When Mindset Becomes A Scapegoat
There could be another reason why you’re not achieving success
Yes, mindset is magic. It can make the difference between struggling endlessly and finally achieving your goals.
But if you’ve been led to believe your mindset is blocking you from success in your business, you might want to take another look. I know this firsthand.
If you’ve been following me for a while, you know that I worked on the team of a very expensive coaching program. Our clients — all health and wellness professionals — joined the program to get help building their online businesses.
One of the weekly calls on the schedule was with an amazing mindset coach. They often had 20+ people on their calls. In fact, their calls had the highest attendance of any on the calendar.
Think about that for a moment.
This was a business development program. Every week there were calls to help people write their webinars, create Facebook ads, conduct sales calls, write nurture emails, and develop their strategies.
And yet, the call that got the highest attendance every week was a mindset call. So I decided to pop in one day to check it out.
Oh boy. I certainly wasn’t expecting what I Zoomed into.
So many people on the call were overwhelmed and distraught. Some of them broke down in tears.
Keep in mind these were smart, successful professionals — functional medicine doctors, naturopaths, physical therapists, nutritionists, and health coaches. And they were going to pieces.
I could feel their excruciating frustration.
They had invested tens of thousands of dollars, plus months of their time, doing everything they were told to do. They followed the frameworks, tweaked their funnels, and poured money into Meta. But they weren’t getting results.
Many were at their wit’s end (and sometimes their financial end, too).
The common theme I heard was, “I know I need to market myself, but I hate it. I don’t WANT to be a marketer. I just want to help people.”
Some would compare themselves to others they’d see online — people with a fraction of their expertise filling their programs with clients.
So naturally, they’d start questioning themselves.
It was hard to witness.
So what was the problem? Why were others making it work but they couldn’t?
That’s what we’re going to talk about today. And while there are a number of possible reasons (and yes, mindset could be among them), I’m going to tell you about the ones I saw most often.
I actually talked about this at length on my YouTube channel. If you’d rather watch it, you can find it here.
The Real Reason Skilled Practitioners Stay Stuck
Whenever the clients expressed frustration, they were told to “trust the process.” And in some cases, that was good advice. Like if someone made some tweaks to their landing page and were worried because they didn’t see immediate results.
But that advice often gave people what I thought was false hope.
There were times I’d be working with a client and think, “What the heck is this person doing here?” I knew they didn’t have what they needed to succeed. And the program wasn’t designed to fill those gaps.
The guru’s “formula” was great for certain people, but not everyone. Unfortunately, once they were in the program, they couldn’t get out of it. (No refunds.)
So they were offered a mindset call. Of course, the underlying implication was that their lack of success was somehow their fault.
But in many cases, the problem was the formula itself.
If you’re given a strategy designed for someone in a different situation, it might not work for you. And all the mindset help in the world won’t change that!
It doesn’t mean the strategy you’re following is wrong. I’ve seen a lot of different ones work. But they work under very specific conditions.
Think of it this way. It’s unrealistic to hand someone a recipe to create a five-course Michelin star dinner when they’ve never cooked a meal before.
The recipe itself isn’t bad — it’s just completely wrong for the person it was handed to.
Keep in mind that when you’re reading a sales page or you’re on a call with someone who’s trying to sell you a program, the goal is “conversions.” In other words, they want to convert you from being a prospect to becoming a client.
So they may not be doing as good a job as they should helping you decide if the program is a good fit for you.
The Top 3 Reasons You’re Not Getting Clients (even though you’re clearly good at what you do)
Now let’s dig into a few specific things that I saw based on the work I’ve done with over 1,000 health and wellness professionals. These are 3 of the top reasons their marketing didn’t help them get the client flow they were hoping for.
1. They were trying to sell something the market doesn’t want
You may have picked a problem you’re genuinely brilliant at solving. But if there aren’t enough people actively searching for help with that specific problem — or if there are already dozens of coaches saying the same thing about it — your marketing is going to feel like pushing a boulder uphill no matter how good your funnel is.
If the offer hasn’t been validated against real market demand, you’re guessing. And guessing is expensive.
2. They sound like everyone else
When I was reviewing clients’ webinars, sales pages, and ads during those seven years, so many of them were interchangeable. They made the same promises, used the same language, and had the same general approach. That wasn’t their fault — they were simply following the templates they’d been given.
But templates make everyone sound the same. And when you sound the same as everyone else, there’s no reason for someone to choose you. I actually heard from some of the clients that people got on their calls and told them they’d seen practically the same training from other coaches. (The conclusion here is they were price shopping.)
If you can’t show people why your approach is genuinely different, they’ll either pick the cheapest option or pick no one at all.
3. They tried to close people who didn’t trust them yet
Health and wellness is different from other markets. The people you’re trying to reach have usually tried things that didn’t work. They’ve been disappointed and are skeptical. And they’re seeing a lot of “experts” trying to sell them something.
Building trust requires the right approach, and it requires time. Most marketing strategies are built for speed — see an ad, watch a webinar, book a call, and close the sale. That works fine in some industries. But in health and wellness, people need more. They need to see that you understand their problem at a deeper level than anyone else. They need to trust you before they’ll invest.
If your strategy doesn’t account for that, you’ll keep hearing “I need to think about it” — when the real issue is your marketing never gave them a reason to choose you.
This Is Not About You
Those three things are strategic problems — an unvalidated offer, weak positioning that makes you blend in, and not building trust before asking for the sale. None of them are about the professional.
So instead of blaming yourself for your marketing not working, look at whether the formula you’ve been handed is addressing those issues. Because the right formula for someone else can be the wrong one for you.
The three problems I just described are exactly what The Trust-Based Marketing Method™ is designed to solve.
If you’d like to know more about the method, my mini-book walks you through it all. Find out more here.