There’s so much misunderstanding about what marketing is that I’m going to write a series of articles in which I show you what good marketing looks like, by highlighting a coaching professional who is marketing well. Part one of this series is about Sarah Clein.
Introducing Sarah Clein…
Sarah is our newest mentor at The Coaching Revolution. For context, Sarah joined us in January 2022. She saw a recording of a webinar that I delivered to The Coaches’ Gathering about how to find clients who can – and will – pay a professional rate for coaching.
Sarah said that there was something about the straightforward way that I was talking that made her prick up her ears. She booked a time in my diary and following our conversation, joined The Coaching Revolution.
Sarah chose the 1:1 programme we offer and started her mentoring immediately. She knew that she wanted to work with knackered public sector women, so having created an ideal client profile and written her marketing message with Jen Mohindra as a mentor, she moved to John Gilbert who is our mentor for those coaches who want to work in the public sector. John is a coach who is also a retired local government chief executive. Like all our mentors, he has been through our programme to learn how to market effectively.
Sarah now has a rinse-and-repeatable formula for generating inbound enquiries and turning those enquiries into paying clients. She has had opportunities to deliver workshops, training and other work, as well as coaching offered to her on the back of the professional marketing message she now shares.
Not Remotely Salesy!
Sarah is an introvert and would be the first to say that the idea of ‘making a show of herself’ is an anathema to her and that’s why this way of marketing suits her.
I am the least grubby/grabby person in the world. The idea of pushy sales and boasty, braggy marketing makes me shudder. – Sarah Clein
Sarah is also public sector through and through. She knew that she wanted to work with knackered mid-life women who are senior leaders within the public sector, but her efforts to build her coaching business prior to joining us had led to lots of consulting work but not very much opportunity to use the coaching side of her expertise. “Don’t get me wrong, I was glad of the work, but consulting isn’t where my heart lies – coaching is“.
When we originally spoke, Sarah had asked me to tell her how long this process was going to take. I said that if she was to consider the first year of learning with us her year of learning and recouping her investment, and the second year of her learning with us would be where she began to see a real business, that would be about right.
By the end of April 2022, Sarah left me a recommendation on LinkedIn in which she said this:
I can honestly say that not only does it do what it says on the tin, but heaps more besides. It is a community of kick-ass, engaged and engaging, supportive, inspiring, funny, and knowledgeable professional coaches. I am learning every single second that I spend with The Coaching Revolution and I am sure that this will pay dividends – literally! – in the months and years to come. – Sarah Clein
As always, the community was identified as the most important part of The Coaching Revolution. The learning is great, but the support makes implementing the learning so much easier.
18 Months Later
Sarah recently shared a win in our members’ community. She used our hashtag #thisshitworks and said that it was an unusual win. The win is that she received her largest VAT bill since refocusing her business towards coaching.
Sarah now works with exactly the kind of women that she wanted to support. She markets in several ways, on LinkedIn, by writing articles and (can you believe?) on TikTok – where she shares her incisive observations and thoughts. The videos Sarah created for TikTok were part of a challenge that I extended to our mentees to encourage them to step out of their comfort zone and to try using video as a way of marketing. In June this year, she posted this in our group:
Just before the start of May, a challenge was set here to post a 60 second video each day. I took it up as it’s by far my least preferred medium and I pretty much hate everything about it but I DO like a challenge and I know it’s about my ICA and not about me ! Its nearly the end of June and I’m still doing it, every day, it’s now become a daily habit just like LinkedIn is and (whispers) I realise that I actually enjoy it. – Sarah Clein
A Shining Example of JFDI
Sarah is a shining example of someone who wanted to coach the women she works with more than she didn’t want to market.
She had ALL the reasons not to take action; she’s introverted, she’s an ex-public sector worker (they can have funny ideas about marketing!), she isn’t comfortable blowing her own trumpet and everything we asked her to do was outside her comfort zone. And she did it anyway.
I regularly speak to coaches who haven’t joined us (yet!) who tell me – for example – that they hate social media. My answer to them is this; if you want to coach for a living, you’re going to have to do new things. New things are by their very definition uncomfortable and doing them requires a big dose of bravery and courage. If you want to build a successful coaching business, then you need to stop complaining about what you don’t like and develop a JFDI attitude. The reward for marketing well is that you get to do the coaching work that you so desperately want, and you get to do it at a professional rate.
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