Gill Moakes (00:01.918)
Welcome, welcome to the Heads Together podcast. I'm your host, Jill Mokes, and I am thrilled to have you here with me again. Thanks for coming back. Or if this is your first time of listening, welcome. And that was very high pitch, possibly only dogs could hear it, but let's go with it. Say no more. Don't let it stop you coming back again. There'll be plenty more where that came from.
Okay, so this week, what are we talking about? Well, I've got this slightly nagging feeling this might turn into one of those slightly ranty episodes. I'll try not to, because I know sometimes I get a little bit on the rantathon. But this is, it's just that this is a subject that I am incredibly passionate about.
And it is something that I really feel resentful about when it gets over complicated. And particularly new coaches or new business owners kind of feel pressure that they have to be something in their business that they're not. And what I'm talking about here is when we have
committed to a path like coaching, for example, but yet we start trying to grow our business and suddenly think we have to morph into digital marketers. Okay. So that's what I'm talking about this week. And I want to reassure you about how simple it can be to grow a very flourishing and thriving coaching practice without
selling your soul to Mark Zuckerberg and without having to master every single digital marketing technique under the sun. Okay, so let's dive in.
Gill Moakes (02:08.83)
So I want to ask a question first of all, why do you do what you do? If you're a coach like me, for example, and I know lots of my listeners are coaches, why did you become a coach?
And I'm really hoping that the resounding answer is because I want to coach people and help them solve their problems or reach their goals. I really hope that is the resounding answer. Because if your answer is I wanted to actually secretly be a digital marketer that blows this episode right out of the water to be quite honest. I'm going to make the assumption that most of you do what you do so that you can.
help people so that you can develop an incredible reputation as a transformational coach, consultant, whatever it is you do, so that you can make great money doing those things. So earning fabulous money, doing something you love to do that has an amazing impact on the lives of other people. Right, that's a dream, right? So at what point is it we think that...
It makes any kind of sense for us to have to dilute that passion and commitment to our thing and start trying to become this pay limitation of a digital marketer. It's so frustrating to me and it's so warped in terms of what effectively creates clients as well. So there's this absolute disconnect between the amount of time.
that we invest into things like social media versus the amount of time that we actually put on our calendar each week for having conversations with people, offering to help people. And that having conversations and offering help is how you create coaching clients. There is no two ways about that. Even if...
Gill Moakes (04:22.846)
And I'm talking about higher ticket coaching, you know, one on one high ticket coaching. Okay. Now if you're talking, if we're talking about kind of one of those bottom tier coaching pyramid, very large group programs or passive income offers like digital courses and that kind of thing, that's not what I'm talking about here. Absolutely. Throw all the money you like at Facebook ads to sell those lower ticket things. But if you are a transformational coach, selling.
high ticket coaching packages, maybe it's masterminds, intimate group experiences, high ticket offers, then you will only sell those offers by having conversations with people, giving them a taste of how it feels to be coached by you and offering to help them, demonstrating that you are the one that can help them.
having a normal human one -to -one conversation where you tell them honestly about what you do and how you might be able to help them. And they tell you honestly about what their problem is. And between you, you decide if this is something that you can work with them on, right? That's how you create a coaching client. So when we keep that in our minds and then we think about how we fill our calendars with creating social media content and...
with even this podcast. I can do this podcast because I've been coaching for a while now and I have a team that helps me produce this podcast. So for me, I can sit here and talk into the microphone and then my team are amazing and pull together this finished article that you're listening to now.
If I had to sit and do all of the moving pieces that go towards putting this podcast out, I would find that really, really difficult. And it would be so time consuming that I wouldn't be spending the amount of time that I want to spend on creating incredible client engagements. So there's a disconnect in the time we invest in doing the lighthouse marketing piece. So remember I talked...
Gill Moakes (06:44.254)
I'll link to the previous episode about Lighthouse Marketing versus Searchlight Marketing. The Lighthouse Marketing is your content marketing. And it's important, don't get me wrong, to establish yourself as a thought leader, as a recognised authority in what you do. Lighthouse Marketing is really great. It's important and I don't want you to think that you will never have to do it. Okay?
But if you are a one man or one woman band who is doing all of the things in her business, then investing too much time in your lighthouse marketing, your content marketing, and not in your relationship marketing or your searchlight marketing is a massive mistake.
It does content marketing does not move the needle for high ticket coaches in the right way. Okay. So that's the first thing I want to say. And I always get don't don't get me wrong. I always get pushed back on this. But you know, but we need to build our visibility. We need to do this. You can generate leads, etc, etc. Yeah, absolutely right. Absolutely right. And if you have the time and bandwidth between
being busy coaching, which you should be, and doing the relationship marketing piece and then also the content marketing piece. Perfect. Find the perfect balance of that trilogy. That's, that's the goal. That's the goal. But if you are not spending an awful lot of time coaching because you don't have enough coaching clients,
then I don't want you to spend more time on the content marketing. I want you to spend more time on the relationship marketing.
Gill Moakes (08:41.374)
Okay.
One of the things I think people prioritize the content marketing is because it's so anonymous. You can just sit behind your laptop and happily play along in Canva and create tons of content and write really good stuff. Don't get me wrong, I see tons of great content out there on LinkedIn, all over the place, which I love. I love it. It's great. But...
Are you doing it because you actually have got into a great routine of batch creating your content, you're doing plenty of relationship marketing, and you've got a busy, almost full calendar of coaching clients. If your answer to that is yes, more power to you, perfect. That's where we all want to get to. But if the answer is...
No, I'm just really good at the content marketing and I really like doing it. And it makes me feel like I'm busy doing business development. Then we've got a problem because it's not the right focus for your time. It's the bit that needs to come in, in the background. Once everything else is working, once you know how to create more and more conversations and make more and more offers to help people.
So this kind of hiding behind this anonymous part, I think it's because for so many people, there's this feeling of, it's almost like the fear of selling starts right at the beginning, where you're first making contact with someone. And that's probably because we all get battered with these LinkedIn DMs that fly in as soon as you connect with someone, there's a LinkedIn, there's a DM.
Gill Moakes (10:38.942)
try not to sell you something or offer you something, you know, and this is where people just get this kind of relationship marketing piece all wrong. I don't need to say much about that. I think we all know it. I think we all know that there are, you know, best practices for building relationships on social media, for example, like LinkedIn. LinkedIn is a is a relationship platform. It's a networking platform. And it's such a great platform.
for developing friendships and for supporting each other's content and for finding collaborators and introducers of business. When it comes to actually finding clients on LinkedIn, it's a much longer game. It's a much longer game. And it's probably not where you start. So I want you to start thinking about...
How do you meet people in real life to have conversations with? So I'm going to tell you, I'll share with you now how I have conversations. Number one is this podcast is a great way to have more conversations with people because I have conversations all the time with people who would love to come on as a guest onto the podcast. I have conversations with people that I would love to be a guest on their podcast. I have conversations.
with people who reach out to me because they've heard something on the podcast that they've enjoyed. So creating original content is a great thing. Like I say, as long as you've got the team and the bandwidth to do it, it's a great conversation starter. But also, there are less time consuming ways where you can really get to the nuts and bolts of building relationships. So for example, in networking groups, there are
great ones and there are terrible ones. Find the great ones, put the effort in. Find a really good group that has the kind of people in it that you know are going to have contacts that could be great for you, that could be exactly in your sweet spot in terms of clients. You know, don't just join groups where you think your clients might be. That's not the point of it. The point is to build a network so that people
Gill Moakes (13:02.494)
think of you when they know of someone who needs what you do. It's much lighter touch than just keep going to the selling as your first option. Relationship building is long term, it takes time. It happens by being an enthusiastic and contributing member of a group. It doesn't happen by kind of sitting back and letting everyone else do the work.
It happens by inviting people to take the relationship to the next level by having a coffee over Zoom. It happens like that, absolutely. Yes, we're all busy, but do I still have coffee with people over Zoom? Yeah, definitely. It's quite isolating sitting and, you know, when you're working from home and your team is remote, you know, it's nice to have a conversation and coffee with someone.
And the thing is with these conversations, I think we all get a bit snobby actually about protecting our time and, you know, it's just not worth my time to have this conversation or that conversation. Do you know what? You don't know that. I think that's one of the most wonderful things about having a very, very open mind when it comes to relationship building and networking and being in groups and that kind of thing.
is if you keep a super open mind, you just don't know where the opportunities are going to come from. It can be really surprising. So that's one thing that I wanted to just talk about, you know, that reality of don't complicate growing your business, grow your business one conversation at a time. When you look at your calendar, I bet...
If you have been listening to all of the advice over the last couple of years about batch creating your content and having a content calendar and all of that kind of thing, I'm pretty sure you've probably got space for that on your calendar, right?
Gill Moakes (15:19.23)
Why not start blocking out time for consciously, intentionally developing relationships? Who is already in your network that you could reach out to and just have a conversation with? Not because you want to sell them a coaching package on that call, but because you're genuinely interested in
what they're doing, and you're hoping that they might be genuinely interested in what you're doing too, and you can have a good conversation. I think this is this lost art of really taking time to build relationships is something that is going to save businesses in as we move forward into 2024. I think it is becoming a lost art. I think a lot of people are paying lip service to it, and still not really doing it.
still preferring to be creating stuff in Canva and Reels and all of that other stuff that they just hope is somehow going to magically magnetize their perfect coaching clients to them.
It isn't. What is going to is a couple of things. It is absolutely establishing yourself as a thought leader and or recognized authority in what you do. I would like to think this podcast is my way of doing that. So absolutely. If you can create original content and you've got that bandwidth for it, definitely do it. But by far and above that is the relationship.
building with intention piece, block some time in your calendar for that. If it's either or, forget the content creation right now, go with the relationship building. It's what will move the needle for you, I promise you. We need to get over ourselves when it comes to reaching out and to have genuine conversations with people. We've got to get over ourselves.
Gill Moakes (17:28.926)
It's not annoying. People are perfectly able to say no if they don't have time for it. You know, stop feeling that, especially if you're in the UK, this is a British thing. We feel like we're bothering everyone. You know, we feel like we're being too pushy or we're, you know, kind of intruding by landing in someone's email inbox. I'd love it if we could all just get over that and focus on being.
really good at what we do so that it's worth people's while to have a conversation with us.
This is another thing that I see a lot is, and this is going to sound brutal. Okay. People are complaining that they aren't getting coaching clients. And I think there's one standout issue. They're not good enough. They haven't put enough effort into becoming a transformational coach who gets incredible results for her clients. They haven't.
put the time into coaching, possibly even for free at the beginning, to make sure that they're really good at what they do, that they are getting those transformational results, that they can turn clients into their ambassadors, sending them out and talking about them to other people. Right? Yes, it sounds brutal, but you have to, if you want to grow a thriving practice, a coaching practice, a consulting business,
You have to be excellent, outstandingly good at what you do. Because that is how you will grow by word of mouth and high ticket clients, they tend to come from word of mouth. It's the most important part is getting really good at what you do. And if you're not really good right now at what you do,
Gill Moakes (19:34.558)
And if you know that deep down, if you know there's a little room for improvement, get really good, do what it takes, do what it takes to get really good. Because it's so worth it. And once you are, once you are giving people the most transformational experience when they work with you, suddenly that need to morph into a digital marketer becomes way less relevant.
And then of course, the ironic thing is that once you are consistently getting up to those 10K months, providing an incredible experience consistently for clients that are perfect for you, right, then, then you are going to be able to leverage your time a little, you are going to introduce some high ticket group experiences, perhaps. If you'd listened to last week's podcast, when I was talking about the coaches offer pyramid,
Right, this is really relevant because once you are at that point, then absolutely you can start experimenting with your, you can start experimenting with your business model. You can start bringing in some more leveraged offers into your coaching pyramid, right? But the difference is that by then you'll have the money to pay someone else to be the marketer.
whether that's an assistant, whether it's a social media manager, whether it's whatever it is. Yes, you can absolutely build and grow your visibility, whatever platform you decide to choose, whether that's a blog or a podcast or a YouTube channel, whatever it is. Yes, absolutely invest in that as you get more and more successful. And then you're into scaling territory.
But at the beginning, when you're building your business, you are not a digital marketer. You're a coach. And what will grow your coaching practice is delivering incredible coaching experiences to clients who will talk about you to other people. And how you find those clients is having conversations, having conversations with potential collaborators, potential introducers of business.
Gill Moakes (21:55.582)
potential clients.
Gill Moakes (22:00.062)
Oh, on a scale of one to 10, I don't think that was too ranty. I really managed to tone that down a bit because it could have been a little bit more brutal. I'm hoping that you hear that message. I'm really hoping that that actually offers some relief for some of you who often, I think, you know, the whole digital marketing where you've got to be on all the different platforms, you've got to be putting out so much content, you know, we're being told now it's like, you got to post every day, I think.
Is it on X, the old Twitter platform, it's like you've got to be posting like seven times a day is optimal or something. I mean, it's just crazy. It's crazy. And it's not what you as the coach need to be doing. Right.
Okay, well, have a fantastic week everybody. And oh, that sounded so patronising. Don't know why I always get slightly awkward when I sign off lately. I don't know why. I sound really like patronising and have a nice week everybody. I'll work harder on that. I do apologize. Anyway, have a good one. And I'll see you the same time same place next week. Bye for now.
