*contains the odd bit of profanity. I can’t stand bullshit (BS). I hate it with a passion. Sadly there are those who operate in the same industry as The Coaching Revolution who peddle it.
I recently had a chat with a fellow northern-Englishwoman about how we just can’t tolerate nonsense. We prefer straight-talking, not BS and platitudes. It made me wonder if you have to be both northern to appreciate straight-talking. I don’t believe that you do and so I’ve written about three different kinds of BS I come across on a daily basis, that really grind my gears – let me know what you think?
1 – Professional BS(my least favourite kind!)
One example of this is the idea that you can build a business full of ‘high paying’ coaching clients by spamming people via their LinkedIn profile and that you’ll feel ok about doing it.
I’m sure that if you bombard enough people with unsolicited DMs, some of them might become clients. You’ll lose your self-respect in the process though – and the respect of those who didn’t want you to coach them, and that will be the majority of recipients.
Apparently, that lack of self-respect that comes from hating the fact that you’re spamming people is down to you having the wrong mindset. I call bullshit on that! Marketing shouldn’t be cross any core values and insinuating yourself into peoples’ lives uninvited does exactly that.
2 – Coaching BS
If you’ve ever read anything I’ve written, you’ll know that I believe that coaching is a superpower and that everyone deserves the opportunity to experience it. However, there is some nonsense talked about what coaching can do, which is a shame when it can do so very much – it’s not necessary to make stuff up about what it can do!
The idea that you can coach across a knowledge gap is not true. You can’t. In my field, I come across this nonsense when I speak to a new client and they tell me they spent thousands on a coach who was going to help them to grow their coaching business by coaching them to create a marketing strategy. I call bullshit on that! The truth is that it’s not possible to coach a marketing strategy out of a head that doesn’t contain one.
3 – ‘Your Niche Will Find You’ Bullshit
This is an insidious one. It comes from a very famous coach and author who maintains, via his various books, that your job as a new coach is to spend a couple of years ‘powerfully serving’ people by having 2+ hour long coaching conversations, for free, with – basically – anyone who will let you. Eventually, he says, your niche will reveal itself to you based on who you enjoyed coaching for free the most. I call bullshit on that for ordinary people.
This method of marketing a coaching business (ie giving it away for a few years before making any money) is fine if you are independently wealthy and you don’t need to earn a living. However, those are not the kind of people that The Coaching Revolution works with. Nor, I believe is it the kind of person that makes up the majority of the coaching profession.
A far quicker way to succeed in finding coaching clients who pay a professional rate, is to realise that a niche is a choice. That’s right – you choose your niche, there’s nothing mystical about it.
What Do You Think?
I feel pretty certain that hating this BS isn’t something only northerners do. Let me know in the comments? I’m really curious about what you think.
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