Why Winging It Is Killing Your Coaching Business (Build Your Signature System Instead)

So what I wanted to go over today, signature systems, just an idea. You don't have to call it your signature system. To me, it's kind of hokey. But the underlying premise here is that you have a procedure, a protocol, if you will, that you believe and then test will lead to the positive outcomes that you're looking for with your specific clients. This allows you to actually improve client, approve and measure client results and also allows you just distinguish yourself in a very crowded marketplace. As you guys, I think, are implicitly aware, your success is correlative to the results with clients that you're able to get. Obviously, your system is not going to be a guarantee that the outcomes will 100% manifest themselves, but it does allow you to improve consistency across outcomes across clients. So I don't want you guys to take this idea so too far. But for play, just for the sake of play, you're only as successful as your last client. So don't take that to an extreme, but just be aware that your client's ability to achieve success is correlated to yours. What we also are able to do with a signature system is to start to understand and create an experience that people can step into. Also, obviously, as I mentioned, will allow you to achieve more consistent, improved results across the board. Why is that? For one thing, checklist manifesto style. Having a checklist that you're running people through, turns out, is pretty useful. Having a system that you've defined implies that you can then refine it as you have people go through it and you get some feedback. It also allows you to create stability within sessions and in between sessions. So rather than becoming unsure about a certain direction to go with a particular client, this allows you to sidestep that issue and stay out of the zone of winging it, which sometimes can be creatively awesome and sometimes super not. This allows you at least have a choice of the path that you're going to take. Are you going to follow the prescribed? Or maybe you get an intuition that you should go a different direction, but at least you have something you're sort of pivoting away from. Also just allows you to make sure that you don't miss critical parts of the thing that you're working on. So, for example, if you're working on weight loss for clients, perhaps it just escapes your brain that you never talk to this person in front of you about protein, because you do this a lot. And so sometimes we forget who we've talked to about what. This allows you to kind of be aware of and not miss things that are going to lead to their success. So what we're going to cover today, what's a signature system? What it's not benefits of having one which we've already started talking about how to create. So again, the document that I put in the chat, not this week thing, but like think in these terms thing and then obviously questions at the end. So just show of hands. Does anybody have a current system that they run everybody that they work with through? Okay, cool. No worries. Many people just sort of rely on a pure coaching approach where, you know, you open the session up to the client, go all the directions the client wants to go and you're really not providing any sort of structure layered in. Other people have sort of a mix, they're relatively free flow, but they're running through basic procedure on some level. And some people have one that's super mapped out. So I think there's a lot of reasons why a person might want to have a system. As I mentioned, helps you not forget important pieces. When you're interacting with a fair number of people, it can be easy to forget that you haven't talked to so and so about such and such. This is going to directly impact their ability to be successful. It also allows you to have a reference point that you can superimpose upon wherever a client is at. So you can be rather flexible with it. Even having a system. Obviously also what we track improves if we don't have a system. It's difficult to track and therefore improve. So a really great example, Marie Kondo's link that I put in the chat is just an example. So she's not really just offering non specific advice. She has a very specific step by step approach that allows her to build confidence. Interesting point. In terms of books, books are actually a really not suggesting that anyone needs to write a book, but just thinking this through. Books are actually a really interesting way for people to define their signature system because they don't have the luxury of sitting down with somebody and coaching them through a problem. And they have to understand the problem at such a high level that they can reasonably anticipate what will work and whatever obstacles a person would commonly kind of interact with trying to solve the problem. The system is something that allows you to define a point A, where a person will start in your system and then a point B and that's their desired outcome. Also has the clear steps that allow you to kind of interact with and overcome the obstacles. And what I think is actually the most important part of this and if there is something I want you to take away this week from this. It's based on a person's, the authors or yours in your guys case philosophy. So this is in other words, my encouragement to have an opinion, have a point of view on the issue that you're trying to combat. For Marie Kondo, she doesn't just say organize for this, organize this room, then this room, this room. What she's really helping you organize around is this principle of sparking joy. And that's how you determine what you keep and what you don't keep. So in other words, her point of view or her philosophy is that this joy principle is the most important thing to organize around if you're trying to solve a clutter issue. Got a little ahead of myself there. But again, clear philosophy. She's got specific rules. So she'll have. She doesn't say go in all of your rooms independently and gather your clothes. What she would like you to do is bring all of your clothes to one location, dump them and then sort. She also has a sequence through which she runs you. So she starts you with clothes, which she says is the easiest. You might have a different point of view, but she ends with sentimental items because these are typically the hardest to get rid of. So signature systems actually are not just the program that you're running a person through. They can be a methodology that you can break into, offers, books, programs, retreats. So they're very high level in terms of, especially in terms of your philosophy. Again, Marie Kondo is the joy principle. They allow and encourage us having these to have a strong point of view, which I know can be very challenging for us as human beings. However, it also is what allows you to get somebody to say yes or a no. If we can't get somebody to a yes or no, we probably haven't taken a strong enough point of view for them to know if they want to do something in terms of moving forward. So it is on some level our obligation to have enough of a point of view that somebody can figure out is this for me or is it not for me? Another thing that it is is something that you've created. So in other words, you're obviously, you can't just take the heroic protocol and say that that's your protocol. You want to be able to iterate on other ideas that you've consumed, digested and metabolized. Some of the things that make having a system, it doesn't have to be super involved, but having a system that you're working with allows you to differentiate yourself which once you Guys are doing a certain amount of marketing, you're going to want to be able to pull people in and repel people rather quickly, rather than just being in a position where you're putting out content where nothing happens. That's pretty much where we don't want to be. We want to either be pulling in and repelling, pulling in and repelling. And the only way we can really do that is through differentiation, as I mentioned, helps you get more reliable outcomes. You can incorporate what you think in terms of your system, which is a representation of your point of view on how a problem should be solved, into your marketing. It also allows clients to relax, and I think this is probably for me, the most important piece. When a person feels and knows that there's a plan that they're following with steps that a person on the other side of the exchange has determined are the easiest and most straightforward ways for them to achieve such and such thing, they're allowed to relax a little bit more, which is pretty much the reason they hired you in the first place. They needed to have that level and infusion of confidence. It's very difficult to give somebody that without a system. Also scalability. This is what allows you to work with more people more quickly, more efficiently. In terms of differentiating yourself, what you're really looking for is not a different problem to solve, but a problem to solve differently. It's a huge opportunity to really flex your creative muscle in such a way that you're able to define a unique and novel approach that is exciting for somebody to consider. For me, this is one of the, you know, things that I really love most about doing this is the ability to do all that digesting of complexity in order to iterate and come up with something that actually can move somebody more quickly towards the desired outcome. It also allows you to, well, it allows your clients or potential clients rather, the opportunity to decide if they like your approach. So if you don't have an approach outlined, it can be very difficult for somebody sitting on the other side of the conversation to determine if that's something they like. For me, it's almost like an ethical imperative to have some of this mapped out so that you can provide that point of contact intellectually for a person that you're interested in working with. It also becomes part of your brand. So for me, you can probably notice that I'm not Alex Hormozi and I don't approach it in such a way. Right. So for you guys, this becomes part of the brand that you represent. Creating those reliable outcomes for clients, obviously super important for you. Having predictability in client results can make a huge difference in your experience in running this thing. There's already a lot of uncertainty in this process from your guys. From our perspective, having that predictability for us is a huge advantage because it also allows us to relax into doing what we do best. I guess I was really concerned when I wrote this about people forgetting steps because I think this is the third time it's come up, but helps you not skip steps, allows you to measure progress. Also, interestingly, when clients start to experience issues, you can identify what might be going on versus might be going on with them based on your signature system. So what comes up a lot is you start to notice people skipping steps and then having issues so you have something to bring somebody back to, which again allows them to reinvest in the process to understand the value of doing such and such thing. It allows you to intervene much more adeptly than if you don't have a system and you're kind of just shooting an arrow in the dark. Obviously, opportunities to refine as well once we start tracking what's going on, how people are responding. This everything that you include in your signature system then becomes stuff that you can create marketing pieces around. So if you've ever sat down to do content creation and came up with some blanks, this can really help. You can review what you do with folks, pull out the most interesting and compelling pieces of that and create content. This is also useful when you are having sales conversations. It's very challenging. Again, if you don't have a system that you're working from, however unrefined. It's very challenging to present to somebody something that they could buy when it's that big. So for me again, it feels almost like a ethical issue to make sure that I'm presenting something that to a certain person could be valuable rather than kind of leaving them in space. I think I covered this one, so I'll go back. I'm just gonna read this one point because I think it is important. Otherwise this is a little bit redundant. Having a system like this allows you to create an experience where the people you're serving don't have to figure out what they're going to talk to you about every week, which frankly might be cool for them for a couple of weeks, but after a couple of weeks they're going to wonder since they chose to work with you. It implies that they're having some level of issue when they start, when they're required to self direct week after week after week, they're going to start to experience some confusion about whether they're even on the right path because they actually came to you to help them figure out what that path is. So I think that's a really important aspect of it as well. It's great to open it up for self direction, but we don't want to place the burden of directing the engagement on the person. We're serving scalability. So if you do choose to write a book, this is something that will be very useful to you. Online courses so part of what we're doing in terms of creating online coursework, this is essentially all the stuff that you wish your ideal clients knew before sitting down to talk to that would make your coaching that much more effective. Consider building that into your signature system. Also super useful. If you get invited to speak, you won't have to reinvent the wheel every single time somebody asks you if you'd like to speak. You can pick out pieces of the system, the whole system. The system as applies to problem A. So it does create a higher degree of efficiency in terms of workload over time. One important note that I just wanted to make, you don't always necessarily have to have it be steps. So Atomic Habits is an example of a signature system that allows people to pick and choose. They basically. He basically has different buckets to choose from in terms of habit formation. And a person can apply that in a way that feels, feels like what am I trying to say? Rather than going step 1, 2, 3, 4, a person checks in and says my scenario is a little bit more like this. So I'm going to look at this section of the signature system so you can do it that way as well if you want to be a little bit more flexible. Steps to creating such a thing. Our favorite thing is number one, having the niche. This helps us create a system. Otherwise we are again sort of standing at the edge of the Pacific Ocean trying to organize it right. It's. That's a really big task. So we want to have something that's theoretically at least organizable. Second step is articulating a point of view. And this is again really what I want to impress upon you today is how do you develop your unique perspective on how you should solve a given problem. So permission slip to have an opinion on the thing that you care about is here for you today. Next step. Obviously we need to know the obstacles that are in a way, in the way of a person solving such a thing and grade the steps so you'll see in the worksheet that I put in that I hope you will kind of revisit time as time progresses and you get some iterations, identifying the audience you're working with, what their problem is and establishing point A. Point B. You can use the format I help put into brackets, who you help and what you help with. It's really that simple to begin with. So if you feel like you can't answer those two questions, that would be the place to start again. This is not a marriage. This is the problem that you're going to solve right now. If in six months you're like, I think that problem is really stupid and I don't care anymore, then you don't have to do that. What I'm encouraging you to do is be intense in the moment. B, allow yourself to be compelled in the moment without attachment to this being a lifelong pursuit that you cannot extricate yourself from. Articulate your point of view. The simplest way to define this is the best way to achieve whatever it is you're helping with is by your point of view. If this is something that feels really foreign, this is probably where you should start. And I just want to kind of give you an example of what this means. Let's say you're a financial coach for tattoo artists, which seems like a really cool niche. I would say some financial coaches for tattoo artists might say, well, the best way to solve your financial issues is by changing your relationship with money. Another one might be more focused on, perhaps you need to keep better track of your expenses. A little more of a literal approach. But this is just kind of the direction I want you to go. Understanding what your unique point of view is on the problem is extremely helpful. It should reflect your beliefs, and it is really the foundation on which your signature, signature system will rest. Frankly, if you just have that, your life will feel much easier. This is just sort of an illustration of how this can the reality of this. So person doing the same job as somebody else. A business coach for whoever and a business coach for whoever. Their unique approach and point of view may be centered around how they organize their relationships or the technical aspects of their life or their mindset or what systems they use, or they can kind of grab from everything and kind of have a more holistic approach for you guys. You just need to figure out what category you're in. Next step. I think you guys have probably all done this to some degree or another, but what are the obstacles? What's missing? What are they lacking when they come to you can be a really helpful place to start. What are the barriers? Misconceptions? What do they misunderstand about their problem? So perhaps when you and I first talked, we were talking about the difficulty of getting into momentum.