When Being Authentic Can Backfire
Why some coaches need to balance the desire to be authentic with the desire to help more people… and how to do it
I had to get out.
Even though there was a time when I loved my corporate career, it eventually started feeling like lingchi - or “death by a thousand cuts.”
My work didn’t feel aligned with me or my values. And I was at the point in my life when I ached for all parts of my life to be authentically me.
And I knew that I wanted to work with people who valued and lived authentically, too.
That’s one of the reasons why I was so drawn to work in natural health and wellness, and especially with coaches. The vast majority of health and wellness coaches are caring people who strive to live in alignment with who they are.
This trait is also what can make marketing for many of them so difficult. And it’s why every once in a while, I have to have “the talk.”
“The talk” is when I explain why being 100% authentic in marketing can backfire.
At first, this idea can trigger a lot of resistance. The coach naturally feels like I’m asking them to go against their values.
I’m not suggesting they use sleazy “bait & switch” marketing. But the fact is, not everyone is ready to accept the truth, right off the bat.
If you’re a parent, or if you know one 😉, you know exactly what I mean.
The Sneaky “Mom & Dad Technique” That Brings You More Clients
Here’s a story from my life that I bet a lot of parents can relate to.
When my son was a toddler, I was always looking for ways to get more vegetables in him. One of the best ways was in pasta sauce – the perfect hiding place!
I could grind broccoli, kale, or spinach in the food processor and toss it in the sauce. He got what he wanted… his beloved pasta… and I got him eating the nutrient-rich vegetables I wanted him to eat.
Everyone was happy!
Is that sleazy? No. We both know that if you give a toddler a plate of broccoli, kale, or spinach, it could very well end up on the kitchen floor!
Every parent on the planet finds ways to get kids to do things they would otherwise resist.
That’s why caring parents often find ways to give kids what they need disguised behind something they want…
Give them what they want in a way that allows you to give them what they need.
And as a health or wellness coach, sometimes you have to use this “mom & dad technique” with your potential clients, too.
Keely’s story illustrates this perfectly.
Keely had been a nutritionist for 10 years when I met her. She was helping women who were emotional eaters and chronic dieters. But she struggled to get clients.
Before working with Keely, her clients were miserable. Their entire lives revolved around dieting.
And yet by the time they finished Keely’s program, they stopped emotional eating and loved their bodies, no matter what size they were.
Keely brings peace and joy to their lives, but her clients would never have believed her if she was up front with them from the start.
I helped Keely construct a cold-traffic funnel (meaning a funnel that’s designed to attract people who don’t know her).
The only way to have a successful cold-traffic funnel is with messaging that focuses on something the audience wants. So in Keely’s case, that was weight loss.
Now to be clear, we didn’t promise people would lose a certain amount of weight. We focused on why diets didn’t work for them and how to break the yo-yo dieting cycle.
Shortly after Keely launched her funnel, she said she signed a woman up to her ticket program on the spot. She asked her new client if there was something in particular in her webinar that resonated with her the most, the women said, “It was everything. It was like you were inside my head!”
That’s the power of the right messaging! And Keely went on to sign up 7 more clients.
Even though she was thrilled about her new clients, there was something bugging her.
She felt like her webinar wasn’t exactly true because she knew women wanted to lose weight, but that wasn’t what her program was about.
So she made some changes to her webinar to be more authentic to what she does.
And it bombed.
Keely thought it was her writing. So came to me for help reworking her webinar so it would be aligned with what she does and work.
That’s when we had “the talk.” And Keely confessed…
Keely’s Confession
Keely told me she showed her clients the first few slides of the new version of the webinar and asked if they would have watched it. Every single one of them said, “No way!”
So Keely put her original webinar back up, and she started booking calls again.
The problem with the 2nd version of the webinar was it offered people vegetables when what they really wanted was pasta!
That’s why it’s so important to know who you’re marketing to and where they are on the marketing journey…
… and to realize that at certain times, effective marketing may mean you have to hold back a bit.
If you’re marketing to people who don’t know you, your messaging must be about what they want, even if you know they need something else.
If you’re creating content for social media, you can talk about the things you want to talk about. But if you do that in a cold traffic funnel, you could end up spending thousands of dollars and still struggle to get clients.
What Do You Value Most?
At the end of the day, what’s more important to you?
If it’s to help more people, your marketing needs to align with your audience. Then when they’re ready to hear it, you can tell them there are vegetables hiding in the pasta sauce.
On A Personal Note…
I broke my streak.
I’ve posted an article every week since I launched this newsletter 6 months ago. But I missed last week. This article sat on my computer, 90% finished, but I couldn’t get it done in time.
Life got in the way.
I was consumed with time-sensitive decisions, trips back and forth to Home Depot and Lowes, and countless hours spent online searching for ideas and answers.
Why? Because the toilet in my upstairs bathroom had started leaking. Or so I thought.
Turns out it had been leaking for quite a while.
When the plumber pulled the toilet up to replace it, the tile underneath came up with it! That’s when we discovered the toilet had been leaking imperceptibly for months. Water had been seeping under the tiles and eventually loosened them.
I considered a bunch of options…
I could just fix the floor under the toilet…
I could replace the entire floor…
Or I could remodel the entire bathroom and make it bigger, which was part of my long term plan.
Since I’d been living in my house for 22 years and still hadn’t done the project, I figured this was the push I needed to get it done.
The problem was I only had about 5 weeks to design the bathroom, pick all the materials, and get the project finished because I was heading out on one of my “mini relocations.” And I needed the project finished so my house and kitty sitters had a working bathroom.
So last week, I was running around like crazy and couldn’t get the article finished in time.
But today I woke up in Quimper – a town in Brittany about 20 minutes from the Atlantic coastline.
And as I sit in a café across from the Saint-Corentin Cathedral, putting the final touches on it, I can’t help but think how lucky I am. I was able to leave the corporate world and create a business I love and gives me the kind of lifestyle I want to live.
And that’s what I help coaches like Keely do, too!
If you’d like to know more about the formula Keely used to get 8 new clients so quickly, you can read about it here: The Proven Health Coach Success Formula.
And if you want to make sure you get my latest articles as soon as they’re published, now’s a good time to become a subscriber to Be A Profitable Health Coach.
