The Number One Place to Focus If You Feel Like Growing Your Coaching Business is Hard

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. Hey. Hey, super stoked that you're tuning into this week's episode. I cannot wait to dive in today's [00:01:00] topic because I'm gonna be sharing with you something I wish I would've listened to when I first started my online coaching and consulting business almost four years ago now, and I prefaced the word listen to because I'm sure you've heard the message before from lots of people that share their like aha moment.

In their business where it's like, I wish somebody would've told me this, or I wish somebody would've, you know, warned me about this before I went down this path. It would've saved me so much time and energy. The funny thing is, is what I'm about to share with you is something that. I was being told by my coach at the time, but for whatever reason, it just didn't lend or resonate with me and I still ended up doing the thing they were telling me not to do, uh, in order to get my business off the ground quicker to see customers and clients come through the door quicker because when we don't see that in our business, any business, You know what happens, right?

We either continue to put a [00:02:00] lot of money forward to try and make the thing work and a lot of time and energy to make it work, and then eventually we burn out or we hit a point in our business where it's like, this just isn't working. I've gotta close the doors, or I've just gotta give up on the dream that I have for this particular business and move on, and I wanna share with you.

My big learning here, because it did definitely stall my growth in my business in the first year or two of it. The beauty of it was, is that I had another business at the time, right? So I was running my brick and mortar, so I had this income coming in through there that allowed me to sustain that for two and a half years, where I was sort of building this coaching and consulting business on the side, and while I was seeing clients come through the door, It definitely was not enough to sustain me selling the brick and mortar and going full-time into my coaching business.

So a lot of businesses won't last that two and a half years unless [00:03:00] you have a ton of capital funding from people to keep it going. When you're seeing all of these expenses go out and you're not really breaking even in the business, or you're experiencing a big loss, you're investing a lot more than you're obviously making in your business, and I wanna help you avoid that.

Specifically. If you're a coach or a consultant, you have an online coaching business, or you're contemplating one, you're like, I've got this brick and mortar, or I'm operating mostly in the offline world. Bring this into the online world. I wanna save you a lot of stress and headache now. I know those of you that are listening, there's going to be a handful of you that do what I did and don't listen and just keep going down the root and path that you are going down, because that's your divine journey and that's the journey you're on and you've gotta learn maybe the same way I did.

But for those of you that are like. Huh, maybe she has a point. I'm gonna listen to her and I'm going to stop doing some of the things I'm gonna mention because I will tell you it [00:04:00] will impact the growth and eventually, like I said, you'll get to a point where you're like, oh man, I wish I would've focused on this rather than focusing on all the things I thought was gonna move the needle in my business.

So, Let's dive in, shall we? Okay. I'm gonna bring you back to the summer of 2018. June of 2018, to be exact, because that was the month that I finally committed to hiring my very first business mentor to help me launch and grow my online coaching and consulting business. Now, June of 2018, in 2018 in general, was not the first time that I had this wild idea.

In fact, the first time I had it was in 2015. But I was working in corporate at the time and I was in discussions already with a few of my colleagues to leave the organization that we were working at and start our own consulting firm. But we were focused very, uh, local, civic, and provincial more than anything.

We were not thinking global or online or anything like that. But it's funny how the universe works because it was [00:05:00] giving me breadcrumbs. I was getting these ads delivered to me on Facebook and Instagram about online coaching, consulting. You know that global reach, being able to work from anywhere. And when I pitched the idea to my colleagues that we were in discussions with, they didn't really grasp it or couldn't really wrap their head around it.

They didn't see the vision for it. And as a result, I started to doubt my own vision. I was like, well, maybe this isn't possible, or maybe they are right. Maybe we need to focus local and provincial. Maybe I'm out to lunch as well. Maybe these ads are just really good fricking marketing and I'm buying into something that isn't possible.

And so we all just went our separate ways. And I went into my brick and mortar. We started a brick and mortar in 2016, and I worked at it for two years. But I had this itch that just kept coming up to start an online coaching and consulting business that would allow more time and financial freedom to work from anywhere.

All of those sorts of things that are really, really lovely with the online coaching and [00:06:00] consulting model. So in 2018, hired my very first business mentor. It was a big deal for me because when I opened my brick and mortar, I didn't hire a mentor. I just. Hit the ground running, fired on my feet and made the thing work, you know?

And so it was a big commitment to finally go, okay, I'm gonna invest some money in a coach or mentor to help me and show me the way. And within the first 90 days, I had launched this idea, this group offer that I had put together that I wanted to put out into the world. And if you've heard my story, I'm in quotations, you can't see me.

But in quotations, I'm saying launch because I followed all of the steps that this coach was had laid out for me. And I got to midway through my launch and I had this expectation that I needed to have X amount of people going through the launch in order for it to be successful. And when I got midway through my launch and realized I wasn't hitting my targets, the numbers that you know were projected for me.

Then I pulled [00:07:00] out of that launch. Because I had deemed it as maybe I'm not ready. Maybe I don't have the offer down. Maybe I need better branding. Maybe I need to figure out my logo. All of the things that go into our mind when things aren't maybe going the way that we expected or. They aren't going the way that we want.

And so what ended up happening was I pulled out mid-launch, never even finished the launch. So obviously you know the results of that. And I sat for another six months and this is the part of the story that I really want you to focus on. I sat for six months, literally. In my own little world, trying to come up with the perfect name, trying to come up with the perfect offer name, trying to come up with the right branding and the colors, trying to, you know, grow my audience on Instagram.

I was posting consistently every single day on Instagram [00:08:00] trying to grow this audience. And what's so crazy about this is, is that all of the things that I was preoccupied with trying to perfect. Never actually moved the needle one way or the other for my business. Like not even at all. And the reason why I'm fo I'm wanting to share this with you is because if you're in the early stages of your business, I see this all the time.

I did it, I see it all the time with entrepreneurs and I see it really predominantly with entrepreneurs who are high achievers with this like, Perfectionism baked into everything that we do. We're high achievers, so we never really meet the level of standard that we think we need to meet in order to be successful and to not look professional and to not come out as professional or looking our best.

It's really difficult for us, and so we spent all this time trying to perfect what we're doing. The funny thing is as I was doing the polar opposite of what my business mentor [00:09:00] was telling us to do, which was fail fast and fail forward. And the only way to fail fast and fail forward is by putting yourself out there is by putting the offer out there so that people can say yay or nay to it basically.

And if they say yay to it, and you get a few people that go through your experiences with you, whether it's one-to-one or a group, Then you will learn what delivery works and what doesn't. You will learn how to refine the offer. But if somebody doesn't buy that first time you launched, then you know, okay, what needs to be tweaked and refined as part of the launch process?

Where didn't I articulate the value in the offer? These are the places you wanna focus if you're in the early stages of your business, but these are also places you wanna focus. If you're in the scaling stages of your business, I'm still refining my offers. I'm still refining the delivery because there's always room for improvement.

There's always [00:10:00] room for innovation, and this is the area of your business that's going to give you the most benefit or return on your investment in any way, shape, or form, time and money. It's not in the perfection of all the things we think we need to perfect. Right? The safe place in your business is to stay in building internally where you don't actually have to put yourself out there.

The safe place in your business is not having to work with client relations. So it's like, oh, just sit here and you know, play on Pinterest and come up with colors for my business. And if you're feeling triggered by this, I can see why, because maybe you're sitting there in your business doing this right now, and this is what I did.

I literally started a Pinterest board and started to pick out colors I wanted for my brand, and I would spend hours doing that. Or I'd spend hours scouring on DeFont trying to come up with the perfect font, and I'd be playing in Canva. Canva wasn't around really at the time I was. Playing in Photoshop, that's where I built my logos, [00:11:00] was in Photoshop.

And I'd be sitting in there building logo after logo, after logo, after logo. And by before you knew it, I had, you know, 50 logos there. And it's like none of this is going to make or break the business. Honestly. It's just not, especially in the early stages of your business is just not. The early stages of your business, you have to validate the offer, otherwise you won't have a business.

And it becomes an expensive hobby. And luckily for me, I had another business that had income. And so I was playing safe in all realms, right? I was playing safe and like I wasn't really, you know, testing the offer and I wasn't really putting it out there for criticism or rejection or anything like that.

I was just sitting in the business building and playing and being creative, which is a very safe place for me. But I had this other income coming in, so I didn't really have the pressure. And I did this for about eight months. In fact, I went to his live event in January of 2019, and I was sitting in that room full of online coaches [00:12:00] and consultants listening to their stories of launching and testing and trying new things and putting things out there, and people sharing.

Really, really successful stories and me feeling a little bit defeated sitting in that room being like, you know, I've spent eight months and I don't feel like I've moved forward at all in this business or seen any real success. And I finally had a conversation with one of his internal coaches and she asked me why I hadn't launched yet.

And I said to her, because I was doing all this stuff, I was getting the brand ready. I was ironing out exactly what to put in the offer. I was recording the content for that. I was. Getting that built in Cajabi, I was doing all of the things right and she said to me, Catherine, you will never know if that offer is something your people want.

Unless you launch it, like you've gotta put it out there and that is the best way to assess it. And that's the best way to, to continue to refine it and to tweak it over and over and over again. [00:13:00] It's that fail fast and fail forward sort of mentality. And it was her words that really landed with me, even though my kosher mentor had been saying it for months.

It was like something. In what she said really hit home, and maybe it was me being face-to-face with her in a room. The words just sort of landed, and I got home from that event and I launched in February of 2019 where I enrolled four people into my beta program. Was it the price point that I had envisioned?

No. Was it the price point that was gonna allow me to leave my brick and mortar? No. Was it the perfect launch? No. Was it the perfect delivery? No. Did some people show up and put their all in? Absolutely. Did other clients of mine n not show up and not put their all in? Absolutely. There was lots of things that did not go according to plan, and yet I did it.

I put it out there and I had four amazing people go through it. All at their own pace. And the beauty of that is, is you get so much [00:14:00] feedback. You get so much feedback from the way they've moved through it, from the delivery of it, from the length of it, the price point of it, you, the work that's gonna go into delivering it in the way that you want.

There's so much there. And then there's so much there that you can build from. There's not a lot you can build from. Literally when you're picking brand colors and logos and trying to build a website, like in order to get a ton of sales off your website, you've gotta be driving a ton of traffic to that website.

You don't need the website to get up and running and going. You really don't. Um, and some people might argue this with me because, you know, they're like, well, I help people build websites, but honestly, you don't really need the website to do the heavy lifting for you. You just need a really solid offer and a way to sell that offer.

And that is the fastest way to really get your online coaching and consulting business off the ground and to start seeing consistent sales in your business. [00:15:00] Because if I'm being really honest with you, I launched in February. I launched at a beta price. It wasn't, I. Sustainable at that price point. And I still sat on the idea to reel launch again.

I think I waited until May of that year. Um, had another successful launch, had a few clients come through at a higher price point, which was a total win. And then I launched again in the fall of 2019 and I had another handful of people come through, um, again, at that like same price point that I was at the second time I launched.

Um, and then I've grown it from there. And. But I wouldn't have been able to grow it from there or to really scale it from there and to create sustainability. And I didn't really know what people, like I said, wanted or what worked or what didn't work. Um, and if I didn't, hadn't built an audience of people that wanted the offer I was putting out there.

I'm just gonna give you a bit of an example with that, cuz sometimes people are like, well, I'm building my audience on Instagram first. [00:16:00] I'm gonna create the website so that I can build a bit of the audience. But yet, They're still uncertain about the offer and what the offer looks like and the package and positioning around that.

And I always say that the offer really drives everything right. It would be kind of like me opening my brick and mortar wine business and it being maybe a wine business, and I. Maybe I like wine, but I don't know what type of wine business it's gonna be, but yet I have the location and I have the signage, and I've got the colors and all of that.

And yet, I don't know what's gonna go inside the store. Like it might be wine accessories. It might be us making wine and and selling wine. It might be, you know, a wine tasting room. It might be a wine and food bar. Can you see where that. Is so backwards when you're trying to launch a business. Like you've gotta start with, what is it that I'm selling?

Because that's gonna drive all of the other decisions, right? It's gonna drive the, the signage of it, right? It's gonna drive what I put on the signage. [00:17:00] It's gonna drive what goes obviously into the store and all of the promotions around it. But I see this sort of like backwards approach in the online world, and I did it.

So like I'm right there with you, is like, it's like I said, I often say this, it's like I walked through a vortex and forgot everything I knew about building and running a business. And it was like I went through that vortex of like, I've gotta do all of these other things first and get all of these in a row before I actually focus on the thing that's gonna get people to come into my business and buy from me.

And if I would've done that with the wine business, whereas like I like wine, I. And I think I'm gonna start a wine business, but I don't really know what's in it or what I'm gonna sell yet, but I'm gonna start it and get the ball rolling. I'm gonna build the foundation of the website and I'm gonna, you know, create the signage and the colors and all that.

And then I'll figure out the offer and the audience later. We are, we would've never opened our doors. We would've gone bankrupt. You know what I mean? Because we needed to have the offer of what [00:18:00] it is that we're actually selling. And we needed that also to get like, Financing from the bank. You can't go to the bank and say, Hey, can you gimme, I don't know, a hundred thousand dollars loan, let's just say.

And for what we're gonna start a business for, well, what kind of business? Well, I think it's gonna be around wine, but I'm not really sure yet. But I kind of need the loan in order to start the business and to get the ball rolling. Bank's gonna go, no, I need a detailed plan of what you're planning, what you're thinking.

You've gotta do the same with your online coaching and consulting business. Otherwise, it ends up being an expensive hobby. And if you're sitting in your business right now and you're feeling that it's likely because the attention and the focus is distracted and you're not focused on the offer, the thing that people are actually gonna buy, the thing that's gonna create revenue and income in your business, you're focused on all of the other things that don't actually move the needle writing blog posts.

Uh, building a website, the branding, you know, I could name a [00:19:00] lot of them, right? It's like finding the right tech. Should I get Thrive Card or should I get cajabi or should I get w It's like, what's your offer and how, how are you gonna deliver the offer? And then from there you can pick the tech, right?

It's, it's similarly to the whole idea of social media. It's like, we've gotta be on Instagram and Facebook and TikTok. And it's like, well, where is your audience? And the only way to know where your audience is, is to know what your offer is and to know who you're actually selling that offer to. It's not about doing every, the these backwards steps that we talk about, right?

It's like, I gotta get presents, I've gotta create visibility. Well, what are you creating visibility and presence for? You gotta come back to the offer, you gotta start with that end in mind. Otherwise, you're gonna end up spending all of this time, like I said, creating content that doesn't really produce results.

You're gonna spend a lot of time creating content that keeps you in the friend zone or keeps you, you know, speaking to the void, cuz there's no clear [00:20:00] pathway. That's the biggest thing I see with entrepreneurs is there's no clear pathway to the offer. When we created the brick and mortar wine business, it was very clear what we offered.

It was a custom winery. People could come in and make wine. They didn't open the doors and be like some people did open. Cool. I've never seen this concept before. Tell me about it. But they didn't open the doors being like, Hey, can I buy a hamburger here? Like it was very clear on what we were selling and who it was for.

You gotta do the same with your online coaching consulting business. You've gotta have a clear pathway for your people. So that there is an offer there for them to buy. There is something for them to buy, and it's not changing all the time, or it's different all the time, or you're attracting a bunch of people in that want wine.

Let's just say. I'm putting that in quotations. They want wine and now you're trying to sell them hamburgers. It's like they don't really go together. You know what I mean? Well, I guess they could go together if you wanted them to, but you know what I mean? Right. There's gotta be congruency between. What you're offering, what the message is, what you're putting out there.

There's gotta [00:21:00] be congruency and so. This is one of the biggest areas like where I see most business owners close their doors within the first year, two years, three years. If they've got this like really rock solid willpower of like, I'm not giving up. I'm gonna make this work. But eventually your business has to create income and revenue, otherwise it's not really a business to begin with, but you just can't sustain it.

Right. And. And if you're in that position right now where you're like, I really wanna make the online coaching consulting business work for me, you have to focus on the offer, and then you have to focus on putting that offer in front of the right people at the right time. That's where, if I could go back to 2018 and I could redo this whole journey, I would, I would've doubled down on that, and I would've not even spent an ounce of time creating the logos, the branding colors, the photo shoot.

I would've done none of that. I may have gotten a skeleton website page up, but that would've been [00:22:00] like, you know, maybe my bio or something like that. But I literally would've focused on. The offer, the articulation of the offer, and who was that audience? And I would've focused on putting that offer in front of the right people so that I could get some feedback from those people of what they liked, what they didn't like, whether the offer even is valuable to them.

I would've literally doubled down on that for the first 12 months of my business, and I would've made that my sole mission of like, I'm gonna learn everything I need to learn about these people that I wanna support and help and impact. And I will double down on that and I won't get distracted with shiny object syndrome, and I won't get distracted with what's safe in my business, right?

What is, where's a safe place for me to sit, which is building and innovating and creating new things, and staying in creativity mode and writing right. Those are all really safe places for me to be. I would not do that. I would literally, I would've listened to word on word what my mentor was saying at the time, and I would've implemented that.

I would've failed fast, and I [00:23:00] would've failed forward, and I would've done that over and over and over again till I got to a point of, okay. Here I am now. I have some really good information about what works and what doesn't work, and then as I scaled, I would've looked at the brand and gone, okay, how can I make the brand maybe reflect more of who I am or how can I, you know, elevate that?

But that would not be the first place I started. At all. How can I build the website that reflects who I am? Um, I revamped that original website I built back in 2018. And again, creating websites is a, is a gift of mine in a lot of ways. I, I write copy, but I can build a website pretty quickly. And so I built that in 20 18, 20 19, I think is when I built the website.

I refreshed that in 2021. So you can see the year gap, right? There was almost a three, two year gap, two to three year gap, where I [00:24:00] finally refreshed it involved the website to a place where I actually feel like it now really fully reflects me, but it wasn't where I focused my attention after that 2019 like wake up call of like, wow, okay, yes, I'm literally just delaying.

All of my growth. And eventually in 2020 when we sold, I had no choice. I had no other additional income coming in. It was like, you have to make this really work now and you've gotta create that sustainable growth, which I have absolutely. Um, I'm seeing growth every single year, if not double tripling my, my income, which is beautiful and I'm super grateful for that.

But I've gotten hyper-focused, literally hyper-focused on what are the activities I need to do in my business to. See an impact and then all of the other things that I think I need to do or should do because they make me maybe look better or more professional. All the things I've let all that shit go.

Literally let it go. I'm like, I could post today on social media, but I. [00:25:00] Um, I just have, you know, three D three calls that have just now come through my, my funnel that I built. And so I don't need to post on social today if I don't want to, and I'm not feeling inspired. Right? If you actually look at what's moving the needle in your business, you can get hyper-focused on the activities that you do, and that's where you create beautiful spaciousness, right?

Everyone's like, oh, I want the ease and the spaciousness. You gotta ask yourself, are you willing to, to allow yourself to create that and experience that? Because I had to get over the perfectionism. I had to get over this need to be professional and look professional all the time. I had to get over the idea that, you know, I was gonna get rejected or clients were gonna go through experiences with me and maybe not have the best experiences.

Like I have to know that, you know, done is better than perfect in a lot of ways. And I know that sounds cliche, but it's the truth, right? It's that like, Not everything is going to be this like perfect offer that gets, goes out there for the first time. That, that, that things do take time to [00:26:00] refine. And the only way to refine is by having that like two-way conversation with your, with your audience and with your clients, right?

They're the ones gonna give you the feedback. At the end of the day. They're the ones who are gonna tell you whether or not your offers solid and good and something they want, and then, Therefore is something that you're delivering on, okay, so you've promised this and now are you delivering on this?

Right? So I really hope that for those of you that are in this position right now, that this is landing and resonating with you and you're going, oh, wow. I can start to see the things that I, I need to let go of, you know, again. Back in 2018, I literally probably would not have even focused half of the energy on creating content on social media.

I was literally creating content every single day. I would not have done that because my audience and the audience that I'm growing, I'm growing through my funnel, the people that I know who I can support and want to support those selling the invisible [00:27:00] are coming through my funnel. Right. Yes. They might see me on social media and content going out, but majority of the people are coming through that funnel.

And so again, is building a pathway for your people. How do you build that pathway? Rather than throwing spaghetti against a wall, just chucking things out there for the sake of chucking them out there hoping something sticks. Right. That's a lot of output energy. Something that I did and was doing and I was like, yeah, I'm on this like hustle grind.

I can do this. I can create content with the best of them. And then it got to a point in my business in, yeah, 2019 that I was like, there's gotta be an easier way. There's gotta be. A more systematic way. There's gotta be a more processed way, and my mentor was teaching it, you know, I was just not seeing it for whatever, for whatever reasons I had to go on my own journey, which is why some of you will listen to this and you'll go.

Yeah, cool. Next. Um, and you need to go on your own divine journey, and that's true. [00:28:00] But honestly, to be honest with you, I've, yeah, I run two, I've run two businesses now, and I'm saying this from both experiences, right? From the brick and mortar world and the online world is like, and how differently I approach both of those businesses and how differently the sales came in effortlessly in the brick and mortar.

And how much more of a grind it felt like in the early stages of my online business. And now I know why is cuz I was building it backwards. You know, I was so focused on this outward appearance, this branding, this, all these things. And I was not really focused about the offer I was putting out there and who ultimately it was gonna impact.

Which is quite funny because I am a messaging strategist and conversion copywriter and have been for over. 20 years. Um, so that's the funny, funny thing about it, but it's been my journey and a journey that I wanna share with you so that if you're at that stage of your business right now where things feel hard or you're not seeing the sales consistently, and you're [00:29:00] wondering why, even though you're putting in all of this effort, or it feels like you're putting a lot of time in your business, like you're working really hard in your business, I can almost guarantee you that.

The focus in where you need to focus your business is, is on all these things that aren't actually moving the needle. And you're focusing on all these things that aren't actually gonna tell you what's working and what isn't working, which is all the things we do in Spellbound. And what's so interesting is I'll have clients say to me, I really need help focusing Catherine.

A lot of them will come to me. I need help focusing on what will actually work. And cuz I'm tired of throwing spaghetti against, well, I'm tired of just. Throwing things out into the universe, hoping that people come into my world and wanna work with me, and I can sell out my offers, and I'll literally make the most simplified plan of like, this is exactly where I would focus.

And I can see because there, you know, we're all beautiful in, in our own journey is like how we get derailed and the things we get derailed [00:30:00] on. And I'm constantly going, okay, come back to the focus of the plan. If you focused on this and actually built this out and let everything else slide. Literally let everything else slide.

You would see so much growth in your business, um, and so much more information and feedback of what's working and what isn't working, which is the only way to create that ease and spaciousness in your business, and to know what to let go of. Is knowing what to focus on, right? What is actually working, and I would say that a lot of entrepreneurs don't know what's working in their business in order to be able to pull the levers that are working and then let go of everything else.

Now into next week's episode. I'm really excited about this one cause I'm gonna be sharing some really big shifts and opportunities that I'm seeing predominantly in the online coaching and consulting industry. And anytime we see this, we often see like these doomsday messages of like, what worked no longer works and you've gotta shift this and you gotta do this.

And I wanna share from the perspective of like, [00:31:00] here are some really big cool shifts that I'm seeing and some opportunity. And from a place of like, innovation, right? Of like, how can we innovate, how can we introduce maybe a novel new idea that we've been sitting on for a while. So it's gonna be a really fun episode and it's something, like I said, I've been seeing in the industry for a while now, but I'm seeing some really big cool shifts happening and some really cool opportunities for coaches and consultants.

So be sure to tune in, uh, when I drop this episode. 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.