Hey! It’s you and me again! I hope you’re doing GREAT! Before we get into our topic today, I HAVE TO first tell you about this beautiful experience I had. I went out last weekend, and on Friday, our prime minister announced that the next day, Saturday from 4pm, Oslo (which is where I currently live), would fully re-open. So for nearly 2 years bars and clubs have either been closed or required us to sit on tables without guests being allowed to go over to other tables. Now, last weekend the government decided that they would end all restrictions and there would be no more mask mandates, no keeping 1 meters apart – basically going back to pre-pandemic life. The city was PACKED with people. Every club or bar had 10s and hundreds of meters with lines outside them. When we got into one of the clubs, the vibe was insane. It wasn’t like there was any better music or anything like that. People were just so happy. Everyone was super polite, friendly, warm, welcoming and ouzed of excitement to finally be around other human beings again. At some stage in the middle of the dance floor, my eyes teared up, because it was just so beautiful to see how genuinely HAPPY people were to not have any restrictions on them any more. So yeah, I just wanted to share what felt like liberation day or a historic event with you.

Marketing Strategy for Coaches

Anyway, today I am here to help you understand why you’re not creating more content on a consistent basis, why it’s hard for you to “put yourself out there” AND how to start creating more content. Hint, it’s probably not what you think! 

So why is it important to create all of this marketing content – truly? It’s not just because everybody does it and you should just do it too. It’s MANY reasons. From a purely strategic standpoint, the more content you create, the larger your online footprint is – and you also stay top-of-mind for your people. It builds your authority in your domain and you get to test how your people respond to the concepts that you share. These concepts can eventually be further developed into courses down the line. By taking action and creating content, you become more familiar with what you’re truly passionate about and what will become your signature contribution in the online space. You don’t have to have a set tone of voice and set branding to start creating content – in fact, it’s often better if it evolves organically as an authentic expression of who you are becoming. 

So apart from marketing  strategy, sharing a lot of high value content is also helpful to your potential clients. Many people fear that if they share too much free content that they won’t have anything more to give to their clients in a paid offer. But look at your own content consumption patterns. You probably listen to one podcast episode after the other or spend hours scrolling on instagram WITHOUT IMPLEMENTING what you actually learn. The way I see consuming free content is that it’s an awareness practice. Your potential clients might become aware of something or learn something new on an intellectual level. But not in a really deep, integrated, embodied way where it’s second nature to them. That requires practice – and that’s what our paid offers are for. Our paid offers are where we take people deeper. Our clients get to really implement what they’re learning week after week. So we want to create lots and lots of great content so that we help our people the first step of the way for free and then, when they work with us, we help them apply it to THEM SPECIFICALLY. We want to help our potential clients as much as possible through our free offers, which is one of the reasons why we want to create lots of content. We show them that we know what we’re talking about and create a relationship with them through the value we share. 

Now we understand WHY we should create lots of high quality content. We’re living in a time where we have access to ALL the information we need in order to create great content. It sounds pretty straight forward, right? So then, why aren’t we doing it? I’ve heard just about any excuse, but most of them boil down into either of these 8 reasons: 

1. Lack of time
2. Lack of skills 
3. Lack of ideas
4. Comparison to others 
5. Overcomplicating things 
6. Fear of the response 
7. Fear of responsibility
8. Don’t feel like it

These are all points of resistance that you may experience towards marketing your service and that are preventing you from taking action. They all come back to mindset, or THE THOUGHTS that you have about TAKING ACTION, and some of them are based on TRAUMA TRIGGERS. It’s so easy to get frustrated at ourselves for “never being able to “stay consistent” and then bulldoze and shame our way into just getting on with it. But that’s not sustainable when the REASON you’re not posting is anchored in a subconscious trauma triggers or lifelong societal conditioning. 

For example the “comparison to others” or “fear of the response” (which refers to fear of judgement, rejection, ridicule, conflict and so on), are most likely from trauma triggers. We are afraid of a perceived consequence of putting ourselves out there. And our scared parts are working AGAINST putting ourselves “out there”. These parts are trying to have us not post in an attempt to try and keep hidden and safe. The inner critic might chime in to add some spice to that soup too! 

The good news are that at the deepest level, what we are ultimately afraid of, is the FEELING OF DISCOMFORT that putting ourselves out there brings. If we’re feeling “not good enough compared to others” or afraid that we will be judged by our close ones, we aren’t going to get PHYSICALLY HURT. The worst thing that will happen is that our body will experience the discomfort of having those emotions. So, if we are willing to feel those emotions in our body, we can start to build confidence and a sense of achievement. We teach our scared parts that we are, in fact, safe. You don’t have to go all in with your most controversial, mind altering concepts right away, but practice getting bolder and bolder. A feeling in our body is as bad as it will get. Putting yourself out there requires courage, but taking courageous actions leads to confidence, my friend! And emotional bravery is a muscle that needs to get exercised if you want to succeed in building your business. As with everything, the more we practice, the easier it gets. 

How to start marketing your business consistently 

So what is the antidote to these perceived obstacles that I’ve mentioned? I’ll go through each of these one by one and invite you to answer questions for yourself as well. Remember, that’s the fastest way to get results and develop your brain. Do the introspection and come up with the best answers for YOU specifically. Okay, so here we go:

1. Lack of time

Instead of saying “I don’t have time”, try saying, “I’m not prioritizing this right now” See how many times you don’t prioritize working on your marketing when you actually had time for it – but CHOSE to do something else. Everything in life is a prioritization and as the saying goes, if there’s a will there’s a way. If you had a sick child, you would make time for that child and seek help if you were stuck. Also, go to your settings on your phone and see how many hours you’ve spent on social media – or see how many hours you spend watching Netflix. See how many times you prioritize tidying your home over marketing your business. Obviously there are seasons in life where we have less time, but for the most part, it’s actually an excuse for something we resist doing. Your marketing doesn’t have to be fancy or something you spend hours doing. Simply document something relevant that you’re learning or doing can do wonders. Share your thoughts on a topic within your field of expertise – it doesn’t have to take long. 

2. Lack of skills

This often refers to skills either within your own field of expertise OR to marketing and selling your expertise. You spend most of your time consuming content or courses and little to no time doing the things that will actually attract clients to come and work with you. You’re also not taking what you learn about marketing and selling your offers into action because you’re constantly telling yourself that you have to learn this one thing here or that one thing over there before you put yourself out there. This is nothing less than a form of procrastination as a result of insecurity of your own abilities with your current expertise. While perfectionism and learnoholism (as I like to call it) most likely is due to some sort of emotional trauma, we have the power to change our thoughts to something more empowering. We get to exercise thoughts like: “No one will ever get to the finish line of learning and because I am further along than many people, I can help them RIGHT NOW.  

3. Lack of ideas

This falls into the category of freeze or flight in the fight-flight-freeze response. If we’re a coach within a certain topic – whether it be mindset, holistic health or whatever else, we tend to be pretty nerdy about it. It’s OUR JAM and we spend most of our spare time pouring ourselves into it. If you’re being totally honest with yourself, you know that you have a truckload to talk about within your field of expertise. Just remember back to a time when you were having a conversation with a friend who is also interested in self development, coaching, spirituality, psychology, health – or whatever your thing is. My educated guess is that you could not stop talking FOR HOURS and you went home all pumped up and energized about the conversation. You DO have ideas. You do have LOTS of things to talk about. You just get freaked out about the idea of sharing it online because you’re afraid of the consequences. Your scared internal parts make you go into a freeze pattern where you feel like your brain doesn’t work and that you have nothing good to come with. You could also drop into flight, which shows up as procrastination; doing ANYTHING but market your business. This “lack of ideas”-mindset can also come from a perfectionist mindset, where you are afraid that what you share won’t be good enough or that people won’t care. But here too, we get to choose to assume that “people who follow me are just as interested in this as me and they’re curious about what I share. My followers are MY PEOPLE, MY CROWD, and if they don’t like what I say, they are welcome to unfollow me”. 

4. Comparison of others 

“Compare despair” or “Comparisonaites”, as some people call it, is such a common one! It’s closely tied to imposter syndrome and builds on a belief that we are LESS THAN someone. It’s easy to also invite the good old perfectionism into this mix as well – thinking that if we aren’t as good as them, what’s the point anyway… who would want to work with us when this other person is so amazing and offers something similar – right?! It’s another way of thinking “I’m not good enough”. If you find yourself comparing yourself to others a lot, I would highly recommend you unfollow them – just for a while at least. Following them and comparing yourself to them has not proven to give you great results, so let’s change that up! Also, we get to practice thoughts like “I’m not here to compare myself to others. I’m here to share what I’m passionate about and to help people my way, through MY voice, through utilizing my unique background, personality and energy”. 

5. Overcomplicating things

Sooo many people fall into this trap when it comes to marketing! Most coaches don’t have a background in digital marketing and get so overwhelmed by all the things they think they need to learn in order to succeed with attracting and signing clients online. They spend hours and hours browsing the web for the best courses on instagram or facebook strategies, ad funnels and all the technical stuff. STOP IT! You do not need this! As a person who has worked in a digital marketing agency and helped companies grow online for about a decade – I’m here to tell you that I’m not even using that in my own business. It’s not necessary. You can build a business by simply sharing your knowledge and creating offers that sell. I teach my clients how to do this, and they are so relieved that they don’t have to do all the complicated technical stuff. YOU DON’T EITHER! So overcomplicating funnels, and all of that, is one thing, but most people tend to overcomplicate EVERYTHING. If you want to make a video, you want to have the perfect light, the perfect sound, the perfect angle, the perfect editing and effects in your video. You want beautiful transitions and maybe a nice finishing touch with some suitable music in the background – which you’ll spend 3 hours finding by browsing on royalty free music pages. I SEE YOU! I’ve been there too! But this is NOT what will get you clients!!! When I wrote my master thesis, I discovered through my research that people follow you for your relatability, authenticity and the value of the content that you share. Not for any of that other fluffy add-on stuff. People want their problems solved, not a pretty video or a technically advanced funnel. You could literally make a video as you wake up and still sit in bed with poor lighting and average sound and say something that changes someone’s life completely – so much so that they reach out to work with you. The moral of this story is that you always want to ask yourself, how can I do this in an EASIER WAY? How can I do this in a way that feels simpler and more FUN for ME? Everyone’s different, and something that’s hard for others, might be your jam. But always aske yourself – how can I do this in an easier way? Because if you over-complicate, you will just end up procrastinating – and even if you did film a video, it’ll just be sitting on your phone, unedited, not helping anyone and stressing you out because you’re “should’ing” and shaming yourself over it. Simple wins the race. Simple changes lives. 

6. Fear of the response 

This is huge. And this has so much to do with trauma response. We procrastinate with creating and sharing content because we are afraid of being judged, ridiculed or rejected. We are afraid of the consequence of sharing the content and putting ourselves out there. The freeze coping mechanism kicks in and we blank out when we try to create or something. Or we flight – by procrastinating. I encourage you to sit with this. What are you afraid of? When you find an answer, ask yourself “why is that so bad” as many times as possible – all the way to the core of your fear. Once you have discovered that root fear, play out the worst case scenario. What you’ll find is that it won’t be as big and threatening as you’ve made it out to be. With fear of the response, it can be helpful to practice thoughts like “I am safe and the only thing I’m really risking is to feel emotional discomfort. I am willing to feel emotional discomfort in exchange for building my dream life and business”. 

7. Fear of responsibility

Fear of responsibility most often comes from lack of confidence. You’re not confident – or fear that you’ll make a mistake, that you’ll disappoint people, that you’ll fail. You’re afraid of pressure – of putting more weight on yourself, which you’re not confident that you’ll be able to handle. You’re probably afraid of some sort of conflict arising as a consequence of taking a certain action. Some part of you might really want to sign a client, but another part of you is afraid of the responsibility that comes with it. Therefore those scared inner parts “self-sabotage” you and have you feel yuck by the thought of marketing your business and selling your offers. If you haven’t yet listened to my previous podcast episode on self sabotage, do yourself a favor and listen to it straight after this episode. Good thoughts to practice if you’re afraid of responsibility can be “It’s safe to make mistakes – every human on earth makes mistakes”, “If I don’t follow my passions and share my knowledge for fear of failing, I fail up front. I fail 100% of the times I don’t try” and “If I don’t dare to take on the responsibility of signing a client for fear of disappointing them, I disappoint myself and I’ll never get better. If they are not happy with my services, I could always refund them”. 

8. Don’t feel like it

When we “just don’t feel like it, it’s often because we don’t recognize the importance of our work. We just think “meh, it doesn’t really matter if I share this content or not – people don’t reeeeaaaally care. I mean, they can find this information elsewhere anyway. Nobody really cares if *I* post or not, they’re too busy in their own lives to care whether or not I share today – or this week – or this month…” Does this sound familiar? Yeeeep, been there too! We don’t have a strong sense of “why” we do what we do. We don’t see the importance and feel the urge to take action RIGHT NOW. Simon Sinek wrote the amazing book “start with WHY”, and it has so many great points. However, we can end up using this concept against ourselves. If we don’t have a big, roaring, earth shattering WHY for what we do in our business, we can feel that we don’t have what it takes to build it. This huge WHY can often seem too grand, too vague and hard to relate to. So, I invite you to bring it closer to home – AND to fall in love with THE PROCESS, not the outcome. Why is it important that you create and share this content?

Your WHY is in Your Process

When I lived in Japan and worked as a full time artist – painting oil paintings, it wasn’t that I wanted to revolutionize art. It wasn’t that I wanted to make millions of dollars. It wasn’t that I wanted to become the world’s most famous painter in modern times. It wasn’t that I had discovered some magical unicorn fairy dust transformational art therapy that i JUST HAD TO share with the world.

NO! What got me up at 4:30 in the morning on some days and staying up painting until 3am other nights, was my thoughts about my art. Inspiration came FLOWING through me as I focused on what MY artistic expression was. How I could make art MY OWN WAY and in a way that would positively impact the people that observed my art. The inspiration came so hard and fast and I felt that I just needed to capture it and get it into the canvas as soon as possible.

In a short amount of time, I was selected as one of 5 international artists to show my art in a large exhibition with 700 guests. When I went back to Australia, I had a solo exhibition and got the press to come and cover the opening night. And I created all of that for myself because of my devotion to my paintings and creating art on a consistent basis. 

But my art hasn’t been the only time that I’ve been in flow pretty much every day. I’ve created it in my other businesses as well. The common denominator for not being in “meh, this doesn’t matter”, but rather being in massive, inspired action day after day, month after month, was my thoughts about what I was creating. When I have thoughts like “this work is so important”, “most people don’t know about this and that it’s possible for them too, so I HAVE to get it out here”, or “I have so much to share around this” or “I want to help my people even if they never end up paying me” – I get a fire in my gut. There are many more thoughts where these came from, but I just wanted to give you an indication of what they can look like. They don’t have to be massive “I’ve got the cure for cancer”-type of thoughts. They can be a lot more grounded and centered around YOUR specific sphere of people and area of passion. 

That being said, you’ve heard me list out suggestions of what you can think for each of those 8 common excuses. BUT hearing me list out some thoughts without feeling the feelings that accompany them is like reading a 2D cartoon magazine vs watching a full on 3D movie with those special glasses to really step into the movie. You’ve got to find the thoughts that sparks YOUR fire in YOUR belly.  If you want help with this, send me a DM on instagram. I’m serious, let me know if you want assistance!

You Don’t Feel Like Marketing Because of Underlying Triggers & Conditioning

So, as you see, you can either focus on why sharing content is important to YOU or you can focus on why this is important for YOUR PEOPLE. What changes that will make in THEIR world.

As you’ll hear me talk about time and time again is that there are ALWAYS VALID REASONS why you are not eagerly throwing yourself out there and sharing all the things that excited you. Your social conditioning or emotional trauma triggers are mostly what is holding you back. You are NOT lazy or useless for not consistently posting. You are a human being with VALID REASONS. But as I said earlier, we get to reclaim our power by practicing more empowering thoughts, by practicing courage and building up self trust. We get to realign ourselves with our why – with the importance and joy of doing what we do. The more we do this, the more we grow our business and the more people we help. AND, you don’t have to do this alone. If you consider working with a coach, I can’t say how much of a difference it makes in our lives and businesses. Even when we’re coaches ourselves, we still have human brains. We still have a subconscious mind where we can’t see our own patterns because we’re too close to ourselves. We still get the best results when we have accountability and another skilled brain to help direct us back into alignment with our goals week after week. We still grow faster when we partner with an objective third party who is willing to tell us the things nobody else will, and who helps us evaluate how WE work the best. We still move faster when we hire someone whose job it is to do everything within their power and expertise for US TO SUCCEED. That’s how we create results. By setting ourselves up for the success we want and aligning our thoughts, feeligs and actions with our desired outcome – week after week. 

Alright, my friend. That’s all I’ve got for you today. Looking forward to talking to you next week!