How to Sign Consistent Coaching Clients in 4 Steps

Hey, hey, welcome back to the Thriving Therapreneur Podcast. I'm your host Carly Hill, and today's episode is something I have been genuinely sitting with for a while because I think it is one of the most important conversations that we can have as entrepreneurs right now in today's crazy market with all of the shiny object syndromes and the coaching industry just continuing to boom. So this episode is for you if you're a visionary, and I know you're a visionary because you're listening to this podcast. That is That is me. Go us. And as a visionary, you see what other people don't see yet. You think in possibilities. You're always 3 moves ahead. And this is one of your greater gifts. But today I wanna also talk about what happens if that visionary brain is in the shadow side, because it can actually become a liability for you instead of an asset. And most successful people that I know, the ones that are quietly building wealth when everyone else is spinning and getting stuck in that shiny object syndrome, they are doing something different. And what they're doing that is different might actually surprise you. They're going back to the basics. That's it. And that's what this episode is going to be about. So let's just dive right in. And I want to ask you a question. How many times in the last 90 days have you heard a marketer online tell you some strategy is dead? It's old news. It doesn't work anymore. Their new blueprint is the only thing that is working in the market right now, and you need to buy it right away. And then how many times did you stop what you were doing, go down that rabbit hole, consume their free content, funnel hack it, maybe even buy their course, and then find yourself more confused? More scattered, further away from your goals than when you started, especially if you bought courses from multiple different people and you're trying to follow all of their strategies. So this is one of the most expensive traps in entrepreneurship, the shiny object syndrome. And I have watched it time and time again, quietly destroy momentum of incredibly talented, intelligent, driven people. Including people who should know better, that they shouldn't go down this shiny object syndrome rabbit hole, but they do. So here is what most people are not talking about. 99% is 99% for a reason. If you wanna be in the 1%, which I know you do, you don't need another strategy. Don't get caught in the shiny object syndrome. You need to stay in your freaking lane. You need to go back to what the 1% has never stopped doing. Being a visionary is a real gift. I know this from personal experience because I am one. My mind is always observing, innovating, seeing patterns, identifying gaps, creating frameworks. Like, I am compelled almost 24/7 to create something new, to think differently, to look around the corner at what's coming before anyone else sees it, even when I'm half asleep. My visionary brain is going. And in business, this is one of the most powerful assets that you can have. But that shadow side of the visionary brain, it is absolutely an escape hatch. When you're doing things that are uncomfortable, the repetitive work, the business fundamentals, it starts to feel boring. It's kind of unsexy. It will feel boring. The visionary brain is going to try to escape and convince you that you need something new, a new offer, a new platform, a new strategy. This is dead. You need a new mentor. You need a new direction. And suddenly you're 3 pivots deep. Nothing has traction. You're wondering why your business isn't growing when you're working this hard, especially when this new and improved way was supposed to work because all the other ways were dead. No, the visionary's job is to look ahead, but you also need to know when to pump the brakes, look around, and ask yourself, am I running towards something real, or am I just running into a distraction? Am I running away from the fundamentals? Am I running away from the true work that I know I need to be doing? The 1% are visionaries too, But the difference between the 99% and the 1% is that the 1% has learned to channel the visionary energy into their zone of genius while staying anchored in the fundamentals. The fundamentals have always worked. The difference is they didn't go down the rabbit hole and the shiny object syndrome. They stayed in their lane. They stayed in the lane of fundamentals. Let me describe what the shiny object syndrome actually looks like in practice, because I think we hear it and it is kind of like a buzzword these days because it is very popular. And it doesn't just mean buying a bunch of courses, like that can be part of it, but it is so much more subtle than that. It looks like possibly even switching your niche, like this is early shiny object syndrome because you saw somebody else's niche performing better on Instagram. It looks like abandoning your email list or not doing as much email marketing because somebody told you that email marketing is dead, which it's not. It will never be dead. Okay. It looks like dropping some sort of strategy that was just starting to build momentum because you didn't see results fast enough and you were a little impatient and you wanted that instant gratification. A new mentor convinced you their method was the only one working right now. So this is how the trap is set. And these marketers are very smart. They know how to trigger your fear of missing out. The FOMO is real. They're speaking your language. They're a visionary and innovator and thought leader themselves. And they're going to tell you that old way is dead. Their new blueprint is the answer. And because you're the high achiever who is always looking for an edge, you lean in. But every time you say yes to something new, you're also saying no to something else, which could be the fundamentals. And every pivot could cost you something— time, money, momentum, compounding power of the consistency of the fundamentals. So I'm not telling you to not innovate and do new things, because we absolutely have to stay up with the times and the market absolutely changes. But I want you to recognize, and I want you to ask yourself a question: is this an opportunity or is this a distraction? Because those two things can look identical from the outside, and it can be very tricky. But the difference is whether you're aligned with where you're actually going, or is this new thing just exciting because your current path got hard? And you didn't want to do the boring, basic, unsexy, repetitive, fundamental things? That's the real question that you have to start asking yourself every single time. Let's talk about what the 1% actually looks like. The 1% isn't some secret club with a secret strategy that nobody else has access to. No, the 1% are just doing things that every single person listening to this podcast already knows that they should be doing. They're just not doing them. They're not doing them consistently. They're not doing them without distraction. They're not doing them with conviction. They're abandoning ship when it gets hard. What are the fundamentals, Carly? You keep talking about fundamentals. Like, what does that actually mean? Well, one, a clear niche. Okay, you have to have powerful messaging. No broad, no clever. It needs to be specific. It needs to be a person with a persistent, painful, urgent problem. They need to know that you can solve their problem and trust you. Like, you are speaking their language. You bugged their house. You read their diary. The 1% never stops refining this. I still do market research. Market research will never end because I want my messaging to be that clear every single day. I'm not chasing a new audience. I have gone down that path of wanting to chase a new audience. But I had to have the hard conversation with myself. And then I go back to my therapist and I go deeper with you. The second thing is a simple, proven offer. Power of one. You've heard me talk about this a lot. Your offer suite should not be comparable to a Chinese menu or the Cheesecake Factory. You don't need 15 offers. You don't need a new program every quarter. You need 1 or 2 offers with depth, margin, clear transformation. Sometimes the magic is in the subtraction, not the addition. Somebody told me that years ago, and I have run my business by it ever since because I do want to create new stuff all the time, but the magic is in the subtraction, not the addition. The third thing is consistent visibility. 1%, we show the eff up. Not perfectly. Nobody likes a perfect person, not on every platform all of the time. Maybe we're repurposing, but we show up consistently in the right places. We double down on the right places. We understand that trust is built through repetition. And if you're not saying it enough, you're, you're, if you're not repeating yourself, you're not saying it enough. That's the bottom line. Nobody's going to remember what you posted last week. You absolutely have to repeat yourself and show up consistently. Not perfectly. Also, you need to have a sales process that actually works. You don't need to have a million complicated funnels. What you do need to have is conversations. What you do need to do is extend invitations. What you do need to have is relationships. And I'm going to talk about that deeper in a second. You absolutely have to follow up because fortune is in the follow-up. The 1%, they're not embarrassed to sell. They don't have visibility wounds. They understand that selling is service and they do it relentlessly over and over and over again with their simple proven offer, with their crystal clear niche and messaging. That's it, y'all. That's what the 1% are doing. They have clear messaging. They're solving a persistent, painful problem for a specific person with one simple proven offer. They show up consistently and they make invitations. They have conversations and they close deals. It is because they have relationships that they have curated. Truly deeply, I believe relationships is one of the single most undervalued assets in your business. Relationships can't be hacked. They can't be automated. There's no algorithm to a relationship. There's no funnel or AI tool or a new platform. Relationships just compound. It is like interest. It is like equity, relationship equity. The longer you invest in the relationships that you are curating and building, the more that they're going to grow. And the people who build big businesses, sustainable businesses, joyful businesses that they love, they figured out that relationships are important and they curate them. They literally reach out to past clients just because they care and they genuinely wanna know what's up. They have multiple touchpoints with their current clients. They have relationships with affiliates. They do brand deals to co-create. Clients stay in touch after they leave your program because you have curated that relationship. Referral partners are gonna send you leads because you showed up for them first. Peers in your industry who you collaborate with, who are possibly competition or indirect competition, they will cross-promote with you. Collaboration happens at the top. Competition happens at the bottom. Who you open doors for will open doors for you that you could never open alone. Relationships are everything to the 1%. Mentors who you invest in, who give you access to rooms that will absolutely change the trajectory of everything. The rooms that I have continuously paid for have absolutely changed my business. I will pay for my friends. I will pay for proximity. I will pay to be in these rooms because these are the best friends that I have ever had. I love these relationships. These are my soul sisters. I have had opportunities come to me that move the needle more than any single marketing strategy ever has because of a relationship that I have invested in, not because of a DM, not because of an ad, just because of a human being who trusted me enough to open a door. So I know I'm really nailing this in, but I need you to understand that relationships are the context of everything else we talked about today. The shiny objects, the new blueprints, the new platforms, the new strategies— those are all trying to take a shortcut to the relationship. The relationship is what is most important. They're promising you fast cash without the messy patient human work of actually connecting with people. It's not that hard, y'all. We just have to connect with people. But that fast cash that actually lasts, the clients who stay and reinvest in you and ascend and upgrade, the business that compounds year over year, that is built on relationships. Yes, you have to get new clients, but you also have to keep your existing ones. So yes, have your funnels. I have funnels. I love funnels. Yes, have your ads. I have ads. I love ads. I love automations, but never, and I mean never, do I let that system replace the human connection. Your systems can go down. Your ads can stop performing. Your algorithm reach can tank overnight. I had a colleague who said she got sick with cancer, and because she had to stop all of these ads and funnels and systems in her business, her business continued to run because she wasn't showing up, but she had built relationships. Relationships never stopped performing. She leaned on those. It is gold. Nobody can take that from you. I wanna close with something as we're wrapping up that I also feel really strongly about, especially in this season of everyone having a hot take and follow my way, and this is my new method and everything else is dead. And then you don't know who the hell to listen to. Just be a leader, guys. Do not be a follower. This means stop outsourcing your discernment to every bro marketer with a big follower and a bold claim. Develop your own point of view on your own niche, on your own industry, in your own business. Lead from that thought leadership visionary place. You're a therapist, you have training, you have expertise, you have insight that most coaches don't have. You understand human behavior at a depth that gives you an edge in this industry. That is your unfair advantage. Your clinical brain is not a liability. It is the foundation of your thought leadership, and I want you to stand in it. Do not water it down. Don't try to sound like everyone else. Don't lose the very thing that makes you magnetic. The coaches who are building real authority, lasting authority, the ones who trust themselves, those are the ones that not everybody agrees with. They take a stance, they take a position, they teach from their own heart and own framework and own language and their own lens. They're not following, they're not copycatting, they're here writing their own path. Choose your own path. The 99% follows, 1% leads. You are a visionary and I need you to act like one. And I hope this served as a friendly reminder The noise online is very intentional. It is loud. It is real. It is designed to make you feel behind, make you feel like what you're doing isn't working, make you feel like the solution is always something new, something external, something you haven't tried yet, and that you need more information. But I just need you to stay committed, committed to your messaging, committed to your vision, committed to your mission, committed to showing up consistently. Commit it to building real relationships and commit it to your own thought leadership. That's the fundamentals. It's not trendy, but it is the real work. And the real work always works. And it won't steer you wrong. And it is what the 1% is doing. And it is now what you know to do over and over and over again. So if this episode stirred something in you, if you felt called out, fired up, you really needed to hear this message, I want to hear from you. Please tell me, DM me on Instagram, share the episode to a friend, share it on social media. And if you're also sitting here and you're like, okay, maybe I need help going back to the fundamentals, Carly Hill, I'm totally guilty of being sucked into the shiny object syndrome, then Reach out to me, reach out to my team. We are absolutely here to help you. We are in your corner. I will help you cut through the noise. I will help you go back to the, the 1%, the fundamentals, the needle-moving, money-making, revenue-generating activities in your business that are going to make you money today, this week, this month. Links are always in the show notes. As always, my love is with you. I'll see you in the next episode.