marketing and sales. So if you are ready to tap into a more powerful way to be seen her and a sought after entrepreneur in your industry without having to spend endless hours marketing your business and chasing clients, you are in the right place.

Be The Sought After Entrepreneur podcast is here to help you ditch the cookie cutter one size fits all approach to marketing, and use your unique energy to effortlessly attract the most aligned clients when you do this. You can spend less time marketing your business and more time doing your soul work and enjoying the richness of your life.

Welcome to Be the Sought After Entrepreneur podcast, and here's your host, Katherine Thompson. Welcome back. Super stoked that you're tuning into this week's episode, and I cannot wait to dive in today's [00:01:00] topic because we're talking about something that's really near and dear to my heart, and that has to do with ethics and integrity in marketing and sales.

And if you know anything about my story, you know that I've contemplated leaving, I. The marketing and sales industry have been doing it for over 25 years, and I contemplated leaving a few years ago before I ever started the podcast because I didn't agree with a lot of the things I was seeing predominantly in the online coaching and consulting space.

But something that I never really aligned with when it came to marketing and sales in general, and that was using what I call manipulative. Tactics or psychological trickery to get people to buy into what it is that you're selling. But I also didn't agree with the notion that we needed to convince people that they were missing some type of void within themselves and therefore needed the thing that we were selling.

And so I started this podcast almost two years ago. We're coming out to our two year anniversary in July, [00:02:00] and I started this podcast two years ago with that whole mission in mind. I was like, I can be the change or I can just walk away from it all. And I decided I wanted to be the change because I know that my message, my story, and my voice is gonna be super impactful in changing the rhetoric around marketing and sales and shifting to a more ethical and integral way of doing business.

So, If you are a coaching consulting, this is gonna be of more relevance to you because I reference a lot of the coaching industry and consulting industry. But doesn't mean that if you're not doing coaching consulting online, that you don't need to start to think about this in your own business if you're selling a product, because to me it's all the same, right?

How we show up. How we market and sell if we aren't doing it ethically, whether we're we know about it or not. I think a lot of people just don't know what is ethical or out of integrity when it comes to marketing and [00:03:00] sales, because most of you that are listening to this. Marketing in sales is not your background.

And so you're looking to us, me, and other marketers to show you the way, and that is why I started this podcast because I want to be that beacon of light that is gonna show you ways in which you can continually improve the way you're doing things and do them in a more integral way. Now, this episode is not to shame you if you've tried these tactics or you're using these tactics that I'm gonna reference and point out.

Because we all have, if I'm being honest, right? I've been doing marketing for over 20 years, probably coming up to like 22 or 23 years. I've lost count, to be honest. But I've been doing marketing for a long time and we are taught a certain way. We're taught a certain way to market and sell. And, and it's proven.

And these tactics are proven to work, and so we follow them, right? So this is not to shame anybody. This is just to start to bring light to some of the tactics and [00:04:00] strategies that I think are not really ethical and maybe not. Super integral when it comes to selling. I often refer to them as psychological trickery or manipulative tactics, right?

In order to convince somebody to buy what you're selling. And again, I'm gonna be referencing the coaching and consulting space a lot because that's where I'm living at the moment. But like I said, we can see this across industries, whether you're a product or a brick and mortar business or whatnot. We see this across the board, so, The other thing that I wanna preface is, is that, you know, this topic, like I said at the beginning, isn't something that we often, you know, talk a lot about, is not something that we hear a lot of marketers talk about, cuz it's kind of like we're calling ourselves out.

But again, like I said, I want to be that beacon of light where we're shedding light on this and we're starting to shift the way that we do things because. As I shared with you on the last episode, there's three big shifts I'm seeing predominantly in the online coaching industry, [00:05:00] and I think a lot of that shifting is happening because consumers, you or me that are looking to buy things are starting to really question the.

You know, the messaging behind what's being sold to us, and a lot of us are starting to kind of maybe see through it or feel like it doesn't, you know, necessarily resonate with us anymore, or we've bought into the message and then it didn't pan out the way that we maybe expected or the promises that were being promised.

We're never really sort of delivered and therefore we're starting to get skeptical about what's happening. Right. And so when I, we talk about the shift, and you probably hear this a lot in the industry, is like when we talk about these shifts happening, we as marketers or we as business owners have a responsibility to ensure that we are being in integrity with everything that we're doing because.

That's what creates skepticism eventually down the line. And the industry itself blew up. [00:06:00] And what ends up happening is we have a lot of, you know, n not regulations around the industry. So we've got a lot of people rushing to it and then applying these marketing and sales strategies that are being taught, right?

They're being taught by big names and big gurus, and therefore are being applied on mass and people are then experiencing this. And now after. Years of this happening, we're seeing a lot of like distrust and skepticism in the industry, which is what I shared on the last episode. And to me, as I mentioned at the end, was it comes down to us as business owners and it comes down to us as marketers, marketing our products and services.

To ensure that we are operating out of integrity. And you might be listening to this right now and thinking to yourself, well, Catherine, I'm super integral with what I do, so this won't, you know, apply to me and I'm just gonna tune out now. But if you're not a marketer by trade, I can almost guarantee that you've used one or more [00:07:00] of these tactics at some point in your marketing and potentially still using it because it's what's being taught.

On the mainstream and traditional marketing levels, right? It's what's being taught by 99.9% of marketers. There aren't a lot of marketers like me who are gonna call out ourselves basically, right? And call out the industry and, and start to carve a different path in the industry. Most marketers are teaching a lot of these tactics that I wouldn't say are unethical, but they aren't a hundred percent.

Integral and they do play off of what I call psychological trickery and some manipulation to get people to buy, or at least convince them to buy because they feel like they're missing something or they need the thing in order to get to their next level. Right? We've heard these messages or they're using different things and different tactics to paint a picture that might not be a hundred percent full, and we're gonna dive into that.

I'm gonna share. Some of [00:08:00] these tactics with you, some of the most prevalent ones that I'm seeing in the industry. So that one, if you're using them right now, again, this isn't to shame you, is just to sort of shine the light on where you can make some tweaks and edits and changes. Because as the industry becomes more sophisticated, These types of tactics are eventually gonna shine.

Not a great light on businesses because consumers are waking up and the skepticism and the lack of trust is very prevalent right now in the online coaching space. And people are starting to. So sort of see where, okay, that tactic. A little bit manipulative or that tactic is totally psychological trickery.

They might not be using that language, but they're like, I fell for that before. I fell for the big money promise before and it didn't work. And so I'm not buying into that anymore. So I'm gonna share with you some of the tactics so that we can shine a light on it. Now, this isn't designed, like I said, to shame you, especially if you're using these tactics, is just designed to shine the light on it.

So we have the [00:09:00] awareness to make the shift. Cuz as I mentioned, Consumers are getting more and more sophisticated, and the more they get sophisticated, the more they're gonna see through the BS promises, the more they're gonna see through the BS and surface level tactics that are being used to get them to buy.

And if we don't make this shift, Right. Eventually it's gonna shine a bad light on the tactics you're using because people are waking up to it. So the first one is, is what I call grandiose promises. These really big promises that the thing that they're investing in the coaching or the consulting that they're investing in is gonna give them this big thing in a certain amount of time.

Right? And we've seen the money ones. The coaching industry is probably the only industry on the planet that I know that people actually share their bank statements and people share the behind the scenes of how much money they're making every month. You don't see, you know, Jeff Bezos of Amazon sharing [00:10:00] literally with you what his bank statement looks like.

You don't see Elon Musk doing that. You don't see Oprah Winfrey doing that, and yet in the coaching industry, we've used that to sell. We use these big money wins or these big grandiose promises like lose 50 pounds in 30 days to get people to buy. And people are waking up to that now because they've experienced these experiences where they maybe went to try to lose the 50 pounds in 90 days were 30 days and it didn't work for them.

Or they bought into, you know, how to make a hundred K in 90 days and it didn't work for them and now they're skeptical. And this is what creates skepticism in the industry. And the reason is, is because these big grandiose promises don't paint the full picture of what's entailed to actually achieve those types of results.

And the problem with that is, [00:11:00] is that it lacks context then. And I know that if you're listening to this, potentially you have bought into that money promise. I know I bought in to my very first coach because of the message he was selling. And I was definitely seeking an out from where it currently was at, and his message was all around time and how to work a heck of a lot less and make a heck of a lot more.

He didn't use money promises, he didn't show his money or his bank statement or any of that, but he really played into the time factor. And at that moment in my life, I was working so many hours at my brick and mortar and I was like, So you can actually have a business and work less and make more. And so I bought into that, right?

So you have to also know as a marketer from an integral place that your people are buying from a state of being in which they're at, which is why marketing messages often get crafted, right? They get crafted because [00:12:00] they're like, oh, I'm gonna create this message that's speaking to some state of being that my client is at, and usually.

It's pain, agitation, or somebody needing to fill the void. That's what traditional marketing does. This new shift in paradigm, this new way of doing things, in my opinion, is more an integrity because it's speaking more to the desire and not playing off people's weaknesses, not getting people to buy in a moment of weakness.

Now, in saying that I invested in my first coach. I completely transformed the way I looked at business. He was phenomenal. But he also really delivers on what he promises, right? He promises the systems and the processes needed to lay the foundation, and he absolutely over delivers on that. So that investment was a good investment.

I'm not saying that all grandiose promises are bad investments, let's just say, but his message wasn't grandiose. Right. [00:13:00] He was playing off the time factor, but it wasn't like, you know, make more money in three days by applying this process. That's not what his messaging was. So I'm talking about grandiose promises that are saying these big things.

Or the other big one that I often will see is like, I'm the best at doing this. I'm the best for this. I'm the best at doing whatever, right? So people positioning themselves as an authority of being the best. If you want to lose weight, I am the best and the superior. If you wanna make more money in your business, I am the best.

If you want to learn how to style yourself, I am the best. If you wanna learn how to make healthy meals for your family, right? These grand, this grandiose language, this grandiose messaging. The problem with that, as I mentioned, is, is that you have to be able to deliver on that promise if you're making that promise on the front end.[00:14:00] 

Then you have to more than 80 to 90% of the time deliver on that promise. If not a hundred percent, and I get it right, I get that people will opt into things and sign up for things and then they don't show up, or they don't put in the effort, and therefore the results aren't there for them. But I'm saying that if people are putting in the effort and the time and you're making that promise, that be better, be a promise you can stand behind.

In saying that, I do really believe that these, this flashy money stuff that we're seeing in the online coaching space is starting to like, Fall by the wayside. People are like literally seeing right through the bullshit. And that what used to work when we shared our money no longer works. Um, I recently saw a coach posting about this and a coach that I really, really respect.

Um, but she posted about it and somebody literally below that was like, that's great that you make that. But like, how do you, how can you [00:15:00] guarantee that your clients make it? Like where are the results with your clients? And this particular coach does share a lot about her clients and a lot about their wins and, and does do measurements in order to assess, you know, the success rate going through her experiences and that sort of thing.

And that's what she responded with. Right. And we can't. As somebody creating a social media post, put everything in one post, right? It doesn't paint the full picture, but we have to ensure that the measurements we have in place in our business do reflect the promises that we're making. Right? So she's sharing her money wins, let's just say, and therefore also has backing on her clients being able to earn money as well in the programs that she.

You know, coaches, people on and also does measure the success rate of her program, which is what she responded in the comments. I'm sharing this because like I said, I do feel like a lot of people are starting to wake up to the money promises, especially if you are wanting to [00:16:00] become a coach and you're looking at business mentors and marketers and you're going, who do I hire?

You know, it's gotta be beyond the money and how much money your coach is making, but also how much money. Your coaches clients are making, and the reason being is because everybody's definition of success is different. You know, somebody that wants a hundred K months, you know, somebody else might just want, you know, 20 K sustainably, or somebody might want, you know, 10 K.

10 K is cool and I can work, you know, less than what I was working before and I'm, I'm totally kosher with that. Some people want one-to-one, some people want group programs, like everybody's level and definition of success is different. And that's the other reason why I feel like. These grandiose promises don't really speak to what's possible for people within programs because everybody then latches onto that definition of success.

I need to make the a hundred K to showcase that I was even successful in [00:17:00] that person's program, or that my investment was worthwhile, right? If I don't hit that a hundred K or 50 K months, then that investment wasn't worthwhile. When in reality that's not the case. And so, like I said, if you're gonna make.

Any type of grandiose, you know, promise to your clients, then you therefore need to back it in every way, shape or form in the delivery of what you're doing. But I also think that people are starting to poke holes in these grandiose promises because, Of them being made forever in the coaching space and them not really delivering on the backend because at the end of the day, who can really claim that they're the best, who can really claim that?

I can guarantee you a hundred K months. Just because that person achieved a hundred K months doesn't mean that's the same pathway for everybody else. And I often think when we create those types of promises, we forget all of the steps and hurdles that we have to go [00:18:00] through. And so it's like I'm making that now in my business.

But I'm not showcasing the five years it took me to get there, or the four years it took me to get there, or the 15 years it took me to get there. You know, we're not showcasing that whole roadmap in that promise. And so what ends up happening when we, especially when we attach a timeframe, like you can lose 50 pounds in 30 days, it's like, but how long did it take you to get there?

And yes, when you learn something and you master it, you're able to shorten the timeframe for other people. But. There's still gonna be roadblocks in people's lives, businesses, that sort of thing, that we can't really promise that, right? It's, it's out of integrity to promise that something can earn a hundred K in 90 days.

We can't guarantee that. Which leads me to my second thing, which is guarantee. And yet we see this so heavenly used in the online coaching consulting industry, these guarantees that are placed on sales pages [00:19:00] that guarantee. If you apply the step by step process that is laid out for you, you will see the results that I'm promising.

And the reason it's used is to eliminate risk, right? That risk of investing and it not working. The problem is, Nobody can guarantee results. There's not a coach on the planet that can guarantee that if you do the work inside they're done for you program or any type of program that they can guarantee you that they're, you're gonna hit that 50 k hundred K months.

It's not possible because, There is not that step-by-step cookie cutter way of doing things, and that's what we see. Right? And so the fine print is, is if you apply the steps exactly how I've laid them out. Well, user error, you and I both know is a big reason why stuff often doesn't work. And I see this in coaching all the time, right?

It's like I've given you the steps to go apply it and yet, Our own interpretation and our own way of looking at the world, [00:20:00] somehow tweaked it, or we skipped a step, or we didn't execute that fully, or whatever it is. You could go to any process and everything and every person that's applying, it's gonna apply it slightly different.

So the guarantee is just, To me manipulative, because the fine print literally says if you apply this step by step and you don't see results in, you know, 90 days or 12 months, then you'll get your money back, or you'll get another 12 months free. But in reality, if you were to actually go assess what somebody did, Then you probably and anybody could as a coach, pick out holes along the process that they didn't follow exactly how you laid out.

Cuz everybody sees the world differently and everyone's own interpretation of what's being taught is different through their own lens. So that to me, feels a bit manipulative because you can't guarantee that in the first place, not like you could with a product, like a hundred percent satisfaction guaranteed, which is what we did with the [00:21:00] wine.

Because we knew we were producing wine and that when we delivered it to our customers, while it's somewhat subjective, we still had a physical product they were walking away with and that we wanted them to be satisfied with, right? I could guarantee that we would produce high quality wine that people would like, like I could guarantee that.

And so our satisfaction rate, and nobody, I mean, I think we had like two people say they weren't satisfied and then we made them another batch and then they were satisfied. And so I'm just sharing that because it's, it's different with a product-based business. A hundred percent guaranteed that you will get high quality wine when we're done this process and that you'll enjoy it, right?

Is something that we could back and put a promise to. You can't do that with coaching when you're, uh, promising results like losing weight or making money or, you know, being a better parent or whatever. Right? You can't, you can't guarantee results in that [00:22:00] regard, um, because it's just not possible.

Everybody sees the world different. Everyone's business is different. And so, um, that's something that I wanted to share with that guarantee piece of being manipulative, even though we often think it is a bonus, right? It's a bonus that I'm putting that on there. You can't guarantee results in the coaching and consulting business because, The other thing is, is that everybody's results are gonna look different and everybody's level of success and what they measure, a success is different.

For example, when I went into my first launch, I went in with the notion that I had to have a certain amount of people coming through my funnel, otherwise it wasn't gonna be successful on the backend. And what did I do? I pulled out of the launch cuz I wasn't seeing those numbers coming in. When in reality, I have no idea what the success of that launch was gonna be.

Nobody knows that. They're all just metrics that are given to us to follow. But I have over the years had way smaller launch [00:23:00] lists and launch sizes, and I've done substantially better than what anybody predicted. Right? So again, it's all sort of perspective. Nothing is guaranteed. Which then brings me to the next thing that we often see, which is false scarcity or false urgency, right?

We know in the brain, lots of people run to deadline. We know that people will buy things at a deadline or they'll push the deadline to buy, and so we put these full scarcity practices in place. And false urgency in place to get people to pull the trigger. In reality, the coaching industry is one of the only industries I know where people open and close cart, where people open the doors to their business and then close the doors to their business.

No other industry on the planet does that. You don't see Amazon doing that. You don't see brick and mortars doing that. I've said this on many shows [00:24:00] that if we did that with our brick and mortar wine business, we would've been out of business in the first three months. We don't, that's not a tactic people use, so why do we use it in the coaching industry?

We use it so people buy. So that people invest on the deadline or feel like, oh my gosh, the time is running out. Their nervous system's freaking out. Cause they're like, I'm gonna miss out. Foam was a real thing on that subconscious level of missing out. I don't want to miss out on the thing. What if I don't invest and somebody else invests?

And then you're comparing yourself to all the other people that are gonna invest in the thing and do better than you in whatever it is that they're doing. Right. This is real. This is, this is real. It plays off of people's dysregulated nervous system, which to me is manipulative because at the end of the day, there no other industry does open and close cart.

The only reason it's done in the coaching industry is to drive sales. It's to get people to buy on that deadline, which to me, Is not [00:25:00] done out of integrity because if somebody isn't ready to buy or they don't, you know, necessarily need it in that moment, but they're buying it in the moment cuz they feel like they're gonna miss out or the doors are never gonna open again, or whatever it is, and they start throwing money at stuff.

And that to me is out of integrity because I'm of the mind that I want people investing in the things that I have. I want my clients investing in spellbound when they're ready, that they're coming from a grounded place. And the reality is, You get clients then that are committed, right? You get clients that are in integrity to themselves, but also in integrity to the work that you're doing.

Which brings me to the next one, right? As coaches and consultants, as we're marketing and we're putting our message out there into the world, it's also our responsibility to have like prerequisites or have some type of measurement of the type of clients we wanna work with. And I'm not saying this as like, Well, they're not a good client and they're bad clients.

There's [00:26:00] lots of rhetoric around that, which again, is just pure shaming in marketing. I could do a whole episode on shaming in marketing. No, it's that sometimes we create offers. We create coaching packages that are better suited for people, maybe further down the journey, for example, People coming into Spellbound, you know, I ask if they have a validated offer or if they've coached people, you know, they've made sales in their business and how have they made sales?

And most people that come into my world have done it through word of mouth. Right. I know then that they have some knowledge of. Business, how to run a business, what they're offering, what they're teaching, what their level of experience is. Most people that come into my world have years and years and years of experience.

They've had a level of mastery. That's what I'm looking for and not because I'm like, oh man, the people that don't have that aren't good clients. It's just the way in which I teach and the knowledge that I bring to the table is predominantly designed for them. If I was. [00:27:00] Allowing people to spellbound that didn't have that one.

It would compromise the energy and the integrity of the group, but also I wouldn't be able to serve and deliver. They wouldn't see the transformation that's available and possible if they were further down the line, right? Because they're gonna be still learning the foundations and the basics of business.

And so it's kind of like asking somebody. To, you know, who's in pre-med to dive straight into doing surgery. Like you would never do that, and you would never expect that because the prerequisite to doing your practicum is that you have all of the other courses that you've passed, right? It's like university, right?

So you wouldn't have somebody going into senior level math classes when they don't even have. One math class under their belt. The same is for your coaching packages. So the integrity piece is marketing to those people that you ultimately want to serve and who can best, you know, be [00:28:00] best in your programs.

But you also have to say yes and no. And to me, when we have this like launch method and we're rushing people to a door and we're getting them to buy, there's no real, um, we can't actually really assess that in a lot of ways. Right? Who's coming through the doors, but we're also not. We're saying yes to whoever wants to hit buy now on our stuff.

Right? And to me, in the coaching industry, the best coach and client relationships are coaches that are in an alignment with what it is that you're putting out there and that are ready for what you're putting out there. And so if that, to me means like that, I'm not scaling massively and having these $8 million launches, that doesn't mean that.

You know that that's a good thing necessarily, right? It's like, what are we after? You know, we, we can chalk it up as, oh, well I'm, I'm selling 8 million in sales and therefore I have that much more impact, but, I kind of call [00:29:00] BS on that in a lot of ways. I would rather scale sustainably and I would rather scale in integrity and maybe have a business that makes, you know, $500,000 a year instead of 8 million.

Because I'm staying in integrity with the work that I do, and I'm staying in integrity with how I sell and how I market, and I'm staying in integrity with how I serve. I used to turn people away at the wine store all the time and people thought I was crazy, right? I'd be like, Well, you probably aren't gonna even like the wine that we're making because they were looking for something hell of a lot cheaper than what we were selling.

And yet our wine was very on point with the other stores in the industry. And yet we had a phenomenal product that was way different, a hundred percent pure juice and not made from concentrate. So I'd say, well, you can go and and buy this somewhere else if you want to, or I would turn people away that wanted to make wine at home.

Who were wanting to buy supplies from me. And I'm like, you could go on k Gigi and get it for half the price [00:30:00] versus me getting in the supplies for you. And my thinking was is that number one is that we made most of our money making and selling wine in store and selling kits to take home. We didn't make a lot of money on the like stuff that people needed, like the car boys and.

The plastic buckets, like we didn't make money off of that for the, you know, 10 people a year that would come in and ask for that stuff. I'm like, just go to k Gigi. It's easier than me having to take your order right now and then have to order it and pay for the shipping and all the things. I was just like going K Gigi, you'll find it straight away.

Or bottles right. I'd often say that as well. You can buy them new from us. But you could get them hell of a lot cheaper. And the reason being is cuz we didn't have a huge profit margin on bottles. So to me it was like it didn't matter, but it was also out of integrity of like, you could save money doing this, which is how I've always operated my businesses.

Right. And again, when we look back at this whole like, scaling piece of it is like, what's [00:31:00] scalable? Can I scale that to 8 million? If you can't scale it to 8 million, then therefore it's, you know, you're doing it wrong in reality. You could have a really amazing business and be making $250,000 a year and be totally content.

You could be making 120,000. You could be making a hundred thousand and be totally content in your business and be totally cool with it. Again, we go back to integrity and marketing, and we go back to that big, grandiose promise. What's your definition of success? What's your definition of what you want?

Because striving for the 8 million, or striving for the a hundred K months, or striving for whatever. Just because somebody's promising you. That also then goes back to the whole integrity piece within yourself as the buyer, right? This isn't necessarily on the business owner, but as a buyer then how, how do you start to see through.

The bs, but also how do you start to poke holes in people's promises so that you can buy out of integrity so that you're not buying a promise that [00:32:00] really actually doesn't, isn't the thing you want in the long run. Which I think we can all say that we've, you know, maybe fallen into at some point in our lives, you know, investing in something or saying yes to something that your heart might not have been in.

Right? And so, The whole premise of this episode was one to highlight what is ethical and integral marketing, or what isn't, I should say. And the whole underlying messages is like when we reconnect with our heart and what we ultimately want on that heart level one, we start to market naturally in integrity and we start to ma, you know, market way more ethically.

And we also buy. Way more out of integrity because we're coming from a heart place. We're not saying yes to something out of a moment of weakness, and we're not saying yes to something out of a moment of desperation. We're not saying yes to something out of a moment of escape. All things I've shared with you over the [00:33:00] the episodes, right?

I was always trying to escape the reality I was living in. I didn't like corporate, so I'm gonna open a brick and mortar, and I never really thought about. What that looked like in life and what my definition of success was, or what I even desired. I never once even contemplated that. I was like, oh, this is an escape from the thing.

I don't like that. I get into my brick and mortar, and while I loved wine and I loved what I was doing and my my customers, my heart wasn't in it, right? It was out of alignment. My heart wasn't in it. And so what did that cause? A lot of stress and angst and frustration and anger and all the stuff that comes with that.

And when we can reconnect back to what our heart actually wants and say yes from that place, whether you're a marketer or a buyer, then you just become, you're living and embodying that integrity and everything you do and everything you put into practice comes from that place. So the last thing, like I said, I shared was that full scarcity and urgency this.

Pressure to get people to buy this pressure, to get [00:34:00] people to, to sign up now, or, you know, they're gonna miss out or they're missing something if they don't do it right. Their success hangs on the balance of them, you know, enrolling in. You know, your healing sessions or your weight loss, or your holistic health or whatever, or your business programs, whatever it is that they're investing in, they feel like they're missing out.

And I never want clients coming into my world feeling like they need me, otherwise they're not going to be successful. I never want that feeling right. I always want people to come into my world and into spell bound feeling like it's a thought partnership more than anything that they have. So much magic and brilliance within them, and I'm just gonna help unlock a lot of it and work with them to do that.

And a lot of people that come into spellbound, like I said, they come in because they're not marketers by trade and they want support in marketing. They want a marketing brain with them and a marketing heart with them to [00:35:00] help guide them, which is what spellbound is in the essence of what it is and how to reconnect back to that heart and how to operate from an an integral place because lots of soulful coaches.

Often feel a lot of integrity with the marketing that they're doing, but they just don't know there's another way. And so that false scarcity and that false urgency, you know, I could do a whole other episode on that of like our urgency culture and what we measure as success, right? We, we hang so much of our success on.

This like limited time that we have, right? I have this limited time to invest. Now I have this limited time to make this happen or I need to create results in X timeframe. Which is why when we use that false scarcity and that false urgency, we get a lot of clients and that energy that need to create results like yesterday, right?

So they come into your experiences and they're like, I need to lose the 50 pounds cuz I'm getting married in a week and I need that gone. Or you know, I need to heal pronto because I've [00:36:00] got. All this other stuff going on that I need done, or I need to make 10 K like yesterday in order to even continue to pay for the investment.

We, that's the energy that they come into your space with, which is, you know, the energy. Then you're having to coach them in, and I often say, that's not the energy I want my containers of because I want. People who want to build sustainable businesses who aren't rushing through life to create the results in a month or two months or whatever, because they know that this is a long game and that they know the process of them doing the work they do in this world and bringing their gifts to life is their life's work.

It's not something that they cultivate overnight and create. You know, all the success. It's, it's their life's work. They're on this journey to have this work, be put in the hands of more people and therefore committed to this long game and building sustainable practices within [00:37:00] their business so they can create sustainable sales.

Not this roller coaster that I see a lot of coaches on where they're like, they've got these high months of a launch and then a, a big low, and this high month and this big low is like, There's nothing that feels great in the nervous system about that, riding that rollercoaster. It's like nothing feels good about that.

When we can create that sustainability month on month on month, I'm not saying that every month is gonna be identical when it comes to sales, it won't, but at least you have some projected sales over the months leading, you know, into the future where you can feel a little bit at. Ease at peace, but you also have a system in place that allows you to generate that and something that allows people to come in on their own timeframe, which is what Spellbound is and what's it, what it's built on, right?

I built it on this. I am open. You can come when you're ready model, which is how every business in the world works other than a lot of the coaching, right? It's like. They can come when they're ready [00:38:00] and they will come when they're ready. And therefore it creates that much more of a beautiful coaching experience.

So that full scarcity and false urgency, something to consider, where am I putting deadlines where they don't need to be? And do I believe I need a deadline to get people to buy? And do I need to create scarcity, like there's only two spots left or one spot left when in reality I don't actually really have a limit.

These are all things you can contemplate, right? And what strategies am I putting into my business from a place of lack, from a place of scarcity, myself, right? If I don't put a deadline, I'm not gonna hit this big money goal that I'm after. If I don't, you know, create the guarantee or put that on the page just for show, because that's what it is, nobody can guarantee results and I will die on that mountaintop.

Um, if I put that guarantee, that will remove the risk and therefore more people will buy as a result of that. What strategies and [00:39:00] tactics are you using to get people to buy. Because at the end of the day, if you have a product people want, and it's an offer that's irresistible, it will sell with all of, without all of the gimmicks.

And that's another big thing that I am such a proponent about within Spellbound, let's create the offer and articulate the value of the offer so that it's irresistible so that we don't need the gimmicks. And I'm not saying that creating masterclass and quizzes and stuff like that is gimmicky. I'm not saying that.

I'm saying the gimmicks that we use in the buying cycle, in the selling cycle that get people to buy deadlines, false urgency, false scarcity guarantees, you know, these big, grandiose promises that we know are playing off people's weaknesses or playing off people's. Biggest, deepest desires because they think if I create the a hundred K month or I lose the 50 pounds somewhere in me, I will be a better human.

I'll feel better about [00:40:00] myself, right? Is playing off of people's lack of feeling whole or lack of feeling worthy, and that's where I wanna shift the industry. I don't want to play off people's weaknesses and I don't want to play off people's lack of worth to get them to buy into whatever I'm selling, but also, Similarly with the clients I'm working with, I never want my clients to be coming from that angle either, which is why I work with a lot of soulful coaches who are really here to change The way that that we do things in so many ways is because they see the inherent worthiness and wholeness within the people that they're trying to help, which is why they're helping them in a lot of ways.

So, I've chatted a lot today and I've channeled a lot in the moment, and I really hope that this episode is given some insight into how you can make everything you do and continue to do in more in integrity with who you are and the. The clearest pathway to that is connecting [00:41:00] back to you and your heart and what it is that you want to do and why you want to do it.

Because that is going to shine out your integrity. You'll start to say no to things that your thinking brains telling you you need to do in order to be successful, uh, because you know at the heart of who you are that you can be successful. Um, Doing it your way and the way, way that you want. Now onto next week's episode, I'm super stoked because I'm bringing on a handmade artist, product-based business, who has created a beautiful line of clean candles, and I cannot wait for her to share her story with you because she shares a lot of the ups and downs of entrepreneurship in the early days and all the things that kind of got in the way and then, Now has this beautifully successful business that she is created from the ground up, and I cannot wait for her to share her story with you.

Because if you were somebody who is artistic and creative in any capacity, which if you're following me, you likely are, and you have a business and you're like, [00:42:00] I'm doing the thing here and I'm wanting to maybe add in a different product, or I have this creative endeavor that I'm dabbling with, that would be a compliment to what I'm.

Offering, then you're gonna wanna tune in because she does share, like I said, a lot of cool things that she's done, um, to build her business and to grow it a lot organically in a lot of ways. And collaborations and partnerships is one things that she talks about just as a hint. So be sure to tune in when that episode drops next week.

Cheers. Thanks for listening. We'll see you right back here next time. You can also find us on social media at creatively owned and online@creativelyowned.com. Until next time, keep showing up as your authentic self.