Good Content Is Over. Here's What Actually Gets Clients.

just creating good content isn't getting you clients anymore, and creating more content is not going to fix that problem either. And I'm sad to say, focusing on better content won't fix it either, because the whole content game for business owners who have coaching programs, like a life coach, a business coach, a fitness coach, has completely changed. And I'm going to tell you what's working right now, what I see with the coaches that I'm working with on a daily basis in my program. You see, I teach coaches who already have an established program that they've been selling, and the sales are kind of slowing down, and they're like, what do I do now? To get my sales back up to where they were. I teach them how to use YouTube as a sales asset just like I do instead of trying to be everywhere on social media. And recently I had to relearn this lesson for myself because, you know, the old wives' tale, a cobbler's kids never have new shoes. Well, hello, I never have a new YouTube strategy because I'm always focusing on my clients. So when I go light on YouTube, my sales slow down, like real slow down. And then when I recommit and I focus on my strategy, those sales pick right back up. So I want to tell you exactly where your content needs to be living that's converting clients right now, the 3 tests every piece of content that you create needs to pass, and the 1 test most people who have coaching programs, their content always fails. The biggest content structural shift that's happening that nobody is talking about is that most of you that have coaching programs are creating content on push platforms. Instagram, TikTok, those algorithms push your reels in front of people that didn't really ask for it while they're scrolling at 9:00 PM in bed watching Real Housewives of Potomac. She's not in buying mode. She's in escape mode. She's in wind-down mode. Push platforms are great for nurturing your audience, people who already know you. They are terrible for converting cold strangers into actual clients because that type of micro content cannot teach enough depth to make somebody trust you to throw down a couple thousand dollars to enroll in your program or apply to your program. But YouTube and the long-form videos there are the complete opposite. YouTube is a pull platform. People come with a problem, they search for it, and they choose you if it looks like you're going to solve their problem. This is somebody who's already invested in fixing their problem. This is not somebody just scrolling to escape. She's typing her exact problem that she needs solved in the search bar. And the thing that's happening right now that's completely changing everything that we do with content is, you guessed it, AI. AI is the number one spot, and soon it's going to pass organic search like Google as the place people go to have their problem solved. They're going to Claude, Perplexity, Gemini, AI, and people aren't scrolling for answers anymore. They're typing their problems into AI and trying to go into detail with very specific problems. And do you know the number one resource that AI references? Brand new, because it just surpassed Reddit as the number one resource, is YouTube. YouTube is the number one source that AI will reference and recommend to people trying to solve their problem. So you need to understand, if you're creating great content on social platforms and you're not seeing leads, clients, applications coming in, it's because they're not searching on social They're going to AI, and AI is sourcing people who have YouTube videos. I noticed this recently in my own business. A few months ago, I got overwhelmed and busy in my business, and so I took a break on YouTube. I got complacent, and I just started pumping out videos that I knew would do fine. So I went light, I cut back, and I watched my leads slow rate way down. And in this case, I was doing a weekly webinar, and we saw those signups to those weekly webinars start to dwindle. Now, when I recommitted just a few weeks ago, we saw those registration numbers go back up. And that wasn't a coincidence. That is confirmation. YouTube is doing something for my business that Instagram, even on its best month, never has and never will. I want you to evaluate something real quick. Where does your best content live right now? When your future potential client has that problem that they need to figure out how to solve right before they say yes to working with you, yes to applying to your program, where is she searching? Because that's exactly where your content should live, not where it's easiest for you to post or trendy for you to post. Because I'm going to tell you time and time again, my clients come to me thinking that their audience is not on YouTube. And I say, well, let's try YouTube for 90 days. Let's see what happens. Because they assume, because they've never been on YouTube, that their audience isn't there. But I'm going to tell you, your audience is 100% on Google and AI. And so when my clients start posting on YouTube, not only do they get new leads from YouTube, but we start to track their traffic sources. And we see people coming from Google, people coming from ChatGPT. So even though you're in your head thinking, well, my audience doesn't watch YouTube, maybe not, but I'm going to guess they are. But they are also searching Google and using AI. And if you're putting time into these push platforms, your ready-to-buy viewer will never see that when they're actually ready to buy. And you don't have a content problem, you have a discovery problem. And AI is making this a lot worse for the wrong problems and a lot better for the right ones. Now, even if you're like, okay, I'm going to commit to YouTube, I see the power in these pull platforms. Your content, your YouTube video has to pass 3 specific tests before it will ever even convert, which is the point of creating content, converting viewers or potential leads into clients, into customers, right? In fact, let me know for you, what are you trying to sell more of on YouTube? Drop it in the comments. Do you have a membership? Do you have a coaching program? Do you have a course? I would love to hear what you would like to sell more of through your YouTube videos. So I call this test the 3 Conversion Test. Super original, right? And most of the coaches that I work with, their content fails at least one of these tests, and a lot of them fail all three of these tests. So let's talk about the three tests: direction, durability, and buyer. Test one is direction. Does this content point somewhere next? Is there a next step that viewer can take, or does she nod and say, "Oh yeah, that, that's good," click away and disappear forever? Because most coaches on YouTube or business owners on YouTube don't plan their content with a next direction in mind. The viewer will learn something useful from that video and then either watch the next video that pops up that may not be your video or select another video in the suggested column, which again may not be your video because you didn't tell that viewer what to do next. And this is a huge piece of the strategy in my YouTube playlist funnel and how we structure content to do specific things. Every video in a playlist funnel has a specific job that keeps that viewer on your content or taking that next step with you. Because as a business owner, we aren't showing up on YouTube to be a YouTuber, to be a content creator. We're showing up on YouTube to generate leads, to book clients, right? We're going to come back to this one in a minute, but I want to go to the second second test that your content has to pass, and that's durability. Is your content going to compound over time, like interest, or does it vanish and have a very short lifespan? Because that Reel you spent searching for the trending audio, editing it on your phone and CapCut or wherever, it took you an hour, an hour or more to edit, it will vanish. The lifespan of that Reel will be done in less than 48 hours. Same thing with a carousel. We hear carousels are great right now, but you post a carousel on Monday, it's doing nothing for you by Friday. And what you're doing is you're not building a sales asset with this content. You're basically feeding a furnace to keep it lit, and you have to keep feeding it to keep it lit. And when you stop feeding it, everything goes dark. I want to show you what compounding on YouTube actually looks like. So I have a video on my channel called How I Made $100,000 in 90 Days on a Small YouTube Channel. You can see this video is over 2 200 days old and it's still pulling in 25 to 30 views a week. And this video is a conversion video. It talks about who is right for my YouTube coaching experience. So it is driving me traffic to that page every single day, 200 days after I published it. I made it once and it's working almost a year later. I'm a busy mom. I'm planning for the summer. I'm planning not to work on the afternoons in the summer. I need content that does that instead of constantly feeding Instagram every other day. The third test you need to take your content through is the buyer test. Does this content actually speak to a buyer or a browser? And so in my world, what I teach my clients is, is your content created for Expert Esther, that person who is ready to buy that just doesn't know what the solution is they need and your program is the solution? Or are you speaking to a Beginner Betty, that person who doesn't understand yet the importance of investing in themselves, of hiring you as their guide, as their coach? Because when you create Beginner Betty content, you're not going to make sales. One of my mentors, Mariah Coz, she calls these champagne problems for champagne clients. So in my example, I'm not creating content for somebody who wants to start a YouTube channel. I'm creating content for a coach who has a program like you, who used to sell it on Instagram, who had great results on ads, but sales have slowed down and they're like, how can I get my sales and my clients back up to where they were before? You have an established offer, you've sold it before, you're just looking for a new avenue to sell it more. You have very different problems than somebody just starting a business, than somebody just trying to find their first clients, right? And so I create content for you because I want you to come to this channel because you understand the importance of having an avenue to sell your coaching program. Where the beginner, one, may not even have the money yet to invest in working with you. Second, doesn't understand the full scope of the problems that are going to arise once you've got people in, how to keep that coming. These are two completely different people. Will the beginner eventually become an expert-esser? Potentially, They've got to go through that viewer journey first. They've got to experience that and understand why this champagne problem is a champagne problem for them to then buy or join your program. Let me know if you're nodding your head shaking yes by saying champagne or giving me a little champagne emoji down in the comments. So I want to show you an example of a client who has content that passes all 3 of these tests. This is Gina, and when she came to me, she had content a little bit on Instagram, a little bit on YouTube, and she wanted to find a specific platform that she could focus on that would give her the biggest bang for her buck because with 80 PhD, she's all scattered, and she wanted to know where she could save the most time. So we got specific with her strategy for YouTube. We made sure we created specific content for a specific buyer with a specific call to action that took people off of YouTube at the right time and onto her email list. And that's where she could continue that relationship. You can see right here she offered a lead magnet, a free lead magnet. So now I'm going to give you the receipt, proof, timeline, screenshot, cuts because Salt Lake City has taught me well. Gina has one video. This particular video of Gina's is almost a year old. It has 50,000 views on it in the last 7 days alone. After already being almost a year old, it's pulled in over 460 more views and 13 brand new YouTube subscribers almost a year after she posted this video. And the other important part of this, if you look at where traffic is coming from, ChatGPT is one of those places. AI is finding and referencing her video and pulling it to answer people's questions, and they are sending people to that video, and that video is sending people to her email list. Within the first 4 months of working together, Gina was not only able to fill her first coaching program where she had some vacant seats she was having a hard time filling, but she reopened a second cohort, increased the pricing, and filled that immediately with the audience that she had on YouTube. And in fact, she hasn't even posted for a few months because she's been fulfilling 2 those coaching cohorts and she's still getting over 400 views on a video that's almost a year old because she doesn't need to post right now. She can take a break because she built a sales asset that keeps working for her while she continues to serve her influx of coaching clients. That's not luck, you guys. That's a video that passes all 3 tests: direction, durability, and buyer. And as I said, it's working for her and she doesn't even need to post. I'm gonna tell you, test 3 is the hardest one to grade yourself on. On because a lot of coaches will think aiming at Expert Esther limits their reach, and so they try to broaden their reach by speaking to Beginner Bettys. And sometimes you may not even realize you're speaking to Beginner Bettys. So I built a free custom GPT for you to test out your next video idea. You're gonna plug in any video idea that you have, and it's going to tell you, are you attracting Expert Esthers with this idea, or is it a Beginner Betty video? And you can grab that custom GPT at trenalittle.com/customgpt. Www.youtube.com/whoswatching. I'm telling you, test out your next 3 videos on this GPT and it may completely change the way your videos perform from here on out. I want to go back to those 3 tests again, and I mentioned I wanted to deep dive a little bit in test 1, direction. This is where almost every single coach that I work with fails, but it is the most fixable if you understand it. So I want to walk you through what this looks like in practice. Every piece of content that you create needs to have a job. It needs to play a specific role in your business. Look, we aren't showing up as business owners, as I said earlier, to be content creators. So stop just pumping out content to hopefully find somebody that watches your video and hopefully buys you. You need to create content with purpose because I don't know about you, I would rather have 1,000 true people watch my content, people that were actually the right fit for my program, than get 100,000 views or build my channel to 100,000 subscribers. Because if those 1,000 people are the best fit for my YouTube coaching experience, I am set. My business is good to go, as opposed to 100,000 people with nobody that's the right person. I'm broke. So when I plan Every single video that I put on my YouTube channel, I ask one question: What is this video's job? Maybe it's to get people into a lead magnet so I can continue to nurture them in an email list. Hello, the Who's Watching lead magnet. Maybe it's also to send people to another video so they can continue to get a sense of my vibe, my style of teaching, build trust. And maybe its job is to get people to actually buy my program, apply to my program, book a call. But every video has a specific main job, and every video has a specific call to action to get that job to actually happen, because we aren't shoving all of them in there. If you put all of these jobs into one video, nothing's gonna happen. And that's exactly the biggest mistake I see so many coaches make when I'm working with them. They try to make one video do all the roles— comment below, download the freebie, apply to my program, join my next webinar. By the time you've asked for all of these people have done left your video. They're like, okay, enough already. And this is why I really love what I do in my business. I can take about 2 hours to plan a video from ideation to scripting to filming it, knowing that it can bring me leads for the next 200+ days, as opposed to I could spend an hour on a reel and its relevancy be done in 48 hours. Because if I focus on a video that maybe I need to film like today on a Saturday before the soccer games because I had the 5th grade school picnic yesterday, I know this video that I'm filming today will work for me all summer so I can take all afternoon in the summer to go to the pool with the kids, or I can fly out on a random Tuesday to Amsterdam to go see Harry Styles. Well, I have videos still growing my email list and I don't need to show up on social media. And it has allowed me now to be able to go to Pilates every single morning after I get my kids on the school bus, where before I was creating so much content, my to-do list was just never ending because content was such a huge chunk of it. I could never catch up. And that's what a video that passes test 1 does for you. Here's your challenge, and let Come back to me in the comments or email me and let me know. Audit your last 5 pieces of content that you created, whether it's on Instagram or TikTok or YouTube, and can you name the specific one job that piece of content was doing to get people to that next step? Yes or no? When you can't, that's why you're not seeing your email list grow. That's why you're not seeing more applications come in. That's why you're not booking more clients. It has failed test one. I understand that maybe my audience isn't in that buyer mindset when they are scrolling through Instagram, but are we sure? YouTube is the best platform because the answer is really going to surprise you. It is going to change everything about where you put your time when it comes to creating content to grow your business. I'm going to break down exactly what YouTube can do for your business and give you the receipts, the proof, the timelines in this video that's on your screen right now. Click to watch.