Can Cheese Transform Your Coaching Business?

These lessons from the Roquefort Revolution will help you stand out in the sea of factory-style marketing

Sarah was fed up.

She wanted help creating a webinar funnel to bring new clients into her high-ticket coaching program. But all the webinars she'd been seeing lately looked practically the same.

Even worse, she said she now sees more webinars in her niche (joint pain) than ever before.

There are a lot of health coaches dealing with this same problem. And we have AI to blame.

Why AI Makes It Harder For Coaches To Succeed

There are a lot of programs out there that claim to help coaches build marketing systems that will get them more clients. And many of them now use AI as part of the process.

But here’s something you need to know.

AI is better for building a “guru’s” business than it is for building your own.

AI gives a program guru an easy way to scale their business fast and rake in more profits. Many of them use AI to help coaches create marketing funnels. Some of them even deliver “done-for-you” marketing assets made with AI.

This factory-style approach allows the guru to scale. They can now pump 100s of coaches through their program every month without the overhead of hiring experts.

What does the coach get for their $12,000 to $20,000+ investment?

A cookie-cutter webinar and other marketing assets that look practically the same as every other coach in the program.

And this isn’t lost on the audience, their potential clients. They see all the other coaches’ programs, too, because of the way algorithms work.

Once a person clicks on an ad, the algorithm will immediately send them other ads about the same topic. That’s what happened to Sarah.

She clicked on another coach’s ad, and now she’s constantly seeing ads for the same type of program.

“They look practically identical. People even comment on the ads that they’ve already seen 4 other webinars that look the same.”

Since AI simply regurgitates what’s already out there, the market is becoming saturated with low-quality, look-alike marketing assets that make it practically impossible for a coach to stand out.

What does a smart consumer do in this situation? They shop around and look for the cheapest option.

It’s hard enough for health coaches to get clients. And now with thousands of coaches going through these programs, they are quickly becoming a commodity.

So how can you give your health coaching dreams a fighting chance?

For that, we need to look at cheese.

Roquefort cheese, to be exact.

The Roquefort Cheese Revolution

Roquefort cheese has been around for over 1,000 years. And for many of those years, the artisans who produced the cheese were caught in a battle.

They were constantly fighting the makers of copy-cat cheeses that claimed to be Roquefort. The market was often flooded with Roquefort imitations.

How did they know they were imitations? Because real Roquefort cheese is made in a unique way.

It’s made exclusively from the milk of Lacaune sheep – a breed that originated in southern France. These sheep are well-suited for grazing on wild herbs and grasses that grow in the rocky landscape of the region. That’s what gives the milk its unique flavor.

Then to make the cheese, the sheep’s milk is aged in the limestone caves of Mont Combalou. These caves have a unique microclimate with a cool temperature and high humidity. Plus, a gentle breeze is channeled through the caves by a natural ventilation system made of small tunnels.

This unique microclimate creates the ideal conditions for the Penicillium Roqueforti mold to grow. Penicillium Roqueforti is the specific strain of mold that gives Roquefort cheese its blue veins and distinct flavor.

Then the cheese goes through a special production process. The cheese wheels are carefully pierced so oxygen can reach the mold spores and create the blue veins. Then the cheese sits uncovered in the caves for 14 days.

Finally, the cheese wheels are wrapped and moved to a colder cave to complete the aging process.

This artisanal process is what makes the taste of real Roquefort cheese so unique and sought after. And as far back as the 1400s, people were trying to cash in on it by making Roquefort fakes.

These fakes were stealing customers from the real producers. But that’s not all. They were also devaluing the authentic product.

In 1411, Charles VI of France stepped in and granted the village of Roquefort-sur-Soulzon a monopoly on the cheese. But that didn’t stop the problem. The fakes continued, damaging the real producers.

Finally in 1925, the French government granted Roquefort cheese legal recognition. It was the first product to be given an official “designation of origin” because of where and how it’s produced.

It was a revolutionary idea that eventually became the AOC system (Appellation d’Origine Contrôlée).

The AOC system was officially established in 1935 as a way to protect unique products like Roquefort cheese. It thwarted counterfeits. And it stopped AOC products from being devalued because they couldn’t be factory-produced.

It’s not an easy process to get AOC designation. Producers have to make their case through an extensive application process. But it’s worth it.

There are 63 AOC cheeses in France. And it’s expanded to include other products, such as wine, olive oil, and even meat and poultry.

The Secret Ingredient Behind France’s AOC Products

As you can see, the only way to make authentic Roquefort cheese is to use milk from special sheep, who graze in a special area. You also need a special cave with a special microclimate where a special type of mold grows. And then you have to use a special production process to make the cheese.

All of this “specialness” is what the French call “terroir.” It’s the secret ingredient behind the finest products in France.

Terroir encompasses a unique combination of factors that influence the characteristics of a product. The factors are geography, soil composition, climate, and the human influence involved in producing the product.

Terroir basically means the product embodies the essence of a particular place. There’s a story behind each product that can’t be commoditized or replicated elsewhere.

Terroir makes a product unique. And with AOC designation, the product standards are protected. This makes the product more valuable. And consumers are willing to pay more for these authentic products instead of mass-produced products that come out of a factory.

Just as terroir reflects the unique qualities of a particular place, your marketing should reflect your unique qualities as a health coach.

How To Bring Terroir Into Your Marketing

As a health coach, you have your own "terroir". It’s made up of your experiences, personality, philosophy, and your approach to health coaching. When your marketing reflects this, you stand out.

When it’s done the right way, your marketing will make you the obvious best choice for your dream clients.

There’s no way you can get that with AI or factory-style marketing programs. Like the Roquefort fakes, what you get out of those programs lacks the uniqueness that will make you stand out and attract more clients.

Your marketing assets need to showcase your uniqueness … your personal “terroir.” And there are 2 key marketing assets that give you the perfect platform to do this.

First is a new client lead funnel

When I create this type of funnel for a client, the first thing we do is to identify what makes them unique as a health coach. And it’s almost always something different than what they think. Here’s why.

You have to approach this from a marketing perspective. So this isn’t about your personal style. It’s about your philosophy and how you help people get results, even if nothing else has worked.

This is your marketing terroir. And the coaches I work with are almost always surprised by what we come up with!

Then once we have their unique marketing terroir, I hand-craft a webinar that tells people about it in an exciting way. This makes them eager to take the next step with the coach.

The second asset that will showcase your terroir is your website. Plus, your website is also where you can add more of your personal style.

But you still need to capture the same uniqueness you would put in a webinar. Because if you want your website to bring you new client leads, it needs to accomplish the same thing.

It needs to show people how you get them results, even if nothing else has worked.

The Stakes Have Never Been Higher

Your story, your personality, and your philosophy are your unique terroir. They’re what will make you stand out from other coaches. But if you use a factory-style program that creates cookie-cutter assets with Al, your uniqueness will be lost.

With so many coaches bringing their businesses online, it’s more important than ever that you have a way to stand out.

Here’s what you can do about it.

First, take the time to discover what will make you unique as a health coach. This article shows you how to do it.

Then either learn how to create your own webinar and website, or work with a skilled professional who will customize them for you.

When your marketing assets are done well, they make you the obvious best choice for your dream clients.

I’ll be starting a workshop series in 2025 that will help you do all of this. The best way to find out about them is to become a subscriber.

How to Use AI The Smart Way

I didn’t want to end this article with you thinking I’m 100% anti-AI because I’m not. I use AI myself for many things.

The best way I use AI is as a research assistant. I use it to help me research scientific studies for the sales promotions I write. It also helps me to come up with ideas and to spark more creativity!

But I DON’T use AI to write for me because it can’t write as well as I can.

Every time a client asks me to review copy they’ve written, I can always tell if it was written by AI. And it’s almost always harder to rework it than it is to start from scratch.

And What About Sarah?

I started this post telling you about Sarah. We started working together a month ago with 2 goals:

1. Update her webinar funnel so it does a better job reflecting her expertise and positioning her as the obvious best choice for her clients

2. Get more clients into her high-ticket coaching program

Since Sarah has an email list, the first thing I did was to create a year-end campaign. That resulted in 3 new clients. Off to a good start!

My next step is to create her new webinar funnel. Her webinar will be customized and full of Sarah’s “personal terroir.” We’ll have that done and launched in January.

I’m very excited about this project and can’t wait to see the end result!

If you’re done with the factory-style approach… and if you’re ready for marketing that’s authentically you … subscribe the Health Coach Marketing Insights for weekly guidance on how to make it happen.