Transcript
00:00:05 Joanna Lindenbaum
I’m Joanna Lindenbaum, a coach, ritualist, and all-around transformation nerd who is obsessed with helping clients go deep to create more change and results with their clients.
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I created the Coaching Revolution Podcast to share with you coaching skills, tips, and advice, as well as a deeper understanding of human behavior and of yourself.
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so that you can do even better client work and group work, grow your business organically, and know that you’re making a real difference in the world.
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This is about creating a revolution in the transformational industry so that more practitioners feel amazing about what they do, and so that more of our clients experience life-changing shifts.
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Let’s get started.
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Welcome back to the Coaching Revolution Podcast.
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So I’m going to start with this.
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For the most part,
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I love marketing and sales.
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I love sharing about my work.
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I love sharing about how folks can step into my work and how it can make a big difference in their lives.
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I love using my marketing to inspire others and to share my values and to share ideas I believe can help change the world.
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I really see marketing when it’s done well
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As a way of not only growing your business, but also as a way of adding value to those who read and hear the marketing, and over the years…
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We’ve had quite a number of people write into us on our info line in response to various marketing emails that I’ve sent or in response to various preview workshops to tell me that when whatever I wrote about yielded a breakthrough for them or helped them normalize and feel better about an obstacle or the marketing inspired them or gave them a great new idea.
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And it just delights me to know that I was able to do all of this while marketing, while also sharing about my work and what I’m offering.
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And knowing that my marketing isn’t just helping me make a living, but that it’s also in and of itself making positive impact in the world,
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It’s really inspired me to be more visible and to stretch myself when it comes to showing up more.
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All that being said, I will also tell you that it wasn’t always this way.
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I haven’t always felt this way about marketing, and I haven’t always approached marketing in this way.
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And in fact,
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I used to be terrified of marketing and of sales.
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And if I’m being honest, I actually used to be repelled by marketing and I wanted to have nothing to do with it.
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Because of that, I used to hide myself.
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I wouldn’t really directly share about my offerings
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or I’d maybe e-mail about my offerings once a month or every other month.
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In short, I used to avoid marketing pretty much at all costs.
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Okay, so you might be wondering what changed.
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How is it that I’ve done a full 180 on this?
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And if you’re part of my newsletter community, that indeed I have done a 180 on this because I e-mail and I mark it a couple of times a week.
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A couple of times a week, I’m sending emails with content and tips and wisdom, but also sharing about my offerings and very openly and very boldly inviting readers to step into the work with me.
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what changed is my confidence and my confidence in two very specific things.
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So the first thing or place where my confidence
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shifted that allows me to really market and love marketing is that I now have so much confidence in the quality of the work that I offer and in the power and in the impact of the work.
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When that your work is effective, when that your offerings are truly helping to yield your clients’ results and to co-create deep and real transformation for your clients, then it becomes easier to market because you believe in yourself and you believe in your work and you believe in your offerings and you want people to know about it.
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And this is why I am such a huge, huge advocate of learning world-class skills, like the ones that we learn in sacred depths.
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This is why I’ve devoted so much of my career to teaching practitioners how to go deeper with clients and how to become more effective.
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I’ve got so much to say on that.
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And if you’ve been listening to this podcast for a while, you’ve heard me talk about it before, but we’re not going to really focus on
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on the quality and the power of the work to help you market more today.
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Instead, in today’s podcast episode, I actually want to focus on the second thing that changed my confidence and my perspective around marketing.
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And that is the confidence that the marketing and sales techniques and strategies that I’m using are ethical,
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and heart-based and authentic and also not sleazy.
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So for years, I wasn’t able to truly get behind doing marketing and I wasn’t able to also market really well because I hadn’t found a way of marketing and selling
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that felt right to me, that felt aligned to me, that felt in integrity.
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And that’s because when I first became a coach and when I first started my business, I didn’t really see examples of other coaches and entrepreneurs marketing and selling in ways that were aligned with my values.
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Instead,
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I saw a lot of pushiness.
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I saw a lot of manipulation inside of marketing.
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I saw a lot of marketing that was fear-based and that shamed.
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And…
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I didn’t know that there was another way to do it.
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I didn’t know that there were other options out there for marketing because all I saw were these ways that felt really icky to me.
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I thought this is the only way to do it.
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This is the only way to market and grow my business.
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And because of that, I kind of silently decided that I didn’t want to have anything to do with marketing, that I wasn’t going to do it.
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And so
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I basically kept myself invisible and I didn’t mark it for a while.
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And of course that didn’t work for me either.
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It took me a few years.
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of being willing to do things differently and go outside the box and what I was observing in the industry.
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It took me a few years of really paving my own way when it came to marketing, a way that really spoke to my values.
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But I did it.
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I was able to figure it out.
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And that gave me the inspiration and the motivation and the confidence to start
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putting myself out there in big ways.
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I feel so, strongly about the need for ethical marketing and sales strategies in the coaching industry.
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And if you have traveled with me through Sacred Depths or Advanced Depth or really any of my trainings,
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that we talk a lot about ethical marketing and sales inside of the trainings.
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And my guess is that if you’re listening to this podcast episode, you feel the same way that I do.
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You’d rather not market at all if it means that you have to do something that compromises your ethics and your values.
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And if you do feel this way, I really want to applaud you because not everybody feels this way.
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And I really believe that we need more coaches and entrepreneurs like you.
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We need entrepreneurs who are going to market.
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We need to market, but who do it ethically and do it in a way where we’re really bringing value to the world through our
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marketing.
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And I am here to tell you that there absolutely are ways to market very effectively that are also completely ethical and in integrity.
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And I teach these strategies every day in, like I said, in my training programs and particularly in the Sacred Depths transformational practitioner training.
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It’s so, important.
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And I want to share with you today three practices out of many, but three to start off with that I want you to consider because these are effective ethical marketing practices that I think are going to help you
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not only create stronger marketing, but be willing to do more marketing and to be more seen because that you’re being ethical.
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So here we go.
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Here’s the first practice or tip.
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Ditch fear-based and shame-based marketing.
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ditch fear-based and shame-based marketing.
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So any good marketer will tell you that a big part of effective marketing is painting a picture of what’s not going so well for your prospect.
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And the philosophy behind this
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is that you need to really make your audience aware of what’s not working for them.
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You really need to make your audience aware of the ways that they’re not where they want to be or how it feels to not be where they want to be.
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And in marketing talk, some of you might know this,
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this idea of painting a picture of what’s not going well for your prospect.
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It’s called activating the gap, right?
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They’ve got a gap, something that’s not going well, something they don’t want.
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And in your marketing, you want to activate it.
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Now, I agree.
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with the general philosophy here.
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I have really seen over the years that it is important to activate your prospects gap and that when you accurately describe how a potential client might be feeling about their current situation, it can be really effective in helping them see that they really are ready.
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for change and that they need some help in creating that change.
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When you activate the gap, it can also help your prospect know that you know them, you understand them, you understand their issues.
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you understand where they’re at.
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Almost like, and people have said this to me many times over the years, it’s like I’ve gotten inside of their head and I’m writing the exact same thing that they are thinking and feeling inside of themselves.
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So I do agree, activating the gap is important.
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But, and here’s where the ethical piece comes in.
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There is an important line
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between activating the gap in ways that are honoring of your prospects, that are honoring of who they are and what their resources are and what their opportunities and possibilities are, versus activating the gap in ways that are shaming, in ways that are fear inducing,
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in ways that have your prospects feel that they’re in dire circumstances and the only way out is with your help immediately.
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And I think we’ve all been exposed to this kind of fear-inducing, shaming kind of marketing
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where you read it and the marketer is activating the gap, but they’re doing it in a way where you just end up feeling terrible about yourself, where you just end up feeling really desperate and dire.
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We don’t want to do that.
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Instead, in your marketing, when you activate the gap, remember to do it in ways
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that empower your prospects versus disempower your prospects.
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Remember to do it in ways that are going to normalize their obstacles and their blocks and their situation so that they don’t end up judging themselves and so that instead you help them to know how valuable they are.
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and what resources they do have, even with the difficulties of their current situation.
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These differences are so key in having your marketing make a positive impact on your prospects, whether they end up stepping into your work or not.
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As it so happens, when you activate the gap in these kinds of empowering ways that I’m talking about, it really does also help your marketing, right?
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Because it helps the reader or whoever is connecting with the marketing feel like, oh, she sees me, she sees my problems, but she also sees my strengths.
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and my ability, right?
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And we want those types of clients coming into our offerings.
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Okay, here’s a second effective and ethical marketing practice that I think is so, important that we need to talk more of in the industry.
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Don’t create false urgency.
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So I’m actually a big fan of creating a little bit of urgency in your marketing.
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So if you’ve been following me for a while, you know that I love early bird rates.
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As an example, I’ll say that, you know, I have a certain offering and there is an early bird rate until a certain date.
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I’m putting a little bit of
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of a timeline on it, putting a little bit of urgency in there.
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I love offering early bird rates or special bonuses, et cetera.
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It’s part of my generosity.
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Generosity is one of my top values inside of my business and just for who I am as a human.
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Creating urgency is when you put a timeline on a price
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of an offering or you add a special perk that has a time date to it.
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And I firmly believe that people are more likely to invest in themselves when there’s some kind of special deal or offer.
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It can help folks stop dragging their heels and make a decision to move forward.
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versus staying in resistance when it’s just like you can sign up at this price at any time, et cetera, et cetera.
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But all that being said, I am also a fan of not triggering people’s nervous systems in order to make a sale.
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Because when you do that, it’s not great for your prospect’s well-being.
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And it also takes your prospect out of their highest wisdom to make a purchase decision that is right and aligned for them.
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This is what false urgency is.
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It’s when someone tells you that you need to make a decision about buying right then and there, like that moment in order to get the deal and the deal is never going to be there ever again.
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When we do that, it triggers nervous systems.
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It is, it might get you more sales, but it gets you sales from a place of fear and not from a place of making aligned decisions.
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It can actually really upset people.
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So I want you to think about the timelines
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that you put on your pricing and your perks?
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Are you giving people enough time and space to make a decision from a grounded, regulated place?
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So you can put a timeline on it.
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Like I said, I’m a fan of a little bit of urgency, but I’m never going to make the early bird
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you only must buy it right now or you’ll never get this price, right?
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It’s usually gonna be more time.
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So are you giving people enough time and space to make a decision about buying from a grounded, regulated place?
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That is the ethical question to ask.
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And that’s the question that I always ask myself when I am strategizing outpricing and marketing so that I can land on a timeline that really works for me and really works for my prospects’ nervous systems.
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Okay, I’ll share one more really important practice
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today that can help you be more effective and ethical in your marketing.
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And that is to share realistic marketing promises.
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So this one, of course, is simple and obvious.
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share realistic marketing promises, don’t share lies about what your program can do.
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But I still think it needs to be mentioned because there are way too many marketing promises out there in the transformational industry right now that are unrealistic.
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And when you make unrealistic marketing promises,
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they are nearly impossible to see through.
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And what I mean by that is you’re making then a sale under false premises.
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And when you make a sale under false premises, when your marketing promises aren’t realistic, you’re setting up both your client and yourself
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for failure and or frustration.
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It definitely is a skill and it takes a little time to articulate your marketing promises and the possible results of working with you in a way that’s inspiring and realistic and true.
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But here’s the thing, when you’re able to do this, the clients who are meant to work with you will be even more likely to step in with you.
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And that’s because you’ll have gained their trust.
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You’ll have shown them that you’re not inflating marketing promises.
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They will see that you are so good at what you do that
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your expectations of what they’re going to accomplish are realistic.
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They’re based on experience and real results that you’re able to co-create.
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And I may have shared this on the podcast before, I can’t remember, but
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Whenever I am speaking to someone who’s interested in working with me, whether it’s one-on-one work or stepping into sacred depths or whatever it is, I will often share with the prospect, I will often at some point in the conversation say to them,
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If you’re looking for the coach or the mentor who is going to help you get to the moon and back in a day, I’m not your gal.
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Because what we’re going to work on together, it’s not overnight change.
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It takes real work and real showing up and real commitment.
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And
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I will be there for you every step of the way.
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And every now and again, it’s going to be two steps forward, one step back.
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Hopefully not much of the time, but sometimes it just is going to be like that.
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It’s messy progress sometimes, right?
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But I promise I will show up for you.
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I will be there for you.
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We will get you to your goals step by step by step.
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And
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I’ll tell you, when I say this to people, it doesn’t have them run for the hills.
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It doesn’t have them say, oh my gosh, Joanna doesn’t know what she’s doing because she’s not making these over-the-top marketing promises.
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Instead, it actually
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magnetizes the people who are meant to work with me even more.
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It’s like they take a deep exhale.
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They’re like, finally someone who’s not just feeding me, you know, something that’s not real, something that’s not true.
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And then they end up trusting me more.
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And then, as I said earlier, they come into the work
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with realistic expectations and timelines, and we’re on the same page and so much more is able to happen inside of our containers.
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They’re able to create so much more because of all of this.
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Okay, so as a review for today,
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The 3 effective and ethical marketing practices that we looked at were number one, ditch the fear-based and shame-based marketing when you activate the gap.
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Number 2, create some urgency, but in ethical ways, don’t create false urgency.
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And #3, share realistic marketing promises.
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I could share and teach for days on end about effective and ethical marketing and sales practices.
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There are so many of them that we learn.
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and master inside of sacred depths.
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And I hope that this little toe dip into these strategies today were helpful for you and that maybe they are even showing you that you can market in ways that really align with your values.
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And I hope that today’s episode is maybe even getting you excited to market about, to market your work.
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Let me know what resonates from today.
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And as a reminder, the next cohort of Sacred Depths is starting soon at the end of September.
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There is still time to step in.
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The Sacred Depths Transformational Practitioner Certification is the place to be if you are looking for a home of like-minded individuals who are committed to going deep.
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in your client and group work, who are committed to really co-creating long-lasting change with clients, and who are committed to doing this and doing your business in ethical ways.
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I am always here, as is my team, to answer any questions that you might have about Sacred Depths.
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Please just touch base
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write in, let us know.
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We’re happy to hop on the phone about it.
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And as always, if you loved this podcast episode, please take a moment to give it five stars wherever you’re listening to leave a review.
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And of course, please, share this episode with anybody that you know that would really love it and receive value from it.
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your sharing and leaving reviews are what allows me to get this work out to the people who are meant to receive it.
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Thank you as always for your time and I’ll see you next time.
