Why Coaches Need To Stop Doing 'All The Things' with Laura Pence Atencio

all the things, and you know what I'm talking about. You're doing every single task, top to bottom in your business. That's probably not going to be a very fruitful endeavor if you keep on that path because you really want to have a better strategy. And that's why we've brought Laura Pence Atencio in today from Social Savvy Geek and the Coach's Compass to, to talk about this on Cash In On Camera today. Laura, we see a lot of coaches who are doing all the things. I guess my first question would be, is it okay for a coach to be doing all the things every task in the earliest stage of their business, like when they're bootstrapping it? Or is it more of a case of no, they should not be doing all the things even from the very, very, very start?

We should never be doing all the things. And even— yes, no, even when you've scaled up to the point where you have a team and you can do more things, you still need to be intentional about the things that we do and make sure that we're choosing the right things for ourselves and our business, because no, doing all the things is never good.

Okay, so let's start then at the place of a— for a new coach, right? I know you work a lot with the coaches, so a new coach should not be doing all the things. What are the areas they should be concentrating on in the earliest stage of the business?

Well, at every stage, it's— you have to keep in mind the customer strategy. So people have to find they have to find you and you have to engage with them and nurture them and get them into your community. And then once you have them in the community, you need to obviously nurture them, make a sale. And then once the sale happens, a lot of people stop, but that's when you actually need to start doing things because then you have to deliver on your promise and make sure that you have retention and offer a way for those people to continue working with you. So it's more of doing things intentionally and making sure that you have one, one thing working before you add more things on. So people just keep jumping from tactic to tactic right now. It's a little crazy.

I wrote, I wrote down those words, right? So I wrote down like find, engage, nurture, convert, and deliver. What I didn't see in that list though is create a funnel, create a website, like more technical things. You didn't say you, you were, you're not really talking about all the technical rabbit holes in which we could follow and go down, right? That's what I'm hearing you say.

It is. Now, I own a digital marketing agency. I create funnels, I build all those things out, but people jump on building things out before they know where they're going. That, yes, building the structure happens after you know who you are, who you serve, and what you're going to offer them. So it's not the first thing that you should do by any stretch of the imagination. Yeah.

Yeah. I think that, that often happens where it probably stems from the fact that coaches see other successful coaches at a certain stage of their business, which is way further along than it appears that they are online. So an example could be I see an amazing coach who does something similar to what I aspire to do, and it looks as if they just started this thing last week, right? When in reality they've been doing this for 9 years. We don't see the 9 years. Therefore, we feel like we need to jump the queue. It's like, what's wrong with me if I can't accomplish what they've accomplished in seemingly a week?

People are comparing their beginning to other people's middle. In late-stage businesses for sure. And in all fairness, there are plenty of marketing and business coaches out there right now who are selling the idea that you can skip the time and get straight to the results. And unless you're escaping corporate with a massive budget and you can just hire a team and consultants and have basically what amounts to a startup with funding, then that's just not, that's not gonna happen. I mean, that's a unicorn. But what you can do is plan your activities and create the customer journey strategy and then pick the right tactics at the right time to implement within that strategy to get the results that you want, starting where you are with what you have and then scaling it up as you go. So that's what I've been helping people do for the last 12 years.

Susan says, she says, John, I didn't have a website for the first 2 years coaching years, I did have a Facebook business page. And so let's talk about that idea of visibility. If we're not going to be focused on all the funnels and the technology so much as our core fundamental foundation, what is the best way for people, coaches, start off to have that visibility that we need?

Typically, the easiest way is through online social media, Facebook. However, never ever put all your eggs in one basket because Facebook can and will cancel accounts for any or no reason at any time. I once had my account restricted, uh, and couldn't share anything for 6 months because I got caught up in some algorithm thing that they had, and they admitted it was completely a mistake. I didn't do anything, but during those 6 months I couldn't share links to my website and nobody else could either. And so you definitely don't want to put all your eggs in the one basket, but Here's the thing, people don't want to hear it. The other way to get in front of an audience is to borrow other people's audience, and that's online through guest blogging, guest speaking, guest for summits. But also leave your house on your little feet and go out into your local community and go meet people.

Oh, wait a minute, that means we have to talk to people, Laura. I don't think we want to do that.

I know. So I work with coaches, and most of us want to do do the majority of our marketing online, but sometimes you need to leave the house and go to a conference in person and meet people because it just fast-tracks.

Obviously, we've been limited with COVID and how we could do that, but it's starting to come back. I just came back from Las Vegas publicity and publishing conference in Las Vegas last week where I spoke. It was so great to be in a room with actual human beings. There's an energy in the room and I I absolutely think that's, that's true.

I mean, we're going to start to see— Speaking was the fastest way to get new clients for me for years. Yes. And that's—

I just wanted to touch on what you said about not putting all your eggs in one basket. I had my Instagram account at one point was shut down just out of there. I didn't have it for, I think, over a month. I have a client right now, Instagram account shut down for no reason, cannot get it back. No one that, no human being that you can contact to retrieve it.

It's really, it's really hard.

Yeah. It is really difficult. And it is important, I think, to think about that. But having said that, do we also subscribe to the idea of being on every single platform or is it more of a case that let's pick a few that we want to focus on?

That's the great answer of it depends, but my general advice is this. Choose— there's a Venn diagram and it will overlap how— who you are and how you personally love to communicate. And then there's a circle that is how your clients and your ideal clients consume and enjoy content. Somewhere in the middle is the type of content and the type of platform that you should be on. Because if, for example, I love written content, blog, and then also audio podcasting, I don't love creating Reels and Stories. I'm Gen X, I just don't love it, okay? But if I wanted to work with an old Gen Z, then that's probably not going to be a good fit. But I'd have to do some sort of video content to reach that audience. So there has to be a happy medium.

Um, and with that, you want that thing that you naturally gravitate to is important.

No, it really is. And then that's part of getting that— you got to get the right mentor. If somebody— I've worked with people who are like, you've got to get on video and be live every single day. And I'm like, that crushes my soul. I'm an ambivert and I don't want to do that. No. So first you pick how you're going to communicate, you choose platforms that will work for you sustainably. And then that primary platform will be the one where you spend the most of your personal time and engagement. Now, that doesn't mean that you or your company shouldn't be on the other platforms later, because using content system, you can repurpose all your content. You create your core library and then you can chunk it out and put it on the other platforms, but that's not where you're going to be spending your time engaging. So where you're going to engage should be your primary platform. So for me, that's always been Twitter. I love Twitter. Twitter's my favorite.

Yeah. And I, I, I have a Twitter account for years. I tend not to do as much on Twitter. I think I gravitate more naturally to Instagram. And so I think we all have, and I love YouTube, of course, as well. One of the things that we subscribe to here with, with Profitable Podcast Method is the idea that you would do a, like you said, the content, the main thing, the, the macro longer form, and then you do repurposing from that or big—

Absolutely.

As well. And so I just wanted to talk about content because sometimes people want to outsource content creation or coaches want to outsource the content creation. And I think there are certain portions of it that can be. But at the end of the day, you have to be the spokesperson of your business. Do you agree with that? And, and if so, why?

I would say usually and mostly it's good for you to be the face of your business. However, you don't have to be, um, and that, that's where you're finding the, the form and the type of content works for you. And mostly you have to be at the beginning because you don't have the funds or the team to do it any other way. So there are things that people try to avoid right out of the gate where I'm like, just because your mentor isn't doing that now doesn't mean they didn't used to do it. You've got to get your boots on the ground at first. At first you'll do everything, but then later, um, like for example, when I had a radio show on the air in Denver that was also podcast, I didn't write all that content. I had a library of 8 years of content for my ghostwriter to go through and create a strategy and pull stuff out of, and then I just went over it and made sure that it was in my voice and added my personal stories to it. She didn't know my personal stories, but I had already written the content. She was just pulling it together and saying, on this topic, we're going to talk about this and this and this that you talked about these times. And I'm teaching the same thing, so it's fine. And then you can just update anything that maybe might be out of date. Like if I wrote something about Facebook 10 years ago, it is not relevant now. True. But the underlying structure and content strategy is the same.

Yes. Um, so when it comes to— you, you just mentioned, you know, a ghostwriter, um, having, you know, team members or people that you can rely on to do certain tasks. What is the first person— who, who is the first person that needs to be on a coach's team in order to start not doing things themselves?

I always think there's people you should get are accountants and lawyers. And people like, aren't you a marketer? I'm like, yes, but also I was a financial advisor before. And if your books are not in order, you do not have a business. So get your legal and your bookkeeping handled. And then once you do that, as far as your, your in-house team, I mean, you can do a lot with a really good virtual assistant and, um, and perhaps an agency. I mean, I own an agency, so of course I say that, but we can come in and do a lot, um, of various tasks that you couldn't hire just one person to do. Basically, we're a fractional marketing company for coaches. So if you find an agency or someone who has multiple talents and you can work with them however much you can afford or find the right fit for you, but you need a virtual assistant out of the gate who can handle your inbox and who can message people for you and respond to people and handle your calendar. They could be your client care coordinator or your virtual, you know, virtual assistant is just, you have to have one.

Yeah, I agree. And I think that's one of the mistakes that I made in the early too, was the bookkeeping piece, right? More along the accounting side of it. I was doing things in a backwards way because I didn't know any better.. And then in time I started to educate myself and realize, okay, hello, you know. But yeah, I think in retrospect I probably would have done a better job of that in early stages.

But you're right, I think people don't want to outsource things because they think they can do it themselves. And I'm like, okay, I have an accounting— I was a financial advisor, but I wasn't doing my bookkeeping because I don't love it. So I outsource it.

Well, my situation, I think it was just because I didn't know any better. Like, I just didn't know what I was doing. And right, I think that's the case for a of coaches, you know, when they're first starting out, it's like you don't know what you don't know. And sometimes, and hopefully content like this would help them to better understand what some of the pitfalls may be and that they could, you know, take your advice and hire again a lawyer, an accountant, a bookkeeper. That could be the first stage. The second stage is a virtual assistant. They might not be able to do every single thing in your— but they, you know, they are a general VA, can do a lot of things and can be trained to do a lot of different tasks in your business. Then you can start moving into your— you have an agency, I have an agency, like be able to hire out some outsource certain things in your business. It makes a lot of sense.

And what you want to do regardless of how you work with someone, whether it's an agency, whether it's an individual, whether it's, you know, a small team, is to make sure that you're filling gaps that you need filled. So there are solutions that will have a list of 10 things that you're getting, but you only needed the one thing. And you don't, you don't need all that. So you need to find the solution that fits where you are within your budget at the time that you are. And I am a huge proponent of using software and automation to some extent, as much as possible, reduce the amount of human interaction that you have to have so that you can save it for the important things like speaking with people who are in your, in your DMs. Like, you want to have a human being in there. You don't want to send necessarily automated messages to everything. You could use a chatbot for some things, but then it needs to be obvious and open that it is a chatbot. So you're not being disingenuous. Clear communication and forthrightness will take you a long way.

Well, I wanted to ask you, we have a little segment we do called Stop Marking It's $19.99. And so what is something that— and you with your purple bluish hair, you might understand the reference to Prince here, but You know, so what is something that it could be a tip, tool, tactic, or technique, you, Laura, to market Social Savvy Geek or the Coach's Compass? What is something that's really working for you today?

Well, it's funny that you should ask. I am such a tech geek right now. I'm really excited about— I'm working in GoHighLevel on the back end and building out funnels, and it's so fun. But it really, it just allows you to have the backend systems to support a launch the way that people expect it to look on the front end. I find that people have been selling the idea of like bootcamps or workshops or, you know, any kind of launch, and they see only the visible parts, and then they're selling the results of that without doing the backend work, like the calendar scheduling and, you know, the videos and all the emails and all the text messages and all the parts that go into it. And, you know, there's some upfront costs, but the human cost down the road of having a full staff to run a team, like it was 5 people to do what the software is doing. And I, now I can have, you know, 1 person. It's awesome. Yeah.

Do you mind, do you mind sharing? I mean, I'm personally, I'm a big Kajabi person. Like I love Kajabi because to me it's like an all-in-one marketing solution. Is there any kind of platform of that description that you use or recommend?

That's why I'm using GoHighLevel for the same thing. But I am platform agnostic. Here's the thing.

Oh, nice.

In my agency, I, I will work with whatever platform people need because what works best for me and my business may not work best for you and your business. It's personality based. It's this one. You either need a team or to be tech savvy. So if you're a new coach doing it yourself, that's not the one for you unless you happen to be a super geek like me. But most coaches aren't there and So I will put people into the right software for them. And there's no one correct software, just like there's no one way to deliver on your promise. If you have membership—

but the foundation.

Yeah.

But the foundation and the strategy of what you're describing is really the most important thing.

Yes. That's the thing. Business should be you figuring out who you are, listening to your inner compass, following your true north. People just see something and go, oh, that looks great, I should do that. But if it doesn't work for you, then it's not going to work. I could give you a, like, a real— it's a funny example, but I have always loved and am totally enamored with Audrey Hepburn. She's amazing. She's so beautiful and so graceful and so lovely, and I could try to emulate her and it would be utter and complete failure because I am an Audrey, um, no, now I've lost it. I'm a Katharine Hepburn. That's what I was gonna say. I am brash and pants-wearing and straightforward, no-nonsense, and I'm never going to be an Audrey Hepburn, as much as I love her, never going to be that way. My best friend is like that. I love to look at that, but I can't do it. So first you have to be true to yourself and decide what you're going to do that works for you, that will fulfill your life goals, your dreams, your needs. I mean, I have a lot of people trying to be a coach that they're emulating who has got no children. And well, I have a child. She says, our lives are totally different. What I want is— and so you got to find what works for you, and that includes your tools.

And, and you're— you may, you made a really good example, like you gave a good example there. For those who don't know the references, right, go and go to Google and go to Audrey Hepburn, Audrey Hepburn, and then Katharine Hepburn. You will see they—

No relation. They're not related at all.

But you'll see what Laura is referring to. But yeah, this idea of authenticity and making sure that your systems and that your business is really authentic to you, I think, is really one of the key things. The last thing I wanted to ask you to do— Yeah, that's right. Tell us about how people can reach out to you at Social Savvy Geek, The Coach's Compass. How do people reach out?

Yeah, I, yeah, I gave you my Linktree there and that is actually in the bio of all my socials for both companies as well. And that top is the Facebook group. So if you go to the Coaches to Compass Facebook group right now, you can join that and then you can be included in our upcoming boot camp, which does repeat. So if you're listening to this later, just check. The links are always updated here. So you'll see what is the newest thing. There's also work with me. You can get on my calendar if you have questions right now. And yeah, I'd love to. And of course, you can see all my socials at the bottom. So choose your favorite and connect with me there.

I love it. Laura, thank you so much for coming on Cash In On Camera. Really appreciate all your insights. Coaches need— coaches do such important work because they're really helping to further someone else's journey and guide them to success. And so I think you and I both are very passionate about helping coaches to further their causes and their mission. And I hope that this conversation helped coaches who are watching better understand that they don't have to and shouldn't be doing all the things, but that they should be strategic about doing the right things. So thank you so much for being on Cash In On Camera. We really appreciate it.

Thank you for having me.