"Game of shadows" - Two common mistakes for new online coaches and creatives
When we were younger, I was put through homeschool for a bit.
My father was my teacher, headmaster and tutor. He put me through a blend of his own ‘syllabus’ and the stuff we got sent from New Zealand correspondence school
It was fairly brutal at the time. He was a strict teacher.
But there were two really cool things that came out of it.
First, we were finished ‘class’ by 12pm each day.
We started at 8am, and in four hours, we’re done with everything. In the afternoon we could go do other stuff.
Second, when we got back to normal school (we were living on a boat at the time), I was way ahead of the curriculum.
Not because I was particularly bright.
But because the schedule we had created had ‘removed’ so much dead time - going to and from classes, ‘morning tea time’, travel to school, et cetera.
I ended up being able to ‘coast’ for a year or two, and still get great marks.
I realised that the school system (even back then), had a bunch of inefficiencies in it.
To be frank, it was downright slow, because of these ‘shadows’, or faults people don’t see.
And so it is with online businesses.
A lot of people want an online business today.
They want to be able to stay in their lair, and work on their terms, with the people they like.
And so there’s a lot of people doin’ it. Teachin’ it. Spruikin’ it. And so on.
But it isn’t always easy.
Over the years, there are two big traps I’ve seen people fall into (and fallen into myself) which can add years to the journey, and generally slow things down.
But first we can see there are generally two categories of people who want to launch their business ‘online’
(I’ve used the term ‘coaches’ here, but it could be anyone)
The two categories of coaches:
While we risk getting a little too simplistic here, there are two big categories when it comes to starting out as an online service business.
And it all comes down to audience and reputation.
The first category is “known and new.” These people are already known online. They have personal brand, an engaged audience, but are new to the business side. The second category is “unknown and new.” They aren’t known (or at least aren’t known in their new area), and have no existing trust. Then they are trying to launch a new business from this context.
Let’s break each one down, and see the major mistakes (and, how you might be able to fix them)
Category one: “Known and new”
You have an existing, engaged audience, that knows you in a similar industry that you want to work in.
Example:
One of the clients we work with was a well known CrossFit athlete and coach.
She had a thriving audience on instagram (i.e. rabid ‘fans’ that hang off her every word).
So when she launches her own nutrition program, she has no problems getting leads.
In her words, “getting leads is never a problem”
Another way to think of this, is that she has great personal brand.
If you have a thriving personal brand, then you have an entirely different situation when you start an online business.
Common mistake or problem:
If this is you, the main problem you might face (depending on the size of your horde of fans), is systems, financial acumen and attention, and coming up with a clear offer that people want.
Example:
A friend of mine is an athlete.
He has over a million followers on instagram. It should be easy to monetise this right? Well, he put out a line of t-shirts, and the things barely sold. I think he sold thirty of them. He’s also tried to run workshops, and had to run ads in order to get a dozen or so people. I was blown away when I heard this.
But basically what happened (and often happens) is that he put out something that people couldn’t get behind. They followed him for his sporting entertainment, but didn’t have a huge emotional investment in his world. So his shirts were kind of meaningless.
Getting the attention and even the leads is not the problem here.
The problem is the story and the offer need to be compelling, (and sometimes, the back-end systems need to be boosted.)
Solution:
If you’ve got a huge bank of raging fans, or at least a big audience base, the first step is to make sure they’re engaged, and that you know what they’re interested in. Test ideas with content. Listen when you’re in conversations. Look at your comments on social media or emails, and see what’s firing people up.
What do people want, and what are they struggling with as they try to get there?
This is at the root of a compelling offer.
Once you see what’s resonating, then share the story of your offer, as you put it together and release it to the world.
Example:
Let’s say you’re an online yoga teacher, with a big following, because you’ve shown up over the years, and connected with people. You are experimenting with different content, thinking about your offer. You see something that lights people up. This is a thread. You talk about it more. You do a podcast on it. You write some more emails about it. Then you think about it, and you realise there’s a way you can teach this to people at a deeper level. Now you have a direction for your offer. You’re solving a problem that’s front of mind for people, and connecting with something they have shown that they want. This is called “reading between the lines” and is only something you can do when you’re connected with your market. This makes it pretty easy to share the offer, and direct people to a landing page or your site.
If you have an existing brand, and engaged audience, you’re off to a great start.
You may be able to go straight to a group program or scalable offering, as the demand may be there already.
You just need something that resonates.
Create a simple offer, then make sure your systems are in place to handle it.
Category Two: “New and unknown”
You have a new business, with a non-existent, small, or unengaged audience
Often we think with access to so many people, online should be easy to launch and scale.
However, this isn’t always the case.
If you’re new to the online space, and you don’t have a lot of connections, you’re in a unique situation.
It’s worth looking at the ‘scope’ of the task ahead:
Common mistake or problem:
The big mistake I see over and over again, is expecting to see results just from posting to social media, when you have much less trust in the online space than you think.
i.e. Just because you ‘go online’ doesn’t mean people will ‘buy from you online.’
This mistake tends to come about because people focus a lot of their own attention on instagram, and they see other people ‘supposedly’ making money there.
It’s easy to think “hmm.. I could do this. I just need a good bio, some posts, and I can sell my wares.”
Not quite.
Many of the truly successful people you see online have been creating content, and shipping out helpful resources and value for five, ten, or twenty years. Without an existing audience, it takes much, much more effort than many think to create a trusted online profile, and viable online business.
But it can be done. Read on.
Example:
You might be a personal trainer that wants to go online, or a mindset coach, or a life coach that is starting up.
You have a way to help people, a lot of passion, but really no audience that knows you, likes you and trusts you.
I know, this is a bit of a hard truth.
But it’s super common. In fact, this is most of the people who want to start an online business.
And the most challenging of this subgroup - if you are entering a new market where you don’t have trust.
i.e.
Let’s say you’ve left corporate to become a health coach.
But you only have a handful of people who follow you on social media, or no email list. And you rarely publish content or engage.
There’s no real brand.
And no real online personality…
And now you want to kick off this buisness.
Problem:
As you can imagine, the big problem here is no matter what you ‘launch’ online, hardly anyone is going to see it. And the few that do may not want it right now, or may not trust you yet.
The single, biggest, hottest problem, is that there is no awareness, even for your great program.
So, you now have to do the work to build this awareness.
Solution:
There’s two sides to this, depending on how quickly you need the revenue…
If you need the cash pronto, then without a big audience, you’re forced into direct sales (conversation based selling) at the start (or ads - but good luck with no audience and low trust online).
This can help you build revenue and a track record (social proof).
But then on the other side, you want to be building brand, audience and online awareness.
Because this will help you long term.
You need both.
Example
One coach we work with teaches women how to build strength through online programming.
When she started out a few years back, she had only a few hundred followers on social media. She rarely used the platforms. What happened was, she launched the offer, but only a few people bought in.
So, she started to build awareness - she collaborated with people on podcasts, ran a ton of workshops and events. (Sometimes with only a few people showing up), got people onto her podcast, was a guest speaker at events… She worked hard to create a much bigger online “position” for herself through radical content production, outreach and connection.
[I need to reiterate… This takes consistent work, and often a ‘behaviour change’ - as in, it’s not something everyone is going to comfortable with straight away. There’s a learning curve.]
Anyway, now when she shares her offer, she gets much more engagement because there are more people engaged in her audience.
She had more trust, and more personal brand, so now had more buyers.
Now, there is a little nuance that can be a part of this solution.
And that is using the “offline” side to build your online.
People don’t often talk about this…
But typically, most people who have a bigger online ‘personal brand’ are also aggressively connecting with people, or are active with people offline too.
(As I sometimes say, there are very few “purely online” businesses. There’s typically an offline story somewhere, somehow)
All of that is just to say - if you don’t have any online brand or trust, you may well benefit from creating offline events, connecting with people offline, and then tiring that back into your online world.
Something to think about.
Example:
When I first started to sell an online coaching program, I had no instagram.
No emails.
No podcast.
I just knew people in the community, and committed to meeting other new people.
So I went head first into direct sales. I would have conversation after conversation. Meeting new people wherever I could. The result was that in a very short space of time, I sold around $40k worth of coaching. It was a great start, that helped propel me forward.
Then alongside this, I started to write the emails, articles and podcasts.
And slowly use a bit more social media. Then I kept connecting it all together as the story became clearer.
If you have no real audience, you can’t stay isolated, or only do the odd ‘post’ and hope that it works. You need to do both direct sales (for early revenue) and work on building the audience, by connecting with others, running events, or producing content.
Conclusion
There are two big mistakes we see over and over again with new online businesses.
One for existing personal brands, and one for brand-spanky noobies.
For thriving personal brands, the mistake is tone-deaf offers, not sharing a compelling story, or not having the systems in place to support the thing that you sell.
This happens, but it’s not the main issue we see today.
The second mistake, for the new coaches and creative business owners, is over-reliance on posting on social media, even though their trust is fairly low (because they are new).
Or rather, a general overestimation of the ‘market value’ that they have as a professional.
And so, the solutions are different…
For the former - it’s about listening, and creating a compelling story, then paying attention to your finances and systems on the back end, so you can create a business you’re proud of.
For the latter - embrace direct sales early on to build revenue, and aggressively work to build your online awareness at the same time. Go without the former and you’ll have very little revenue to start. Go without the latter and you’ll always be chasing sales, with no brand building over time.
There can be a lot of obstacles when you’re starting out in business, especially online. But once you ‘shine a light’ on these shadows, you can work on overcoming most of them, and build a business you’re proud of.